There have been things that frustrate me about the NBA, but I mostly get over it. I love basketball and love the Rockets. But perhaps because I grew up as a stats junkie for baseball, I hate it when stats aren't correct because I would never think to double-check them. I know it sounds lame, but you just have faith that someone is accurately tracking this and they are double and triple-checking the numbers the next day or something. I always assume they get it right, and they usually do. I track some of the stats when I watch games, mostly in my head. Hayes' board total and our three-point shooting especially. Most people know how important I think Rafer's three-point shooting is to the team, and what he is doing from long range I usually have in my head. I've seen the league be off by a three-point attempt every so often for Rafer and Luther this season, but usually because they mixed the two up, crediting one with a three attempt when the other took it. But on March 25th against the Hornets, they were off by two. They said Rafer was 4-7 from three-point range when he was actually 4-9. I assumed this would be corrected by now, but it still hasn't. http://www.nba.com/games/20070325/HOUNOK/boxscore.html If you look at the play-by-play, they have two of Rafer's three-point attempts credited as "layup" attempts. http://www.nba.com/games/20070325/HOUNOK/playbyplay.html I can understand a steal or block where it's a judgement call, but shot attempts? I'm sure to many of you this seems trivial, so here's my attempt at a video explanation: <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XId8oHNkI28"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XId8oHNkI28" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object> PS. This isn't an anti-Rafer thread at all -- in fact it's not even about him really. Whether he was 4-7 or 4-9, that's good shooting percentage from three either way. I'm just starting to doubt NBA stat quality control here.
I would think anomalies on shot attempts would tend to "even out" over the course of an 82-game season. It could be off, but I don't think it would be off a significant amount. One stat that can be very unreliable is the assist, because of the subjectivity involved.
The third one? Rafer made that shot. The ref signaled three and then raised both hands after he made it. If you're talking about the fourth highlight in the clip, you failed the test
Box scores are 90% accurate but only tell 50% of the story. Those are just estimates, but I've been tracking games like crazy using my own standards and box scores just suck. There are obvious mistakes (wrongly attributed shots, turnovers, etc.) and subjective problems (who gets the rebound, steal, assist, etc.?). Basically if the NBA wants accurate documentation, they need to hire me to watch every game and report on it (this will take a while, but I have time).
I've been thinking about this... and I agree... the stats suck. But not because they don't tell the truth (hopefully over the course of the season, they're 98%+ accurate), but because they don't tell you enough.
I think the anti-VSpan bias is the worst. Many of VSpan's turnovers could have belonged to his teammates', but they ended up in VSpan's TO column anyway. Given the relatively small sample size, VSpan may well be the ultimate victim of screwed up stats and lies by those of his detractors.
weird, makes u think if those records are accurate, like they still count all the goaltendings a block or something, that would be some messed up crap
If it goes in Luther shot it. If it misses then Rafer gets the attempt. It's the folks at the scorer's table tallying up attempts and all the other stats. They are employed by each team, not the NBA. I imagine this happens more on road games than home games. The scorers are probably more familiar with their own team's players than with a visiting team. Rafer wears #12 and Luther #2. You could imagine just how hard it is to read a jersey number from across the court while the game is still going on with people running around. They see a 2 and credit Luther instead of Rafer. I'm sure mistakes like this happen all the time. Remember earlier this season Bill Worrell had a mistake corrected on a three-pointer not once but twice. It would be nice for someone to look at the tape the next day and confirm the box score stats, but I suspect it would take too much time and effort to do so.
Nice video Clutch. I have to agree, it happens to often that i watched a game, and i'm sure someone had a specific amount of rebound, but thenba recorded less rebounds. I think the nba should have people making boxscores for every game(so not people of the home team), and that there is a certain control, and agreements about who gets rewarded with a rebound in certain situations. p.s. didn't Dream get robbed of a second quadruple duble?
NBA.COM's stat tracking is so inreliable I gave up on it a long time ago. I find ESPN.com and FOXSPORTS.com/NBA to be much better sources of accurate info. the fantasy freaks out there would be fret to think there were errors in tracking these things!!
lol, I'm glad to see the spanoulis fan club has only ratchedted up the paranoia over the last few weeks. Sorry but the general rule for a thousand years goes that if you pass the ball to a player who is unable to establish possession, the turnover is charged to the passer. If you can't establish possession, you can't turn it over. This goes for Vasilis Spanoulis as well as Steve Nash. It's also why Spanoulis has always been a high TO player, even when he was playing for Greece or Pantha.
Exactly! Sam Dalemburt had 7 blocks according to Yahoo sports, but on the NBA site it said 6 blocks! WTF? Made me lose in the catagory too....
Man, I have been watching the same thing for V-Span and his turnovers vs Assists and for Yao in his rebounding. They have screwed up on both players for the worse. DD
I don't understand this, not that I'm arguing. Aren't they all supposed to use the official scorers stats? I always assumed the official scorer published their stats for a game and everyone used those.
So what you're really saying Clutch is that Rafer has stats people 'on the take' to purposely make his FG% look better than it really is? How low can he go? Rafer disgusts me!
Even though I agree that these mistakes will wash out, over the course of the season, and not really lead to any different conclusions... Terrific video Clutch. Loved the song and the tongue-in-cheek tone.
