Easy, I'm not advocating PPS over TS% other than to say...why invent a new stat. I don't like either of them. Sorry, as I said to francis 4 prez awhile ago, I thought people were viewing TS% as a fancy "effective FG%". Now I'm just saying I don't like either, so why inject a fluctuating coefficient into the equation unless you are going out of your way to invent a new stat to make a name for yourself. My contention is in what little amount they show incongruent stats, you cannot be sure one is better than the other. They both overrate free throws. My "criticism" about the drag is it very well may make both formulas show the same leaderboard, in style. I'm not criticizing the drag...i'm saying it may serve no purpose, meaning why invent a new stat....especially one that can never be used to historically rank player since the .44 factor must fluctuate to be accurately "approximate."
also, durvasa, do you really believe Bynum is more efficient than Howard? I mean...TS%, by your description, seems to be designed to lower Shaq's efficiency. I mean...Shaq has 3 rings. In those years he was the definition of efficiency. If your goal in inventing a new stat is to prove Shaq wasn't the most efficient player in the league...then you are operating at the extremes of statistics. Look at the alltime leaderboard for PER vs the well established Eff rating...PER sucks vs the Eff rating in ranking the all-time best players wrt efficiency.
Sure. If you want a single number, easy to calculate, to represent shoot efficiency from the field, you could use "effective FG%" -- like you said, just FG% and adjusting for the three point shot. TS% extends that concept to incorporate free throws. And I think it does it in a more sound way than PPS. PPS rewards made free throws without penalizing missed free throws. Like I said, that's sort of like using FGM (no FGA in the denominator) as an "efficiency" metric in place of FG%. I'm not getting heypartner's point that including those attempts in the denominator is a flaw. I guess my only disagreement with you is you're saying that PPS has some merits over TS% for representing scoring efficiency. I don't see it.
All the data is there in the boxscore. How do we process that information? Yeah, you could look at all the raw numbers -- points, field goals made/attempts, free throws made attempted, etc. -- and get an idea of how the player performed. But these metrics allow us to summarize some of the relevant numbers in a meaningful and consistent way, and do so quickly. You're question is liking asking: "what's the point in inventing FG%?" Frankly, it's a silly question. And TS% and eFG% is no more "invented" than FG%, or FT%, or 3P%. FG% answers the question: How made fields goals mere made per field goals attempted (ignoring field goals missed when there was a shooting foul on the play)? TS% answers the question: How may points were scored per "shooting attempt" (including all shooting attempts from the field, even if there was a shooting foul on the play)? With TS%, we have to approximate the "shooting attempts" because of limited information in the boxscore. But that it's an approximation doesn't make it artificial or useless as a metric. What matters is whether the question itself is meaningful, and whether it does a suitable job in answering it. In most cases, and in particular over a significant stretch of games, TS% does that just fine. I would challenge you to come up with a meaningful question that PPS answers. I'm not sure what it is. First, there are far more important reasons to look at stats than to rank players historically. It's fun to do, but whether Hakeem in the 90s was better than Kareem in the 70s has little to no practical relevance today. You claim they overrate free throws. You've given no reason for saying that. I guess it's just a "feeling" you have. It's hard for me to argue against that. The leaderboard is different, though as you say with some similarities in style. Fine. So, does that mean both leaderboards are meaningless? No. Does that mean one might be more useful than the other? Perhaps. If so, which one should we go with? The one that is based on a more meaningful metric. Which one is more meaningful? I would argue TS%, for reasons given above and below, and in many prior posts in this thread. You seem to view this "drag" in TS% as an artificial addition to the more purely conceived PPS. This is baffling to me. There's nothing artificial about the fact that free throw attempts reflect scoring attempts. If I take a shot and miss, but someone fouls me -- FGA does not record that shot attempt. The boxscore shows it, but only indirectly in FTA. That's what TS% captures, appropriately, and PPS does not. Last season, Bynum was a more efficient scorer than Howard. Yes, I believe it. Does that mean I'd project him to be more efficient this year or for the rest of his career? Maybe not. Sample size and all that. But for last season, yes Bynum was more efficient. But let's be clear: being efficient isn't the same thing as being a great scorer. Chuck is more efficient than Tracy McGrady. That's obviously true, and TS% correctly shows that. However, with the game on the line, you don't give the ball to Chuck and ask him to create something. You give it to Tracy. There's a very clear separation between efficiency and offensive role, and this shouldn't be obscured. This a bizarre paragraph to me. There's no hidden agenda with a stat like TS%. The purpose isn't to "prove" that Shaq was less efficient than you think. It appropriately reflects the well known fact that Shaq is extremely inefficient at the free throw line. I mean, if Shaq only averaged 6 FTA/game instead of 10 or whatever it was, and he was a 90% foul shooter instead of 50%, he'd obviously be a more efficient scorer (i.e. he's more efficient with this scoring possessions, which happen to be less). That's what TS% would show, but PPS would not. And even with that, Shaq's TS% was well above average. Couple that with the sheer number of scoring attempts Shaq got in the Laker's offense, and he was able to produce a ton of points for his team. PER, which implicitly incorporates TS% as well as his other box score stats, rated him as far and away the best player in the league during the Lakers championship years. He was awesome. There's no need to artificially boost his efficiency by ignoring missed free throws to show that. Neither PER nor Eff is an efficiency statistic. The name PER (player efficiency rating) is a misnomer. I would rather call it 'Player Effectiveness Rating". Efficiency, by definition, answers a question of the following form: how many times can you do X per attempts to do X. Neither PER or Eff is answering that question. As for the PER vs. Eff leaderboard issue, I'll just disagree with you. That's another topic for another thread. Edit: Let me just say that Shaq, who you dubbed "the definition of efficiency", ranked second to Tim Duncan in 01/02 in NBA Eff (28.5 and 31.2, respectively). But based on PER, Shaq was far and away the leader with Duncan second (29.7 to 27.0, respectively). Eff is per-game while PER is per-minute, and that accounts for the difference in relative ranking.
I don't agree that TS% overrate FTs. PPS, yes. TS%, no. It simply incorporates FTs into scoring efficiency, which I think is legit. It doesn't make FTs more important than FGs other than the fact that FT% is usually higher than FG% with only extreme cases like Shaq as exceptions. It does not inflate FT worth. It just factors it in. In Shaq's case, his poor FT shooting SHOULD be counted as a negative factor for his scoring efficiency, no? I mean, in his heydays, he could have been the real MDE if only he could make more of his FTs. I agree the .44 coefficient is not perfect. But that's just the result of the imperfect statistics record that does not differentiate And-1 FTs from regular FTs.
heypartner's answer to this is that if Shaq made more free throws, his points scored would go up and therefore his PPS would increase (and, in fact, the PPS would increase at a faster rate than his TS% would). But if Shaq averaged 100% from the free throw line, but went there only 5 times a game, would he be more or less efficient than if he averaged 50% from the line going there 10 times a game? That's the question PPS answers incorrectly.
The problem with TS% or PPS or whatever other stats you can come up with is people want to take these stats and use them in their argument that Player A > Player B. You just can't do it. For example, last season, Kevin Martin was better than Tracy McGrady in PER, TS%, PPS, FG%, 3PT%, FT%, PPG, fewer turnovers. Who here would trade T-Mac for Martin straight up for THIS
I accidentally hit submit reply. Who here would trade T-Mac for Martin straight up for THIS one season (lets just say they had the same contract, I just want to compare the players' production on the court)?
...There's flaw in the metric, time to include blocks and assists and double teams drawn in the TS% It would be cool if they compiled a TS% formula that reflected the difference in star players with 20 shot attempts a game vs a guy with 7 attempts/game But just looking at regular old field goal %, you kinda know high ranked guys like Andris Biedrins & Tyson Chandler arent gonna do crap with the ball if you hand it to them and tell them make a play with it. You still gotta deduct that from looking at other parts of the stat line, the position they play...etc. Like Novak of course.
novak is gonna have a good career. vlad rad type player just needs to hurry up and learn how to play nba ball
It sounds like you're saying that you can not use any box score stats in making an argument that Player A > Player B. If so, I don't agree with that. They should be part of the conversation, because they refer to something very real that's happening on the court. But they shouldn't be exclusively what you rely on to make comparisons.
Oh yeah definitely. Of course we should use stats in determining who's better, but some people cherry pick certain stats and use them exclusively to say someone is better than someone else. It's like when people say Alston is the worst starting PG in the league because of his 3pt shooting FG%. It's ridiculous and needs to stop.
I've never read anyone make this claim about Alston and ONLY use his 3pt FG%. If they did, I assure you it was more about laziness and not cherry picking of statistics.
