Most Chicagoans are fed up with Ben Gordon.  I have defended him and think he is a huge part of this team, but most seem to be sick of him.  But what are the reasons that people give for their negative feelings about Ben Gordon?  Well if we could distill them all down to just 2, I think they would be 1) his poor defense and 2) he dribbles around too much and is a ball hog.  While I don’t believe the first is completely true (and I’ve discussed this before), a new statistical analysis proves that the second, while true, is actually a positive for the Bulls.  Thats right, I’m saying the fact that Ben Gordon hogging the ball and taking his man one-on-one is actually helping the team.  In fact he is one of the best in the NBA at doing it.  Here’s the numbers for Bulls players regarding taking the ball one-on-one:

First, let’s look at the Bulls perimeter players themselves, here’s a list of the percentage of times each guy goes 1 on 1 followed by the NBA percentile in their effectiveness of doing so.

Bulls players isolation usage and effectiveness:
John Salmons 25.65% / 51%
Ben Gordon 20.34% / 69%
Derrick Rose 14.24% / 47%
Luol Deng 9.09% / 6%
Kirk Hinrich 9.02% / 52%

Yeah, 69%.  Pretty damn good.  But how does that stack up against the rest of the league?  I mean I’m sure most of you are sitting there saying “yeah of course he’s better at it than Luol Deng or Kirk Hinrich”.  Well our friends over at the Bulls Podcasters broke that down as well.

The list contains 37 different players.   Of that group, Pierce, Martin, and Redd didn’t have a percentile.  I believe in the case of Redd/Martin it was due to not enough games played with Pierce it appeared his possessions weren’t logged correctly…In terms of how often the players used isolation play Gordon ranked 18 out of 37 which is basically right in the middle of the list.   In terms of effectiveness he ranked 14 out of 34 which is in the upper middle portion of the list.   In terms of overall scoring rate he ranked 14 out of 34 on this list.

So there are 17 other teams with a player that goes iso more than Gordon.  Not only that, but there are only 13 players that are more effective in one-on-one situations than Ben Gordon in the entire league.  Sure maybe if Gordon stopped hogging the ball so much, the offense might get in a better flow, but would that result in more points?  I highly doubt it considering Gordon’s amazing ability to score in isolation.

(Thanks to Doug Thomas at The Bulls Podcasters for doing this great research)