I don't care what Greg nor his colleagues have to say. I don't like 'analysts' that likes to hop on and off bandwagons. Just watch, Yao is gonna have a bad game and the thrashing will repeat again.. and suddenly the "i told you so, DHoward is the best!" arguments will start all over again.
You have to look at their turnovers relative to their offensive activity. John Hollinger, in his stat books, uses the Turnover-Ratio metric to capture this. Based on that metric, Yao has been far more turnover prone than Shaq, if you're look at their careers. Shaq turned it over a ton as a rookie, but after that he had a 10 year stretch where he took very good care of the ball (for the most part). In recent years, he's getting more traveling and offensive fouls called on him so his turnover-ratio has increased. Code: Yao Shaq 2003 13.5 10.1 2004 13.2 11.9 2005 13.5 11.1 2006 11.3 13.0 2007 14.4 17.5 career* 12.9 10.2 * before this season
John Hollinger's books' Amazon.com's sales ranks are consistently poor, compared to, say, Dean Oliver's.
Maybe the fact Hollinger's books are (were) annuals has something to do with that. But it really doesn't matter. If you're going to evaluate how turnover-prone a player is, you look at their turnover relative to their offensive activity. That's common sense. Turnover-ratio is one way to quickly measure that. Looking at raw turnovers per game, or even turnovers per minute, can be quite misleading.
what really counts is NOW, this season! that's the whole argument for Yao to be better is based on lately. Shaq's in his prime? No argument with the exception of free throw shooting.
The comment I was responding to said, that "Yao turns the ball over alot more than Shaq" about Yao being an MVP candidate. They are still are very close to each other with Yao having better numbers than Shaq now and the crackdown on travel calls. Even with those other stats, It still shows Yao is less turn-over prone than Shaq this year. Yes, over his career he has been turnover prone. 2006 Shaq 13.0 Yao 11.3 2007 Shaq 17.5 Yao 14.4
Alright. But I think SunsRocketesFan was comparing Yao to Shaq in his prime. When dominated his team's offense like Yao does now, he wasn't as turnover prone.
I reread his post and do see what he meant. Yes, it was about Shaq in his prime. Yeah, Yao in his prime is alot more turnover prone than Shaq in his prime.
Turnover is the area Yao should work on it. But you still have to consider the factor the obvious biased call against him. When a defender strip the ball from Yao' hand, either it's TO from Yao or it's a foul from opponent.
TO is not a major factor in MVP consideration. First, the team record has to be good or great with your points, second, you have to be the most important part of the team winning. If team loses you, then it becomes very bad. So if Rockets have 55+wins, Yao plays like right now, he could win a MVP for Rockets first time for a long time. Dream never win a season MVP, I think.
Fair enough. However, by moving to the Lakers, Yao's TO will go down immediately as he will get more foul called, he will shoot more FTs, he would become a new SHAQ instantly. and he will average 28ppg instantly by getting at least 2 more FTs instantly.
