Game Score: Using Numbers To Find Out Who Had The Best Game In NBA History

Someone else posted the game score numbers in another thread but I will add it here as well. Harden’s last game came in at 11th best. His 3rd game in the top 12.

http://bkref.com/tiny/ecdq6

 

this is an order of operations nightmare

 

60 + 16x.4 + 0x.7 +3x.3 + 3x.7 + 8x.7 + 1x.7 - 24x.7 - 3x.4 - 3x.4 -5 = .

60 + 6.4 + 0 + .9 + 2.1 + 5.6 + .7 - 16.8 - 1.2 - 1.2 -5 = 51.5


Not bad. I did a 20 assist game with a 6 rebounds, 10 points, no missed shots, 2 personal fouls, 1 turnover. Kind of a great game, but not scoring much and that was at 17.8. I feel like 3 pointers made should be added in somewhere. I wonder where that one game where he got the 50, 17 & 16 would place?

Here's a link to the top 100:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/game_score.html

My math was wrong. Anyway all the stats are in the link. I'm calling b.s. on the game score stat though. It looks like Hollinger just went in and played with the numbers until MJ's best games trumped everyone else's. If assists are weighted down at 70%, then turnovers should be too. Also, minutes played above 40 doesn't seem to mean anything here. So someone playing a 4 overtime game has an advantage. I'm not a fan of this metric. It's one man's opinion. Also, the guy in that video is a douche.

 

Jordon has number 1 in game score but played 50 mins. Harden's was 11th with 30 mins. Hmmmm. Looks like playing more minute only helps game score.

 

https://www.basketball-reference.co...=Y&pos_is_c=Y&pos_is_cf=Y&order_by=game_score

11th since the 83-84 season. It's the highest game score for a player who played under 33 minutes in a game.

 

Media conspiracy right here. Says the Rockets lost the game Harden put up a 60 point triple double. Pretty sure we won that game. But no mention of the Devin Booker putting up 70 points and losing.... SMH.

 

Karl Malone's game made Harden's look bad according to game score. 60.2 in 33 mins. Safe to say best game since advance stats?

 

Game Score Formula =(Math)+0.4*(Math)+0.3*(Math)+(Math)+0.7*(Math)+0.7*(Math)- 0.7*(Math)-0.4*(Math) – 0.4*(Math)-(Math)

[✓] = Maths°

 

Think of it as a substitution for Points Scored that accounts for other contributions (per the box score). It's not intended to rate efficiency on a per minute basis, since the utility of such a metric is greatly reduced when you're talking about a single game.

The reason an assist is +0.7 while a turnover is -1.0 has to do with how we apportion credit. If we assume an expected value of 1 point per possession, roughly, than a turnover is (sensibly) worth -1.0. An assist should be understood in terms of the portion of credit awarded for a made field goal. For a made 2-point field goal, the scorer gets 2.0 + 0.4 - 0.7 = 1.7 points, while the assistant gets 0.7 points. In other words, the assistant is given 30% of the credit for that made 2-point field goal (0.7/2.4) and the scorer is given 70% (1.7/2.4). For a 3-point field goal, the scorer gets all the extra credit for the additional point -- the logic being that the extra skill involved in a made 3 goes to the scorer and not the passer. I think this is definitely disputable, especially in the modern game where offenses are geared around generating good 3-point looks. A player like Harden who's value largely comes from generating open 3s for teammates is slightly undervalued here. That said, assists are a pretty shaky stat to begin with, with a large margin of error in terms of what they actually convey about the player, so I'm not too bothered by this.

 

So whoever makes the turnover is 100% responsible? Ever heard of teammates being out of position?

 

It is an approximation based on information available in the boxscore, and it’s intended to be something that is quick and easy to calculate. There is no information in the boxscore about players being out of position. It also doesn’t penalize players further for live ball turnovers which jump starts the opposing team’s offense.

If your complaint is that this is not an exact measure of how many net points a player was responsible for in a game, then you are right it is not. So, yeah, it’s not some definitive measure of how good a game a player had. But it’s still better than points scored.

 

Right but I'm saying the metric doesn't have a ton of value. I can't look at that top game by MJ and say, "that's clearly the best game ever played". Weighing turnovers so highly and not sharing the blame with your teammates while sharing the credit with your teammates for assists, is most definitely hypocritical.

The metric is very flawed and really doesn't have a whole lot of value for me. I mean, why are defensive rebounds weighted so little? Does that not help a team win?

To me, this metric is out there to "prove" to non-Jordan fans that Jordan is the best ever. Why? Because this metric says it. It's recursive and doesn't help evaluate great games. It basically says, 'get a bunch of points and have no turnovers and you're the best'. It's weighted for Jordan's cream to rise to the top.

 

There are theoretical explanations for all the weights, and it has nothing to do with making a particular player look good.

A recorded turnover likely hurt your team more than a recorded assist. A lot of assists are system dependent, and they aren’t even reliably recorded in the box score. There’s really no good reason to weight them the same.

As for defensive rebounds, again there’s a theoretical explanation for the weight. It awards 70% of the credit for the stop to forcing the field goal miss and 30% to the player who ended the possession by collecting the rebound. A lot of defensive rebounds, like assists, are more system dependent / passive than a player going out of their way to grab it.

I’m not going to argue that the metric is perfect. But it is simple to calculate based on the box score and is probably more reliable than any other linear weights formula of similar complexity for summing up a players contributions in a given game.

 

It's not a panel of people coming up with these metrics. It's John Hollinger. Quit acting like he's some sort of guy incapable of skewing stats. That's his job and you're acting like it's your job to treat some stats-guy like a deity. Stop.

His formula sucks in my mind. You disagree? Fine. But you cannot sit here and talk to me like this is science. There's no scientific theory here... there's just John Hollinger and his made up stat called Game Score. The stat designed to make Michael Jordan's legacy continue. Woo-f-ing-hoo.

Here:

Feel free to print that out and worship it. Here's the one that your deity has printed out and set up in his house:

Here's mine:

Here's a list of games that for the most part are better than Jordan EVER played:

 

You think assists and turnovers should be weighted the same. The consequence of that would be that 12 assists + 12 turnover game in a game 7 of a playoff game is no worse than a 4 assist + 4 turnover game, since in both cases the turnovers are cancelled out by the assists. That is dumb, independent of anything Michael Jordan did in his career. Sorry.