Great piece in The Ringer today from Kevin O'Connor (Hi Kevin, just in case you ever slum it here with us fellow C's fans) with take-aways from the Sloan conference this weekend.
In the interest of making sure people read the article, which is short and well worth any true NBA fan's time, I will share a few pieces:
In the interest of making sure people read the article, which is short and well worth any true NBA fan's time, I will share a few pieces:
And I am guilty of the following, albeit as a shorthand way of analyzing defense in combination with DBPM:During a panel called “Take That for Data: Basketball Analytics,” Nick Wright of Fox Sports asked Rockets general manager Morey and Celtics assistant general manager Mike Zarren about the strength of a single-number advanced statistic such as real plus-minus (RPM), which currently ranks Tyus Jones and Fred VanVleet as top-14 players. Zarren said that if a stat is at odds with what you’re watching, then either the way the number is calculated or the way you’re watching the game is probably wrong. Morey pointed out that although a statistic like RPM can pick up on how some players provide a role when they’re on the floor that helps the team win, “that player could be very replaceable by multiple players with that same skill set. … Even though it’s correct that they’re creating that winning, in our roles of having to decide player to player, you have to think about how else can you fill that role.” In other words, data can’t be the be-all and end-all.
The article has plenty of other interesting pieces of information to putting conditions around players in trades to teams potentially being able to trade lottery ping-pong balls to Jimmy Butler's injury. Again, its worth your time to read the whole thing. O'Connor is pretty much a must-read for me these days.One front-office stats guy told me that he observes people making mistakes most frequently with NBA.com’s defensive rating, which is a team statistic, not a player statistic. For example, you might see the following sentence somewhere on the internet: VanVleet leads the Raptors with a 97.8 defensive rating. But that’s not true. The correct way to convey the statistic is: The Raptors have a 97.8 defensive rating when VanVleet is on the floor. There’s a subtle but important difference between the two sentences. The former implies that VanVleet is an elite defender, while the latter says VanVleet is one of five players who make up a team performing at an elite level. Fans and writers alike made this error last season when analyzing Jae Crowder, who ranked 20th in real plus-minus and shined in virtually all other advanced statistics. The reality is Crowder was a beneficiary of the Celtics’ system and the superior defensive players he frequently shared the floor with.