PER Loving Spurs Fans Rejoice

[timvp]

Tony Parker 25.2 PER since Feb. 4
Tim Duncan 24.1 PER since Feb. 1
Manu Ginobili 23.6 PER on the season
Tiago Splitter 22.4 PER since Jan. 17
Kawhi Leonard 21.8 PER since Feb. 21
DeJuan Blair 19.8 PER since Feb. 23
Danny Green 16.8 PER outside of Jan. 18 to Feb. 21
Gary Neal 16.4 PER since Feb. 8
Matt Bonner 14.5 PER since Jan. 21

Patty Mills 31.8 PER since signing
Stephen Jackson 14.4 PER since trade
Boris Diaw 13.0 PER since signing


Key
MVP Candidate: 25.0 PER
All-Star: 22.5 PER
Borderline All-Star: 20.0 PER
Second option on a good team: 18.0 PER
Third option on a good team: 16.5 PER
Legitimate Starter: 15.0 PER
Legitimate Rotation Player: 13.0 PER

[Robz4000]

Liking those numbers. How do these PER compare to some of the key players on the other contenders?

[DBMethos]

Obligatory "WE STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKED"

[Arc]

Tony Parker 25.2 PER since Feb. 4
Tim Duncan 24.1 PER since Feb. 1
Manu Ginobili 23.6 PER on the season
Tiago Splitter 22.4 PER since Jan. 17
Kawhi Leonard 21.8 PER since Feb. 21


will we ever see that awesomeness as the starting line up? ..sigh

[Nathan89]

will we ever see that awesomeness as the starting line up? ..sigh

no:depressed

[Spurminator]

DeJuan Blair 19.8 PER since Feb. 23
...
Borderline All-Star: 20.0 PER


http://i.imgur.com/hakaL.jpg

[Texas_Ranger]

People who look just at stats would think Dejuan is a pretty good player, but when you watch him play you know that he's not that good. Yes he can catch the ball and finish around the basket, but he also makes a lot of idiotic mistakes when he wants to play 1-1 or shot a jumper, and his defense is probably one of the worst I ever saw on Spurs.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

:smchode:

[Robz4000]

People who look just at stats would think Dejuan is a pretty good player, but when you watch him play you know that he's not that good. Yes he can catch the ball and finish around the basket, but he also makes a lot of idiotic mistakes when he wants to play 1-1 or shot a jumper, and his defense is probably one of the worst I ever saw on Spurs.
People are being too hard on Blair. Yes most of the players he guards can just shoot over him due to the height disadvantage, but he's found several ways to get by that, and when he plays smart he can defend well. There have been flashes of it all season long.

[hater]

People who look just at stats would think Dejuan is a pretty good player, but when you watch him play you know that he's not that good. Yes he can catch the ball and finish around the basket, but he also makes a lot of idiotic mistakes when he wants to play 1-1 or shot a jumper, and his defense is probably one of the worst I ever saw on Spurs.

PER is a contagious deceiving stat. Even a rat would have a decent PER in the Spurs

[NASpurs]

So what you're saying is that Patty Mills should be starting and Parker should be on the bench. :stirpot:

[jjktkk]

Wow, impressive stats. The next big accoplishment is to see these stats in the playoffs.

[jestersmash]

As the resident PER-homer, this is my kind of thread :lol

Really encouraging numbers to see :tu. Patty Mills' gaudy PER doesn't surprise me at all, but obviously he won't be able to maintain that level of offensive production.

[timvp]

Best PERs in the Big 3 ERA outside of the Big 3
2003 David Robinson: 17.8
2010 DeJuan Blair: 17.7
2011 DeJuan Blair: 17.1
2007 Brent Barry: 16.6
2003 Malik Rose: 16.1

[timvp]

PER is a contagious deceiving stat. Even a rat would have a decent PER in the SpursSomeone is confusing PER with plus/minus. There's nothing contagious about PER, tbh.

[jiggy_55]

Someone is confusing PER with plus/minus. There's nothing contagious about PER, tbh.

Isn't it affected by bhis starting and getting big minutes with Tony and Tim? Does +/- have any effect on PER? I would assume he benefits a bit from that, unless its a completely individual statistic.

[jestersmash]

PER is an offensive-centric stat.

The fact that DeJuan gets burned in the paint on defense or can't close out properly on mid-range jumpers is not reflected in PER (While +/- is entirely a correlation statistic, it does a better job at trying to assess defensive potency)

PER shines (and where +/- fails, at least when trying to assess offensive prowess) in its ability to individualize and isolate offensive production to each player by way of its usage metric.

I think looking at combination of PER, +/- (per 100 possessions), WS/48, and Offensive rating (ORtg) - Defensive rating (DRtg) (Basketball-reference) can give you a quick and dirty "overall picture" as far as comprehensive advanced stats go.

[TheSkeptic]

People are being too hard on Blair. Yes most of the players he guards can just shoot over him due to the height disadvantage, but he's found several ways to get by that, and when he plays smart he can defend well. There have been flashes of it all season long.

I don't think anyone's being all that hard on Blair. I (and I would assume the others) just want to replace him with a better and more disciplined player.



So what you're saying is that Patty Mills should be starting and Parker should be on the bench. :stirpot:

Look at those numbers.

Parker might be having an MVP season but Patty is making history. I say we give him the max.

:hat

[Seventyniner]

I take it the numbers are worse if you use the whole season. I think any team that goes 25-5 in a 30-game stretch is going to look like a team of mostly stars.

[Drz]

One more very important detail -- it measures PRODUCTION, not performance.

Your PER is rewarded if you jack up 80 shots a game.

[jestersmash]

Look at those numbers.

Parker might be having an MVP season but Patty is making history. I say we give him the max.

:hat

Hey, if Patty Mills could consistently provide 20 points in 20 minutes on 8-11 shooting, a 2.0 assist to turnover ratio, and a couple of rebounds, he'd be worth a max contract :lol

Even in Sacramento on a per minute basis, Mills got busy pretty quickly scoring 7 points in 6 minutes.

The other fatal flaw of PER is that it's per <time unit> statistic. That's precisely why on ESPN there's a minimum minutes played requirement to be listed. Patty Mills probably isn't on the ESPN's official PER list yet because he's played such limited minutes.

If you had Joe scrub come in and score 2 points on a dunk in the last 30 seconds of "garbage time" consistently for every game, he'd probably have a gaudy PER (he's scoring 2 points per minute on 100% shooting).

You have to be cautious with PER in that sense. It's an offensive-centric stat, and it's a per <time unit> stat.

[therealtruth]

will we ever see that awesomeness as the starting line up? ..sigh

I think that lineup would be starting for most coaches.

[jestersmash]

One more very important detail -- it measures PRODUCTION, not performance.

Your PER is rewarded if you jack up 80 shots a game.

You're totally wrong.

If you jack up 80 shots per game but only make 25% of them, your PER is going to suffer. It's an efficiency stat. eFG%/TS% are extremely important variables for calculating PER.

If you jack up 80 shots per game and make 60 of them, you should be rewarded with a high PER. That's...the entire point.

Jacking up 80 shots per game and only making 10 of them (20 PPG) will do you no good.

[hater]

Isn't it affected by bhis starting and getting big minutes with Tony and Tim? Does +/- have any effect on PER? I would assume he benefits a bit from that, unless its a completely individual statistic.

PER does depend on the type of team and efficiency of the team. Spurs run and gun a lot more and that helps it's player's PER. Also Spurs are very efficient offensively this season, pass the ball very well and have great spacing, which also helps the players PER. this is why I said it is contagious and a bit deceiving.

[TheSkeptic]

Hey, if Patty Mills could consistently provide 20 points in 20 minutes on 8-11 shooting, a 2.0 assist to turnover ratio, and a couple of rebounds, he'd be worth a max contract :lol

Even in Sacramento on a per minute basis, Mills got buys pretty quickly scoring 7 points in 6 minutes.

The other fatal flaw of PER is that it's per <time unit> statistic. That's precisely why on ESPN there's a minimum minutes played requirement to be listed. Patty Mills probably isn't on the ESPN's official PER list yet because he's played such limited minutes.

If you had Joe scrub come in and score 2 points on a dunk in the last 30 seconds of "garbage time" consistently for every game, he'd probably have a gaudy PER (he's scoring 2 points per minute on 100% shooting).

You have to be cautious with PER in that sense. It's an offensive-centric stat, and it's a per <time unit> stat.

I completely agree with you. :lol

I'd say though that other than Dejuan Blair, these numbers do bear out what most of us are seeing. Although I guess they kind of make sense in Blair's case.

I feel like (other than maybe Pop) most people can see that Manu, Parker, Duncan, Tiago, and Kawhi are probably the most productive players on the team.

Even the order looks about right so that has to count for something.

[polandprzem]

Best PERs in the Big 3 ERA outside of the Big 3
2003 David Robinson: 17.8
2010 DeJuan Blair: 17.7
2011 DeJuan Blair: 17.1
2007 Brent Barry: 16.6
2003 Malik Rose: 16.1

hmm interesting

2003 and 2007 were championship years
Blair compliments weaker squads

[timvp]

Isn't it affected by bhis starting and getting big minutes with Tony and Tim? Does +/- have any effect on PER? PER doesn't factor in plus/minus at all.

Stats PER uses include minutes, field goals, free throws, three-pointers, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks ... in addition to advanced stats such as the team's pace and the league's pace.

PER is far from perfect on its own but it does a decent job of pointing to productive players. It's biggest flaw is it doesn't have any way to account for individual defensive play. That's why Blair scores so high in it and why Bowen never had a PER higher than 9.5.

[jestersmash]

I completely agree with you. :lol

I'd say though that other than Dejuan Blair, these numbers do bear out what most of us are seeing. Although I guess they kind of make sense in Blair's case.

I feel like (other than maybe Pop) most people can see that Manu, Parker, Duncan, Tiago, and Kawhi are probably the most productive players on the team.

Even the order looks about right so that has to count for something.

Yeah, I think with Blair the issue is most people have gotten so used to seeing Blair's glaring deficiencies on defense that they've forgotten or ignored his positive offensive traits (he does have pretty good touch around the rim).

Another poster mentioned Blair taking dumb shots - yeah, he'll sometimes pop that mid-range jumper (much to our chagrin), but it's still just one boneheaded shot per game. I think the sheer stupidity of that shot selection sometimes obfuscates Blair's otherwise good offensive touch around the rim :lol

Fortunately I don't think I've ever seen Blair take more than one mid-range jumper per game, but even after he takes just one, it leaves us with perhaps a worse impression of Blair's overall offensive game than it should.

Defensively, most advanced stats will tell you that Blair got absolutely torched during that Memphis playoff series last season. There's no excuse for him on defense. Taking into account the fact that PER doesn't factor that in, I'd say his PER is just about right where I'd expect it to be.

[timvp]

PER does depend on the type of team and efficiency of the team. Spurs run and gun a lot more and that helps it's player's PER. Also Spurs are very efficient offensively this season, pass the ball very well and have great spacing, which also helps the players PER. this is why I said it is contagious and a bit deceiving.The 2005 Suns and the 2007 Suns are arguably the best offensive teams of the last decade and both of those teams only had four players with PERs better than 15. This year's Wizards suck and nobody passes on that team and they have six players with PERs better than 15.


I take it the numbers are worse if you use the whole season. I think any team that goes 25-5 in a 30-game stretch is going to look like a team of mostly stars.
For those who don't want to take the time to look up the numbers by themselves:

Manu Ginobili 23.8
Tony Parker 22.2
Tim Duncan 21.5
Tiago Splitter 19.5
Kawhi Leonard 17.0
DeJuan Blair 17.0
Danny Green 14.1
Matt Bonner 13.8
Gary Neal 13.2


Richard Jefferson 11.0

[mathbzh]

You're totally wrong.

If you jack up 80 shots per game but only make 25% of them, your PER is going to suffer. It's an efficiency stat. eFG%/TS% are extremely important variables for calculating PER.

If you jack up 80 shots per game and make 60 of them, you should be rewarded with a high PER. That's...the entire point.

Jacking up 80 shots per game and only making 10 of them (20 PPG) will do you no good.

Totally wrong? I don't know...



"Hollinger argues that each two point field goal made is worth about 1.65 points. A three point field goal made is worth 2.65 points. A missed field goal, though, costs a team 0.72 points. Given these values, with a bit of math we can show that a player will break even on his two point field goal attempts if he hits on 30.4% of these shots. On three pointers the break-even point is 21.4%. If a player exceeds these thresholds, and virtually every NBA player does so with respect to two-point shots, the more he shoots the higher his value in PERs. So a player can be an inefficient scorer and simply inflate his value by taking a large number of shots."


So if you shoot at 35% and jack up many shots (and your coach do nothing about it) you can have a good PER.

[hater]

The 2005 Suns and the 2007 Suns are arguably the best offensive teams of the last decade and both of those teams only had four players with PERs better than 15. This year's Wizards suck and nobody passes on that team and they have six players with PERs better than 15.


the Suns were also a chucking team under D'antoni.

[jestersmash]

For those who don't want to take the time to look up the numbers by themselves:

Manu Ginobili 23.8
Tony Parker 22.2
Tim Duncan 21.5
Tiago Splitter 19.5
Kawhi Leonard 17.0
DeJuan Blair 17.0
Danny Green 14.1
Matt Bonner 13.8
Gary Neal 13.2


Richard Jefferson 11.0

:lol R.J. @ $844,745/PER point

You know, annual salary/PER might not be such a bad metric for assessing (offensive) value to the team.

[jestersmash]

Totally wrong? I don't know...



So if you shoot at 35% and jack up many shots (and your coach do nothing about it) you can have a good PER.

:lol Fine, technically you're correct. He's not totally wrong, but his point is utterly irrelevant not only for the Spurs but for most players in the league.

I can think of only a handful of players in the league that probably have slightly inflated PERs due to chucking.

Edit: And implied in my definition of "chucking" is shooting at a "low" FG%.

I actually don't think there's anybody even close to the break-even FG% point (30.4%) that consistently inflates his PER by chucking.

[mathbzh]

:lol Fine, technically you're correct. He's not totally wrong, but his point is utterly irrelevant not only for the Spurs but for most players in the league.

I can think of only a handful of players in the league that probably have slightly inflated PERs due to chucking.

Edit: And implied in my definition of "chucking" is shooting at a "low" FG%.

I actually don't think there's anybody even close to the break-even FG% point (30.4%) that consistently inflates his ER by chucking.

I agree with that... as I said there are coaches in the NBA.
So there is generally a correlation between production and performance (Kobe is allowed to jack up shots because he is Kobe).

But you can still find a number of volume shooters with suspect FG% but solid PER.

I like PER but I am not sure you can use it alone to assess a player value.

[jestersmash]

I agree with that... as I said there are coaches in the NBA.
So there is generally a correlation between production and performance (Kobe is allowed to jack up shots because he is Kobe).

But you can still find a number of volume shooters with suspect FG% but solid PER.

I like PER but I am not sure you can use it alone to assess a player value.

Even with Kobe though, I think the fact that the break even point is sufficiently (edit: high, not low. Sorry :lol) mitigates the degree of PER inflation that you might expect given Kobe's tendency to chuck.

There's no question that Kobe's FG% this season has been strikingly medicore, but I'm pleasantly surprised to see that despite this fact his overall PER is still "just" ranked 18th.

I'd be far more disappointed if he had a PER in the top 5 or top 10.

The "chuck" factor as long as you're past that "break even" point is a flaw with PER, but practically speaking it's rarely an issue. PER's inability to track defensive prowess (apart from blocks, steals, rebounds) is still its most glaring deficiency, but it's only a deficiency in so much as trying to satiate our needs to find the "ultimate" comprehensive advanced stat.

As long as you look at PER knowing that it's an offensive-centric stat, it can be an invaluable metric.

[timvp]

I think looking at combination of PER, +/- (per 100 possessions), WS/48, and Offensive rating (ORtg) - Defensive rating (DRtg) (Basketball-reference) can give you a quick and dirty "overall picture" as far as comprehensive advanced stats go.

Personally, I think my current order to evaluate players is:

Subjective observation > Traditional stats > PER > Raw plus/minus > Adjusted plus/minus > WP48

Traditional stats usually give you a good picture but PER is a quick way to get an overview. Plus/minus stats are useful to see how a player actually impacts the game. You can fake your way to a good PER but you can't fake a good PER and good plus/minus. WP48 really is great about judging how efficient a player is so if a player scores well in PER and WP48, you know it's not just a chucker who ballhogs his way to good stats.

[Dex]

Richard Jefferson 11.0

Good riddance.

[roycrikside]

LOL thread.

Not surprising at all, but it seems quite a few folks here don't understand how PER works, its strengths and its weaknesses, despite L.J. patient efforts to explain it.

I think it's a pretty useful stat, but yeah, you have to use it as a part of your evaluation, not the whole thing. Win shares and adjusted +/- and offensive/defensive production per 100 possessions are all important too.

Personally, in addition to not having a metric for evaluating guys like Bowen, I think PER over-evaluates PF/Cs. As long as you shoot over 55% and rebound fairly well, as long as you're not a turnover machine you're gonna have a pretty decent PER. It doesn't matter that you can't create your own shot and that all your FG attempts come from 5 feet away on put-backs and pick-and-rolls.

To me, it doesn't really say that a player is special, it's just rewarding a guy for doing what his job calls for. You're supposed to rebound and shoot a high percentage as an interior player. It's like being impressed that your offensive lineman can block better than your wide receiver. If he couldn't, he wouldn't be in the league.

To me, I think PER needs to be evaluated on a sliding scale. 13 is supposed to be a rotation player, 15 is average, 18-20 is good starter and anything above 20 is all-star level, but I think that's for guys who are point guards or wings.

For big men, I think 14 should be the minimum, 16 average, 19-21 good starter, 22 all-star level and 25+ best guy on a contender.

[TheSkeptic]

Yeah, I think with Blair the issue is most people have gotten so used to seeing Blair's glaring deficiencies on defense that they've forgotten or ignored his positive offensive traits (he does have pretty good touch around the rim).

Another poster mentioned Blair taking dumb shots - yeah, he'll sometimes pop that mid-range jumper (much to our chagrin), but it's still just one boneheaded shot per game. I think the sheer stupidity of that shot selection sometimes obfuscates Blair's otherwise good offensive touch around the rim :lol

Fortunately I don't think I've ever seen Blair take more than one mid-range jumper per game, but even after he takes just one, it leaves us with perhaps a worse impression of Blair's overall offensive game than it should.

Defensively, most advanced stats will tell you that Blair got absolutely torched during that Memphis playoff series last season. There's no excuse for him on defense. Taking into account the fact that PER doesn't factor that in, I'd say his PER is just about right where I'd expect it to be.

He definitely has his strong suits. I just lean toward taking him out of the rotation because of how badly he reacted to coming off the bench last time.

If he could embrace his role as a bench player in this league, he'd be a pretty good asset imo.


The 2005 Suns and the 2007 Suns are arguably the best offensive teams of the last decade and both of those teams only had four players with PERs better than 15. This year's Wizards suck and nobody passes on that team and they have six players with PERs better than 15.


For those who don't want to take the time to look up the numbers by themselves:

Manu Ginobili 23.8
Tony Parker 22.2
Tim Duncan 21.5
Tiago Splitter 19.5
Kawhi Leonard 17.0
DeJuan Blair 17.0
Danny Green 14.1
Matt Bonner 13.8
Gary Neal 13.2


Richard Jefferson 11.0

For the season, I was expecting something like this. (The order's still the same) :hat

Although I would think that Kawhi would be doing better than Blair on the whole? Matt Bonner too since it seems like he's always measuring well statistically...

[DPG21920]

Timvp, with all the metrics you can look at, Pop has to be in the same boat with you with regards to what he values (subjective observation>stats of any sort). Bad news is his subjective observation with regards to Tiago is that he isn't very good or skilled. Do you think this is why he won't play him more?

[TheSkeptic]

To me, I think PER needs to be evaluated on a sliding scale. 13 is supposed to be a rotation player, 15 is average, 18-20 is good starter and anything above 20 is all-star level, but I think that's for guys who are point guards or wings.

For big men, I think 14 should be the minimum, 16 average, 19-21 good starter, 22 all-star level and 25+ best guy on a contender.

With all due respect, that's essentially how PER numbers are evaluated as is give or take about 2 points.

[jestersmash]

Personally, I think my current order to evaluate players is:

Subjective observation > Traditional stats > PER > Raw plus/minus > Adjusted plus/minus > WP48

Traditional stats usually give you a good picture but PER is a quick way to get an overview. Plus/minus stats are useful to see how a player actually impacts the game. You can fake your way to a good PER but you can't fake a good PER and good plus/minus. WP48 really is great about judging how efficient a player is so if a player scores well in PER and WP48, you know it's not just a chucker who ballhogs his way to good stats.

I agree.

My only (minor) caveat with "traditional" stats (i.e. the stats you'll see in a box score on ESPN.com or NBA.com) is that I wish they included eFG% and TS%. In the interest of brevity, they at least should include eFG% for every box score.

I can kind of get a sense for eFG% by seeing how many points a player has scored on X shot attempts (add FTM-FTA into the mix if we want to go down the TS% route), but eFG% is such a fundamental advanced metric that I feel like it deserves its own column in a box score.

[Mel_13]

gnsf

nasf

now plsf...rummpd has to be the president of that club

[timvp]

There's no question that Kobe's FG% this season has been strikingly medicore, but I'm pleasantly surprised to see that despite this fact his overall PER is still "just" ranked 18th.

Speaking of Kobe, he's a good example of why checking PER and WP48 is useful.

If someone is mad that Kobe's PER has stayed relatively steady this year,

Kobe Bryant - PER
2001 24.5
2002 23.2
2003 26.2
2004 23.7
2005 23.3
2006 28.0
2007 26.1
2008 24.2
2009 24.4
2010 21.9
2011 23.9
2012 22.1

that person would be happy to know that WP48 disagrees.

Kobe Bryant - WP48
2001 .151
2002 .178
2003 .199
2004 .207
2005 .152
2006 .146
2007 .185
2008 .206
2009 .184
2010 .137
2011 .132
2012 .049

[jag]

There's only one thing I have to say about this:






























Free Tiago

[jestersmash]

gnsf

nasf

now plsf...rummpd has to be the president of that club

:lol

gnsf - Grey named spur fan

plsf - PER-loving spur fan

nasf - ?

[Mel_13]

:lol

gnsf - Grey named spur fan

plsf - PER-loving spur fan

nasf - ?

New age Spurs fan

[roycrikside]

PER doesn't factor in plus/minus at all.

Stats PER uses include minutes, field goals, free throws, three-pointers, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks ... in addition to advanced stats such as the team's pace and the league's pace.

PER is far from perfect on its own but it does a decent job of pointing to productive players. It's biggest flaw is it doesn't have any way to account for individual defensive play. That's why Blair scores so high in it and why Bowen never had a PER higher than 9.5.

LJ, I agree PER underrated Bowen, but I don't think it did to the degree you're hinting at. Personally, I think Bowen was tremendously overrated by Spurs fans.

I don't say that to disparage him, but only to point out that a guy like Bowen is similar to Horry in that he's only useful if he's got several stars around him.

Spurs fans like to think offense and defense are equally important, but they're just not. It's not as extreme as baseball, where being a good fielder is like 10% of the game (a lineup of 9 Barry Bonds' would crush a lineup of 9 Omar Vizquels), but there is a much bigger gap between being a Hall-of-Fame level scorer and a Bowen than there is between Bowen and the worst defender in the NBA.

The Spurs could hide Bowen on offense and effectively play 4-on-5, because they had three HOF-level offensive players in Tim, Manu and Tony. Even without Bruce, the Spurs have been contenders based almost entirely on their offensive efficiency.

However, a team of five Bruce Bowens in the NBA would get slaughtered. They'd lose every game 80-50 as no one would be able to create a good shot. No one would rebound, pass or dribble sufficiently enough to produce a passable offense. It would look like some shitty mid-major college team, frankly.

Even the object of Bowen's defense itself is overrated, because while limiting the damage of a wing player is important, Tim has always been the Spurs most important defender and it's not even close. Not only does he protect the rim, which is the most vital part of any defense, but he gets the rebounds as well, and no defensive possession is truly successful until you get the ball. It's like comparing a goalie to a defenseman in hockey. You can have the best HOF defensemen you want, but if you play with a terrible goalie, it won't matter.

Bowen could do two things very well, defend and shoot corner threes, but a truly important player needs to have a lot more tools in his belt.

[jag]

T Park came out of hiding and started dealing out NASF labels like he was being paid.

[DPG21920]

I guess quitting on the team is an old spurs fan thing...

[angelbelow]

You're totally wrong.

If you jack up 80 shots per game but only make 25% of them, your PER is going to suffer. It's an efficiency stat. eFG%/TS% are extremely important variables for calculating PER.

If you jack up 80 shots per game and make 60 of them, you should be rewarded with a high PER. That's...the entire point.

Jacking up 80 shots per game and only making 10 of them (20 PPG) will do you no good.

Beware of the drz. Hes a dedicated Bonner troll who won't hesitate to declare that everyone in the thread is stupid and that he is smart. He'll also bail out of arguments prematurely because he claims that we are no longer worth his time.

He brings a certain entertainment value though. Like KillBill still does with anything Greek or "Tiago Euroleague MVP!" Or goPaTTY's obsession with Patty Mill's. Like clockwork, you can expect an appearance out of him in any Bonner bashing or Bonner celebration threads. Based on his history, I can only assume that Bonner being lower on the PER ranking irked him so he decided to incorrectly bash the system.

[Hollinger]

Great thread!

[Mel_13]

I guess quitting on the team is an old spurs fan thing...

ogsf

[timvp]

To me, I think PER needs to be evaluated on a sliding scale. 13 is supposed to be a rotation player, 15 is average, 18-20 is good starter and anything above 20 is all-star level, but I think that's for guys who are point guards or wings.

For big men, I think 14 should be the minimum, 16 average, 19-21 good starter, 22 all-star level and 25+ best guy on a contender.

This is a good point. That's also why power forwards have the highest replacement level PER. In other words, if you sign one player at each position off the scrap heap, it's expected that the power forward will have the highest PER.

For the record, IIRC, small forwards have the lowest expected replacement level PER.

[NASpurs]

T Park came out of hiding and started dealing out NASF labels like he was being paid.

NASF run rampage in the game threads so I kind of dig that moniker for them. :tu

GNSF are most obvious in the NBA section of Spurstalk where they're trolled by the elders and are flies to shit in obvious troll threads.

[jestersmash]

NASF run rampage in the game threads so I kind of dig that moniker for them. :tu

GNSF are most obvious in the NBA section of Spurstalk where they're trolled by the elders and are flies to shit in obvious troll threads.

Yeah. It's most prominent in the NBA section, but you'll see this phenomenon up here on occasion as well. I think lakaluva made a rare appearance up here a couple of days ago with the most blatant troll thread imaginable, and he caught 3 or 4 posters legitimately insulted and seriously responding to his claim that no player on the Spurs' squad could start for L.A. :lol

[timvp]

LJ, I agree PER underrated Bowen, but I don't think it did to the degree you're hinting at. Personally, I think Bowen was tremendously overrated by Spurs fans.

I didn't think I hinted at much. If 15 is a legit starter and Bowen's best is 9.5, it's safe to say PER underrated him. I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that Bowen is at least a legit starter, which means PER underrated him by more than 50%.

As far as Bowen being "tremendously overrated", I'm not going to even start typing my disagreement with that sentiment with a game about to start. I'd be typing through halftime, tbh :lol

All I have to point to is how the Spurs defense has collapsed since Bowen left. And how the Spurs haven't done anything in the playoffs since Bowen left. And, oh yeah, how horrible a fit RJ was even though every traditional measurement would have predicted RJ would be a much, much bigger asset than Bowen.

I agree the Big 3 were all much better than Bowen but Bowen at the very least was a key cog who deserved to have his jersey retired.

[therealtruth]

I didn't think I hinted at much. If 15 is a legit starter and Bowen's best is 9.5, it's safe to say PER underrated him. I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that Bowen is at least a legit starter, which means PER underrated him by more than 50%.

As far as Bowen being "tremendously overrated", I'm not going to even start typing my disagreement with that sentiment with a game about to start. I'd be typing through halftime, tbh :lol

All I have to point to is how the Spurs defense has collapsed since Bowen left. And how the Spurs haven't done anything in the playoffs since Bowen left. And, oh yeah, how horrible a fit RJ was even though every traditional measurement would have predicted RJ would be a much, much bigger asset than Bowen.

I agree the Big 3 were all much better than Bowen but Bowen at the very least was a key cog who deserved to have his jersey retired.

PER was accurate for Bowen. His strength wasn't really his production but the ability to take away production from the other team. A better way to measure Bowen would be by the opposing player's PER which likely would be lower.

[roycrikside]

All I have to point to is how the Spurs defense has collapsed since Bowen left. And how the Spurs haven't done anything in the playoffs since Bowen left. And, oh yeah, how horrible a fit RJ was even though every traditional measurement would have predicted RJ would be a much, much bigger asset than Bowen.

I agree the Big 3 were all much better than Bowen but Bowen at the very least was a key cog who deserved to have his jersey retired.

I don't disagree that he deserved to have his jersey retired, but ask yourself if the Spurs defense has suffered to the degree that it has because Bowen is gone or because the big three have aged as they have, especially Duncan.

Suppose you have a 2005 Duncan/Rasho/Ginobili/Parker out there with 2005 Horry as the third big and the 2012 Jefferson as the SF. You really think the Spurs wouldn't have a top-5 defense?

As for them not doing much in the playoffs, the biggest factors have been

1) Manu's injuries
2) Duncan's slippage
3) Not that they replaced Bowen, but like you said who they replaced him with.

[roycrikside]

PER was accurate for Bowen. His strength wasn't really his production but the ability to take away production from the other team. A better way to measure Bowen would be by the opposing player's PER which likely would be lower.

A fair enough statement I suppose. My point was that if I have to choose an all-star defensive big man with a crappy defensive wing or an all-star defensive wing with a crappy big man, I'll go with the former every time. It's why the Orlando Magic have been a contender for years.

[timvp]

Timvp, with all the metrics you can look at, Pop has to be in the same boat with you with regards to what he values (subjective observation>stats of any sort). Bad news is his subjective observation with regards to Tiago is that he isn't very good or skilled. Do you think this is why he won't play him more?I really think Pop just sees Duncan and Splitter as centers. For a team that has to score to win, Pop doesn't want to bog things down by playing two centers. I don't think it's more than that, tbh.

But perhaps Pop is a fan of WP48. While almost every stat in existence says Splitter is a stud, WP48 says Splitter has regressed quite a bit from last year. Rookie Splitter had a .204 WP48. This year, Splitter's number has slipped to .149.

It probably has nothing to do with Pop's thinking but who knows. Leonard has the best WP48 on the team (.290) and he's starting.

:stirpot:

[Cant_Be_Faded]

So is this the best PER team in the Duncan era?

And will that actually matter come playoff time?

[TheSkeptic]

I really think Pop just sees Duncan and Splitter as centers. For a team that has to score to win, Pop doesn't want to bog things down by playing two centers. I don't think it's more than that, tbh.

But perhaps Pop is a fan of WP48. While almost every stat in existence says Splitter is a stud, WP48 says Splitter has regressed quite a bit from last year. Rookie Splitter had a .204 WP48. This year, Splitter's number has slipped to .149.

It probably has nothing to do with Pop's thinking but who knows. Leonard has the best WP48 on the team (.290) and he's starting.

:stirpot:

Couldn't he just play Duncan at the 4 on offense? I mean even though Tiago plays the 5, he's also a bit of a power forward in a way.

If Pop was a fan of WP48, he would've played him more last year. So I'm going with the can't play 2 centers/isn't very skilled theory.

Although I think those reasons are hogwash.

[timvp]

Suppose you have a 2005 Duncan/Rasho/Ginobili/Parker out there with 2005 Horry as the third big and the 2012 Jefferson as the SF. You really think the Spurs wouldn't have a top-5 defense?

Yeah, the Spurs are probably still a top-5 defensive team in the NBA without Bowen that season. However, do the Spurs win the championship with RJ instead of Bowen? RJ had a PER that was about double of Bowen's so he should have made that team even better, right?



We all know that wouldn't have been the case. I can't even comprehend how horrible RJ would have been in that Suns series or that Pistons series.

Think of it this way: If RJ replaced Bowen, Ginobili would have been forced to chase around Rip Hamilton in the Finals. With Ginobili expending so much energy on defense, there's no way he could have been the offensive hero he was that series. And without Ginobili having such a great series, there's no way the Spurs win the championship.

Even if all Bowen ever did was allow Ginobili (and Parker in certain matchups) to save energy on defense, he was invaluable to the Spurs.

[timvp]

So is this the best PER team in the Duncan era?Yeah, has to be because none of the teams that had Bowen on it would be able to compete since PER hated Bowen.


And will that actually matter come playoff time?Hopefully. But it's far from a guaranteed, obviously.

The Mavs won a championship last year even though they had pedestrian PERs outside of Nowitzki.

Dirk Nowitzki 23.4
Tyson Chandler 18.4
Shawn Marion 17.0
Jason Terry 15.9
JJ Barea 14.8
Jason Kidd 14.4

[Fabbs]

http://www.rob-clarkson.com/duff-brewery/martin/02.jpg
So the significance of PER is.....
timvp

The Mavs won a championship last year even though they had pedestrian PERs outside of Nowitzki.

What have the regular season PERs been of other recent NBA Champs?
(Do not include rigged Laker years).

[Obstructed_View]

A fair enough statement I suppose. My point was that if I have to choose an all-star defensive big man with a crappy defensive wing or an all-star defensive wing with a crappy big man, I'll go with the former every time. It's why the Orlando Magic have been a contender for years.

:lmao

[GSH]

Tony Parker 25.2 PER since Feb. 4
Tim Duncan 24.1 PER since Feb. 1
Manu Ginobili 23.6 PER on the season
Tiago Splitter 22.4 PER since Jan. 17
Kawhi Leonard 21.8 PER since Feb. 21
DeJuan Blair 19.8 PER since Feb. 23
Danny Green 16.8 PER outside of Jan. 18 to Feb. 21
Gary Neal 16.4 PER since Feb. 8
Matt Bonner 14.5 PER since Jan. 21

Patty Mills 31.8 PER since signing
Stephen Jackson 14.4 PER since trade
Boris Diaw 13.0 PER since signing



Damn. I've never seen anything like that. I know it's not a full season, and you got a little selective with the dates, but still. I know I've never seen a team with that many high-performers. Since the beginning of March, these Spurs have been really strong.

At first I thought that part of it was the fact that so many people have gotten minutes. But teams always have top subs who get the minutes. They just don't can't produce that much. Yeah

We staaacked!

[ElNono]

I don't know about 15 = legitimate starter... I'm pretty sure 15 = average NBA player...

[Drz]

One more very important detail -- it measures PRODUCTION, not performance.

Your PER is rewarded if you jack up 80 shots a game.


You're totally wrong.

If you jack up 80 shots per game but only make 25% of them, your PER is going to suffer. It's an efficiency stat. eFG%/TS% are extremely important variables for calculating PER.

If you jack up 80 shots per game and make 60 of them, you should be rewarded with a high PER. That's...the entire point.

Jacking up 80 shots per game and only making 10 of them (20 PPG) will do you no good.

:lol Fine, technically you're correct. He's not totally wrong, but his point is utterly irrelevant not only for the Spurs but for most players in the league.

I can think of only a handful of players in the league that probably have slightly inflated PERs due to chucking.

Edit: And implied in my definition of "chucking" is shooting at a "low" FG%.

I actually don't think there's anybody even close to the break-even FG% point (30.4%) that consistently inflates his PER by chucking.


Even with Kobe though, I think the fact that the break even point is sufficiently (edit: high, not low. Sorry :lol) mitigates the degree of PER inflation that you might expect given Kobe's tendency to chuck.

There's no question that Kobe's FG% this season has been strikingly medicore, but I'm pleasantly surprised to see that despite this fact his overall PER is still "just" ranked 18th.

I'd be far more disappointed if he had a PER in the top 5 or top 10.

The "chuck" factor as long as you're past that "break even" point is a flaw with PER, but practically speaking it's rarely an issue. PER's inability to track defensive prowess (apart from blocks, steals, rebounds) is still its most glaring deficiency, but it's only a deficiency in so much as trying to satiate our needs to find the "ultimate" comprehensive advanced stat.

As long as you look at PER knowing that it's an offensive-centric stat, it can be an invaluable metric.
:lol I love how you used three posts to come around to what I had posted, but you still seem to think I'm wrong. At best you can nitpick the semantics of my post since production is an indicator of performance, but I stand by what I said. I also stand by the idea that "practically speaking," it's obvious (to people who've done even basic research on PER) that if the metric is inflated by taking more shots, which affects nearly every player in the NBA as has been covered in this thread, then that is a very practical issue with the metric.

That was cute when you talked about eFG% and advanced metrics, by the way. :p:

[Seventyniner]

PER overrates mostly-offensive players and underrates mostly-defensive players, due to the lack of defensive statistics in the box score; lots of blocks and steals doesn't necessarily make someone a good defender.

Bruce vs. RJ is the definitive argument of why PER should never be looked at in a vacuum.

[Drz]

Beware of the drz. Hes a dedicated Bonner troll who won't hesitate to declare that everyone in the thread is stupid and that he is smart. He'll also bail out of arguments prematurely because he claims that we are no longer worth his time.

He brings a certain entertainment value though. Like KillBill still does with anything Greek or "Tiago Euroleague MVP!" Or goPaTTY's obsession with Patty Mill's. Like clockwork, you can expect an appearance out of him in any Bonner bashing or Bonner celebration threads. Based on his history, I can only assume that Bonner being lower on the PER ranking irked him so he decided to incorrectly bash the system.
Bonner troll/lover...check.
Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid... check.
I am smart...check.
Bails out prematurely because arguments aren't worth my time... check.
Entertainment value... that ones a little iffy, but I'll give it a check. Overall, pretty insightful.

I've thought about changing my username to "The Bonner Signal" and getting a sig like the bat signal, but with a sandwich. I lurk here and read stuff every 1-2 days, but I only ever post in Bonner-related threads.

And since you brought Bonner up, I was sad no one responded to my mind-shattering post in the last Bonner thread, so I'll repeat it here to blow minds again:

Spurs 2011 Playoffs Leader in Win Shares per minute?

MATT F**KIN' BONNER

:flag:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SAS/2011.html

[Mel_13]

I don't know about 15 = legitimate starter... I'm pretty sure 15 = average NBA player...

IF you're going to use PER at all, then 15 is a reasonable cutoff point for legitimate starter.

Last season, 186 players met the standards on basketball-reference.com to qualify for the scoring title. Of those 186 players, 92 had PERs of 15 or higher.

With 150 starting slots in the NBA, the 92 players with a per of 15 or higher would seem to pass the test to be considered legit starters.

That is, IF you're going to use PER to make that sort of distinction at all.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&match=single&type=totals&per_minute_base=36&lg_id=NBA&is_playoffs=N&year_min=2011&year_max=2011&franch_id=&season_start=1&season_end=-1&age_min=0&age_max=99&height_min=0&height_max=99&birth_country_is=Y&birth_country=&is_active=&is_hof=&is_as=&as_comp=gt&as_val=0&pos_is_g=Y&pos_is_gf=Y&pos_is_f=Y&pos_is_fg=Y&pos_is_fc=Y&pos_is_c=Y&pos_is_cf=Y&qual=pts_per_g_req&c1stat=&c1comp=gt&c1val=&c2stat=&c2comp=gt&c2val=&c3stat=&c3comp=gt&c3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=gt&c4val=&c5stat=&c5comp=gt&c6mult=1.0&c6stat=&order_by=per

[Spursfanfromafar]

To me,

Subjective Evaluation (indepth, not limited scouting)> Adjusted Plus Minus+ (adjusted with box scores even - Rosenbaum/Barzilai, Ilardi etc) > Raw Plus Minus> BR's Win Shares (based on Bill James)> PER (Hollinger) > Wins Produced (Berri)

The reason why I put up APM+ high is that it combines player performance by point differentials with regressions both for replacement player as well as box scores. Bruce Bowen for e.g. will score far higher on APM+ than PER, which is box score limited.

[Drz]

15 is intentionally set to be league average every year.

This should be required reading for all thread participants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Efficiency_Rating

[ElNono]

15 is intentionally set to be league average every year.

This should be required reading for all thread participants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Efficiency_Rating

This.

If more players averaged over 15 last season than those that did not, it just simply means more players were better than the average guy a season ago.

[Drz]

To me,

Subjective Evaluation (indepth, not limited scouting)> Adjusted Plus Minus+ (adjusted with box scores even - Rosenbaum/Barzilai, Ilardi etc) > Raw Plus Minus> BR's Win Shares (based on Bill James)> PER (Hollinger) > Wins Produced (Berri)
Interdasting. I'd go:

1. Adjusted Plus Minus+
2. Win Shares
3. Wins Produced
4. Subjective Evaluation (in-depth, not limited scouting)
5. PER
6. Raw Plus Minus

Obviously subjective evaluation depends heavily on how in-depth we're talking. If it's as far as teams like the Spurs or Rockets take it, it can get moved all the way up to #1. Here, I'm defining it more in the traditional scouting role (I know that's vague).

[Spursfanfromafar]

Interdasting. I'd go:

1. Adjusted Plus Minus+
2. Win Shares
3. Wins Produced
4. Subjective Evaluation (in-depth, not limited scouting)
5. PER
6. Raw Plus Minus

Obviously subjective evaluation depends heavily on how in-depth we're talking. If it's as far as teams like the Spurs or Rockets take it, it can get moved all the way up to #1. Here, I'm defining it more in the traditional scouting role (I know that's vague).

Actually I would agree with you on one thing- Raw Plus Minus should be last. Was a mistake in my previous post.

I am not so keen on the "Wins produced" advanced stats. It suffers from serious limitations, which a lot of hoop experts have commented upon.

Agree with you on "Subjective Evaluation" as well.

[ElNono]

To me,

Subjective Evaluation (indepth, not limited scouting)> Adjusted Plus Minus+ (adjusted with box scores even - Rosenbaum/Barzilai, Ilardi etc) > Raw Plus Minus> BR's Win Shares (based on Bill James)> PER (Hollinger) > Wins Produced (Berri)

The reason why I put up APM+ high is that it combines player performance by point differentials with regressions both for replacement player as well as box scores. Bruce Bowen for e.g. will score far higher on APM+ than PER, which is box score limited.

Agree PER has a strong bias towards offense.

I like APM+, BUT only when you have large samples. This is something we discussed a while back.

[Drz]

Actually I would agree with you on one thing- Raw Plus Minus should be last. Was a mistake in my previous post.
Haha, okay, that was the one that stood out to me as weird and got me to post my order. I was pretty on board with everything else you'd had.

I'm a sucker for regression, hence my love for Wins Produced, but I have to admit I don't know much about it beyond what's on their website. Time for me to look up its shortcomings...

Edit: Just looked it up here (http://www.backpicks.com/2011/02/20/malcolm-gladwell-and-wins-produced-how-they-both-went-wrong/). Wow. I'd just mistakenly assumed the correlations would be good enough -- in theory, determining the values of box score components via regression seemed great to me, and I thought the normal shortcomings of regression would be overmatched by its positives. Apparently not.

I wonder if a neural net model would work better? If you've got the data, it's not hard to run with R or SAS. Hm.

[Spursfanfromafar]

Agree PER has a strong bias towards offense.

I like APM+, BUT only when you have large samples. This is something we discussed a while back.

Indeed.

I lost my love for PER after I found how badly it evaluated individual defense (and therefore Bruce Bowen). No one who looks at PER to evaluate players, lets say in posterity, would understand the importance of Bowen to the Spurs team. Hollinger was consistently wrong about the Spurs over a point of time because of using his PER as the only evaluating metric to guesstimate team performance.

Although TBH, he has corrected himself over the years a bit by acknowledging the problems with his advanced stats, the biggest drawback he suffers from is that he relies on subjective weights and box scores alone for his advanced stats. A recipe for wrong evaluation.

[ElNono]

Indeed.

I lost my love for PER after I found how badly it evaluated individual defense (and therefore Bruce Bowen). No one who looks at PER to evaluate players, lets say in posterity, would understand the importance of Bowen to the Spurs team. Hollinger was consistently wrong about the Spurs over a point of time because of using his PER as the only evaluating metric to guesstimate team performance.

Although TBH, he has corrected himself over the years a bit by acknowledging the problems with his advanced stats, the biggest drawback he suffers from is that he relies on subjective weights and box scores alone for his advanced stats. A recipe for wrong evaluation.

Pop also loves to throw a wrench on certain statistical models with stuff like sitting out players or constantly changing rotations :lol

Especially hurtful to Hollinger's power ranking

[jestersmash]

:lol I love how you used three posts to come around to what I had posted, but you still seem to think I'm wrong. At best you can nitpick the semantics of my post since production is an indicator of performance, but I stand by what I said. I also stand by the idea that "practically speaking," it's obvious (to people who've done even basic research on PER) that if the metric is inflated by taking more shots, which affects nearly every player in the NBA as has been covered in this thread, then that is a very practical issue with the metric.

That was cute when you talked about eFG% and advanced metrics, by the way. :p:

I like how you think my 3 posts (including the one where I corrected myself to say that technically you weren't wrong but that your concern over inefficient chucking-induced PER inflation was utterly unwarranted) came around to [supporting] what you had posted :lmao

You stand by that idea? Fine. That's your prerogative if you want to be wrong :lol

Any player that "chucks" while maintaining a FG% > 30.9 will have an inflated PER. For the sake of the argument, let's define chucking as attempting > 10 FGA per game but maintaining a FG% < 45. How many players in the Top 50 PER meet this criteria? 6/50. A measly 6 out of 50 players in the top 50 have FGA per game > 10 and a FG% < 45 - Kobe, DWill, Lowry, Pierce, Stuckey, and Gooden.

If we set the bar for "chucking" even higher (> 15 FGA per game), only Kobe and Deron Williams meet the aforementioned criteria. Bottom line, practically speaking your (implied) concern over chuck-induced PER inflation was overstated to begin with. I corrected myself to say that - yes - hypothetically if you had a hordes of players chucking up large number of shots per game while maintaining the proper break-even FG%/3P%, then yes, this could potentially be a big flaw in PER. It's not. Practically speaking, this isn't the case at all. Looking at just the top 50 PER players, it's a problem for 6 of them (out of 50) if you have a really generous definition of chucking and FG% inefficiency (> 10 FGA per game and < 45 FG%, respectively) and only 2 (out of 50) if you increase the bar for what constitutes "chucking" to > 15 FGA per game.

By the way, I thought it was adorable how you brought up applying a "neural net model" and using R to analyze basketball data http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/cheeky.gif Be sure to let us know how your undergraduate-level statistics class goes :tu

[Drz]

:smchode:

I will bold exactly where you are going wrong.

Any player that "chucks" while maintaining a FG% > 30.9 will have an inflated PER. For the sake of the argument, let's define chucking as attempting > 10 FGA per game but maintaining a FG% < 45. How many players in the Top 50 PER meet this criteria? 6/50. A measly 6 out of 50 players in the top 50 have FGA per game > 10 and a FG% < 45 - Kobe, DWill, Lowry, Pierce, Stuckey, and Gooden.

If we set the bar for "chucking" even higher (> 15 FGA per game).....
This was already posted in the thread, but it looks like you missed it:

Given [that a field goal made is 1.65 points, and a 3 pt. field goal is 2.65 points], with a bit of math we can show that a player will break even on his two point field goal attempts if he hits on 30.4% of these shots. On three pointers the break-even point is 21.4%. If a player exceeds these thresholds, and virtually every NBA player does so with respect to two-point shots, the more he shoots the higher his value in PERs. So a player can be an inefficient scorer and simply inflate his value by taking a large number of shots."

You are arbitrarily defining chucking and say "look, based on these imaginary limits I set up, if they were true, only X players would be affected!"

The unfortunate truth is almost everyone is affected, no matter what fake chucking definition you throw out there.




By the way, I thought it was adorable how you brought up applying a "neural net model" and using R to analyze basketball data http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/cheeky.gif Be sure to let us know how your undergraduate-level statistics class goes :tu
I'm in my early 30s, my career is in statistics. No graduate degree, but I did take grad-level stat classes, albeit 10 years ago. Because of my career, I still regularly read up on statistical modeling. Obviously none of that alone makes me any more qualified to speak on this topic, but that's my background. What's yours?

[Spursfanfromafar]

Haha, okay, that was the one that stood out to me as weird and got me to post my order. I was pretty on board with everything else you'd had.

I'm a sucker for regression, hence my love for Wins Produced, but I have to admit I don't know much about it beyond what's on their website. Time for me to look up its shortcomings...

Edit: Just looked it up here (http://www.backpicks.com/2011/02/20/malcolm-gladwell-and-wins-produced-how-they-both-went-wrong/). Wow. I'd just mistakenly assumed the correlations would be good enough -- in theory, determining the values of box score components via regression seemed great to me, and I thought the normal shortcomings of regression would be overmatched by its positives. Apparently not.

I wonder if a neural net model would work better? If you've got the data, it's not hard to run with R or SAS. Hm.

Sorry, I hadn't read your "edited post".

I don't know anything about the "neural net model" and my understanding of statistics is limited to a very utilitarian use of basic regressions for electoral data that I analyse as part of my work sometimes.

But thanks for the links you provided. They explain the shortcomings of various advanced stats very well.

I still find APM+, warts and all, to be the most robust followed by win shares.

[timvp]

Just out of curiosity, Spursfanfromafar, what is appealing to you about Win Shares? When I've broken down the formula, it basically is like taking PER but then adding in a bias for players on a good team. I've really never put much stock in it due to that bias. For example, according to WS/48, Rose, Noah, Boozer, Gibson, Jimmy Butler and Kyle Korver are all top 50 players in the NBA ahead of very good players on bad teams like Greg Monroe, Anderson Varejao and even Steve Nash.

And then even with that strong bias to players on good teams, WS still doesn't give much credit to a player like Bowen. While he wasn't last (like with PER), he was always on the bottom 2 or 3 on the team.

I also find that the formula leans much too heavily on steals, blocks, defensive rebounds and eFG%. But perhaps you can give me some insight on what I'm missing.



Tbh, WS is only interesting to me in situations when it explains how teams devoid of talent were still able to win a lot of games ... like with David Robinson.

[TJastal]

People are being too hard on Blair. Yes most of the players he guards can just shoot over him due to the height disadvantage, but he's found several ways to get by that, and when he plays smart he can defend well. There have been flashes of it all season long.

"flashes" ain't gonna cut it in the playoffs, sorry.

[Spursfanfromafar]

Just out of curiosity, Spursfanfromafar, what is appealing to you about Win Shares? When I've broken down the formula, it basically is like taking PER but then adding in a bias for players on a good team. I've really never put much stock in it due to that bias. For example, according to WS/48, Rose, Noah, Boozer, Gibson, Jimmy Butler and Kyle Korver are all top 50 players in the NBA ahead of very good players on bad teams like Greg Monroe, Anderson Varejao and even Steve Nash.

And then even with that strong bias to players on good teams, WS still doesn't give much credit to a player like Bowen. While he wasn't last (like with PER), he was always on the bottom 2 or 3 on the team.

I also find that the formula leans much too heavily on steals, blocks, defensive rebounds and eFG%. But perhaps you can give me some insight on what I'm missing.

Tbh, WS is only interesting to me in situations when it explains how teams devoid of talent were still able to win a lot of games ... like with David Robinson.

My point is WS is more appealing to me than PER, only in relation to it. I can try explaining it, but I think it is like reinventing the wheel about the subject. The best explanation that I have managed to search out in limited time is this -

http://www.backpicks.com/2011/01/24/interpreting-advanced-statistics-in-basketball/

As I mentioned in my gradings of various advanced stats, PER and WS both rank below APM+ as they both fail the Bruce Bowen test and both are limited to box score stats. But WS seems to be relatively better than PER. The weighting mechanisms for various stats that result in "points produced" and cumulatively help in delivering wins - the "shares" are (albeit linear), more systematically obtained than PER which seems to be too dependent on arbitrary weights (the 1.65 pts for 2FGMs and 2.65 pts for 3FGMs)

Specific criticisms of PER -

http://wagesofwins.com/2012/03/04/wayne-winston-simplifies-pers/

You yourself had used plus/minus to check out player pair performances and found out the utility value of Bruce Bowen using point differentials. His value relative to others in the team was established. I don't have readymade links to data on APM for Bowen in 2007 and before, but I am sure, even the adjusted APMs will yield high positives for him as compared to other advanced stats.

[timvp]

WS vs. PER is an interesting comparison. Even though WS correlates better with what actually produces wins in the NBA, I just don't find it very valuable when comparing players on different teams within a single season. IMO, if you are going to account for team play, you might as well switch to a plus/minus model rather than use a PER hybrid. PER, even though it is flawed and it's probably not even technically an advanced statistic due to its arbitrary nature, I do like that Hollinger didn't even attempt to correlate PER with team wins. Due to that, it's a better standalone stat than WS or WP. But it is splitting hairs, tbh.


And, yes, I think the holy grail statistic for basketball will be plus/minus related. I just don't think box score stats offer enough information; statisticians have probably reached the limit of what they can squeeze out of those traditional box score stats. As you've probably noticed, I'm a big fan of plus/minus as long as it has a relatively large sample size. I've never understood the criticism of plus/minus since the game of basketball itself is judged on a type of plus/minus.

One day, there will probably be a type of plus/minus that becomes the go-to stat for judging NBA players. We're not there yet but we're a lot closer than even a half decade ago.

As for APM, I like it but I like RAPM even better. Any thoughts on RAPM?

[timvp]

For reference, here are the rankings of the Spurs players in each of the systems talked about in this thread:


Raw Plus/Minus
Bonner +12.56
Ginobili +11.09
Splitter +9.15
Parker +7.36
Duncan +5.33
Green +5.28
Neal +5.14
Leonard +3.73
Blair -0.47

On-Off Plus/Minus
Bonner +10.72
Ginobili +6.11
Splitter +5.59
Parker +3.07
Neal -1.97
Green -2.02
Duncan -2.39
Leonard -5.00
Blair -12.07

Adjusted Plus/Minus
Bonner +11.37
Parker +9.36
Duncan +7.60
Ginobili +5.29
Splitter +2.68
Green -0.17
Leonard -5.94
Blair -6.29
Neal -6.70

Regularized Adjusted Plus/Minus
Bonner +3.3
Parker +3.0
Ginobili +1.5
Splitter +1.4
Duncan +1.1
Green +0.6
Leonard -0.2
Neal -0.2
Blair -1.9

PER
Ginobili 22.5
Parker 21.8
Duncan 21.3
Splitter 19.7
Leonard 16.8
Blair 17.1
Bonner 14.1
Green 14.0
Neal 13.2

WS/48
Ginobili .226
Splitter .177
Parker .169
Leonard .168
Duncan .152
Bonner .151
Blair .128
Green .114
Neal .079

WP/48
Leonard .288
Ginobili .271
Splitter .160
Green .143
Bonner .139
Parker .126
Duncan .111
Blair .076
Neal .049

[ElNono]

As for APM, I like it but I like RAPM even better. Any thoughts on RAPM?

I'm going to throw my 2c on this one even though the question wasn't addressed at me.

Ridge regression (Regularization) is a good way to fight off the noise that's the major component of APM when the samples aren't high enough. To put it in very simplistic terms, it allows to "cap off" values into known limits as you calculate your regressions.

The positive is that it can make APM with a little samples to look much more accurate. Values "check off" because they're within the boundaries that you would expect. The negative is that it can hide truly exceptional events or glaring matchup advantages.

Ultimately, if you have a really high sample APM, you're going to get better quality numbers. Unfortunately, as we all know, sometimes getting high enough samples of APM can be troublesome (ie: playoffs only), so RAPM is probably the best next thing.

[Man In Black]

BY itself, PER or another metric that uses Boxscores like Points Created or TENDEX, is a number that rates the positives more than the negatives. Since something highly valued by the Spurs, POSITION DEFENSE, doesn't show up in a Box Score, then it can't be used to quantify a player like Bowen.

However, if you took it game by game and looked at what a player like say, Bean for LA was averaging in PER and then ran his PER for that game alone against Bruce, you would often find that Bowen would hold Bean under his normal output.

In that case, then PER does show that a guy like Bowen has an effect.
:flag:

[therealtruth]

BY itself, PER or another metric that uses Boxscores like Points Created or TENDEX, is a number that rates the positives more than the negatives. Since something highly valued by the Spurs, POSITION DEFENSE, doesn't show up in a Box Score, then it can't be used to quantify a player like Bowen.

However, if you took it game by game and looked at what a player like say, Bean for LA was averaging in PER and then ran his PER for that game alone against Bruce, you would often find that Bowen would hold Bean under his normal output.

In that case, then PER does show that a guy like Bowen has an effect.
:flag:

Exactly. It would also show that someone like Blair gives up a high PER to the player he defends.

[therealtruth]

"flashes" ain't gonna cut it in the playoffs, sorry.

Exactly. Who wins in the playoffs often comes down to who makes the fewest mistakes. The teams that advance make the fewest mistakes. That's why Pop dropped Blair from the rotation against the Grizzlies. He was making too many mistakes.

[GSH]

I won't even try to get into a debate over the validity of APM methodology, when there's such a huge disciple present. Easier just to stick to results. I just threw darts and pulled up the APM for 2006-2007. It shows Tony as 145th in the NBA that year, as far as the impact he had while on the floor.

But that's not the best part. The numeric score of his APM for that season was -3.06. In other words, substantially below that of an "average" NBA player, whatever the hell that is.

But that's still not the best part. At 127 on the list is... wait for it... Juan Dixon. And his APM rating for that season was -2.21. Substantially better than Parker. Perhaps better still was Jannero Pargo coming in at 108 on the list, with an APM of -.67 - much, much better than the lowly Tony Parker.

Does anyone remember watching Tony Parker and Jannero Parker in '06-'07? Does anyone remember considering that Pargo actually had more impact when he was on the floor than Parker? Does anyone remember thinking, "Ya know... if we didn't have Parker, I'd sure love to see that Pargo guy come here"?

How bad does a tool have to be before you recognize that there are insurmountable problems? And what else is there to go by but results? Does anyone really need a tool to tell them that Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett are good? APM produces a lot of totally expected results. And then it produces a bunch of "surprises" that have to be sorted out by other methods (like common sense). But always, within the list of surprises, there are some players that turn out to be pretty decent. Those are the "success stories" for APM. The ones that are wildly off base just get tossed. Believers always like to say it's because of sample size. But the same things happen no matter how much data you feed into it. Regularly, and without fail.


Edit: I just noticed Mikki Moore in 60th place on the list, with an APM of +1.85. He was almost as far above "average" as Tony Parker was below. I think we all know how much impact he had on the game. Moore did get an $11M contract out of it, so I guess that makes it right.

[Manu'sMagicalLeftHand]

Some posters in this thread seem to imply that Head Coaches are following their players stats to the very last number. That simply ain't correct.

They don't work in detail, reading stats daily, weekly, and monthly, while considering traditional box scores, Adjusted Plus Minus, Raw Plus Minus, On-Off Plus/Minus, Regularized Adjusted Plus/Minus, PER, Win Shares, Wins Produced, etc.. There are also other stats which aren't widely circulated among fans, like shot charts for every player in different situations and its defensive matchups (e.g. Tim Duncan shooting from the left of the low post after a Gary Neal pass in a determined offensive set vs a determined defensive system vs a particular defender, in the 3rd quarter, and so on). There are also computer-recored game physical stats, like distance covered, speed, amount of jumps, etc. for players and team. There's also gym data, appart from the obvious how many lbs and how many times a certain player lifts them, like resistance levels, strength measurements, wingspans, lactic acid levels, heart rate, etc. All those stats are available about your own team and all the others in the league. And there are also millions of game tape hours.

The ones that are really sunk into that amount of data (and many more which are only for NBA insiders) are the General Manager and the President of Basketball Operations, to decide a players value, trades, how much to offer for a contract, if it's worthy to re-sign a particular player, etc..

But as far as coaches, it's other people in the coaching staff who are processing all that information and giving the head coach a briefing. No single person can process that raw amount of data and transform it into a working system and then into a short speech to their players in a pre-game scouting report or even worse, a timeout. There are tendencies, which then could back up or refute direct observation. Not everything can be measured in stats and that's the beauty of it. Players like Robert Horry, Bruce Bowen, heck even Manu, can't be measured by numbers. And there are players whose stats may look impressive but their on-court performance don't.

"Ok, Melo, reading your PER and chart shot indicates that when you shoot three pointers after a pass from Lin in the left corner in the 2nd quarter your % isn't as good as when you receive in the high post from Chandler in the 3rd, but only when playing versus Toronto away, and only if Calderon comes to double team you, because if it's Bargnani, your WP/48 indicates a slight drop, which doesn't happen against the Bucks, but only at home on February the 6th on even years. Also your lactic acid level is low, have some more yogurt" :smchode:

[Spursfanfromafar]

As for APM, I like it but I like RAPM even better. Any thoughts on RAPM?

RAPM is based on a regression technique that is non-linear and is more sophisticated (I had to do a course on Linear Analysis and Quantitative studies, which I found too complicated and unnecessary for my research interests in grad school and so I basically never pursued it further... but this is the technique used - Tikhonov Regularisation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikhonov_regularization) )

A website that uses RAPM to rank NBA players is available. It is quite plain vanilla though -

http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/

Joe Sill who pioneered this technique used to host numbers on a site called "hoopnumbers" but APBR forums say that he has since become a consultant for some NBA team and has removed the site.

An article that explains the various linear, ridge and other regression techniques used to calculate APMs is available here (http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/2011/nba-stats/a-review-of-adjusted-plusminus-and-stabilization/)-

[Spursfanfromafar]

I won't even try to get into a debate over the validity of APM methodology, when there's such a huge disciple present. Easier just to stick to results. I just threw darts and pulled up the APM for 2006-2007. It shows Tony as 145th in the NBA that year, as far as the impact he had while on the floor.

But that's not the best part. The numeric score of his APM for that season was -3.06. In other words, substantially below that of an "average" NBA player, whatever the hell that is.

But that's still not the best part. At 127 on the list is... wait for it... Juan Dixon. And his APM rating for that season was -2.21. Substantially better than Parker. Perhaps better still was Jannero Pargo coming in at 108 on the list, with an APM of -.67 - much, much better than the lowly Tony Parker.

GSH, may I ask where did you get the APM information for 2006-07? For what sites I refer to for APMs (82games and basketballvalue)..the data is available only from 2007-08 (although there is downloadable data that needs to be processed).