It's possible that these reports aren't complete yet. He said in a chat this past week that they'd be available "next week". I also noticed that the Outlook section for McGrady was missing. I like Hollinger's analysis a lot, even if I don't always agree with some of his conclusions. Though a lot of people charge he's just a stat-geek who bases everything on his formulas, I think it's clear from this that the guy actually watches games and studies players extensively. Unfortunately, like last year, I expect ESPN will only advertise the computer-based PER projections (as his "player rankings") and people will complain. "Yao Ming is going to be better than Kobe Bryant? Hollinger doesn't know what he's taking about!" Expect a lot of that.
Usage is a per-minute stat. See here for definition: Usg = 40 * (Lg Pace / Tm Pace) * ((FGA + 0.44*FTA + 0.33*AST + TO) / MP). Usage rate estimates the number of possessions a player uses per 40 minutes played. The idea is that a player creates "possessions" via by getting the ball back from the other team or offensive rebounding. And he uses possessions by attempting to score (FGA + .44*FTA), assisting on a scored basket (.33*AST) or turning it over (TO). Actually, based on his usage formula, the two sides aren't going to balance out as it should (I think there's some double counting going on the with the .33*AST), but it's still a pretty good measure of how much a team relies on him for offense.
Yeah, I agree. Hollinger is perhaps one of the best at extrapolating stats to objective analyses. He's got good insights most of the time. The thing about his stats are that they're as close as you can get to measuring everything about a player's game. I actually like his stuff better when he was with SI, but I guess ESPN's bigger. Just that the commercial stuff they put out is pretty much crap.
i have never seen such accurate descriptions of every player on our team. he is spot on on just about everything and backs it up with stats. he doesn't spew any dumb stereotypes (i.e. Yao is injury prone, Hayes is a terrible finisher, etc.) that I have come to expect from the media and fans in general. Can't believe he does this for every team.
And bench our best shooting guard Head? Granted, I don't think he'll get as many minutes, but from what I read, Head is going to get minutes too. IMO, Bonzi has to prove it, albeit in Adelman's eyes, he probably already has.
durvasa, what was t-mac's 07-08 outlook? I tried finding it on your original post, but I couldn't find it.
Yeah, I think our pg situation is quite muddy. We have a lot of depth but we don't have a clear starter. All of them are good rotation players but none is a perfect fit starter in Adelman's system. The pf situation is a lot better even though we don't have as much depth. Scola is going to be the starter, and Hayes is a good back up. Both are good fit for under Adelman. The thing about our forwards is that they are high IQ guys. Scola, Hayes, Battier, and T-Mac are all smart players. The PGs are the opposite. They are all talented but none are smart.
Hes been doing this for every player in the league the past 5-6 years. I always look forward to his forecasts
The thing I'm curious about with Rafer is, didn't he do very well when he was the starting PG for toronto? I just seem to remember he was looking very solid, able to score and dish very effectively, and was a pretty good decision-maker... so what happened in Houston? Perhaps he just didn't fit into jvg's system?
That's good question. He played pretty well in Toronto, that's why we traded Mike James for him. But what happend to him in Houston? Hmm Last year he knew we was alone on the team. He knew even if he had sucked he would have played. He knew JVG didn't belive JL or VS. He also saw Tracy was a playmaker and JVG was ok with it so he just decided to shot the ball, be that type of "Tracy". Now with Adelman Alston will have to change his game. He will have to be the playmaker again, cause he knows he's not alone right now. With James, Francis Brooks his situation could be tough. Maybe he'll star to think again and be a great player that he was.
Assumptions assumptions. Rafer did not think that. If anything, it was JVG who wanted him to be that scorer, go so far as to publicly back him by saying that he has to be the one who makes the shots when the defence is playing off of Tmac and Yao. So please don't fabricate stuff like that. And no, Rafer did not shoot the ball well in Toronto. I would hardly call 41.4% well. Mike James did well. Rafer Alston did mediocre. His shooting with the Rockets, however, is atrocious. Granted, he's been pretty decent on 3s. But the rest of his offensive game outside of wide-open layups is pretty much a disaster.
Well he was better in Toronto than he was in Houston. The defense was playin' on McGrady cause he had the ball in his 90% of the time he was playin'. If JVG had told McGrady to play off the ball T-Mac would have had a lof of open looks. But he wanted McGrady to be everything. Rafer should handle the ball and it was also on JVG. The coach should tell the players what he wants from them. But it was on Rafer when he was missin' that open looks. If was cold he shouldn't took that many shots.
Hmmm, looks like the player reports are gone on the ESPN for now (it's back to the previous season's). ESPN is probably going to feature them some time this week. I'll check if any of the player reports have changed.
