http://www.orlandosentinel.com/s...=orl-magic By Brian Schmitz | Sentinel Staff Writer Posted October 21, 2004 BILOXI, Miss. -- What does billionaire Mark Cuban, a Jeopardy! champion and a creator of a computerized college-football poll have in common with Hedo Turkoglu? They all inspired the birth of a quirky rating system that identified Turkoglu, who the Orlando Magic signed this summer, as the most valued player in the NBA last season. That's right. Not Shaq or Kobe or Kevin Garnett, but Turkoglu. After averaging just 9.2 points per game for the San Antonio Spurs, the Magic signed him to a six-year, $39 million free-agent deal. Some say they overspent. Why the to-do over Turkoglu? Well, in the ratings system developed by Jeff Sagarin and Wayne Winston, a player's value to his team is measured by more than mere points. Factored in are stuff such as chasing loose balls, taking charges and playing off-ball defense, intangibles overlooked by most traditional stats. Their 2003-04 rankings: 1. Turkoglu 2. Vince Carter. 3. Garnett. 4. Brad Miller. 5. Manu Ginobili. Sagarin is known as the father of USA Today's computer college-football ratings. Winston is an Indiana University professor and a past Jeopardy! champ. They were math whizzes years ago at MIT and combined their love of computers, statistics and sports. Cuban, the rebel owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was a student in Winston's math class at Indiana. When they ran into each other at a Mavs' game four years ago, Cuban asked Winston how his team could be improved. Winston had an epiphany while lounging at his Dallas hotel pool, and the "Winval" rankings system was born. It is modeled after hockey's plus-minus system, in which players are evaluated on how their team performs when they are on the ice. Magic General Manager John Weisbrod, a former NHL player and a big believer in team dynamics, had seen such reports on Turkoglu and his multifaceted game. "I'm a little unorthodox, too," Weisbrod said. "I put emphasis on things that not everybody else does. Turkoglu rated out very, very high." After doing his own detective work, Weisbrod decided that the 6-foot-10 forward could bring a lot more to the floor than raw numbers. ...
ok...this is why stat geeks officially suck. those 5 guys are so valuable, that not one of them have ever won a ring, despite the fact that two of them played together the season before last. there's more to sports than looking at numbers. much more.
I fed all of the information on last year's roster into my supercomputer and detrmined that the best player in the NBA last year was the Trade Exception.
so the ideal team in the nba would be: miller garnett turk carter ??? - some one at point and manu off the bench looks pretty good, it all depends on who the coach is.
Why do people automatically associate "numbers" with stat geeks? I've never got this. If anything, stat geeks are the ones looking past numbers(at least mainstream numbers that people care like ppg, rpg, apg). The system for this certainly suggests that. I believe this system has been ridiculed on this board a few times before. Obviously, it sucks in it's current state. But probably no suckier than whatever system Chris Mullin used to make Derek Fisher and Adonle Foyle $36 and $45 million players.
