Efficiency Ratings and the Rocks -- How many people are actually playing?

Biggest caveat of all is the fact that so many player were injured, suspended, or new. The same rating taken after the next five game, barring any new siginificaant injuries, will show much improved number for KT and Rice. I do not know what you need to score to show you are deep, but I maintain, when healthy, this team is deep.

 

kind of a silly stat...i guess thats because efficiency doesn't always equate to actual worth. shaq last year was a 25.02.

and right now aaron mckie (#9) is more efficient than tim duncan (#10). then kurt thomas is #12. and gilbert arenas is #15 while jason kidd is #18. not really a good stat.

 

IMO, in the formula, TOs should be multiplied * 2. I feel a turnover is worth more than a missed shot.

 

codell -
To give a TO a value of 2 assumes that every TO results in a score...obviously not true. IMO, 1 is too low but 2 is too high.

On the other hand, if an assist can only be given for a made shot, why is the formula value 1 instead of somewhere between 2 and 3 (some assists are 3 pt'ers).

 

Actually, I should have clarified my post. I didnt mean that TOs should be doubled because of the other teams potential to score after the TO occurs.

I was more thinking along the lines of: TOs = missed shot opportunies for us (i.e. 2points).

Im sure my theory is full of flaws and subjectivity. Ive just always though of it like, if a player scored 30, but has 7 turnovers, then in my mind, hes really +14 in the scoring department instead of +30, which is how some would see it. Goes back to the arguement of, well Steve and Cuttino are ball hogs, but they are averaging 65 pts and shooting 50%. But look at their TOs, which is around 8. When people prop up Steve and Cuttino, they fail to look at some of the negative stats sometimes.

 

I pass you the ball and you make the shot. Your ER is 2 (or 3). My efficiency rating is .7 - just on an intuitive level, there seems to be something wrong with the ratio.

 

Heres my argument though. The value of a turnover isnt always translated in stats or in a box score.

Turnovers can be momentum killers/momentum changers/momentum preventers. So to me personally, the value of a TO, relatively, is exponentially greather than just 1 or a change of possession.

See, I can live with Francis/Cuttino lack of passing/ball movement/getting their teamates involved if it werent for the turnovers. Their turnovers arent just from forced shots, but also from poor quality passing. So even at times when they do try and get their teamates involved, they dont make a good pass. Furthermore, even if they do get the pass to a teamate without turning it over, the player receiving the pass is not in the optimal position to score. Now whether thats due to the passer making a bad decision on when to pass it or due to the player receiving the pass not putting himself into the right position, is of course, highly debatable sometimes.

A great stats in my eyes is, turnover to assist ratio. For his career, Francis TO/A ratio is roughly 1.7 to 1. Gary Paytons is roughly 3 to 1. Now, before some of you jump on me for this comparison, yes, I know they arent the same type of player and Payton has better shooters and blah blah blah. Im not comparing them directly, just using Payton purely as an example.

So to sum up, when you see Francis and Mobley not pass as much as they should YET STILL have a high number of turnovers due to bad passing and/or poor decision making when they actually do pass, it is totally couterproductive with regard to establishing offensive rhythm. At times, their ISO tendencies AS WELL AS their passing/ball handling (when resulting in a TO), kill team momentum and offensive "flow".

Thats why I feel TOs are worth more and consequently, should be discussed much much more on here when hyping up Francis and Cuttino or when using a forumla like the one that started this thread.

 

Again, my intention was not to compare them directly but use their stats as examples and emphasize that TOs are a huge detriment to Steve's game and to this teams overall play.

 

dwmyers,

The equation you are using has been in existence for around 30 years or so, I think. It is called the Tendex rating system. There is also a variation on it called the modified Tendex rating that weights the individual stats a bit more.

Dean Oliver's Journal of Basketball Studies has some interesting reading if you're into stats and weighting of player performance based on equations.

http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/ (click on the Methods link at the top of the page).

 

The stats tell me that the rest of the team is watching Steve play Micheal Jordan, instead of playing basketball

Kenny and Yao aren't going to be pushing the ball up the court themselves... Steve is actually going to have to RUN an offense

 

I think the term efficiency rating is actually a bit of a misnomer, since it doesn't factor in minutes played. A better term might be impact rating .

What the "ER" tells me is that we're pretty much a one-man team right now.

 

Don't forget this is less than 2 weeks into the season. It's not unusual for a good player to struggle in a few games and a mediocre player to be hot in some stretches.

I think this rating make at least some sense in terms of showing how valuable a player is. Shaq's problem is his free throw. As dominant as he is, if it wasn't the fact that he suddenly got hot at the line during the WCF, the Lakers wouldn't be the champions right now. It'd be interesting to see Shaq's rating in the playoffs when his ft% went up.

A lot of people have observed that Shaq is the only superstar you don't want to go to at crunch time because of his ft problem.

 

I think the fairest way to do it is for the assist player and the shooter share the points. If an assist is worth 1/3 of the scoring process, then the assist should worth .7 and the scorer should get 1.3 for a 2 point shot. But that would be very hard to calculate because you'd have to record how many shots are assisted and how many aren't. There'd be at least 3 more columns added to the statline.

BTW, the reason why a possession is worth about 1 point is that the probability of scoring 2 points in a possession is about 50%. But in light of the NBA fg% in the past decade, that number should be considerably lower.

 

Cato is more efficient than Mobley.

 

WE hope that the poor showing of our "DEPTH" will improve as the Season moves along and more players find their rythem and shot. They will of course have to demand that the ball be passed to them, when they are open.