also if lebron wanted to be in the nfl instead, wade would be looking pretty secondcomingish

lol skip bayless is a huge lbj hater. i wonder if he's actually serious. he called him out for shying away from pryzbilla on the final play of regulation, which i thought was pretty funny

I've got an idea, let's all level the new guy. Boy, that would be fun eh?

He agrees with you. He's just being an ass and pretending he doesn't.

While we're on this "advanced" shooting % jag, I'd like to point out that Eric Gordon actually is better than Chauncey on offense.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...y.cgi?id=eWNew

^^ guards who play a decent amount sorted by TS%^^

Also, Ray Allen got game this year.

I've always hated that stat the most. FT% inflates its value. Jose Calderon (this year) would be 2nd if he wasn't left off for whatever reason. Forget Bosh, no defense, bad coaching, weak all around play...throwing the ball to Jose for every shot solves everything!

Hollinger's article discussing the possibilities of 5 teams making the playoffs next year is actually interesting and I didn't know he could provide useful analysis.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/column...PERDiem-090319

"5. Toronto: The reason I think Toronto can improve is pretty simple -- I just don't understand how they're this bad."

Pretty much what I echoed in the Raptor thread the other day.

kind of agree with you Chill, the TS% kind of annoys me because FT% is included. I don't see how a FT is comparable to "live" shots.

Eh, I agree, mostly because he's a new poster to the thread and doesn't know about previous discussion on the matter. We should welcome him with open cyber arms and hope he sticks around, in the hopes that perhaps one day he will be half the contributor that Dschmeidreu is, in which case we would all be better for his presence.

I'm not assuming that at all. I understand he played with some poor offensive teammates. But .489 is really bad, and I think just about any player good enough to get some burn can do better than that given some open looks via ball movement or drive and kick.

It's hard to say just looking at the #s. Guys like Dikembe, McKie, Coleman, and even Harpring could easily do better and take some more shots. McKie and Coleman missed a good # of games, though. I'm still leaning toward the fact that the offense wasn't properly balanced.

it's actually FT attempts that are included, not FT%, though that's inherently accounted for since the higher %, the more points you score.

It's pretty simple to see why it's included. Getting to the line is an offensive skill. If anything, TS% underrates this skill because the fouls drawn have value in and of themselves.

yeah I know getting to the line is an offensive skill, shouldn't it be included in an offensive efficiency number then, instead of a TS%? **** I probably don't know what I am talking about, but whatever.

Based on posts thus far, projected DS% is .413

The vast majority of fouls come on shots that would've been pretty high percentage in the absence of the foul. That people like Dwight Howard put opposing players in the situation where they have to foul or give up an easy dunk has a huge amount of value, but FG% treats that as if it didn't happen.


Untouchable-
1. Pop psychology is for sports radio.

2. Lebron's layup-block(that the Cavs recovered!)-ridiculousfadeaway sequence at the end of regulation was as dominant as you can get. That Lebron isn't a dick to his teammates doesn't make the actual effect on Portland less.

His end-of-game steal a few days ago was the sort of play that a bigger ******* gets more credit for, I guess, but Lebron is killing it in the past week or so.

If you just want to look at "live" shots, I think eFG% only looks at 2's and 3's. This overrates guys who are just one-dimensional shooters though.

Calderon isn't on there cause I put in the "qualified for scoring title" term. Jameer Nelson and Ginobili would pop into the top-10 too if you took that out.

Anyways, the main point is Gordon > Mayo.

These stats are all useful but none of them are the be-all-end-all. Haven't we been over this 100 times?

I haven't posted in this thread for a while but I had an intersting thought about Iverson that can't really be proved statistically. (well it can but I don't have the resources or time).

Iverson misses a lot of shots yet for a while playing on pretty bad teams his teams were winning lots of games. He is not a good defender so that obviously isn't the difference. The obvious question is if he is a very inefficient scorer, a bad defender, and is high usage his team should not be good, but they were.

From watching him play I think a lot of his value come from missed shots that are effectively assits. Iverson penetrates into the lane and pulls up for an open jumper, since he is going to shoot an open jumper the centre or power forward comes off their man to contest his shot. Iverson's jumper is now heavily contested but he takes it anyways and misses creating a rebound. Since the centre/power forward pulled off their man his team has two guys to grab the o board against one defender and picks it up and grabs an easy two points. On the statsheet Iverson's play was a net negative but watching it in action it is clear he was basically responsible for an assist

That said Chauncey is still way better than Iverson. He is a big + on the defense where Iverson is a negative. As well the pistons have a lot of sklled offensive players who can work well in a system if they are all getting touches. In order for Iverson to work well he needs to get lots of touches, which means taking away touches from good offesnive players who can score efficinetly. The pistons should start Stuckey Hamilton Prince Mcdyess and Wallace, and than have Iverson lead the second unit where he can control the offense and be super high usage. That is far and a way the best thing the Pistons can do but they won't because Iverson is too selfish too come of the bench. TBH I think it would be great if Sheed/Rip/Prince/Stuckey agreed to come of the bench and they started Iverson and a bunch of scrubs and than borugh out the other guys later.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3999610

Hmm, deja vu anyone?

THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT. IT'S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT INJURY. DONKEYS.

This is true for a lot of good penetrators since they draw a lot of attention. Essentially you want to test points/possession from Iverson missed shots to the league average. This is similar to arguing that Artest is valuable since he jacks up tons of 3s and 3s lead to more offensive rebounds. I think his value is from breaking down perimeter D, drawing fouls, and creating shots (he's still a decent passer imo).

This is an Occam's razor fail. There's a simpler explanation: that his team wasn't as bad as you think it was, and that even though he wasn't a good defender that doesn't mean his team was bad at D.

The year the 76ers went to the Finals they were 13th in offensive efficiency. The year before, when they won 49 games, they were 25th. Those teams were not good offensive teams, primarily because their primary offensive option was a terribly inefficient player.

But almost every other player on those teams was a good defender, and Larry Brown was a good coach. Those teams won through defense.

its funny because people essentially just repeat themselves. i guess over this many posts in the thread it's inevitable, but kbfc (et al) went over this: Iverson's shots do NOT produce a high Oreb%. At all. In fact it's very pedestrian.

Another note about those sixers teams... They are a cool model for how to build a team. Because they're unusual. But they weren't even that good. They had a +3.63 SRS, which that year was good enough for 7th in the league.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/.../NBA_2001.html

6 (yes, 6) western conference teams were better. When we speak of the pathetic east, that year the east (2000-01) WAS truly pathetic. had they played in the west they would've been lucky to be in the 2nd round.

Fwiw, the equivalent team this year would be the Trailblazers. (in terms of SRS) Like, good team, but not a world beater.

Check it out.

edit: It's amusing to me to see this again, as it is about the 4th time someone has independently asked this question on here, and every single time, it is in regards to AI. There is a good point underneath it all that high-usage shot-creation DOES have value in and of itself, however AI is still inefficient to a degree where the rest of the team has to be real bad offensively and real good defensively for him to fit well.

kbfc - would you mind sharing how you're doing w/your NBA bets so far this season? Have you tweaked your model at all? I know absolutely nothing about it but find it interesting as a casual observer