http://www.82games.com/rosenbaum3.htm This is pretty crazy and confusing. According to this formula, Banks, Allen, and Pierce are some of the best defenders at their respective positions. Jefferson, Blount, and LaFrentz are ranked as some of the worst at their position. Check it out.
Very interesting, and a little misleading. As he mentions in the footnote to his SG entry, Allen has one of the largest standard errors in the league, so his numbers are pretty well negated. But seeing Uncle Cliffy and his trick knee and the very bottom of the PF list along with Juwan Howard made me take it with a grain of salt. Let's leave +/- to the NHL where it belongs. I personally think there is nothing more exciting in the NBA than a solid one on one matchup and seeing the defender get the upper hand. Just great television, that's what that is. What that doesn't take into account is team defense. It is a statistical representation of one's player's effect on his team's defensive numbers, which, for anyone who's ever done statistics, makes the whole thing totally moot. I see there that he has adjusted +/- for taking the rest of the players into account, but those same players aren't all on the floor at the same time, don't get the same minutes, their minutes don't overlap, etc etc. The big thing here is that he weights the numbers based on age. That shouldn't be the case. Age is a telling number only in the acutal experience of a player, not his effectiveness on the floor. Yes, it is true that some players age poorly and don't get the job done, but that doesn't mean you should could their years against them automatically. I just think it's weighted a little funny when it comes to the 'importance' of minutes as well. I don't fancy myself a statistician, but it does kind of irk me a little that he weights 'clutch' time more heavily. Garbage time I can understand being sticken from the record, it basically doesn't count, but clutch time is no different defensively than the other 46 minutes the team just played. And besides that, actually observing the 'clutch' time that every player played for 82 games is going to take a little more research than this guy can do alone. And now that I read over it again, there is no proof he's weighted clutch time differently in the tables he shows us, I guess he must've just done it and assumed we wouldn't ask. I'd like to see a little more data on this one before I can swallow it comfortably. But its is an interesting way of compensating for those intangibles on defense.
Thats the most confusing thing ive ever seen lol. Like Ignignot said it is misleading since I know Gordon is not the second best defensive shooting guard in the LEAGUE. That Rosenbaum guy must have a lot of time on his hands.
Let's cut Mr. Rosenbaum a little slack here, people. He never claims these numbers are absolutely definitive. Just (in effect) that they're better than the more traditional statistics like blocks per game or rebounds per game. Not that that would take much doing. For my money per game statistics for individual players are basically garbage, because the only per game stat that's comparable from one player to another is minutes per game. Give him credit for at least trying to come up with something more useful/reliable than the more traditional stats, okay?
I give him all the credit in the world, and I hope he can find a way to nail down his theses, because it would be boon to the rest of the basketball community.
When it says Cliff is the second worst defender at PF and Ben Gordon the second best defensive SG in the league, something must be wrong with his calculator.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Bobcats:</div><div class="quote_post">When it says Cliff is the second worst defender at PF and Ben Gordon the second best defensive SG in the league, something must be wrong with his calculator.</div>In case anybody was wondering, the answer is yes. Bobcats did in fact steal that joke from Odde24.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting 44Thrilla:</div><div class="quote_post">In case anybody was wondering, the answer is yes. Bobcats did in fact steal that joke from Odde24.</div> My God, I knew I heard that one somewhere. I guess we have a lot of fans on ol' Uncle Cliffy.
