Hollinger Statistical Analysis Applied to Aaron Brooks

I used the Hollinger statistical analysis and applied it to our boy Aaron Brooks! I copied the article in the NBA Dish forum and added commentary in bold.

My conclusion is that Brooks is underrated due to his size. He ranks up very well in 2 key factors- rebounding and 3 pt shooting. In fact, he may be the BEST guard in those 2 categories. No wonder Morey liked him

Here is the link to the thread about the Hollinger method:
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=2997340#post2997340

THE KEY FACTORS

I use PER (Player Efficiency Rating) as one of the factors in my rating formula, but it doesn't come close to telling the whole story.

The other six factors that are indicative of pro success are:

1. Age. Everything about the draft has to be seen through the prism of age. This is hugely important, yet teams underestimate it almost every year.

That's why "veteran" rookies like Ely, Dickau, Rafael Araujo and Francisco Garcia have underwhelmed at the NBA level, while the freshman stats of a player like Chris Bosh take on new meaning when you understand his youth..

Uh-oh... lil 'Ron stayed all four years and is 22. It should be noted, though, that Brooks had a really good season as a Sophomore. So he was good at a young age

[1 negative.]


2. Steals. Though perhaps the most worthless stat for NBA analysis, there's no denying that college players who get a ton of steals tend to fare much better in the NBA than their less sticky-fingered brethren. This is the one item that gets the most weight, actually -- it's even more important than PER!

For this year's draft, that's a big positive for Mike Conley, Jr., who picked off more than two balls a game, and a big negative for players like Arron Afflalo (22 all season), Nick Young (27) and Ramon Sessions (29).

48 steals for Brooks this year, and he averaged 1.37 per game. Not bad, but that is well below Conley's 87 and 2.2 per game.

Steal averages of other guards drafted:
Conley- 2.2
Law- 1.1
Stuckey-2.4
Crittenton- 2.0
Cook- 0.7
Almond- 1.2
Affalo- 0.6

I'll put this as 1/2 positive.

3. Blocks. This is the big man counterpart to steals, basically, although it's not quite as important.

6 blocks for Brooks. Probably totally worthless to look at this for a guard. Conley had only 10.

Net neutral outcome.

4. Rebounds. Boards, especially offensive boards, are a good indicator of future pro success as well.

Note that it isn't necessarily the absolute rebounds as much as the rebounds given a player's height. Wade, for instance, has the best rebound rate in the past five years of any player 6-4 or shorter -- a whopping 13.0 his sophomore year. Rajon Rondo was the best under 6-2 (11.5), and Nate Robinson was the best under six foot (8.6 his sophomore year).

4.3 rebounds per game for Lil Brooks! That sounds pretty good to me. That is more than Mike Conley Jr., who only averaged 3.4!

Here are the rebounding averages of the guards drafted ahead of him:
Conley- 3.4
Law- 3.3
Stuckey- 4.5 (he is 6'5")
Crittendon- 3.7
Cook- 4.3 (he is also 6'5")

Holy crap, this is definitely a big positive for Brooks.

Totals:
[1.5 positives]

[1 negative.]

5. 3-pointers. Those previous three items are markers for athleticism, while these next two are markers of skill.

Despite the longer line, college 3-point shooting translates very well to the NBA level, albeit sometimes with a year or two of adjustment needed. The key here is to look for players who both make a ton of 3s and shoot a high percentage.

Brooks averaged 5.7 attempts per game as a senior and made 2.3 per game for a 40.4% clip. He nailed 80 out of 198. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Here are the per game 3pt stats for other guards drafted before and right after him:
Conley- 0.5 out 1.8 for 30.4%, (weak!)
Stuckey- 1.5 out of 5.6 for 26.7%, (stop shooting please!)
Crittenton- 1.1 out of 3.2 for 35.6%
Cook- 1.4 out of 3.3 for 41.5% (getting better, but you're no Lil Ron)
Afflo- 2.4 out of 6.4 for 37.5% (close, but no cigar!)

Another HUGE postive for Brooks here. It looks like he is the best 3 point shooting guard taken in the 1st round.

Totals:
[2.5 positives]

[1 negative.]

6. Pure point ratio. I thought this might just separate the wheat from the chaff among point guards, but it actually helps at every position.

Obviously, guards such as Deron Williams, Marcus Williams, T.J. Ford and Steve Blake differentiate themselves by having college pure point ratings well over 2.0, but wingmen like Andre Iguodala and Luke Walton also helped themselves with extremely strong ratings in this category.

On the other hand, Alexander Johnson and Rafael Araujo both put up -3.4 marks -- perhaps that should have been a warning sign.

In this year's draft, Conley's 2.45 mark stands out with an exclamation point -- it's the fourth-best of any college player in the past six years with at least 500 minutes played, and easily No. 1 among this year's players.

At the other end, Nick Young (-1.8) and Morris Almond (-2.9) have disastrously bad ratings for backcourt players.


I don't know what this is! I'd appreciate it if someone help me out here and add it to the analysis1


THE RED FLAGS

I use the six factors above to produce a "rating" of a player's pro potential, but that's not the end of the story. It turns out just using the rating only gets you about halfway there, and still leads to a lot of mistakes.

The rest of it is taken care of by what I call the four "red flags":

Short guys. We're all familiar with the great hordes of 5-11 guards who have put up spectacular college hoops numbers only to implode upon reaching the pros. I had to put in a system of deductions to account for this.

Will Mike Conley's lack of height be an issue in the NBA?

At the guard spot, a player got a minor deduction for being "somewhat short" if he was a 6-3 or 6-4 shooting guard, or a 6-1 or 6-2 point guard. He got a much larger deduction for being "very short" if he was a 6-2 or smaller shooting guard, or a 6-0 or smaller point guard. This seemed to even out a lot of the small-guard issues, as the best small players were able to overcome their size, but the others weren't.

Uh-oh, that's a negative.

Totals:
[2.5 positives]

[2 negatives.]

Perimeter players who don't make 3s. Making fewer than 25 3-pointers in the year before being drafted is a pretty strong negative indicator for outside players.

Some are good enough in other areas to overcome it -- most notably Wade. Many others fail because of it, however, as the athleticism they relied on to dominate in college isn't nearly as singular at the pro level.

No problem here!

Really bad rebounders. This is a huge red flag -- if a player has an extremely poor rebound rate for his size, it's a strong indication that his athleticism is taxed to the limit even at the college level and he's going to be completely overwhelmed in the pros.

This has several subsets by position, and as you can see it's kind of a gallery of busts:

Guards with a rate below 5.0: Stoudamire and Jannero Pargo overcame this enough to become quasi-useful; perhaps J.J. Redick will too. Others include Dickau, Daniel Ewing, Reece Gaines, Dajuan Wagner and Roger Mason. This year's draftees who get red-flagged on this metric are JamesOn Curry, Taurean Green and Gabe Pruitt.[/b]

No problem here!


THE ONE ANTI-RED FLAG

ne positive, surprisingly, was if a player had a previous season that was better than the one just before the draft.

You might think that this meant a player was "on the downswing," but actually counting one-third the previous season and two-thirds the current one improved the quality of the draft ratings significantly. Interestingly enough, the opposite didn't work -- counting a previous season where a player was worse didn't help at all.

What this tells us, apparently, is that with players this young we should take most one-year improvements at face value.

Well, Brooks did have a really good Sophomore campaign.

He averaged 14.7 ppg, 4.6 assists, 1.0 stls, .429 FGs, .371 3PT

Not as good as his senior year though, when he averaged 177 ppg, 4.3 ast, 1.4 stls, and shot .460 from the field and .404 from three point land.

Net neutral on this one.

SUMMING IT UP

After all that, we finally end up with a numerical rating for each player. While assigning each player a single number can't possibly address all the complexities involved in a draft (present versus future, team needs versus best player, etc.), it does allow us to do a few neat things.

For starters, we can compare drafts between years, which allows us to see almost immediately that this year's draft is, indeed, absolutely freaking loaded. It has the highest-rated player of the past six years, and seven of the top 23 collegians in that stretch.

Second, we can denote differences between players much more finely than we can by just using a ranking system. For example, the difference in the 2006 draft between the top-rated player, Tyrus Thomas, and the second-ranked collegian, Shelden Williams, was greater than that between Williams and the No. 35 player -- which would clue you in to just draft Thomas, regardless of need. On the other hand, the difference between Andrew Bogut and Channing Frye in the 2005 draft was only three hundredths of a point.

Best of all, the system works. Obviously, you want more than just my word, so below are charts showing the top 12 collegians in each draft using my formula, compared to where they actually were picked among collegians and what players went in their place.

Yes, there are a few stinking dogs thrown in -- Vincent Yarbrough didn't quite pan out, for instance, and the Paul Davis Era in Los Angeles is off to a slow start.

That's OK. As I said, this is just the initial version of the system, and for it to work, we just have to have fewer busts than in the real drafts. And as you'll see, there are substantial fewer in the lists below.

Totals:
[2.5 positives]

2 negatives.

And his 2 negatives are due to age and size, while his 2.5 positives are actuall statistics- steals, 3 point shooting and rebounding!

CLIFF NOTES: Aaron Brooks gets huge points for his rebounding and 3 point shooting in statistical analysis. He is hurt by his size and his age.

 

Hotblooded- I will do Landry if I get some time here.

geeimsobored- I didn't see where he put the PPR formula. But here are assist-to-turnover ratios for guards drafted:

Brooks- 1.72
Conley- 2.77
Law- 1.92
Stuckey- 1.62
Crittenton- 1.49
Cook- 0.71
Affalo- 1.06

Brooks is well behind Conley, but still the 3rd best, and just behind Law.

Are PER stats published for college?

 

He shot 46% as a senior.

Durant shot 47.3%.

 

Fair enough, but there is a fair amount of subjectivity to this.

Interesting that the 7 and 8 guys were still there. Obviously teams listen to Hollinger and follow his advice!