As a follow up to my recent fanpost The Denver Defense and Courting Chaos I had a look at game 3 and have analyzed the Denver lineups data to see if the most successful lineups in the game were also good at creating chaos on the defensive end.

If you want to know about what the the chaos% is trying to measure and how it is calculated, please check out my earlier fanpost.

Chaos Percentage

Observations:

• The overall game chaos% was 1 percent under the season average. However if each half is calculated separately, it can be seen that the 1st half chaos% was high and the 2nd half was very low
• This is completely consistent with the +12pts differential in the 1st half which included 8 steals and 20pts off turnovers followed by the -14pts in the 2nd half which included only 3 steals and a block and 10pts off turnovers

Game 3 Lineups

I have looked at the 9 Five man lineups that played at least 90secs in the game and focused on the Top Four Lineups by NetRtg in the game (3 positive lineups and the best negative Rtg lineup)

Click the graphic above to view large version (data sourced from NBA.com/stats and to allow comparison between lineups with different minutes, non % stats are listed at per minute rate)

Members of the top four Lineups mapped for comparison

Observations:

• There are only 3 lineups out of the 9 that had a positive NetRtg
• The top lineup ranked no1 in all the Rtg categories and the Chaos categories (steals, pts off TOs)
• The top 4 lineups all ranked in the top 4 in Pts off TO and all were in the top 5 in steals
• Iguodala was part of all four lineups, while Brewer, Faried, and Miller appeared in three out of four
• None of the top four lineups has a high off, defensive or total rebound% indicating rebounds are not vital to lineup success or creating chaos

The most successful lineups were all very good at creating chaos indicating that aggressive defense is very important to the Nuggets success

Game Flow

Next I have taken the 'game flow' lineup information graphic from the PopcornMachine website I have added boxes to indicate when the best lineups were playing.

Observations:

• As can be seen in the graphic the four best of the Nugget runs (13-2,8-0,8-1,6-1) all occurred when the chaos creating lineups were on the floor
• Three of the four best runs occurred in the first half

This graphic also allows the Golden State lineups to be seen for those interested in looking at the match ups that played against the chaos lineups.

In conclusion, it is looking more and more like chaos matters to the success of this Denver team and it is a vital element to winning the series, and as someone who loves the Nuggets aggressive defensive style I look forward to Denver creating more chaos in the games ahead