"Making your teammates better" vs "Scoring more points"...?

Perimeter defense I think is overrated. Put Martin on a team with good interior help defense and his defensive shortcomings don't matter very much. I believe throughout his career he's played on the worst interior defensive teams in the league (if not league history).

Battier with his league-best perimeter defense doesn't seem to have had much of an impact on our overall defense. However, take a 7'6" guy out of the lineup and our defense immediately goes from one of the best to one of the worst.

 

Yawn. Martin's the 3rd best iso player in the league.

Yawn. Best offensive team in Rockets history.

Ignorant fans abound.

 

Understand what I'm saying, those possessions don't just disappear. If Martin gets 25 points on 12 fga and tracy gets 25 on 20 fgs, 8 extra shot attempts arent created. Do you understand that? So what I meant by clutch or what morey calls a high leverage moment, shots have to be created by someone outside the offense. Thats why tracy for the most part makes his teammates better. Thats why even without Yao for over half the season they made the playoffs and 50 games. Thats why martin cant be the best player on your team. He's a good player and would be even better with better players around him. Thats not a knock on what he does because he "do what he do". You're purpose or whatever you were tying to imply is that if he's not taking shots, then thats more for everyone else and it doesn't work that way.

 

No. You do not know what he is trying to say. And by saying you know what he is trying to say when you in fact do not know what he is trying to say you are making things up that I don't even know what you are trying to say.

We are talking about possessions, not shots, and he does take FTs into account:

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of a "possession". If Martin doesn't use the possession, they in fact DO automatically go somewhere else. Someone will shoot it. Or turn it over. Or get fouled. The possession has to play out somehow, it doesn't just magically disappear.

What does this even mean? "Extra possessions needs to be created"?? Like from steals? Or offensive rebounds? What does that have to with what we are talking about.

You seem to be confusing the term "possessions" with "good shots". They have nothing to do with eachother.

 

You follow me in every thread, yet why is it so hard to understand the concept? If a player is fouled and goes to the line, it doesn't count as a shot attempt, but its still a possession. Is that hard to understand? I mean, you're a trader of some kind and pretty educated, but how hard is that?

 

We are talking about possessions not shots. Possessions include FT attempts. If Martin scores 25 points on 15 possessions, and Tracy scores 25 on 20 possessions, 5 possessions isn't "created" by Martin, it was always there, but 5 possessions is "freed up" for other teammates to use. If they happened to score at all in those 5 possessions, it would be more than what Tracy did with his 20. Do you understand that?

1. This has nothing to do with this thread or discussion.

2. More importantly, that is absolutely NOT the definition of a "high leverage moment". A high leverage moment or possession is one which affects the end result of the game disproportionally higher than the rest. For instance, if you are up 1 point with 35 seconds to go with the ball in your hands, you have a reasonable chance of winning or losing. If you drain a 3 right there, it effectively ends the game. Whether you made that 3 or not had a deciding impact on the final results of the game, which is what made it a "high leverage moment".

Whether you got that 3 off from a pick and pop, running a triangle offense, or one guy dribbling the ball through 5 guys and around the referee and finally passing it to the open teammate in the corner, DOESN'T MATTER. They are all still high leveraged moments.

Hopefully that helps.

 

Completely backwards. Mcgrady would benefit from a guy like martin to bail him out after he dribbled the clock away and needed to pass it to someone just barely open. Martin needs to be just barely open to hit his shot. Not many in the league can do that.

As for Martin making his teammates better vs scoring. martin does both he gives them an outlet for their drives. So can go crazy stupid in the middle (lowry) and when nothing is their find Martin. Plus Martin shoots open 3's like they are layups.

 

Completely ****ing hilarious.

I am the one trying to explain that to you. Everyone of us in this thread is talking about possessions. NO ONE is talking about shot attempts. Except you.

 

I am the common sense police. I show up where ever there is a crime on human intelligence. You seem to be one of the biggest offenders in that now that I have put DD away.

 

I'm sure morey has advanced tracking for stuff like this. We don't know what either player or what happens to those extra possesions they have. In a guy like mcgrady, possessions could be used for setting up a guy like chuck hayes,scola,and landry. In adelmans offense, the offense is designed to create the same chances and thats why tracy didn't fit here especially at that point in his career. I also think this is where usage comes in also. Martin moves well off the ball and is a 1 or 2 dribble shoot guy. So i guess in a sense, we could say since he doesn't hold and prod, it gives other players the chance to do something with the ball when they get it vs being "forced" to shoot from the play mcgrady just created. In simplest terms for me, mcgrady is creator and martin is a shot finisher. More times than not, the shot creator will make his teammates better than the shot finisher. In the real world of basketball, you need both. The spurs don't use duncan as the shot creator anymore because he's not what he used to be. They use Parker and Manu's penetration more now and in the context of their offense. Parker and manu are better at shot creation at this stage of their career than duncan is. Same could be said for martin and his shot making and adelmans offense vs what tracy can create right now mainly because of the unrelible natue of his health.

 

This was the original post. Read the part about equating shot attempts to possessions. Thats wasn't made up by me and you should know this and this is the crux of the entire debate. The only thing we have to judge a possesion by as we know it right now is fga,fta,to's,asst, and usage plays a part in it. As I stated before, those extra shots just don't go somewhere else.

 

You are simply moving the goal posts, in fact moving them badly since you are trying to add in shot creation potential and all sort of hypothetical nonsense in your posts.

 

wemissdeke, you back again?

 

Common sense police for the win. Another case solved.

Thank you for getting it now for the most part. And I agree with most of what you are saying.

The last correction I'll make is that the OP didn't actually mean "Martin creates more than Mcgrady". It was just a hypothetical example of a typical "creator" vs. "efficient scorer". He posed it as a question, not the final say. It was meant to illustrate how an efficient scorer's "indirect" effects could be overlooked by some.

As for who ACTUALLY creates more points? I don't know. Like you said, Morey I am sure has data. It would depend on several factors:

1. Exactly how efficient the efficient scorer is.
2. Exactly how efficient the efficient scorer's teammates are, on their own.
3. Exactly how in(efficient) the "creator" is.
4. Exactly how efficient the "creator" makes his teammates.

If we knew the answers to all those, it would simply be a math problem.

 

You should read what you quoted again and very carefully this time. Especially the part where he says "I take into account FT differences".

 

If you want a medal like most 24,25 yr olds got growing up even if they came in last place, be my guest

 

would it be possible to explain what efficient scoring means? are you talking about fg%?

 

I read it multiple times before I even made a comment about it. For argument sake, lets use something simple and a round number.

Martin avearges 15 fga,8 fta,2asst and 2 to's. In a sense, without counting the times passed off, lets say he averages 23 possession a game. 15 fga,4 sets of 2 fta,2 asst,and 2 to's.

Lets take Tracy's last good year of 06-07. he had 20fga,7fta,6.5asst and 3tos. In simple math, he averaged 33 possesions a game.

Now, without knowing the usage and stuff, we all can say mcgrady possessed the ball more than 33 times during the game and vice versa with martin.

 

TS% is the best representation of scoring efficiency. Taking into account 2P FGs, 3P FGs and FTs.

Of the players who take at least 15 shots per game, Kevin Martin ranks #2 in TS% behind Dirk Nowitzki.

 

now, it's my turn to make some noise.

what i did is to combine all shots, 2 pts, 3 pts, and ft (2 fts count one shot), he tried and made. he tried 1566 shots this season and made 788. it's about .503, but still below scola and hayes's fg%. they deserve more than kevin according to OP's logic.

the problem of OP's logic is he forgot whether other players get high % shots. yes, kevin doesn't need so many shots to gain pts. by doing it, he gives tons of shots to other players. however, he didn't do anything to increase other players efficiency. on the other hand, a great player makes other players better. it means they make other players more efficienct. now you see why making other players better is more important.