If you haven't checked this guy out, he's one of the sharpest outsider analysts around. Economics professor that follows the NBA and has written more than a few outstanding articles about the league, mostly capology. Anyway, he worked up a plus/minus system that analyzed how much the individual players helped their team on the floor versus off. He ranked 128 players out of the 420 based on those that played more than 2 thousand minutes this season. links: Rosenbaum Website Article Methodology List Resource/82games.com Rockets Listed: #4 TMac #50 Yao Ming #93 Jim Jackson #113 Tyronn Lue #125 Mo T Ex-Rockets: #30 Sam Cassell #44 Steve Francis #80 Cat #105 Kenny Thomas The rankings are centered around team success. Good players on bad teams have low value, and younger players also tend to get creamed. This is a ranking of last season only, so don't get in a snit that Yao, LeBron, and Carmelo aren't top ten. The article is a very good read - I'd suggest looking it over to accompany the why's behind the rankings. A ranking worse than 70 or 80 isn't a positive thing in his book. Evan
It doesn't take a genius to figure out this ranking is seriously flawed when Greg Ostertag is ranked higher than Yao Ming...
AND Vlade Divac at #38 LOL. And Big Z too? If they take winning percentages into account...why in the hell is Baron Davis #8?
Or maybe we don't know about the mechanism of basketball as much as we think we do. This paragraph in the article is most interesting to me: This Rosenbaum methodology has been posted here, some time last year, I think. I found it very compelling. Seemingly gross errors such as the Ostertag-Yao rankings pointed out by lancet must have some explanation behind. Either they (the methodology) miss something or we (the commonsense evaluation of players) miss something.
The Hornets had a pretty good record when he was playing, when he wasn't they lost the majority of the games he missed, something like 13 of 15 or so.
KG is quite accurate. Timmy D should be second. AK47 at #2??? Give me a break. He's a solid player all around and an All-Star but he's not the second best player in the league! Shaq, TMac, and Kobe are pretty accurate, although, I think Kobe should be a little higher than Shaq at this point in O'Neal's career. Paul Pierce is too far down that list. He's a better player than Baron and Vince, and easily better than Ray Allen. 18 is too high for James Posey! Jermaine O'Neal at 28??? Way too low. No way Nene is better than Jermaine! Iverson is a headcase but he is such a dynamic player and is one of the best scorers I've ever seen at a shade under 6'. He is top 20 at least. Maybe I'm biased but Francis and Baron Davis have similar games. Francis could even be better than Davis, so why is he back at 44? Rafer Alston and Ostertag shouldn't touch the top 50. Why is Rafer rated above Marbury? Don't get me started on Yao's ranking! He's top 10-15 hands down. I can name a dozen or so more that are oddly out of place. Does this guy have any idea what he's talking about? This list is totally off! Granted, my opinion and personal preferences come into play here, but some of this order is so off, it gives this guy little credibility.
I think it is ranking how productive one's team was when the player was the floor. I don't think it is ranking who is THE best players are. (ie: The Jazz were more productive when 'Tag' was on the floor then the Rockets were with Yao) But, i didn't read it, so I could be wrong.
Different websites give different opinions. http://www.alleyoop.com/prates/prates04.htm http://www.hoopsanalyst.com/goodman22.htm
It also doesn't take a genius to click on the other links and to figure out that that is but one small component of the various statistics being presented, or to try to understand what these statistics mean. I think I posted this back in NBA Dish when it came out -- that's how I got high on Brian Cardinal -- he owns these things.
Rosenbaum has a different way of looking at statistics and individual contributions to a team. Billy Bean's "Money Ball" approach which values certain players much higher than most baseball insiders and fans do is a good comparison. Yao is not a top ten player in the league. As ROX fans, we might like to think so... but he isn't. AK47 on the other hand puts up close to a triple double and high numbers in other stats everygame. A player is rewarded by Rosenbaum for not making mistakes and avoiding turnovers. Almost like onbase percentage in baseball. It doesn't matter how many points you score (that can be contributed to how many shots you take and where you take the shots... ie. a point guard getting you the ball close to the basket) but instead on your shooting percentage and the role you play in making your teammates better. I think that he is on to something. A bit ahead of his time...
The entire plus_minus rating conecpt is flawed, I think. It just showes the difference between starters and backups. For example, Yao's backup was Cato, who will be a starting center for Magic. No big performance drop between Yao against other team's starters and Cato against other team's backups. On the other hand, the difference between Garnnet and his backup is too big, so is Tmac, Shaq, Kirilenko and Duncan. When those guys are not on the floor, there team's performanc drop quite a bit. Player who has a decent packup is given a huge disadvantage here. Take it to extreme, make Lue as Yao's backup center and the plus minus difference will be large enough for Yao to be #1 in the league.
Is it a joke that Yao is ranked #7 on one site, #10 on another site and then #50 on this Rosenbaum site?
It's just a formula, and no formula these kinds of dudes think of will ever make everyone happy, but that list is what came out of that formula so it's not really even an opinion.
Not really, considering the vastly different way in which the sites approach the issue -- the other two seem like weighted or adjusted variants of the Efficiency rating -- Rosenbaum considers some of the same factors but otherwise is operating in a whole different sphere. He didn't just use raw plus minus numbers in the sense that you assume; that was the point of adjusting them.
If Ostertag is abve Yao and Nene is above JO after adjustment, then the adjustment must have failed. It's like somebody creates a fomula, after calculating and adjusting, he concludes that he's older than his father. You know either the formula or the adjusting process is wrong.
You obviously didn't read all of the links or the methodology so I don't know what to say, you really should if you want to understand it; it took me a few times to read it when it first came out to figure out what it was saying...but anyway it seems like you don't really want a rating system, you just want something that will explain your preconceived notions. I don't think you actually even know what the system is trying to measure. That's not what it says at all, it's the outcome of a formula used to measure players' impacts on the court. Read the articles.
Interesting Results: ABOVE AVERAGE: 18. James Posey 59. REEF 65. Mike James BELOW AVERAGE: 87. Carmelo Anthony 93. Jim Jackson 97. Tony Parker 103. Amare Stoudemire 111. Damon Jones 113. Ty Lue 116. J. Howard 125. Mo T This list is absolutely ludicrous. Someone want to tell me they would take James Posey well ahead of Amare Stoudemire. JOKE.
When I see the results, I know it's not worth understanding it. As I said, when somebody tries to sell the idea that you are actually older than your father, do you really need to understand how he proved it? I'd be interested in a good rating system, but this apparently is not.
