What Are Advanced Statistics Really Supposed To Convey

Just on your point about Harden and superstars, it's true that advanced stats aren't very useful.

Everyone knows who the superstars are and everyone is trying to get them.

It's not like anyone will "overlook" a a superstar by misreading stats.

 

You, like anybody else, are giving players the eye test. As fans and students of the sport, I believe most people are capable of using their eyes to see the good things a player does on the court. Advanced statistics are a check on the eye test. If there is something about a player that you're seeing that makes him a great player, you should be able to record those events and form a testable hypothesis on those facets of the player's game.

For example, anybody could see that Chuck Hayes was a pretty good rebounder and was excellent at initiating the offense from the high post under Adelman. Advanced statistics can tell you if what your eye is seeing is actually the case. You can look at how many points on average the team made when Chuck Hayes initiated the offense from the high post and compare that performance to other offensive schemes. You can look at the percentage of rebounds Chuck Hayes got out of the opportunities he had. You can see observe how well Chuck Hayes boxed out his opponents. Advanced statistics confirm what the eye sees, and help remove biases of the eye from player scouting.

In the case of some national sports analysts, they'd show that these analysts are often biased toward the players they like; that they would think particular players are better in certain facets than they actually are based on careful tabulation of the events as they actually occurred. But for a team, they can be used to see how well a scout is scouting players, and so on. Hence their usefulness.

 

They convey what you see or don't see is possibly true or false.

It's not that difficult to understand. People act like Morey uses statistical analysis in place of "eyes" or something, when he's said repeatedly that he uses statistics as a tool and not necessarily the final say-so in arriving at a conclusion.

Stats themselves can prove/disprove what you do see or reveal what you don't see. And despite what many say, no, you can't "see" what every player in the NBA is doing because you aren't watching every play of every player and who they play against in what situations 24 hours a day.

 

Some things are obvious. Stats might be helpful even for the "obvious" stuff, because its never a bad thing to have more confidence that something is true.

But there are a lot of things which aren't obvious, or maybe where conventional wisdom has it wrong. This is where the Rockets are really hoping take advantage with their number crunching analysts.

 

HOU is able to find good players in the 2nd round of drafts because they combine scouting with their statistical analyses of players