Yeah. Steve Blake instead of Reefer 3 years ago would hae been great. We probably could have gone to the WCF.
LOL -- I had that argument with many of the grunts on this board 3 years ago, and said the exact thing that Blake was better than Rafer....I got killed for it........ Now we don't need him but he fit into that team perfectly. DD
The way that this would be done (maybe it already is by those with the resources) is to find out when a team has, say, a 2 point lead at 11 minutes left in the first quarter, how often that team wins the game (let's say hypothetically that it's 52.1%). So a 2 pt shot taken just before the 11 minute mark in the first quarter in a tied game would be assigned a 2.1% effect on winning (the logic being that if the shot is missed, the game stays tied and might leave a team with something like a 50% of winning). Next, you might look at when a team has a 4 point lead at 10 minutes, or a 2 point lead at 10 minutes, and come up with those numbers of how often those teams win the game (making up numbers, let's just say that it's 55.4% and 53.2%, respectively). That way, we'll be able to assign more precise (though not perfectly so) leverage values to each shot taken. As you repeat this procedure with other margins and minutes left in the games, presumably the later in the game and tighter the margin, generally the higher the % effect on the outcome of the game each shot will have. So you don't need to already know the final outcome of the particular game to know more about the value of each shot. This method of analysis is not exact (nor can ANY statistical metric ever be, the best we can do is reduce the chance of error), as it is based on the average game and not one with the very teams involved, but it's probably better than ignoring the leverage factor altogether.
