I thought Argentina only creates great soccer players, but they have some great basketball players too. You can talk about the flopping from Manu and Scola all you want, but to me, they are truly basketball savvy. They knows how to take advantage of the rules, and their moves are usually very deceptive and confuse the hell out of their opponents. I wish Yao learns a thing or two from Scola. Yao is smart, but only off the court. He is a hard worker, but he is not a fast learner. Six years playing in the league, he still makes same mistakes again and again. His moves are predictable and sometimes mechanical. I seriously think we are seeing the best of Yao right now, which is still good but still far short of our expectation.
Scola was a beast on offense. 20 pts and 11 rebounds. But his Lenovo +/- Stat was still -9. Well how do you get a negative stat if you score and rebound like this? Simple, they measure how many points you give up too so defensively, Scola still has a lot of work to do. The Lenovo Stat is a metric developed by the NBA to measure the power of teamwork. It's a way of determining the best combination of players on the court. The Lenovo Stat is a plus/minus statistic that looks at the point differential when players are both in and out of the game, to see how the team performs with various combinations. It also measures the effectiveness of an individual regardless of whether he is a scorer. More specifically, the Lenovo Stat is based on a plus/minus algorithm, and is applied to every event in a given game to determine the effectiveness of various combinations of players on the court. In any game there are constant substitutions which create different combinations of players on court. For example, during the 2006 finals, the Miami Heat used 37 different combinations of 5-man roster from the 12 available players. The algorithm looks at all scoring events to assess the relative productivity of each combination. Simply put: When any of the players on court scores, these points are credited to that particular 5-man combination. Whenever the opposing team scores, these points are subtracted. Therefore, a positive number is good and a negative number is bad. The higher the Lenovo stat, the better the performance of the player, or combination of players. Conversely, the lower the Lenovo stat, the worse the performance of the player or combination. The algorithm is also applied to single, 2-, 3- and 4-man combinations.
I think Scola should start along with Yao, so the opponent's power foward would't dare to double-team Yao. If they did, Scola will punish them.
So why are we still playing rafer alston then... and what is his +/- stats for shooing 30% from field 20% from 3 and 60% from the FT line? I mean can anyone average the league worst in all three of this category? I think rafer can. And he's going for it. Dear god.
Because believe it or not, Alston still has an overall positive Lenovo stat of +17. James on the other hand has a Lenovo stat of -23. Luther Head has the highest Lenovo Stat at +31. But if you break it down to +/- per minute which is a better measure of overall performance, you get the following: +/- /Min G L. Head .207 R. Alston .054 S. Battier .044 T. McGrady .046 C. Hayes .028 A. Brooks 1.639 B. Wells .015 S. Francis .173 K. Snyder .197 M. Yao .004 L. Scola -.009 D. Mutombo -.142 M. James -.088 I guess what this means and I hate to say this is that Alston creates more points for other players overall and has a net positive effect even though his shooting is atrocious. If Adleman would just tell him not to shoot, like when Mugsy Bogues played in the league then his +/- stat would probably be a lot higher. In fact, Rafer would be an asset if he never took a shot. Brooks number is skewed cause he scored a bunch in 3 minutes of garbage time in the one game he played in. There is not enough data to make a case for Francis/Snyder/Brooks. Luther Head however has pretty decent +/- numbers and I was impressed with his cuts and his shot selection. He plays pretty decent defense too.
Poprocks -- all this shows is that the Lenovo and the 84games +/- stats are poppycock. On paper they make players like Alston and Hayes look like superstar players while Yao, T-Mc and Scola look very average. I suggest you watch the game instead.
Scola's appearance first 10 games it was like man this guy's starting to get kinda annoying, this dumpy looking scraggly haired SOB aint doing jack. Past 2 games he brought the A game and brought it hard, Then like that he's Herculean looking, a basketball BEAST and leader of men Anyone else had similar perceptions? Absolutely The only time he fades backward is when he's landing on his back on a flop. Whether its from a spin, twist, off a dribble, a lean in, drop step, everything ATTACKING or forcing his way TO the hoop. He has polish to his game but its mostly GRIT getting it done. Its not like Scola's the quickest of guys so yes Yao can stand to do the same thing. Even if its plodding and quicksand looking, Yao will see that guys will NOT want to get in the way of a 300 pound giant
Unlike football and baseball, Basketball is one sport where the same player can both score or create scores AND give up the same type scores on the other end, so Lenovo stat is a bit useful. One thing the stat doesnt see is exertion. Rafer does create for others, true. That puts the scoring load more heavily on the other 4, and over an 82 game season it can wear those other players down. He's setting them up, but he's also ADDING PRESSURE on them to HAVE to score because's he's so bad at shooting. Leaving him wide open and double and triple teaming the other players puts even more pressure on them. Its nice for the players once in a while to have a Matt Maloney in there so they can get more shots and pad stats. But in a 7 game playoff series the gameplans will expose the poor shooters who cant capitalize. Players should take pressure OFF the other players as WELL as set up others to their strengths. Point guard's a tough business in that regard I guess but thats what you need to compete with the NBA elite nowadays.
What i saw in the first few games for scola was Tmac wanted scola to hang underneath the basket like chuck hayes did, but i don't think that's scola game. He's not as quick as chuck hayes to get that layup, but he's more of a postup player. What i did like to see was the scola/francis lineup. I thought francis was doing a great job doing the pick and roll with scola. Hopefully we can see more of that.
No the stats are not poppycock. They show general trends and how different combinations of players play together. But as the article I posted in the Aaron Brooks thread states, it is not everything and it's not rocket science. You still at the end of the day take other factors into account when evaluating players and combinations of players.
I really like Scola play at low post and when he is actively rebounding. He also got a mid range. He will be a handful to opponents and will be badly needed during play off. I agree he should start as Chuck is quite ineffective offensively.
Yao does not have basketball smarts...he's a 5 yr vet...shouldn't be making the same mistakes over and over. BE DECISIVE BE AGGRESSIVE DON'T WAIT FOR THE DOUBLE TEAM KEEP THE BALL HIGH (ABOVE YOUR SHOULDERS) SEAL YOUR MAN (ELBOWS AS A WEAPON) DUNK INSTEAD OF LAYING IT IN What's so difficult about all this? He has all the tools to do this on a consistent basis. His job is to perfect these things...he can put 24 hrs/day into getting these few things right. I don't buy the notion that he has a high basketball IQ...and please his passing is merely adequate, not great. His ass belongs in the low post. Start Luis and let him roam the high post.
Yao does have bad basketball iq. I mean he only goes from a jump shooting big man with no ability in the low block, to being the best in the league at that spot
could someone please make a video for youtube of Scola's last 2 games (flops, blocks if any, and point)? would really appreciate it! oh- and then someone could post it on spurs forum
Hakeem is the best of the best. Yao can't copy his dream move. He plays like a robot when he tries to copy the dream. That's very true. But I don't think that Yao's TO problem is as serious as someone said. Hakeem's career TO is approximately 3 per game which is almost the same as Yao. We all know that Hakeem earned respect from ref but Yao did not. I don't have the official stats but I suppose Yao got at least 0.5 offensive foul every game. If we minus 1 offensive foul from the average TO, Yao's TO problem is not worse than Hakeem. Moreover, the Yao and Scola learning curve comparison means nothing at all. When Yao came to the league, he was like a very raw high school kid. He headed to a whole new world without oversea professional league experience. I remembered, in the early 02/03 season, some posters said he’s the biggest joke in Rockets’ history. But this kid’s progress was not a joke. He started from zero and reached the elite level after one or two seasons. (May I use the word “elite”? I don’t mean he’s as great as Hakeem, but he’s surely one of the best center in the league now.) Scola is already a proven champion. He was a scorer in a world champ team which beat the mighty USA with no fluke. He got the tools to play in NBA . All he needs to do is to adjust, not learn from zero. Once he earns playing time and trust from teammates, he delivers. He’s in a completely different scenario. Sorry for my poor English. I hope you understand what I mean.
Like you said, the Lenovo is a team stat, Scola's best two games were played without McGrady. That's why even though he scores a lot, he is still in the negative. Scola's Lenovo is clearly skewed. While a factor, the individual player's defense is not directly related to the stat.
