Jeremy Lin out 2 weeks with grade one knee sprain (UPDATE: Will return vs. Portland)

When you're doing a statistical analysis, in it's most basic form you would look at results of comparable units. I was using 19 data points (games) as it's the most convenient/available data.

While over a very small sample size it would appear be somewhat inaccurate, over a larger sample size it would smooth out and be fine.

Over a small sample size with irregular time units there are several ways to approach it. The most common is to weight the values by time, or to even it across a universal time value. For example, instead of looking at a scoring rate per game, you would look at it per 48 or per 36 as a basis.

So, let's say game 1 you had a score of 20 points over 36 minutes, and game 2 you had a score of 15 points over 18 minutes, if you decided on a base time comparison of 36 minutes, you would treat game 1 as 20 points/36 minutes, and game 2 as 30 points/36 minutes.

As for eFG%, how you would weigh it would depend on what exactly you're trying to determine.

For example, if you're trying to determine how hot/cold a player gets from game to game (streakiness), then you might just look at the base eFG% values without concern to the actual number of shots per game.

In other words, if I want to know how consistent your performance is from day to day in terms of how you shoot FT's versus how well you've shot FT's over all, those are two different questions. Let's look at a question that could actually be multiple questions.

Q : How much does a player's 3pt shooting vary?

Seems like a simple question, but are you asking how much does a player's performance in 3pt shooting from game to game? Or are you asking how much does a player's 3pt shooting vary over the season?

If I want to know how much your shooting form varies on a night to night basis, IE, whether you will shoot 3pt's at an 40% clip or at a 30% clip, and the odds of either happening on any given night, then I wouldn't be concerned with whether you shot 4 or 10 shots during a particular game, since the assumption would be that if you're shooting well you'll take more shots, and if you're shooting poorly you would shoot the 3pt shot fewer times.

In that case I would look solely at the 3pt% on a per game percentage basis, treating a 4/8 night as 50%, and a 1/4 night as 25%. Given a sufficient number of games I would eventually be able to calculate how "streaky" of a shooter you are.

On the other hand, if I just wanted to know how well you shot over the season, I would just total the number of 3ptm/3pta. In other words I would use season totals.

In one case I would weigh the number of shots, in the second example I would not.

As for your example, you wouldn't weigh shots at all.

The reason for this is that you're defending 2 different opponents. The statistical data for Chris Paul going 10/20 in game 1 can NOT be compared to Blake Griffin going 1/5 in game 2 because they are different games, on different days, with you in a different line up in different points in the game, and Chris and Blake in different line ups in different points of the game.

So if that's the case, how could you compare defensive success from game to game and opponent to opponent? What you *could* do if you were trying to create a comparison of defensive effectiveness is you would look at scoring differential versus expected scoring.

Let me illustrate...

Meh and Clutch play 2 games each and both spend the entire time defending 1 player for the entire game. We'll use FG% to keep it simple for the purposes of illustrating the point.

Meh
Game 1 - Jamaal Tinsley - 30% Fg%
Game 2 - Anthony Bennet - 30% Fg%

Clutch
Game 1 - Stephen Curry - 30% Fg%
Game 2 - Lamarcus Aldridge - 30% Fg%

If we just compared the Fg% of both You and Clutch, you both look like equivalent defenders. And from that I might conclude that both Meh and Clutch are elite wing defenders.

However, this would be misleading as Curry and LMA are scorers while Jamaal Tinsley and Anthony Bennet are not. If we look at this season's Fg%, we would see this...

Jamaal Tinsley - 20% Fg%
Anthony Bennet - 23.7 Fg%
Lamarcus Aldridge - 48.1 Fg%
Stephen Curry - 46.0 Fg%

It's clear that Tinsley and Bennet had great shooting nights against Meh, while LMA and Curry had poor shooting nights against Clutch.

So, in order to make the data factor in the differences in skill and the difficulty of the assignments, instead of looking at the absolute Fg%, we would look at the Relative Fg%, in other words, how they shot compared to how they normally shoot.

Meh

Game 1
Jamaal Tinsley - +10% Fg%
Anthony Bennet - +6.3% Fg%

Average Fg% differential vs Expected Fg% = +8.15%

Game 2
Lamarcus Aldridge - -18.1% Fg%
Stephen Curry - -16.0% Fg%

Average Fg% differential vs Expected Fg% = -17.05%

So to make a long story short, no, Curry shooting 20 shots and Griffin shooting 5 shots isn't really relevant to what we're trying to determine in terms of defensive efficiency. And you certainly can't weigh Curry's greater number of shots against Griffin's fewer shots since they are not equal performers on the court since it could easily be argued that Curry took More shots because he had more open shot opportunities due to poor defense while Griffin took Fewer shots because he had fewer open shot opportunities due to great defense.

In other words, defending Curry is a discrete event from defending Griffin since they are different players playing under individually unique circumstances.

Similarly, you couldn't take Chris Paul playing for 1,000 minutes and treat it as multiple games unless you were trying to determine a value on a per minute basis like per 36 or per 48 specifically for Chris Paul. Chris Paul playing for 1,000 minutes has no bearing on Blake playing 30 minutes.

When you are determining whether you can blend one set of data with another (like Player A and Player B), they have to be providing similar data. 1 shot from Curry is NOT the same as 1 shot from Blake, so you can't intermingle their total shots without distorting the result.

Now, if Curry and Blake were similar players shooting at a similar expected level, then depending on the question you are asking you *might* be able to intermingle the data sets, but you would only do so very carefully and in a very limited fashion, and it would still be risking introducing additional uncertainty into any assumptions you wish to make.

In either case when determining base shooting percentages or relative shooting percentages, you would still need a larger sample of games.

I hope that made some sense.

 

Wow, thanks so much torocan for your time and patience here.

It's great to see rationally minded posters who are willing to take the effort and share their knowledge.

 

Lin is damaged goods. His confidence and game is gone. Trade him now.

 

The guy has played a grand total of 35 minutes since coming back. Stop knee jerking

 

Does this look like the same player to you? He's got the door in the headlights look, he's mentally broken.

 

*deer.

 

The same type of posts when Lin starts the game 0-2 on FGs, and people come in and say "Lin's totally cold tonight, he can't hit anything".

 

This must suck for Lin. He gets injured, loses all momentum, and now not playing well. He shouldn't have came back if he wasn't 100%

 

He is playing really bad, and that sucks. Just gotta push through, he'll find the stride eventually.

 

I agree but he was playing great in the first quarter scoring 5 points.

 

Seriously you people need to relax.

Guess what, when a player comes back from injury he needs a few games to catch up to speed!

Be thankful that we essentially have 2 starting PG's on the roster which allows Lin more leeway to take his time in regaining his confidence. He's not gonna come out like gangbusters after a knee sprain and light up the scoreboard against two good teams in portland and golden-state.

Why don't we all relax and let the players play!

 

He's well on his way back. Did more (and better) today than yesterday. Probably move to 20-25 minutes next game.

 

LOL. He didn't get reconstructive surgery and miss an entire season. He got a sprain.

 

He took like 5 shots and people are saying he's done LOL fk awf


Great game tonight, fkn hate the warriors Dwight u monsta