Borrowed Money

Posted by Stanton Huntington on January 24, 2009

We’ve all learned quite well over the past year or so, through observation or experience, about the risks of living on borrowed cash. The Jazz may not be a Lehman Brothers yet, but to some extent we Jazz fans are living on borrowed money. And of course, by “borrowed money” I clearly mean the shoulders of Mehmet Okur.

You see, when I first started this little post it had a completely different angle. I intended to gripe about Memo’s lack of production on the road. Then I actually got into the stats and realized that a portion of whatever success the Jazz have experienced thus far is attributable to the extraordinarily abnormal production of one Turkish Money Man. I’ll explain.

Take a look at Okur’s 08-09 split stats (games in which he’s played):

	Games	FG %	3 PT %	TO	PPG
Home	19	54.2	47.2	1.4	18.4
Away	16	43.7	37.2	2.3	16.8

What was striking to me was the significant differential between Memo’s home and away production. I thought it was an indication of his weakness away from the friendly confines of the Energy Solutions Arena, but it turns out his road stats this year aren’t that far off or are even better than his career or All-Star season numbers. It’s the home performance that tells the interesting story because, in fact, Memo’s efficiency at home is substantially improved over his career average and even comparable to or better than his 2006-07 All-Star season. Compare these numbers to those above:

CAREER	Games	FG %	3 PT %	TO	PPG
Home	252	47.2	40.1	1.4	14.1
Away	242	44.7	33.6	1.7	13.3

‘06-’07	Games	FG %	3 PT %	TO	PPG
Home	40	47.6	41.3	1.3	18.1
Away	40	44.8	35.8	1.8	17.0

Turnovers aside, it turns out Okur is rather handily outperforming himself this year in Jazz home games (a 15-4 record when Okur plays), at least in terms of efficiency.

Also, the correlation between Memo’s performance and Jazz success goes beyond just the Home/Away split but to overall wins and losses. When the Jazz win, Memo averages 19.4 points and shoots 55.3 percent. When the Jazz lose, Memo shoots closer to, or below his career average and nobody seems to pick up the slack.

It all means that for the current Jazz team to win, Memo needs to outperform his career FG average by 8%, a tall task for any NBA player. Thus far he’s done it with some regularity, but the law of averages suggests that this bubble may burst and Memo’s shooting, especially at home, will return to earth. But hey, until that becomes a reality, here’s to living on borrowed money.

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Ramin on January 26, 2009 said:

He’s streaky on offense, and crap on defense regardless of being home or away. Day in and day out we are being beat at the Center position…I hope this is the last year we have to deal with him.

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