I came across this today. I thought it was very well written, and does a good job in covering most of the "advanced stats" that are in use today that I know of. Includes links to get more information on various metrics. http://thecity2.com/advanced-stats-primer/
I'm going to bump this because I think it's a good read to see the tools for how today's NBA and college players are being valued. There are some things to keep in mind when trying to use stats to evaluate college players, namely that scorekeepers hand out assists and offensive rebounds somewhat arbitrarily at times, so those numbers may be misleading when trying to translate them to the NBA. Some of the more stats-saavy front offices have a good idea of what stats predict a player's NBA performance, though. A brief disclaimer that I work for Synergy Sports—Synergy in particular is a really neat tool for fans who want to take a closer look at what's happening behind the stats, as there's video associated with everything we track.
Maybe we should sticky a thread like this so that every time there's a discussion on advanced stats, we can educate ourselves before saying something dumb.
I've always been curious about this, do synergy sports have team member who watch the games and then chart everything? How does it work?
My employment agreement prevents me from giving out anything more specific, but every game is watched by someone.
Durvasa, have you ever come across a compilation or comparison of basketball injuries? Like the number of left knee injuries vs right knee injuries. Or anything related that could be used to predict possible injuries in the future? I think it would be interesting to sort through it. One could possibly predict wear and tear injuries from a player's shooting motion or from which side they shoot the ball from.