Wisco Fanatics Show: What are fundamental failures?

 

If you watch the Wisco Fanatics show on Wednesdays you may have heard me talk about a group of statistics that I combine into one when talking about basketball. This is a metric I came up with by myself that involves looking at three statistics and can be applied to any basketball team. I use it when talking about the Milwaukee Bucks and Wisconsin Badgers men's basketball team.

The three statistics that comprise the fundamental failures are missed free throws, opponent second chance points and opponent points off turnovers. I began tracking these three areas because I believe they stem from three main fundamental aspects of basketball that need to be executed in order to win. The three aspects being one, making your free throws, two, boxing out your opponent and three, taking care of the ball.

I started keeping track of this after last year's All-Star break, the Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Brooklyn Nets by just three points, but the addition of these three areas came to a total of 59 points! I kept track for the rest of the season and recently went back to look at these three areas for the entire 2021-22 season. My hope was by determining the average fundamental failure points every night that I could determine by the actions of the team executing on the things they're supposed to do, the fundamentals, that I could determine which games the Bucks should win and which they should lose.

Furthermore, if the Bucks performed to a certain degree above or below their fundamental failures and had an outcome that went contrary to whether or not they executed on the fundamentals, that I could find whether the Bucks did something else that hurt their chances to win, like shooting poorly themselves, allowing their opponent too many open looks or whether credit simply needed to be given to the opponent for having a great night themselves.

On the other hand, if the Milwaukee Bucks won a game where they had a high number of fundamental failures and managed to win, that either the Bucks opponent had a bad shooting night, brought on by good defense or missing open looks or if the Bucks just performed well enough outside of the fundamentals to overcome sloppy play.

Without further explanation, here is what I determined from the Milwaukee Bucks 2021-22 season on fundamental failures. The Milwaukee Bucks averaged a total of 33.6 fundamental failure points per game. The Bucks averaged 5.1 missed free throws per game, opponents averaged 15.6 points off turnovers per game against the Bucks and opponents scored 12.9 second chance points against the Bucks per game.

From there I had to look at wins and losses, in games they had more or less than 33.6 fundamental failures, and then look at the margin of victory to determine if their fundamental failure or success was the reason the team earned the win or loss.

Games with fewer than 33.6 fundamental failure points

Starting in the games the Milwaukee Bucks executed their fundamentals at a rate better than the average of their season, I had to examine whether the Bucks won or lost. If the Bucks won and had a total of fewer than 33.6 fundamental failure points, the next thing I look at is margin of victory.

For example, say the Bucks won a game by 10 points and had 25 fundamental failure points, the margin of victory being 10, the fundamental success could be credited for eight of those 10, meaning the Bucks playing fundamental basketball was part of why they won the game, but not the sole reason. The Bucks may have had a strong shooting game for example or their opponent could have had a poor shooting game.

Let's say the Bucks blow out an opponent by 25 and commit 30 fundamental failure points, games like that would suggest that the Bucks shot the ball at a very high field goal percentage and played potentially very good defense to hold their opponent to a low field goal percentage while still either missing a lot of free throws, allowing second chance points or allowing their opponent to score off turnovers. These are the best games to have.

Losing while still performing well in the areas of fundamentals is where you can point to things you can improve. If you lose a game by six points and were at 27 for fundamental failures, that means that had you been average on fundamentals, you may have lost that game by 12. So the fundamentals weren't the thing that can be improved upon. It may be getting higher quality shots, it may be playing better defense or it simply may be that it just wasn't your night and shots weren't falling.

The other thing that losing while playing fundamentally sound basketball should do for Bucks fans, and I understand this can be tough, is give you permission to give credit to your opponent for playing a good game of basketball and being better than your team for the night. These are the tough close games where you leave saying "that was a good basketball game." It's okay, they're all professionals.

When you have more than 33.6 points of fundamental failure

On the flip side, if you commit higher than 33.6 fundamental failures, there may be clearer things to fix. For example, the Brooklyn Nets game on February 26th that caused me to start keeping track of these things. The Milwaukee Bucks lost this game by three points, just three, despite missing 13 free throws, allowing the Nets 19 second chance points and 27 points off turnovers, an astounding 59 total fundamental failure points. This game is a very easy one to explain, had the Bucks been a more fundamental basketball team, in any of three areas, it is extremely feasible that they leave this game victorious.

Now there may be a game where the Milwaukee Bucks commit more than 33.6 fundamental failures, only by say six or seven points, and lose by 15. Those types of games are the ones where even if you had played to an average level of fundamentals, your opponent still would have won. If you can figure out why, you know what you need to improve.

There will undoubtedly be games where the Bucks commit more than 33.6 fundamental failure points and still win, those are games you look at and can say "the Bucks could have easily lost that game." However not all wins will fall in that category.

If the Bucks commit say 40 fundamental failure points, seven above their season average, and win by 30, there has to be credit given to the Bucks for doing something else right despite playing a sloppy fundamental game. Whether it be high field goal percentage, low field goal percentage by the opponent or even the opponent committing even more fundamental failures than the Bucks. Those are the games where you say "the Bucks could have won by even more had they been more fundamental."

Now if the Bucks are seven points above their average fundamental failure points and win by say four points, those are the wins where the Bucks snuck away with one, or could have lost by playing sloppy, some might even say they got lucky.

EXAMPLES

Here are examples of each possible outcome

Bucks won, higher than 33.6 FF, margin of victory larger than FF over average: 

October 23, 2021, Milwaukee Bucks beat San Antonio Spurs 121-111, margin of victory 10, FF 42

The Bucks missed four free throws, allowed San Antonio to score 24 points off turnovers (the Bucks committed 22) and allowed 14 second chance points.

The Bucks did enough to overcome their lack of fundamental play in this specific game by shooting 53 percent on field goals. For this the Milwaukee Bucks deserve credit for winning by a bigger margin than they failed on their fundamentals.

Bucks won, higher than 33.6 FF, margin of victory smaller than FF over average:

December 10th, 2021, Milwaukee Bucks beat Houston Rockets 123-114, margin of victory 9, FF 51

The Bucks in this game missed eight free throws (24-32, respectable 75 percent), allowed 21 points off 15 turnovers and let the Rockets collect 12 offensive rebounds and turn them into 22 more points. This was a sloppy game that the Bucks should have collected a blowout win in. This is one of those games that causes takeaways like "playing down to your competition."

Bucks lost, higher than 33.6 FF, margin of defeat larger than FF over average:

October 21st, 2021, Miami Heat beat Milwaukee Bucks 137-95, margin of defeat 42, FF 46

This was the second game of last year, the Milwaukee Bucks missed 10 free throws, allowed 21 points off turnovers and 15 second chance points. Had the Bucks been around their average for fundamental failures, they may still have lost this game by 30 points. For that, credit to Miami and their defense for holding the Bucks to just 38.1 percent on field goals and 28.6 behind the 3-point line.

Bucks lost, higher than 33.6 FF, margin of defeat smaller than FF over average:

February 26th, 2022 Brooklyn Nets beat Milwaukee Bucks 126-123, margin of defeat 3, FF 59

This is the example I used above and is the game that inspired me to keep track of fundamentals. The Bucks missed 13 free throws in this game, allowed 27 points off turnovers and 19 second chance points. 59 fundamental failure points is a massive 26 points above the season average. A terribly sloppy game and ultimately, one the Bucks certainly could have and should have won. When you lose by fewer points than you were over the average fundamental failures, those are the games that you lost, not the other team won.

Bucks won, lower than 33.6 FF, margin of victory smaller than FF below average:

March 29, 2022, Milwaukee Bucks beat Philadelphia 76ers 118-116, margin of victory 2, FF 27

The Milwaukee Bucks won this game despite by two points despite being six points below their fundamental failure average, meaning they played fundamental basketball. Had they not played well fundamentally and played average, they could have lost this game. Bearing that in mind, the Milwaukee Bucks can certainly thank their fundamental play for winning this game.

Bucks won, lower than 33.6 FF, margin of victory larger than FF below average:

December 22, 2021, Milwaukee Bucks defeat Houston Rockets 126-106, margin of victory 20, FF 19

This is the example of the perfect game. Execute your fundamentals, this was one of the lowest fundamental failure totals of the entire season, and on top of it, even if the Bucks had played an average game of fundamentals, conceding the 14 points below their average, they still could have won this game by six points. Meaning the Bucks played well fundamentally and played good basketball on top of it. These are the type of games the Bucks should aspire to daily.

Bucks lost, lower than 33.6 FF, margin of defeat smaller than FF below average:

April 3, 2022, Dallas Mavericks beat Milwaukee Bucks 118-112, margin of defeat 6, FF 20

The Bucks played a fantastic game from a fundamentals standpoint, doing all the little things right, only missing five free throws, only allowing nine points off turnovers and only six second chance points. The Bucks could expect to win tons of games playing that fundamentally sound, but not this one.

Losing a game like this is tough, it feels like the Bucks did the fundamentals right and still came up short, either it means something else can be done better, or simply that you tip your cap to your opponent for a good basketball game.

Bucks lost, lower than 33.6 FF, margin of defeat larger than FF below average:

March 12, 2022, Golden State beats Milwaukee 122-109, margin of defeat 13, FF 32

This was a game where while the Bucks did play fundamentally sound, they could not stop Klay Thompson, in the end the 13 point loss looked closer on paper than it felt in person. Klay Thompson scored 38 points. This is the type of game that the Bucks sit down, watch film and figure out what they can improve on. The Bucks shot a respectable 38.6 percent on 3s, but just 41.3 percent overall. The biggest disparity however, is rebounding, the Warriors outrebounded the Bucks 55-39, 20 of the 32 fundamental failure points came from Golden State second chance opportunities. 

For the Bucks their takeaway from this game should have been: okay job at the free throw line, fantastic job only committing five turnovers and letting them converted into five points, but you have to control the glass.

This is just my way of looking at how the fundamentals of basketball can affect the game. It can also help me with how to feel about a game, whether the Bucks did a great job playing basketball and were world beaters, maybe they got away lucky from a sloppy game. Or the Bucks opponent took the game despite solid fundamentals from the Bucks and we need to give the opponent credit or the Bucks could have won the game by being more fundamentally sound.