Yao Stats Update - Awakening of the Sleeping Giant? Part 2

Man I love these graphs. Keep up the good work Tango. Although it seems like you made a mistake with the most recent "ppg (4 game moving average)". The red line spikes up all the way to 32 ppg, when shouldn't it be at the average of Yao's final 4 games and not only his most recent match against the Blazers.

Also I remember another one of your graphs where you charted Yao's minutes played. Well I just wanted to add that Yao is undoubtedly in the best shape of his life. In the past 6 games, he's averaging about 37 minutes a game, and showing no ill-effects of the additional minutes. In fact, tonight he sat down with 5 minutes to go in the game and already 36 minutes played, and he looked fresh enough to finish the game.

The improvements that Yao has made this year since his toe surgery are absolutely astounding. His Points, Rebounds, and Minutes are up while Fouls and Turnovers are down. His Blks are steady, and even Asts are crawling up to his rookie year totals.

Yao has always been an efficient player for his minutes. But now, he's playing the big minutes and producing the big numbers. And beyond the numbers, Yao has really been dominant and unstoppable.

Here's to Yao continuing his progress and maintaining his growing expectations for the rest of the season and the rest of his career.

 

Your charts demonstrate, without question, that Yao is a significantly better player post-surgery than he's ever been before.

Your charts from before motivated me to graph other aspects of Yao's progress this season (like per-minute averages, true shooting% which combines field goals and free throws, turnover-rate, and assist-rate). I'll post them shortly.

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I'm looking at his progress in three categories so far this season: TS%, Assist-rate, and Turnover-rate (all explained below). This link shows how he's done in these categories in previous years.



This shows his True Shooting%. Formula is (1/2)*points / (fga + 0.44*fta). Demonstrates how efficient he is as a scorer. Above 55% is very good, and over 60% is a league leading pace. Obviously, he's been exceptional this season, though he was even more efficient last season.




Turnover rate gives an idea of how often he turn the ball over relative to the possessions he's a part of. Over 15 is usually bad. Yao's been at around 13 in previous seasons, so he's definitely improving (particularly in the last few weeks).



Assist rate shows how often he assists relative to the possessions he's a part of. Yao isn't used much as a passer, and his season average hasn't varied too much, though since the all-star break he is starting to get more and more assists because he's dealing with double teams better (i.e., not turning the ball over as much).

 

Awesome charts. I wonder what KG's look like. It's been widely noticed on this board that he progressed in manner very similar to Yao.

 

Here are some graphs for per-40 minute stats. Check here to compare with his previous seasons.

Points


Rebounds


Offensive Rebounds


Defensive Rebounds


Assists


Blocks


Turnovers


Personal Fouls


The only area in which Yao has clearly gone down (compared to previous seasons) is shot-blocking. Notice that there was a large dip in blocked shots in December -- perhaps this was due to his toe problems.

And, as observed by others, his biggest improvements appear to be rebounding, turnovers, and especially staying out of foul trouble of late.

 

Damn... if this aint the best fan site in the world or what??!!...

 

You guys are freaks... I love this place.

 

Geesh, all these charts and analysis...

Scientists and statistians, just tell us the conslusion! Yao is now Kareem, right?

 

i think its pretty clear when you see the fouls per 40 decline everything else goes up.

 

You're right. Though his improvements, per minute, aren't quite as dramatic as per game, it's still clearly there. That he's playing more minutes while doing this makes it even more impressive.

Yeah, early in the season his blocks went way down even while his fouls went up. I find it interesting that in his current stretch, his fouls are way down while his rebounding (both on offense and defensive end) has gone up. Actually, his offensive rebounding in this stretch is by far the best of the season. Maybe his lack of foul trouble allows him to be more aggressive going for the boards?

 

Spoken words from a truly "random idiot"

 

Although I give props to the guy who came up with all the graphics and charts, I have to say you guys have absolutely nothing better to do all day that turning Yao into a scientific study. Just let him play ball and enjoy the fruit of his hard work. We don't need to crunch numbers and stats about his rebounding or scoring history. It's so no necessary and spills into the territory of over-analyzation.

 

This is just your own opinion. I think there are a lot more people like me who would like to know in which areas Yao has improved the most.

Thank you for the good works, Tango.

 

Fantastic, Tango and Durvasa, and thanks. One question though: where do you guys get the raw data? I get an occasional urge to check into Juwan's stats, but have no idea where to get the data.

 

Tango and Durvasa, are you guys looking for a job with the Rockets? K-Dawg, are you reading this thread?

 

Just make sure your graph paper has negative quadrants for that one. LOL.