A lot of modern so-called “advanced” basketball analytics, like RAPM, are attempts to ignore traditional statistical measures and use on/off or plus/minus stats to holistically capture performance. This method doesn’t work particularly well without secreting arbitrary, consensus-affirming weightings into the mix, but it’s growing in popularity anyway. Over at Boxscoregeeks, Patrick Minton has published a very simple set of thought experiments that show why on/off NBA analytics are flawed.
Tag: Basketball
This is Klay Thompson. It turns out that he’s a really good basketball player.
Him being a really good basketball player is somewhat surprising, as–statistically speaking–he didn’t used to be. His WP48 his first three seasons were .003, .033, and .061, which are all below average. When the Warriors passed up the chance this summer to trade him for Kevin Love, I said we were going to be laughing at the team for years. But so far this season, under new head coach Steve Kerr, he’s putting up a WP48 of .221, which makes him the 25th most productive player in the entire NBA. It’s also significantly better than Kevin Love, who has somewhat struggled on his new team, the Cavaliers. Also notable, Thompson just broke the NBA record for most points in a quarter, with 37 against the Kings. No, really. He scored 37 points in a quarter.
The previous record for a quarter was 33, recorded by George Gervin of the Spurs, who did it without the benefit of a three-point line. But still. Klay Thompson is balling, and the Splash Brothers are now the best backcourt in the NBA.
So that’s me shown. At least we can all still laugh at the Thunder for the James Harden trade. He’s putting up MVP type numbers this season.
The San Antonio Spurs, perennially underrepresented in sports media, have been so phenomenally good this year that people are actually starting to write articles about them. There have been several nice ones recently.
- “Gregg Popovich’s Portable Program” by J. A. Adande. An analysis of how the Spurs’ culture has led to success, and why it is now the model that other teams–especially small-market teams–are attempting to emulate.
- “21 Shades of Gray” by Chris Ballard. A long and detailed character study of Tim Duncan, which ran as a cover story for Sports Illustrated.
- “The San Antonio Spurs Aren’t Boring” by Kevin Arnovitz. A detailed analysis of the Spurs “motion weak” offense, and why it is both so effective and so overlooked by NBA fans.
- John Hollinger, who I generally dislike for crimes against meaningful statistics, had a pretty great Per-Diem column on the Spurs’ season. You have to pay ESPN to read it, unless you manage to find it mirrored somewhere or something.
- “Kawhi Leonard not awed by finishing fourth in Rookie of the Year voting.” More specifically, he said, “I wasn’t really looking at the rankings. It’s an individual honor. Congratulations to whoever won it.” That is either the driest humor out of a rookie since, well, Tim Duncan, or Leonard is in fact a machine built to be a San Antonio Spur. Noteworthy also is that, of the top 12 vote-getters for ROY, Leonard is the only one still playing. Congrats to whoever won that individual award, indeed.
Some rare good sports reporting from the usual suspects. For statistically defensible analysis, though, the gold standard remains The Wages of Wins, with important statistical backup from NerdNumbers, The NBA Geek, and Baskteball-Reference.com