Rosenbaum tells us that this system is a team by team impact measure of players, but then he ranks players of different teams. I have no problem with his approach, I have a problem with the way he presents his data. The data is heavily affected by team play. That's the point of the system. But then he states that this is how he would pick his all NBA team. Secondly he tries to explain away why a guy like Jermaine O'neil is low on his list, at least lower than people expect, by saying that O'neil is on just on a good team and doesn't have that much impact because his teamates are good. So how does he explain Ron Artest? And he turns around and explains why Jeff Foster is so high, a guy who is not only on the same team, but a guy who plays basically the same position and is less effective considering traditional stats. The guy is just to far across the board.
Easy, your reasoning cerntainly deserver more respect than those from Sam. Fortunately I don't have to read any of his crap. Ignore list works like a charm. Rosenbaum's ideas are very good. These factors mentioned in his formula do reflect the value of a player to help the team win. HOWEVER, his current results are worse than laughable. And it is not just an outlier of Yao Ming vs Greg Ostertag. Other obvious errors include: AK47 at 2, Baron Davis at 8, Rasheed Wallace at 11 (he is like 3rd option at both POR and DET), James Posey at 18 (Memphis 10-man rotation will work fine without Posey), Shawn Marion at 14 vs Amare at 103, Finley in front of Steve Nash, Rafer Alston in front of Lamar Odom and Wade, Big Z in front of Boozer, Tony Parket neck to neck with Bruce Bowen. There are so many obvious errors. Outliers in Rosenbaums' system are everywhere. On the other hand, even a simplistic Efficiency Ranking do not produce these obvious errors. I am sure someday newer computer models will take Rosenbaum's ideas and produce better measurements. The current Rosenbaum's model is just garbage, or I should say worse than garbage because it produce misleading information.
lancet, I'm not going to defend Rosenbaum's math because I can't. I don't have the math knowledge, and most of the people here don't either. And I am pretty sure he has some glitches that need to be worked out. But your criticism, or basis of your criticism is the same as all the critics here. For example, you say that Rasheed Wallace cannot be #11. Your reason? "He is like 3rd option at both POR and DET." This clearly shows that you still hasn't grasp the point of this whole approach. The effectiveness of a player, according to this system, does not necessarily depend on how often a player touches the ball. That's the whole point. Yet you and others just can't shake the deep-rooted notion that the most effective player on the team is the one who does more scoring, rebounding, etc. While Rosenbaum's method might be flawed, this "doing more is better" idea is even more flawed, imo. What amazes me is that many of the critics here are also critics of Steve Francis, whose "doing more is better" mentality is exactly what gets him bashed.
Where do you get that doing more is a not better? Garnett puts up some of the best stats ever, so does McGrady, so does Duncan, so does Kobe, and definitely Kirelinko. He does incorporate players stats into his method in order to get rid of the outliers.
I think Yao's ranking comes in low because if you watch the Rockets, they don't all of a sudden go inept when Yao goes out of the game. The same thing with Steve Francis, all though I believe there are other things that hurts Steve's ranking.
I am even going to ask how you will defend the other obvious errors in Rosenbaum's ranking, since you didn't. And there must be some pretty good seasons, because impossible to defend these rediculous errors. Let's talk about Rasheed. In the Pistons team, Rasheed is the fourth most valuable player in my opionion, behind Ben Wallace, Billups, and Hamilton. On defense, Ben is clearly the beast, on offense, Brown look to set up Hamilton and Billups before Rasheed, because he thinks these two are more efficient. There is no way to back Rasheed ranking at 11, Ben at 23, Billups at 34, and Hamilton at 89. It's not even about scoring and how many oppurtuntities Rasheed has. Rasheed's role can be easily replace by the other big bodies on the Piston bench. However, Ben, Billups, and Hamilton's roles are much harder to replace.
Obviously, Rosenbaum is a racist (is it possible for a jewish person to be considered racist these days?). That is the only rational explanation for ranking white guys so high on the list.
Easy, I admire your effort and civility. However, neither you nor the other clown can explain the Rosenbaum methodology. 1. There is no explanation from you guys on how this system addresses two major flaws of the plus minus rating systems in general. A. The bench strength affecting the starter's ratings and vice versa. B. To seperate the impact of individual players in a set lineup. You say that Rosenbaum has provided adjustments but failed to present any substantial information on how he does it. Can't blame you, as he didn't present any sound justification on how he can magically "hold all other variables constant" and therefore ISOLATE the impact of a certain player, and his weights on ratios are subjective. This is a dead end for if he uses conventional stats such as points, rebounds, blocks as the benchmark to address these two issues then it's doomed for failure since we agree these stats doesn't accurately reflect the impact of players. If he uses the plus-minus ratings of other teams, players, benches instead as the benchmark, then it will be tautology - trying to justify results with the same results. Rosenbaum has been stuck in the Godel's syndrome - trying to present a system and is bogged down by the imperfections followed by the nature of said system, then through masking such imperfections he introduces ways that's furthermore defected, then he goes on and on in such cycles. 2. While you admit that chemistry is left out of this guy's approach, I hope you realize how big a flaw it is in a plus-minus rating system. Basketball is a team game and chemistry is very important. A significant part of the Pistons winning the title is their great chemistry, which I'd like to call compatibility. My stance is that chemistry is not something stats can measure but is one of the important results of one's impact on a team. 3. I read your post from the beginning to the end and I still didn't see your input on how is this system useful. Showing the impact of a player on a team is nothing if we can't rely on it to make decisions. You further argued, along with the other clown, that it helps us to understand what kind of player has more impact - such as younger players have less impact than the veterans since they are less savvy and experienced, LOL, do we need a complex system to just know that?! Therefore I declare your and the other clown's inability to understand the Rosenbaum methodology and also the grave defects of his wet dream. I admire your effort and civility but you guys repeatedly dodged the questions I presented without any substantial feedback. I kindly request the refund of my statistical consultation fee and declare that I'm exiting from this futile valley polluted by dumbasses in delusion of their intellectual prowess. Of course, I'm not talking about you in this regard.
nice.... sit there and talk about "valley polluted with dumbasses"...yet since the only people posting is Sam and Easy and the others who agree with you....that means you consider Easy a dumbass...yet then you address Sam as the "other clown"...which implies that Easy is also a clown... then you have the unmitigated gall to claim that none of your insults were directed at Easy....who has gone wayyy past the call of duty to explain his position on this.... I always found your posting to be elitist and your attitude reeks of snobbery...you have just confirmed it to the nth degree... hope you are proud of yourself....Im sure you are.
BTW, I hope you show some consistency to the condescending posters in this thread to avoid being a hypocrite.
choujie, these measurements are used as tools. Nothing more, nothing less. They are not used as conventional rankings; it's not an ESPN ranking. Stop thinking in terms of "best" or "better." We all know that Yao is a better PLAYER than Ostertag. So, now that we have that out of the way. Go back and re-read the articles and statistics and try and figure out what he's measuring and how that materializes on the court. Think of it as a mathematical tool that measures TEAM contribution when on the court, TEAM damage when off the court, and INTANGIBLES. If an average player -- measured by conventional stats -- happens to be ranked higher than a KNOW better player. That's ok. Because that player slipped through the cracks. Discount it; throw that data away. Because it doesn't measure that thing called potential. That's something that we have in our minds: we KNOW that Yao will get better and better. Don't let that color your use of the stats. They still can be used to pick out players that contribute things (or don't contribute) that you wouldn't normally *see* in conventional stats.
"Doing more" in the sense of "helping yourself" rather than "yourself, the team, the defense, the offense, how much you help the team on the court, how much you hurt the team on the court, how much you help the team while on the bench, how much you hurt the team on the bench -- and last but not least, intangibles." P.S. "Helping the team while on the bench" is a BAD thing! <---now that's an embarrassing stat!
Easy, Not sure how long you've been watching basketball....but one of the things that been degraded over the years is the effectiveness and efficiency of our "best" players; our stars. It's the little things; the attention to details that seems to be missing from our best players. Sure, we all know that KG, TMac and Kobe are three of our top players (and soon LeBron, Melo and Howard). But even they don't play the complete game (KG seems to be the most balanced of the list). They could be a whole lot better in these intangibles we were talking about. Scoring seems to be the only "cool" thing to do anymore. And that's what our star concentrate on mostly. But they are missing so much of the rest of the game. Kareem is the all time scorer at: 38,387! But he also is the all-time center's assist leader at 5,660! Oscar, Isiah, Drexler, Archibald, Magic, Jordan, Bird, English, Hayes, King, Balor, etc...Those stars could DO IT ALL. Not just scoring. I miss that. It's rare today to see a star forward that can score 27 ppg and also get 10 rpg. Or a shooting guard that can score 25 ppg and also get 9 apg. Or a point guard that could score 20ppg and 13apg. And not only limited to those stats, but also everything else. Example: Jordan and Drexler were two of the best PASSING SHOOTING GUARDS I've ever seen. It wasn't their average (5.5 ish). It was their impeccable timing! It was near perfect! And that's what I mean when I say intangibles!
Panda, it is not "us" that are saying that we would rather have Cardinal over Amare. Or AK47 over Kobe. That's what YOU think we are saying. We are not saying that. And that's not the purpose of these ratings; this is not necessarily a "starter picker" or "star player rating." And it's not a wrong gauge, because YOU are using a conventional paradigm to rank players (in your own mind). If you want that, go to the ESPN web site.
No, the mentioning of not taking Ak47 over Kobe indicates that trades is not one of the areas in which this system is useful, which was acknowledged by Easy later on. I don't know why I'm wasting my time here, I'm out.
That's right...but... I wasn't talking about trades. I was talking about YOUR implication that WE were saying that we would "take" a higher ranked player, over a *known* "star" based on Rosenbaum rating. We were not implying that. So, please don't suggest we are.
I assume when you say "there is no explanation" you mean explanation in term of his formula. I already said I don't know enough of the math to anaylize his formula. You sound like you know. So please do ME a service for a change and explain it to me why it doesn't work. To paraphrase your own word: All you are doing is asserting that his system doesn't do this and doesn't do that without showing how it doesn't. However, I think we can debate the philosophy behind the method without going into mathematicall details. Ah, tautology. That's a logical term. I like logic! No, it is not tautology. It is just consistently applying the same calculating method in its adjustment. I already explained it that it is similar to the "strength of schedule" factor in team power rating. How they factor in strength of schedule? They use the same rating system and feed it right back to adjust every team's rating by all his opponents' ratings. There is no fixed set of circumstances in sports. That's why you have to make adjustments the best you can. Are these adjustments perfect? Of course not. But that doesn't mean all adjustments are futile. We all do that when we argue about which player is better than others. How can you even know which player is better when they are never in the same set of circumstances? You make adjustments like "he never play without a dominant big man" or "he pad his stats on a bad team" etc. Those are very crude and subjective adjustments. The math is supposed to provide more precise adjustments. I totally agree that chemistry or compatibility is a major issue of this system, which he doesn't address. That's my biggest beef. However, the other two guys (too lazy to look up their names), who Cuban pays to get their data, do analyze combinations of players. In principle, it can be done (again, not perfectly) to see what lineup of 5 guys produce the best result. Of course, the players in the combination has to have played together in order to have the data. A complex system to confirm or dispel a "common sense" approach is no laughing stock. Medical researches do that all the time. Rosenbaum does point out some not so common sense observations such as avoiding turnover seems to be very important in a player's effectiveness. this bbs talk about this aspect all the time because of our team's weakness. But you don't hear it near enough in main stream sports media about this issue. Apart from the "what kind" usefulness, I all think that it is mainly useful to compare players in the "same class," stars with stars, starters with starters, bench players with bench players. Comparing between different class of players is not very accurate because of different sample size and the stamina factor.
I don't know why you keep having this "all or nothing" approach when you talk about usefulness. It is not "absolutely" useful in trade talk because there are other factors such as potential. But it does not mean that it cannot be a tool to help evaluating players in trades. If your all or nothing logic is correct, then I can claim that everything you say is useless if I can find just one single flaw in one of your sentences.
I like the system. We just did a trade of 2.9 for 5.2. And I don't know how the Lakers ever lost to the Pistons since Shaq and Kobe alone have more "battle points" than the entire Pistons starting lineup combined. We're not playing Dungeons and Drgaons here, people.
