Agree with that counter point. I'm glad we've got Artest. Shane was an offensive liability that made Rafer the 3rd option. Now with Artest, we have a scorer and defender and Alston can stop shooting the ball at that horrible 36% clip which is probably the reason he's -/- on both sides of the ball.
But note that players who played at least 2000 minutes a season ago usually had a positive offensive +/-. Rafer plays big minutes for us, and his offensive +/- is significantly lower than "average" (which I represent, approximately, with that red box in the plot). Further, I think PGs are typically supposed to be good for your offense, but for Rafer its a real weakness according to this. As I mentioned in another thread, I'm surprised Rafer's offense looks so poor here, because the last couple years his raw On/Off Offensive +/- was +8.4 and +6.9. Something weird is going on there ... not sure what.
That's a good point, but at the same time he ranks ahead of Rajon Rondo, Derek Fisher, and Kirk Hinrich. I don't know, a lot of those stats make sense, but then some seem really odd. I mean just watching the games last year, when Alston wasn't on the court our offense sputtered.
Maybe that's because our backup PGs weren't very good either. Neither James, Jackson, or Brooks fair well offensively according to this analysis. And perhaps Rafer benefited from playing a higher proportion of his minutes with Tracy and Yao together compared to the other PGs. Just based on skillset, Rafer does not strike me as a good offensive player. The adjusted +/- analysis affirms that, but the unadjusted one does not. Maybe that's an indication that this analysis is doing something right.
for some reason, i almost never end up replying to your stats threads (though i usually plan to), but i always find them interesting, especially since you seem to get the stats from a lot of different sources. so don't stop posting them. and i thought rafer was really good at adjusted (not just raw) +/- last year and maybe even for several years, so it seems weird that he's negative in both stats. maybe i'm remembering something else. as for yao, i think it actually makes sense. we've had a good D ever since he has been here and, for whatever mobiliy issues he has, he still makes the paint a rough place to score and is good for the defense. and on offense, as efficient as his fg% might be, he commits a lot of turnovers and we commit a lot of turnovers getting it to him and we also waste several possessions a game trying to get it into yao, only to have to force up a shot to beat the shot clock. his mobility and athletic deficiencies hurt us more offensively than defensively.
Did anybody notice who is at the absolute bottom of the list for players who played less than 2000 minutes? I'll let you look it up.
Stevie Novak! Go check his numbers, no wonder Morey dumped him. And you KG ain't got nothing on Chuck's post defense.
I don't have a fancy formula, but I have eyes, pen,pad, and basketball sense. I can tell you rafer's inability to shoot effectively, shane's not being able to put the ball on the floor from the 3pt line hurts this team. I also know last playoffs, shane was like -30 when he was on the floor.There are stress points to this team that's really hard to calculate into a formula.
Yeah, I thought Yao's numbers made a lot of sense as well. They really capture both how our team has been great defensively since he came and the pain every time we try to force something into him and it fails. I think this year is finally the year that his offense will be a net + for the team. We have enough weapons and some experience with Adelman's system where we should be able to efficiently use his strengths. Up to now, he's been really effective in spurts, and then a game-killer in spurts (multiple turnovers related to his role in the office in a row). But Yao looks so good when he's effective that you keep wanting to give him the ball. I wonder if Mutombo's numbers would look a lot like Chuck's, or if he would be +15 on defense.
On another board, someone wrote that the average defensing rating for PGs was -1.56 (they tend to be worse defensively). So actually Rafer's defensive rating maybe above average for his position.
I read that too durvasa about the pg. I wonder how a calculation can work when we talk about game changing plays. In the playoffs, williams took over in the 4th one game, but on the ratings thing, it probably evened out.
I would never disagree with your initial point in this thread -- that to really understand a player you can't just rely on a fancy formula, you have to watch and study them. These ratings are a way to summarize in a few numbers how the flow of the game tends to change when a player is on the court, given the other players sharing that court. But when you try to model a player with a couple numbers, you lose a lot of contextual information. Stuff like "clutchness" likely don't show up very well. I will say that the "clutch" moments tend to be ones where the opposing team's best lineup is on the floor, so if a player consistently performs well in the clutc, that means he's typically helping his team against good lineups. That should, in theory, help his adjusted +/- rating.
is there some sort of stat that shows high percentage shots created over average replacement player? when i say created i don't mean created for other players i just mean created by actually being able to get the shot off. hope that makes sense...
