Tracy McGrady is really a great all around player who is not great at scoring?

Wow man, this thread is like its very own philosophy course, alternate universe and Carlos Castaneda experiential reality course with the Yaqui medicine man out in the desert all rolled into one.

Kinda nice when a Rockets fan can read this and then be treated to Sam and DD following one behind the other. It's like being a kid in the candy store with 25 cents in my pocket!

Now all I need is for the Rockets to agree to my idea I gave them, and whenever Gundy puts Chuck Hayes in, have the PA system play Purple Haze by Hendrix!

BTW I think the other side of the Tmac coin is he has this innate ability to play GREAT team ball and make everyone around him better but he has never had the surrounding cast to make it show except for short bursts of games/seasons. Last season (tell me if I am wrong statsguys) I think he drove much less to the hoop due to the injuries, and when he took the forearm in the nose he really seemed to get cold feet going in.

Crossing my fingers this team is healthy and gels. My son and I splurged on season tickets and I am really looking forward to seeing a lot of games!!!

 

To expand on what durvasa said, it's a measure of scoring efficiency that goes beyond FG%, to consider the extra points from 3pt shots, as well as free throws.

The formula for TS% is this: TS% = Pts/(2*(FGA + (.44*FTA)))

Technically, TS% is only an estimate, since it would take a long time to actually count up the number of FTs that actually took up possessions by themselves (not "And 1s"). The 0.44 multiplier was derived from statistical research by APBRmetricians; supposedly only 44% of the average player's FTAs are not attached to an And 1 FG.

TS% is far better than simple FG%. Going by just FG%, you might wonder why the star guard who shoots 0.41 from the field, or the spot-up 3pt marksman who averages 0.38 are even worth it. However, because the spot-up shooter is getting extra points from his long shot, and the star is probably going to the FT line a lot, their scoring efficiency is probably comparable to, if not greater than some other players with a higher FG%.

 

So which part of that formula makes his TS% lower? Is it the number of FT's he takes, the percentage of 3-pointers to 2-pointers? His overall FG%?

 

Ghetto edit:

I actually meant to say "the number of scoring attempts in which a player shoots purely from the FT line (instead of And 1s) is about 44% of his total FTAs." This is slightly less than 50% (2 FTs on a normal trip to the line) - obviously 56% of the average player's FTAs are not from And 1s, as I accidentally said in my previous post.

 

You said Van Gundier's analysis is "way off base." This is a diplomatic way of saying "the analysis is a piece of ****," not compromising in the least and indicates that you don't see the value in statistical analysis. Again, you can hate now since it hasn't shown itself to be effective in basketball. But before you make yourself look like the discredited moneyball haters in baseball, you should reconsider your stance.

 

I compared McGrady's stats to Kobe's. T-Mac's TS% is a mediocre 0.526, while Kobe's is a good 0.552. T-Mac's FG% and eFG% (takes 3pt shots into account, but not FTs) are both a bit lower than Kobe's, even though T-Mac has been better from 3pt land. T-Mac also goes to the line less than Kobe (7.4 FTAs per 40 minutes compared to Kobe's 8.2), while making less of his FT opportunities (75.8% compared to 83.4%).

82games.com breaks down a player's shooting tendencies (% of shot attempts in the paint will be used here), and also shows the ratio of fouls drawn to FGAs (DrawF):

Tracy McGrady
2003: 26% inside, 14.9% DrawF
2004: 20% inside, 12.0% DrawF
2005: 23% inside, 12.2% DrawF
2005: 21% inside, 12.7% DrawF

Kobe Bryant
2003: 22% inside, 12.3% DrawF
2004: 34% inside, 14.8% DrawF
2005: 29% inside, 16.0% DrawF
2006: 21% inside, 11.9% DrawF

Over the last four seasons, Kobe has had two seasons in which he took it into the paint and drew fouls significantly more than T-Mac did. He didn't do that in the most recent season, but was a much more accurate shooter instead.

T-Mac's problem seems to be that he settles for too many jumpshots.

 

Well I don't see how a player that led the league twice in scoring, "is not great at scoring". TS% measures shooting efficiency, not scoring ability. Usually the top TS% guys are three point specialists, so I'm not wild about using that as the benchmark comparison. And why use career TS%? Tracy was the only one who started his career on the bench for three years. And those happen to be 3 of his 4 worst TS% years. Isn't it obvious that a (healthy) Tracy now is a better player/scorer than his Toronto days.

Sure Tracy doesn't drive the ball as much as he used to, and he puts up a lot of threes despite being kind of streaky back there. But it's pure madness to suggest that Tracy needs to shoot and score less next year. I mean I don't mind him taking a back seat to Yao, but considering our lineup, who else is going to score? We need guys that can get their own shots in the worst way. And Tracy is the ONLY guy on this team that can do that.

How many times in recent years has the offense bogged down completely when we couldn't enter the ball into Yao. Too many to count. We need a guy like Mcgrady that can just get his own shot in that situation. In fact we could really use one of our new guys to be able to do it as well (KillBill, Snyder, Lucas etc.), because we need all the offensive help that we can get.

Edit: Damn. JimRaynor55 said pretty much everything I did, except with a lot more backup and detail. Gotta admit, the open registration has brought some sharp cats along with all the riffraff. Though that name sounds familiar. JimRaynor. Could I have seen you somewhere else before?

 

Shooting efficiency is a part of scoring ability.

True, however many of the star swingmen brought up in this thread (like Kobe) aren't 3pt specialists, and they still have a higher TS% than T-Mac.

I don't see anything wrong with it. Check out his TS% at Basketball-Reference.com (under "Advanced"). His career TS% of 0.526 is exactly equal to his TS% in his last two healthy seasons (2004 and 2005). It's certainly more favorable to him than using just his most recent season (0.494).

Coming off the bench doesn't matter. Kobe did too, and his TS% was higher than T-Mac's, and consistent with the rest of his own career.

As I said in one of my last few posts, in an ideal situation T-Mac would be shooting a bit less. However, I don't think that's possible with this lineup.

 

Fair enough on the rest of your response to my post, but we're of like mind on this point. We need tracy to shoot and score as much as ever. Anything less would require one or more of our new aquisitions to be a towering home run in the point-making department.

And like I edited into my post above, your name seems familiar. Is there any other place, I might have seen it?

 

Yao Ming Mania?

 

That must be it. Welcome aboard. You'll find this place to be much more active and less tolerant of nonsense than that one. Enjoy.

 

18-19 pts a game!!?? Has the 06 season treated us this badly, that we are now in the illusion of T-Mac scoring 18-19pts for the good of the team. Who would pick up the scoring load?? I think someone must have guided Juwan Howard the fountain of eternal youth.

Simple as this. He takes the toughest shots in the league, by far. But at the same time, me makes some. Someone come up with a formula for "tough" shots and see who percentage is the best. I'll put my money on T-Mac. He does take too many tough shots and doesn't attack the rim as much as we all would like. This is what drops his %. Also he fires 3's at a higher clip than all except Ray Allen, and his 3's are coming with the D all in his face. But who else do you know makes scoring look so easy?

Fact is, T-Mac and Yao are gonna have to combine to score 50-55pts a game for us to contend. T-Mac scoring 18pts wasn't working in the first half of 04, and it isn't going to work now. That same low scoring mentality has kept Garnett from being mentioned as one of the all-time greats. We don't need a passive T-Mac, we need a T-Mac who wants blood and is willing to stab an opponent in the heart when he's down. Score, score, score!!!

 

The title of the post should be "Can I be the first rookie to make it to 500 posts in 1 month?". With all the efforts to reply and defenses he'll have to make of himself, he should make it there tonight

 

Certainly not the first. Creepyfloyd got almost 1500 posts in a little over two months. And even though he hasn't posted in about a month an a half, his posts per day is still at a staggering 12.12 ppd.

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/member.php?u=17658

 

Another mind reader.

So just because I disagree with Van Gundier's analysis of Tracy that means I don't see the value of Moneyball in basketball? Like I said, you need to grow up so more and then you'll learn that because people don't agree with a particular point it doesn't make them "haters" or extremists against a philosophy or way of viewing things. I'll repeat myself since you didn't get it the first two times: "I actually like the Moneyball concept when it comes to evaluating how effective a player is. But with basketball, it has to be used in conjunction with observation."

 

Suppose your observation tells you one thing, but the "moneyball" stats say another.

Which do you trust?

 

It depends on the subject and what observation and the Moneyball stats say. I can't generalize something like this. There are some stats I respect more than others. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but it's my view. IMO, this is the only logical view. If you absolutely must put me into a philosophical box, I tend to trust stats unless observation makes it abundently clear a particular stat is misleading. And whatever stat you show me, saying Tracy is more like Pippen than Kobe/Jordan is just wrong; saying Tracy is not an elite scorer is off the tracks. But everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how wrong it is.

I strongly believe in statistical analysis and in my profession, we do it better than our competitors and use that to our advantage. With Morey, the Rockets have an opportunity to walk a step ahead of other teams for a few years until everyone copycats it.

 

13 points in 37 secs. Enough said. Tmac is a great scorer. Next.