What the heck happend to just looking at Points, boards, dimes and blocks? I am not a stat guy, but if your great in about 2 of those your a good player. Now we have people stating PER, +/- 82games yadda yadda yadda. Those stats really dont mean shit, you can eather play...or you can sit the bench, or your a guy on a message board bitching about people that are playing and sitting on the bench. I have a better argument, but my brain hurts.
Tom Izzo: "He's made mistakes. But I'll tell you this: I'd like to coach him again. If I got an NBA job, I'd like to coach him." Thats Tom Izzo on Zach Randolph. Id trust his judgement of basketball players over anyone on any message board.
awesome. you don't think him getting passed around by the worst teams in the league because no one wants him means anything? about your whole "stats" argument, it's pretty simple. people don't care as much about the "simple" stats and care more about the "advanced" stats, because the advanced ones are better as long as you understand what they are measuring.
Because those stats do not always tell the story, poeple seek out other ways to quantify a players performance....take the plus/minus for instance....if you could show that when player A plays the team is plus whatever and when player B replaces him, the team is minus whatever.....but indiviually, player B has better stats.....who should be playing? some guys are just better team defenders than individual defenders....thats the way to quantify it....I do believe you can reach a point of paralysis by analysis, but there is value in all of the "new" stats....
PER is nothing but a summary of points, boards, dimes, blocks, and the other stuff you find in the boxscore. If you really think those things are enough to capture what a player does well, then that's what PER is based on. +/- stats are a different story.
I"m with you big frame, some guys can just play. Stats may tell you what's really going on, but i trust what i see over what the stats are. Stats don't factor in real game situations. Look how much role players like walton and battier do for their teams. Their contributions aren't anywhere close to where their stats are.
What you're saying here and what Big Frame said in the original post are two different things. He thinks the new stats don't mean anything because points, rebounds, blocks, etc. are basically good enough. You're really expressing the opposite view. Perhaps the most stats-centric ball-club in the league, the Houston Rockets, put more value on their "intangible" players (Shane Battier, Chuck Hayes) than any other team in the league I'd bet. Daryl Morey, Rockets GM and "stats geek", thought enough about Shane Battier to recommend trading a lottery pick (Rudy Gay) for him a couple years back. What does that tell you?
I don't see how i am saying the opposite at all? I agree with him that all that matters is if you are good enough to play or not. All those +/- and other stats don't explain what players do. He did it because the team didn't need a young guy, and battier is a baller. EVERYONE has known since he was in duke that the guy can play, and help a team win. Stat geek or not, watching him play is all you need to know in my opinion.
I just want to point something out. The stats are the RESULTS of the game. It was like an argument I was having with some guy on thebullspodcasters. Say Player A averaged 20.7 points a game on 57.3 TS%, and Player B averages 22.8 points a game on 53.2 TS%? I would say Player A is the better scorer, because the 2.1 points a game more, is not worth the efficiency trade off of 4.1 TS%. And that's not to say that Player B isn't the more SKILLED scorer, but Player A PRODUCED as the better scorer in that season, thus making him the better scorer for that season, because the RESULTS are all that matter, not how you LOOK doing it. I don't really care too much for PER or +/-. What I look at is PPG and TS% (look at those together), RPG, APG, BPG, O-Rtg relative to team, and D-Rtg relative to team. I find just looking at those stats is pretty good criteria for judging a player.
if you had any clue what you were talking about, you'd know what you were saying isn't true. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all but yes, the rockets traded for battier because "everyone knows he's a baller".
When the decisions you make can turn around the fortunes of a franchise, you better have some solid evidence backing it up. These are high stakes. If you think you can tell a player is a baller by just watching him play, then surely you should know what it is you're seeing in him. And if you can identify that, then you can record it and analyze how consistent the player is with it, and how likely he is to continue to do it in the future with new teammates. The more data you have to do that, the more substance there is behind your decision-making.
simple plus/minus isn't really all that interesting of a stat. when teams actually talk about plus/minus and using advanced stats, they definitely aren't talking about just simple plus/minus.
