Are you utilizing individual defensive stats to forecast wins or are they disguised as team defensive stats? What are these numbers showing as to the year-to-year difference in a players individual defensive numbers after changing teammates such as Kyrie, Crowder, Cousins, Gay, Noel, DeAndre Jordan (entirely new backcourt), Gobert (3 new starters), and others?Because certain of these metrics (e.g., defensive RPM) can be used to effectively project actual team results (within a reasonable margin of error). For example, the win projections which I post aren't perfect, but they do reasonably well, having beaten Vegas every year for 4 years now. These are driven in large part by metrics very similar to RPM (I run my own version of RPM, but it's very similar). There are many other win projection systems which work similarly.
I'm sympathetic to the fact that there are elements of teamwork which aren't being captured here, but that's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Despite the very real issues with individual player defensive stats - they still work reasonably well for the purposes of forecasting wins. Are they perfect? Certainly not. Is there "any value" there however? Of course there is.
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