Only four teams – Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul, Real Madrid, Valencia Basket and Zalgiris Kaunas – survived the latest Turkish Airlines EuroLeague double-round week unscathed. Real and Zalgiris won both of their games on the road by building leads and then getting enough stops to maintain control of their Round 19 victories.
Getting stops has been key to the success of both clubs this season. While Real has risen to the top of the standings and the defensive efficiency leaderboards, Zalgiris now ranks as the fourth most efficient defense and is tied for sixth place.
While forcing turnovers and avoiding fouls play a role in defensive efficiency, shot defense is king. As the table below shows, Zalgiris and Madrid both rank among the best five EuroLeague teams this season in points per-shot allowed. Digging a layer deeper, we also can compare their defensive success to the estimated value of their opponents' attempts.
Synergy Shot Quality (SSQ) is a metric that calculates the expected value of any given shot attempt based on a data-driven model that considers all the advanced tracking data Synergy Sports has collected on every field goal attempted in EuroLeague games over the last decade. Synergy Shot Making compares SSQ to a team's actual points-per-shot to show, in this case, how many more points per attempt a teams opponents scored relative to what could have been expected.