No, with team SRS.

Why didn't he show us the results of his player rankings then?

Probably because all he was interested in was trying to vindicate his Rubio hypothesis with a flawed regression for the sake of an article. Otherwise, he would have had to reveal that Mario Chalmers is more important to the Heat than Wade and Bosh and get mocked even more.

This is a flawed reading of the article. Again, his core hypothesis is regarding the value of steals and not anything specifically to do with Rubio. You can criticize the Rubio parts stylistically, but it's just disingenuous and wrong to suggest that's the core of the article. Secondly, why the **** would you think the regression suggests Chalmers is more important than Wade and Bosh?

If you don't want to engage the article because of what you feel are its flaws, don't engage it. A flawed article doesn't make these inaccurate ****-flinging takes on it into better posting.

Das Boot,

What would you consider his primary argument and where would you say he supports it and shows the results of it?

The primary argument is something like: "Steals, as a box score statistic, are undervalued." The supporting case is:

1) Steals have outsized predictive weight relative to other box score statistics as measured by average change in team SRS. (His regression is the supporting evidence for this claim.)
2) Each steal by itself is a major event (worth ~1.2 points on average). When a team loses expected steals due to player absence, those steals are almost completely not replaced. (The replaceability section is the supporting evidence for this claim.) Therefore we should expect steals per game to be an important metric.

this x1000

losing respect for nate extremely quickly

Well if he just said then I think people like Fly and myself would have much less of a problem for it. Don't blame people for reading the stuff he actually wrote. He certainly went a lot further than arguing they are simply undervalued.

The supporting case is:

From what I understand, he said:

From what I understand from this, a successful steal is more valuable to the team's SRS than a successful point, rebound, assist, or block.

I don't see anything wrong with that, other than that it's pretty useless because box score stats can only tell us so much and it doesn't address the downside of a missed steal.

My objection is this: There are 180-200 possessions in a game. The best stealer is getting 2.5 steals per game and he's not close to 100% responsible for them due to the team aspect of basketball defense. With such small margins there, how can you be confident about the predictive value on steals to SRS, especially given that it disagrees with the market, haralabos, etc;?

This is where the missed steal attempts becomes so important. It'd be like giving players credit for scoring without factoring in how many possessions they used. Without that, #2 is completely useless.

I don't really get the replaceability thing either. If "Charges Taken" were part of the box score they would be even more irreplaceable than steals but that wouldn't them important because just like steals (and everything else) there is a downside for attempting it.

Thank you for making his argument 100 times better than he made it, but

Well, the metric is "steals per game". So losing (or gaining) one average steal per game is more important than losing/gaining an average one of the other stats.

The regression should take care of the downside of a missed steal. If high-steal players are disproportionately gambling and costing their team, losing steals from the rotation shouldn't affect SRS that much.

If he's not responsible for them, how come the people who take his place aren't getting that steal? This is the "replaceability" part of the article, which is imo the strongest part.

It doesn't specifically disagree with the market afaik. "The market" (bettors) obviously have finer player value metrics than box-score-stat regressions. It's more aimed at box-score-fueled perceptions of player value (PER the given example, but implicitly also public opinion regarding the relative value of these things).

This is where the regression comes into play again as important supporting evidence, as above.

As I've mentioned, it's not an ironclad nor overly precise statistical case (and the author, in general, does not present it as such, though I don't think every sentence was worded precisely towards that end). But the pieces do fit together -- if steals and gambling canceled out (such as, perhaps, "taking charges" and "not attempting to contest shots" might), we'd expect the loss of a steal to have much less of an impact on SRS.

You can't seriously believe this with all the basketball you watch. Lots of steals are the result of team defense. Obviously if an elite stealer misses time than his likely scrub backup is going to be worse (at steals and everything else). But if the best spg is 2.5 the backup is still going to come in and average somewhere between 0 spg and 2.5 spg. If Rubio gets 2.5 and Barea gets 0.8 and individual players aren't 100% responsible for steals, there's a pretty large margin for error there.

If steals were as predictive as you're saying then they'd be able to predict something.

Team SRS in games with that player vs. games without that player. That information is not easily accessible, thus, it is a secret. (note that for players who play 82 games, this metric literally cannot be calculated)

Also note the Sixers continue to lead the NBA in steals.

.

If you read the comments, someone corrects Simmons on this. Others rush to Simmons defense, saying he was joking. I don't know. That doesn't seem like joking or hyperbole to me. I know that sometimes sarcasm or joking tone doesn't come across in print, but that seems to be a 100% serious answer.

Anway, just thought I'd point out that the 76ers have 4 lottery picks on their team, including a 2nd overall pick. While that isn't a guarantee of anything, that's at least 2 more than any other team in the tourney.

Tut owning this thread pretty hard

box scoar regressions always wind up assigning 100% of the credit for team schemes to the one person who gets the box score, steals is 100% within the framework of team defense.

Nah bro because when you take starters out and put jj barea in they don't get steals.

Ben's response to the response

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/w...worth-a-point/

Ben,

If steals are so predictive why aren't you making a killing exploiting your market edge in understanding?

I'm just guessing, but I bet the lack of books that set their lines based solely on box score statistical averages has something to do with it.

What are your dream Zach Lowe articles? Posting ideas ITT and in TZ can be useful; Grantland's scouts might steal them.

ok, now 538 is telling me a point isn't worth a point, which is why a steal is worth 9 points. but those 9 points arent really 9 points, so its ok bro.

... wtf

Part 2

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/a...f-bad-defense/

As a ZAZ/Leslie Nielsen fan, I finally got around to reading Amos Barshad's Naked Gun 33 1/3 look back. Not only was it so badly written that I couldn't finish it (it was Greenwaldian in its terribleness, like a dad trying to sound hip while also staying on Grantland Brand™), but he didn't mention Police Squad! once. That's like writing an article on the final season of Cheers and never mentioning Shelley Long. Or, to use a metaphor Simmons will understand, like writing about the end of 90210 without mentioning Shannen Doherty.

fyp