We've had major...severe...disagreements about player evaluations over the years. What I've always appreciated...respected...about you is the fact you actually watch the game and use a stat to backup your observation. On a Hollinger note, he had Sean Willams, Fazekas, Big Baby and Josh McRoberts ALL ranked ahead of Landry. Nice to see he at least has some flexibility.
The same Wizards that beat the Hornets the previous night? Yes they're not as good, they might even suck a little bit, but you don't hold ANY team in the NBA to 23 points in a half without doing something right.
First of all...heypartner - that was a great post. Spacemoth - I'm not disagreeing with you regarding the Rockets defense. We have an amazing defensive team. But you can't judge the effectiveness of our defense by one half against the Wizards. If you could judge a team's defense by their statistics from one game...by that measure the Hawks would be an elite defensive team by holding the Spurs to 5 points in the first quarter the other night. Let's wait and see how our defense fairs over the next few games...especially Sunday vs. the Nug-Nugs
Well said! That's what we have going with Deke. Can he keep it up? Can Scola and Landry keep playing at this level on defense (and hopefully improve) if playing increased minutes? It was only the Wizards, true, but the guys did a terrific job. You have to wonder if it can continue and be effective against the powerful teams, especially in the West. Man, I hope so.
Lol. I just hope RA doesn't get too excited when he has a couple 10 rebound 3 blocked shot nights and start creeping his minutes upward. I'd say max 25 with a 20 minute average. And sparingly on any back to back. He's just not going to recover very quickly! I'm sure this has been posted already, but why exactly hasn't Deke had a role this season? Its easy to look back now, but had he played even 5-7 minutes a night I really think Yao is still playing.
all the sudden, we got threads like following: what if rockets win the champ w/o Yao, should we trade him? can Yao get a ring if rockets win the champ ? D better without Yao ? ----------------------------- All i can say is that why AD don't play Deke regularly and give Yao more time to rest?
Do you remember why he created it in the first place? He has said numerous times he wanted a good way to look at the superstars with a single stat. The stat isn't meant for comparision's between every single player in the game. It is meant for the top flight guys. Essentially you compare guys with others who play similar minutes and it is a good indicator for who's better. You say rank teams by point differential ... read the formula he uses for his team rankings. Point differential is a big part of it. Here's a link to his formula. It explains he bases the rankings using an exact formula on scoring margin, strength of schedule, recent performance, and home and road splits. http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=Rankings-Intro And it's true in any sport that people who play less have higher per averages. What some of you don't think about is for every player who has a very high per with little minutes there are two who have a terrible per in little minutes. Just as for every superstar who maintains the high per (LeBron has the 6th highest PER regardless of minutes and is higher than Landry) there are the superstars who have good scoring averages just because they play a lot of minutes this having a PER that is crap (look at Drew Gooden).
Deke's defense is definatly better than Yao's but there's so many things that Deke can't do but Yao can.
If they play similar minutes, then why reinvent a stat that relies so heavily on giving someone a marginal advantages for playing marginally less minutes. There already was a stat at there that Larry Bird invented. Hollinger "invented" his stat merely (and SOLELY) to draw attention to espn.com. They wanted a special stat that they could call theres. Larry Bird already invented that stat and he did not believe mpg should matter. The reason mpg shouldn't matter at all when comparing superstars is because fitness matters. Fitness, the ability to play more minutes, the ability to only go out when you are winded, and not because you need to bench do to not faring well in a mismatch...FITNESS and no weaknesses is why you get more minutes...when we are talking about "comparing superstars." If he used that excused to hide the fact espn assigned him to develop a patented stat that wasn't Larry Bird's, then is just bull. Fitness is the fact your coach wants you out there as much as possible is a detriment to the Hollinger stat. If you coach benches you because he knows you are not as efficient with more minutes or the team's better with you playing less than Garnett or Iverson or Kobe, that doesn't make you equal to them...and no stat should reward that. bottomline: a stat that skews based on mpg is trying to outthink the player's coach. Sure there are exceptions, but you said Hollinger first tried to compare only people who played similar minutes in the first place. It's not needed. I know his formula. He uses coefficients. Why complicate it when pt differential is almost a mirror image to the NBA Standings throughout the year. The reason the Riley Stat works so well is because it cuts through the skewing of strengths of schedule. Again, you don't need a new formula unless you are trying to patent something or score a fantasy league.
Code: Player +/- Net-RTG Bryant, Kobe 16.15 12.92 Jamison, Antawn 15.36 18.74 Miller, Brad 12.84 13.13 Howard, Dwight 11.02 8.82 Nash, Steve 10.47 17.37 Wade, Dwayne 6.81 4.47 Duncan, Tim 5.00 8.54 Alston, Rafer 5.07 9.45 Yao, Ming -2.51 -0.66 McGrady, Tracy 0.27 1.35 Anthony, Carmelo -2.91 -0.71 Ellis, Monta -2.79 3.27 Odom, Lamar -2.96 2.01 Jefferson, Al -15.08 -13.01 Paul, Chris -3.11 10.10 Roy, Brandon -4.39 1.08 Williams, Deron -11.27 -3.40 Boozer, Carlos 4.27 -1.99 Kirilenko, Andrei 7.10 4.69 If you want to see the best NBA stats, please check basketballvalue.com. As far as I know, 82games.com uses similar stats too. basketballvalue.com is intended to be a source of both advanced statistical analysis of the NBA and the data required to perform such analysis (copied from its homepage). Do you understand what is "advanced statistical analysis of the NBA"? I don't, therefore I just visit the site to educate myself, so far, I still don't know what it is, it is far beyond my knowledge. basketballvalue.com is the best site I have ever seen, from the site, you can find perfect stats for NBA. You can judge players by "+/-" and "RTG" perfectly, and you can judge teams by "ORTG" and "DRTG" perfectly. I just copy some stats from the site and post them here. I did post the same stats in another thread earlier, but I think they are so precious that it is worth to post again. Please don't ask me how to use these stats or how to perferm advanced statistical analysis, it is far beyond my knowledge.
If he did indeed steal it from Bird then thats crap but thats not what we are arguing. You still fail to see what I said. You're talking about comparing people who play different minutes the stat isn't made for that and isn't really used for that. All superstars play between 35-40 minutes which is pretty darn close range thus PER does a good job of showing which superstar is best. The same goes for comparing Landry to other guys who play 15 minutes per game or close to it. You may not think there needs to be a new stat created for people who play similar minutes but judging how this stat has become extremely popular you're wrong. The general fan likes to have one singular stat that shows who's more valuable rather than having to look at shooting percentage scoring average, assist, rebounds ... etc. to make the judgement.
ok I'm wrong. Larry Bird never suggested a stat the incorporates all stats into an efficiency rating, but leaving out mpg. I'm not comparing across mpg. Hollinger is. That's his stat. As good as Ginobody is, you can't compare his 31 or so mpg to a 40 mpg player by linearily increase his stats to 40mpg. It doesn't work that way. If it did, Popovich would play him 40mpg, if he could hang at 40mpg. That's my pt. Of course, there are better examples than Gino, especially since he's on fire. I'm pretty sure his PER hasn't increased noticeably since last yr though, when it is obvious that he is playing much better this year. Take McHale, Toney, Microwave Johnson or Kukoc or any super sub. You can't just say their efficiency remains the same and then artificially multiplying their stats to 40mpg. It's artificial. The coach knows better than that. But Hollinger compares super subs to superstars. And he compares rookies to stars. I've seen him compare rebounding numbers of rookies to stars based on his 40 mpg normalization. The other point is that I agree with you,,,"<i>The general fan likes to have one singular stat.</i>" That stat was invented by larry bird. It didn't stick, because there was no Fantasy League phenomenon back then. I'm not even sure I can find proof, because there was no internet phenomenon back then either. But Larry Bird did indeed create a formula that incorporated all stats...he just didn't use mpg to artificially inflate numbers. you said yourself that hollinger only wanted to compare people with similar minutes. then why the big deal about using mpg. Players with great fitness and stamina and have no weaknesses to exploit via mismatches (so that they don't get benched in mismatch situations) get more minutes. When you sit on the bench, the Hollinger stat does not penalize you. That's artificial. I mean, Hornachek is one of the most efficient players ever, but the Rockets forced Utah to sit him on the bench because he couldn't guard Drexler in '95. Hornachek's efficiency was not effective at all by that benching, but the game itself prooved beyond a doubt that he couldn't stay on the floor with Drexler...who had a lower PER.
is our defense better w/o yao? i don't know yet. need a few more games to see. gonna be an interesting area to see. but we allowed the griz 95 pts with their guards taking it to the hoop a little too much and too easy. maybe because deke can only so many minutes.
