ESPN: Aldridge Not A Top 10 PF in terms of projected WARP

That's right Portland. Your so-called 'star' is only about average for a starting power forward. Fortunately for you, that penny-pinching Daryl Morey won't pay for a subscription to ESPN Insider, so he doesn't know it yet. He's willing to overpay with multiple assets, including Jeremy Lin and TWO late first rounders. Take advantage before someone emails Morey the article.

 

Lebron and Carmelo are Wings or SF man, come on.

 

That post should be all the proof needed to determine what a useless stat warp is.

 

i don't have insider so i've only seen the position projections posted here, but does anyone know what the actual WARP's for players looked like last season? is the general problem with WARP or the WARP projections? was tony parker in the top ten for PG's in 2012-13 WARP and this year's projection just penalized him a lot? or was he also way down in the actual rankings?

these projections seem to take into account a lot of different assumptions about what a player of a given experience level with a given set of teammates and a given body type and even a given state of health "should" do. obviously this leaves it open to some seemingly huge margins of error. if they are too big then it might render the projections useless. or maybe they just need tweaking. were there similar projections last year? did they come out even close to reality?

i would agree that if tony parker, lamarcus aldridge, roy hibbert, and omer asik don't make the top 10 at their positions (or apparently top 15 for hibbert/asik), then you're projection model probably has some issues. but of course dismissing stats/models off-hand because they don't agree with our preconceived notions seems to entirely defeat the point. at the very least, it should make you ask why the stat/model is so far from your worldview. maybe someone isn't as impactful as you think they are. for example, while i can't see how aldridge is out of the top 10, his mediocre efficiency and non-dominant rebounding don't make me think as highly of him as a lot of people on here do. or maybe someone like korver from the SF list is more valuable than you would tend to think because his one skill translates very well to winning. or maybe after some thought you really can dismiss the model because your eyeballs and 8 other stats say one thing and this is the 1 out of 10 outlier.

 

Did you decide to skip watching the NBA last year?

 

I think LMA is a little overrated here, but I wouldn't go so far as you. First of all, fans still don't consider players like Melo or Lebron to be PFs. Then you have players who are getting too old like Dirk or Duncan who may technically be better, but not long term answers.

So the rest of your list. Anthony Davis is still too young and injury prone before you can say he can contribute as much to a contender. Faried would kill the Rockets spacing issues, not to mention his rebounding isn't a big deal for this team. So we're left with Love(also injury issues), Griffin, and Ibaka as potentially better PFs. that's pretty good.

Overall, a list of players that I feel is either at Aldridge's level or above him for Rockets purposes(title window of ~4 years of Howard prime).

Lebron
Durant
Love
Westbrook
CP3
Irving
Parker
George
Melo
Griffin
Curry
Ibaka

The list ignores centers and ignores players way too old(i.e. Duncan). That's 12 players. And all of them are basically untouchable except for maybe Love and Ibaka. So Aldridge is basically as top a talent as potentially available.

 

Well said. This a very important aspect of stats that escapes a lot of people.