Why our Players are FAR from their peaks -- Statistical Analysis and Hypothesis

I view them different:



There are I believe multiple interpretations of the data. The 21 year old peak is the most statistically significant outlier on the graph and might certainly be due to your interpretation. The group is composed of high school draftees (older data) and freshmen entering the draft. Top draft picks. The drop off at 22 could be interpreted by an influx of drafted older players who do not have the skill sets of their younger predecessors. The other 2 points would fall into my not statistically significant group. But I am good with a minor disagreement. And you might be right. But 26 and 30 seem to be reaches to me.

 

Actually, I was playing around with the idea of seeing if I could track player's growth by minutes played. And wondering how much, or how little, D-League practice times helps with development.

Partially, I'm wondering how many of the guys who only last a couple of years did so because they couldn't break into the rotation to get solid experience, so they're always stuck at that 'theoretical knowledge since I practice with the team' stage because they couldn't get past the threshold of minutes.

Given all that, it might also be worth it to track college minutes and strength of opponent, but that's... a bit too headexplody a concept right now.

 

Nice, but unfortunately it's just so hard to make concrete analysis based on such limited data with limited time. I'm quite sure the Rockets have much more detailed analysis on player growth data, peaks, etc. But unlike baseball, most of the top basketball advanced metrics are proprietary information hoarded by individual teams, after learning from mistakes of Billy Beane.

Personally, I just go by eye test and more or less a "feel" given 20+ years of watching the NBA. It's not scientific, but somewhat of an educated guess. For example, I see most potential in Motiejunas, because he has rebounding skills, post skills, and shooting skills. These are fairly innate and rarely if ever get developed on an NBA level. They also allow for a player to become star caliber. And what he lacks, strength, defense, aggression, are things that often improve assuming a player puts in the work. Doesn't mean DMo will be a star, but it's possible as long as he continues to work hard on his game. While players like Jones and Patterson do not have skills conducive to becoming a star, even if they can become very good players.

 

It's more of a plateau at ages 25-29 than two distinct "peaks". Which fits with conventional wisdom, that players are at their best in their mid to late 20s.

 

How can u be typin' this shi' when there are juggalos a lurkin'?

 

I look at it like this, how good can your 3 best be? How many all star caliber talents do you have. How many all nba type player do you have? That's the important thing to me.

 

Nice analysis!

 

There have been a lot of championships won with only one true all star and a great supporting cast. It's not uncommon. Even more common to win a title with only two all-stars.

Often supporting players only get labeled all-stars after their team wins a title

 

yeah! THIS!

 

Yes, I believe in one interview, someone asked Morey which were the best publicly available stats to measure something (I want to say "Defense", but can't recall exactly). And Morey responded by saying that there were no publicly available stats that accurate measured this element, and that all the best stats on this area were proprietary.

This means armchair enthusiasts are out of luck, since the information is considered a trade secret. Morey has the info, but he's just not willing to share it with the public since it represents a significant investment of financial/staffing/recording/computing resources and is a competitive advantage for GM's. And he feels none of the publicly available alternatives hold a candle to his proprietary options.

 

Yes, Stats LLC provides the raw data sets from all their arenas to each client, so the more comprehensive multi-arena raw data-sets are shared across teams as well as non-team-affiliated third party clients like researchers who pony up, but I believe the analysis and data-mining software used by each team to process those data sets may be unique, proprietary, and exclusive to each team.

Morey has mentioned that there's a job opening he's currently looking to fill, focusing on Wallstreet software engineers who create the financial statistical programs used for things like nano-second high-frequency-trading, to find someone who has a passion for basketball, software programming prowess, and skills and specialization in statistical analysis.

This Stats LLC connection does bring up an interesting point regarding potential acquisition targets. Only some teams have the camera systems installed by Stats LLC (not all teams choose to pony up the cash, or allow the installation of these cameras, which are not league-wide). So potential trade/free agency targets from teams that are clients of Stats LLC would give Morey surer footing for analysis, as opposed to teams who decline to install this system in their arenas.

Though I suppose over the course of a season, even players from non-Stats LLC teams will have some portion of their performance recorded by a Stats LLC arena during away games, albeit with a more limited sample size and thus home-court performance wholly missing.

For an advanced stat-centric GM like Morey, would he be more comfortable focusing on acquisition targets from Stats LLC clients? There's probably a list of Stats LLC client teams out there to find out which arenas have the system installed, and thus give Morey greater assessment precision for trade/free-agent acquisition targets.

 

Hey, there, Rockets fans.

I'm the guy who writes "The City" blog. Saw a bunch of hits from this site, and wanted to check out what was going on.

Also wanted to mention that I actually applied for that job mentioned above. It was just before the Harden trade went down. Interviewed and went out to lunch with Daryl and Sam. Great guys. It was a lot of fun. In the end, "they went in a different direction", but it was still a great opportunity for me just to be able to be considered. They told me there was around 800 applications for the job.

I can share one semi-funny story. I'm a Warriors fan (I don't think they held that against me, so hopefully you all won't either ). At lunch, the subject got around to the draft (I can't tell you what they said about Royce ), and Daryl asked me if I was the GM of the team, who would I have drafted?

Now, I really was a huge fan of John Henson, so I told him that I really liked Henson, but it would have been hard for me to pass up Barnes once he slipped to 7. (In retrospect, I probably should have said Drummond.) At any rate, Daryl was grilling me so hard about this, that I didn't even have time to eat. By the time I started eating, everyone else at the table was finished! :grin:

 

you should hire torocan to be your stats guy the next time a job offer come up

 

LMAO, I was the one that asked them on the site for this exact same thing. :grin: Just mentioning this for their reference that more than one person is interested.

Though I would also be interested in the results of separating out curves by draft date tbh.

 

Nice graphs.

Oh wait, you didn't make your own and just stole someone else's, charlatan.