Can NBA Star Players “turn it on” In The Playoffs?

As a huge supporter of Kyle Lowry, I get particularly sensitive when I hear critics bash on Lowry’s playoff performances. I was at game one during the 2019 NBA playoffs when Lowry went 0 for 7, missed his only two free throws, and ended with zero points. I almost found myself giving into the narrative, but thankfully, Lowry went on to have an amazing playoff run capped off by a 26-point, 10 assist, 7 rebound, and 3 steal game to beat the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

After game six of the finals Fred VanVleet said, “He gets more slander than anybody I’ve ever seen in the league, and so to have him be able to hold that trophy up tonight… that’s what means the most for us.”

Fred implied that the slander was misinformed and this performance vindicated Lowry’s apparent playoff woes. I decided to analyze the data and see if Lowry’s 2019 playoff performance did in fact rectify the debatable narrative surrounding him. But more specifically, I wanted to see how star players performance changes moving from regular season to playoff action.

A common train of thought from the NBA media is that star players can “turn it on” in the playoffs, or “bring their game to a different level.” It turns out that this is likely the exception rather than the rule.

Here is a graph of players average change in regular season vs. playoff Player Efficiency Rating (PER), for players who played over 40 playoff games since 2000 and averaged over 30 minutes in the playoffs.

As seen from the graph, it is extremely difficult for top players on a playoff team to actually improve their performance in the playoffs. Every player except for seven, experience a drop in PER once they reached the playoffs.

My calculation is based off of the change in PER for each year separately, and then averaged. This provided an accurate representation of whether a player could improve from their regular season to the post season, rather than a career comparison of regular season PER and playoff PER.

All things considered, a decrease in players PER should have been expected. The main reason for this being that the competition is far stronger in the playoffs. Firstly, players are playing against the best opposing teams and players in the league. Secondly, a playoff series gives more time to scout opponents, thus improving defense as a whole.

To further prove this I also looked at a statistic called Efficiency (EFF). This is a very simple all encompassing statistic which is essentially a summation of counting statistics.

NBA’s efficiency rating: (PTS + REB + AST + STL + BLK − ((FGA − FGM) + (FTA − FTM) + TO))

Considering that players in the above group averaged 33 and 35 regular season and playoff minutes respectively, we should see an improvement in the playoffs to all their counting statistics and their EFF. As seen from the graph below, that is not the case for most star players in the NBA today.

There are two things that really stand out when looking at this figure. One is that even though 18 out of 20 players on this list saw an increase in minutes in the playoffs, only six increased their EFF. And second, players 2pt and 3pt field goal percentages are significantly lower. Giannis Antetokounmpo is shooting more than 5% worse from two, Damian Lillard, and Lou Williams are shooting more than 5% worse from three, and Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and James Harden are all shooting over 3% worse from three. It is surprising to see some of the leagues all-time efficient players (besides Lou Williams), become more human in the playoffs.

For Draymond Green and Lebron James there is feasible explanation as to why their EFF was able to improve. These two players are notorious for “dogging it” in the regular season before deciding to play harder in the playoffs. Since there is quite a wide spread agreement by NBA media on this issue, I accepted it as a plausible explanation.

Kawhi Leonard on the other hand is an anomaly. It seems he is one of the only star players to actually raise the level of his game in April. Kawhi has been able to improve his 2pt and 3pt shooting efficiency in the playoffs. It is incredibly impressive to think Kawhi was able to do this shooting more 2-pointers, 3-pointers, and free throws per game in the playoff than in the regular season, before the start of the 2020 season.

In the 2019 playoffs, only 51% of Kawhi’s three pointers were assisted while shooting 38% fg. In the regular season, 66% of his threes were assisted while shooting 37%. Kawhi managed to improve his three point percentage taking more threes overall, but even crazier, taking more pull up threes.

Since it is now clear that it is a difficult task for players to raise their game in the playoffs, it is time to check how my man Kyle Lowry fared in the playoffs compared to his peers, to determine if he has misstepped in the playoffs.

Below is the same group of 20 players career on-off statistics during the playoffs.

On-off is a teams net rating while you are on the floor vs. off of the floor. For example, Lowry’s career playoffs on-off is 12.7. That meant that the Raptors net rating was 12.7 points better when he was on the floor. To the contrary, Demar DeRozan’s career playoff on-off is -12, meaning the Raptors had a 12 points worse net rating when he was on the court.

In my view, this graph is what actually paints the correct picture of the Kyle Lowry playoff experience. Although Lowry’s statistics suffered in the playoffs, the Raptors were always a better team when he was on the court. He ranks fourth in this elite pool of players. Lowry is doing so many things to contribute to winning that are not effectively captured in most statistics. This list effectively captures how important a players is to their own team. There is an argument to be made that Lowry is more important to the Raptors than the players below him have been to their respective teams in their career. Kyle Lowry has always been an unbelievable playoff performer, and his championship run in the 2019 playoffs only helps confirm this case.