2021 Meta Analysis

With it being late, I'm going to rapid fire this article. First off, I used the relative data instead of the raw data so that historical comparisons can be made. I will be comparing to the 2016-2019 tournaments like I did in the previous two meta articles. Second off, when I recommend meta and anti-meta criteria, feel free to head over to Bart Torvik's site and find teams that meet this criteria. Third off, I cannot stress this enough: This is untested and high-risk, but if you're like me, you want to be on the cutting edge of new. With that, let's see what 2021's Meta looks like.

 

There's a lot to work with so let's start with the stats in which 2021 is king of the castle. This year has the highest quantity of Top 100 3P% with 36 (9 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 6). If the meta of the tournament is shooting 3-point shots, then the anti-meta should be good 3P%D. Let's look at the closest historical example to test our hypothesis. The year that was closest to this year in quantity of Top-100 3P% was 2017 with 34 (14 + 4 + 10 + 2 +4). How did teams with good 3P%D do in 2017? Let's look.

Simple! Five of the E8 had a Top-21 ranking in 3P%D. I'm liking that quality in 2021 teams. Unfortunately, most of the teams with this criteria are 14- thru 16-seeds and/or packed into one side of the bracket. At best, three teams with this criteria would make the E8 like 2017. Let's try something else. 2021 tied 2019 with highest quantity of 2P%D with 42, although 2019 had almost twice as many elites (Top 20) than 2021 so I would propose a different anti-meta criteria. Since 2021 has similar shooting stats as 2016, a trading strategy seems to be the play. You accept that you're going to stop X% of 2-point shots, so you try to make a higher percentage of your own 2-point shots (Elite-level) or you try to shoot more efficiently (Elite 3P%). Thus teams with Top-50 2P%D with a ranking in either 2P% or EFG% that is higher than their 2P%D. Let's see if this strategy paid off in 2016.

It did. Six of the eight teams fit this anti-meta build (yes, i am counting DAME at 52 among the six). The final area of strength for 2021 is the quantity of Top-100 TORD teams (a total of 32). This also lines up with 2016, and the anti-meta play is teams with high TOR. In a room full of thieves, the ones who can protect their wallets the best will succeed. The best way to counter TORD teams is to take care of the ball and takes shots on your possessions instead turnovers. The 2016 chart above shows three teams with Top 10 TOR. I like that quality in 2021 as well.

The worst aspect of 2021 is the ORB, ORBA, FTR, and FTRA. I know from the season averages that both of these have been in consistent decline. This was also discussed in the first article on meta. If there is an elite ORB team or an elite FTR team with one or two of the criteria above, I would take them into consideration for an E8 run. 

I hope all of this helps, and for the next 8 hours, I'll be finishing my bracket. If I wake up in time, I may post my aggregation model predictions in the "To My Readers" section. I've been aggravated with aggregation as an approach for the last few years. It may have more to do with using regression when I should be using a branching/chaining method. As always, thanks for reading my work and let's keep the bracket busting to a minimum.