Interesing Oden Article

I saw this on another board but I thought it was good for some discussion here as well:

http://www.lolsports.com/nba/oden/

 

Yeah, those people that say Oden is a bust make me laugh

 

What????? It's not a proven fact that Oden is a bust?????

 

dang. I can't wait to see Oden out there playing 35mpg.

 

And fully recovered from his surgery.

Next season is going to be great and fascinating.

 

My question with Oden is will he get over the deer in the headlights issues when playing against the NBA elite centers and become the player we all know he can be? I don't want to see him disappear against Shaq, Tim, KG, Howard and Yao. He needs to put the NBA on notice that he is the new stud in town. His game depends on confidence, without it...... he's kwame brown!

 

Cool article. I think we can't make a true judgement on him until the end of next season. We have to give him a full season without injury and ample playing time before we can call him a bust.

 

I posted this earlier. People just don't seem to get Oden's immense impact on the game. KP mentions how stats indicate how Greg makes everyone better. Here's one way.

Greg Oden's rebounding is what sets him apart. If his rookie year is any indication, he is a once in a generation offensive rebounder.

According to basketball-reference.com, his rookie year offensive rebounding percentage was 15.7%. This is right up there with the rookie years of Rodman (15.6%) and Moses Malone (15.5%), and above Buck Williams (13.7%) and Barkley (12.5%). These are generally considered the greatest offensive rebounders in the last 35 years.

Dwight Howard led the league in offensive rebounds this year by a far cry, and he had 13.8%. So Greg's offensive rebounding rate was 14% better than this year's league leader.

This manifests itself not only as an individual stat. In fact, he not only grabs more offensive rebounds when he's in the game, the whole team grabs even more. So he doesn't "suck up" offensive rebounds from his teammates. Rather, he "makes his teammates rebound better" (related to "makes his teammates play better"), and to an amazing degree.

From basketballvalue.com come the team offensive rebounding stats. The average team has an offensive rebounding rate of 29%. These numbers are fairly clustered, with all but the best and the worst ranging from 26% to 31%. The best (except for Portland) is Philly at 33.4%.

Portland without Oden, is 32.5%, which would be 2nd in league. But with him, we rise far above the pack. With Greg in the lineup, our offensive rebounding rate is 38.7%! So Greg alone adds 6.2% to our already high offensive rebounding rate. That's a greater difference than the 5% spread (31% - 26%) separating most teams in the league. If you are into statistics, with Greg in the lineup, Portland is 5 standard deviations better than the average.

For one individual player to make that much of a difference is truly amazing. It's such an incredible margin, and indicates that he is a once in a generation offensive rebounder.

 

Is that a typo? Thanks for the research though.

 

Great post, thanks for the insight.

 

That's actually a much more interesting post than the original article. Nicely done.

 

Oden's 15.7% vs Howard's 13.8%. Oden's number is 14% better.

 

You are doing a percent of a percent - which is an "interesting" way to look at it - but not very conventional and easy to mis-read.

Oden is 1.9% better. If Howard's 13.8% is the base - Oden is 1.14 times better (multiplication).

I understood where you went with this - but this is probably not a correct way to phrase the statement...

 

You rock!

 

This is mathematically identical to what Blaz06Draft said. 1.14 = 114% of Howard. Since Howard is 100% of Howard, Oden is 14% "better." What he said was correct, but easy to misread.

 

I agree and noticed it and tried to present it in a less confusing way. His way was a very unconventional way of saying it - especially since your base line was already percents. Since one's production is X% and the other's is Y% - one is X-Y percent better. When you go into percents of percents - (which as I said - is just not something people do) - it is very hard to understand (and I suspect bad English as well) to present it as he did...

I will summarize by saying that I am 100% happy we had this discussion - which is 50% of % better than the discussion we had of the Lakers victory parade, making me very percent happy. Or not. It's hard to follow...

 

And Oden managed that while not in game shape AND while suffering under horrific foul troubles (half of that was his fault, the other half mysterious calls that made no sense).

Imagine how many offensive rebounds he might get when at 100%. It could be amazing.

 

One issue though is if he could do the same thing for 35 mins. I believe so. I think he might even do better considering he'd probably get more in a rhythm with more mins, but until he does we don't know.

 

Please send this to Bill Simmons. One of three things will happen:

1) He will ignore the truth in your argument and write yet another bitter article calling Oden a bust and the next Kwame Brown.

2) His head will explode when confronted with irrefutable evidence that Oden is indeed NOT a bust.

3) His career as a sports columnist will come to a screeching halt due to a lack of material as he will no longer be able to recycle his Oden is a Bust article on a weekly basis.

I'm hoping for scenario 2, but could live with 3. Unfortunately, I think 1 is by far the most likely result.

BNM