Quantifying on-court "chemistry"?

[anakha]

Just something I picked up on another forum and found intriguing enough to post here...

http://jamerchant.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/extracting-chemistry-from-the-adjusted-numbers/

In the article, the author takes the sum of a given 5-man lineup's individual adjusted plus/minus stats and compares it to the adjusted plus/minus that lineup actually achieved, as a way of trying to figure out which team's lineup performed better than the sum of its parts, so to speak.

The article examines the 3 most-fielded 5-man lineups of each team, and what's interesting is that for the Spurs, the Parker-Bogans-Jefferson-McDyess-Duncan lineup is the only one with a positive "chemistry" stat (+0.68). The other 2 Spurs lineups covered were:

Hill-Ginobili-Jefferson-McDyess-Duncan (-2.75 "chemistry")
Parker-Bogans-Jefferson-Blair-Duncan (-6.34 "chemistry")

[DespЏrado]

Any stat that lists the Bucks as the best (about ten spots better than the Lakers and Spurs) and you have to readjust the measurement until you end up with the Lakers and Spurs no less the 1 and perhaps 6th respectively.

In other words a measurement is no good unless it has some predictive power for future match ups. This would appear to not predict anything other than fantasy basketball match ups. I like the direction he is taking though, it just needs to be reworked using past seasons as a model until it starts predicting champions with some degree off accuracy.

[ajh18]

Any stat that lists the Bucks as the best (about ten spots better than the Lakers and Spurs) and you have to readjust the measurement until you end up with the Lakers and Spurs no less the 1 and perhaps 6th respectively.

Actually, I tihnk that the Bucks being high on the list makes total sense intuitively. They are a collection of players that vastly outperformed what most people expected last year. Their raw "talent" doesnt seem to be anywhere near where they finished.

"Chemistry" seems as good an explanation as any.

[DespЏrado]

Actually, I tihnk that the Bucks being high on the list makes total sense intuitively. They are a collection of players that vastly outperformed what most people expected last year. Their raw "talent" doesnt seem to be anywhere near where they finished.

"Chemistry" seems as good an explanation as any.

I guess, so if you take this stat you might be able to develop a how likely a team is to beat someone as the underdog.

This could be a good underdog stat that you could throw against Hollinger's team rankings to see how two teams might actually match up....Might have to throw some money Vegas' direction using that as a measure.