Advanced Metrics Nonsense

Or, for example, how he thought Charles Barkely was a top 10 player.
 
I don't understand why anybody wouldn't consider Barkley a top 10 player, let alone consider that a joke. Pretty much anybody would agree that scoring and rebounding are the 2 most important things in basketball, and he did those both as well as just about anyone. He had all the talent in the world. 28 and 12 in '88!!

You know who has done 28 and 12 post merger? I only know of Shaq and Moses Malone. Barkley shot a hell of a lot more efficiently than both of them. Barkley was as dominant as it gets on the individual level, but he doesn't have height, and he doesn't have rings, therefore he's not in most top 10 lists.
 
I don't understand why anybody wouldn't consider Barkley a top 10 player, let alone consider that a joke. Pretty much anybody would agree that scoring and rebounding are the 2 most important things in basketball, and he did those both as well as just about anyone. He had all the talent in the world. 28 and 12 in '88!!

You know who has done 28 and 12 post merger? I only know of Shaq and Moses Malone. Barkley shot a hell of a lot more efficiently than both of them. Barkley was as dominant as it gets on the individual level, but he doesn't have height, and he doesn't have rings, therefore he's not in most top 10 lists.

I don't care about either of those things (the rings and height, I mean).

I care about the defense, which was awful and atrocious, especially when he went to Phoenix.

Barkley easily is a top 10 offensive player of all time (although he took 2,000 3's for his career and was a 26.6% shooter from outside, which is inconceivable), but his defense was awful. If you truly are one of the greatest of all time, you at least should give effort on defense, and he was questioned his whole career for his defense.

My top ten just for argument's sake:

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
2. Michael Jordan
3. Magic Johnson
4. Larry Bird
5. Bill Russell
6. Tim Duncan
7. Hakeem Olajuwon
8. Wilt Chamberlain
9. Jerry West
10. LeBron James
 
I really only deal in the modern era of basketball. Post-merger, and after the addition of the 3 point line (1980ish?). Before that the game was very different, and the talent pool was very thin. I think comparing players from 1960 to now is useless.

I disagree that Barkley's D was awful. I would argue that his D is a hell of a lot better than Magic's. I don't think someone's D is questionable if they get 8+ D rebounds and 1.5+ steals per game (all 4 years in Phoenix). In Philly he was a monster. His best years got wasted with little talent surrounding him. He got there in the twilight years of some stars. He always had 1 good teammate, but just never a deep team.

Phoenix wasn't even close to his best years, that was just the best team he was on.
 
Looking over the assist rates for certain players, it seems as if Grevis Vasquez has no other redeeming qualities (average offensive player, below average defender), other than the fact that he can pile up assists when he's on the floor.
 
Odom looking like his old self more and more. Averaging 10 rp36, but he's not scoring efficiently. I think he'll come around though. He could make the Clippers very dangerous.
 
Awesome article about the tendencies of MVP voting:

Only 1 player has ever won with fewer than 20 ppg (Steve Nash)
Only 3 players have ever won with fewer than 55 wins (M Malone, M Jordan, S Nash)
Only 1 player has ever won appearing in fewer than 75 games (Iverson)
Only 1 player has ever won without getting the most first place votes (Magic over Barkley)
No consensus MVP ever

Based on all this, the guys currently in the MVP conversation are:

Durant
Lebron
Westbrook
Melo
D Lee
S Curry

Everything you need to know about the MVP Award
 
MVP is Lebron's to lose. He's only averaging 26.5, 8.5, and 7. There's not another perimeter player shooting 55% and who averages those type of numbers. Honestly Lebron should win the MVP every year until he stops putting these type of numbers up, and if he doesn't win it it's because people are tired of voting for him.
 
MVP is Lebron's to lose. He's only averaging 26.5, 8.5, and 7. There's not another perimeter player shooting 55% and who averages those type of numbers. Honestly Lebron should win the MVP every year until he stops putting these type of numbers up, and if he doesn't win it it's because people are tired of voting for him.

He's going to get the Jordan treatment. People are tired of voting for him.

With Durant's shooting numbers, better assists number, above average defense, and the controversy of the Harden trade and they are still just as good, he'll get it.
 
MVP is Lebron's to lose. He's only averaging 26.5, 8.5, and 7. There's not another perimeter player shooting 55% and who averages those type of numbers. Honestly Lebron should win the MVP every year until he stops putting these type of numbers up, and if he doesn't win it it's because people are tired of voting for him.

And I agree with you. He's the best player in the league. He should win MVP till his reign is over.
 
Lebron is the best player, but I think Durant is outplaying him so far this year.

Durant is the better shooter no doubt, but I think Lebron's body of work has been the best overall. It'll come down to Durant and Lebron though, and whoever does better in the h2h matchup and whoever's team has the better record will win it. But like you said I think he'll get the Jordan treatment unless he continues to average near triple dubs each night.

Regardless we're extremely lucky to witness these two go at it.. They're like the Bird-Magic rivalry of our generation, except they might be better..
 
Jordan probably won too many MVPs. I don't think he had 5 seasons where he was the best performing regular season player.

Durant is shooting .648 TS%, which is insane. His best by a long shot, and his scoring numbers were already insane. Jordan's last MVP he was shooting .533 TS% (basically league average), and none of his other numbers were very impressive, either. He was still good on D. Jordan won that one on reputation alone.
 
Jordan probably won too many MVPs. I don't think he had 5 seasons where he was the best performing regular season player.

Durant is shooting .648 TS%, which is insane. His best by a long shot, and his scoring numbers were already insane. Jordan's last MVP he was shooting .533 TS% (basically league average), and none of his other numbers were very impressive, either. He was still good on D. Jordan won that one on reputation alone.

Well he probably should have won in 89 and 90, where he put up an ungodly shooting average of 53.2% for two years (with hand checking rules) 7.5 boards, 7.2 assists, arguably the best defensive guard in basketball, and had a shooting line of 53.2/34.7/85 and averaged 85% from the FT line.

Maybe the greatest back to back guard season of all time. Combined win shares that year? 38.8.

Pretty sure Hines just had an orgasm after reading that.

Also, right before he retired, for five years, Jordan's averages? 32.5 ppg/6.6 rpg/6.2 apg with a shooting slash of 52.5/32.1/84.4, averaged 8.6 FTA per game and was arguably the best defensive guard in the league. His win shares? 115.3 and a TS% of 59.5 and eFG% of 53.7. Holy Hell.
 
Jordan probably won too many MVPs. I don't think he had 5 seasons where he was the best performing regular season player.

Durant is shooting .648 TS%, which is insane. His best by a long shot, and his scoring numbers were already insane. Jordan's last MVP he was shooting .533 TS% (basically league average), and none of his other numbers were very impressive, either. He was still good on D. Jordan won that one on reputation alone.

Jordan led the league in win shares for NINE YEARS. I can make the case he didn't win enough MVPs.
 
Well he probably should have won in 89 and 90, where he put up an ungodly shooting average of 53.2% for two years (with hand checking rules) 7.5 boards, 7.2 assists, arguably the best defensive guard in basketball, and had a shooting line of 53.2/34.7/85 and averaged 85% from the FT line.

Dude, he was amazing, but I've got Magic both of those years...look at 89...Magic did 22, 13, 8 and outshot Jordan.

What do you like about the Win Shares stat? I like Wins Produced because I know the math behind it, and it's solid. Looking through past seasons' Win Shares winners I'm not seeing any that averaged less than 20 ppg, which raises a flag that it probably skews towards scoring.

I don't know the math behind Win Shares, but I do know Dirk was 1st in Win Shares in 05-06 and he was 16th in Wins Produced.
 
Dude, he was amazing, but I've got Magic both of those years...look at 89...Magic did 22, 13, 8 and outshot Jordan.

What do you like about the Win Shares stat? I like Wins Produced because I know the math behind it, and it's solid. Looking through past seasons' Win Shares winners I'm not seeing any that averaged less than 20 ppg, which raises a flag that it probably skews towards scoring.

I don't know the math behind Win Shares, but I do know Dirk was 1st in Win Shares in 05-06 and he was 16th in Wins Produced.

Calculating Win Shares | Basketball-Reference.com
 
Dude, he was amazing, but I've got Magic both of those years...look at 89...Magic did 22, 13, 8 and outshot Jordan.

What do you like about the Win Shares stat? I like Wins Produced because I know the math behind it, and it's solid. Looking through past seasons' Win Shares winners I'm not seeing any that averaged less than 20 ppg, which raises a flag that it probably skews towards scoring.

I don't know the math behind Win Shares, but I do know Dirk was 1st in Win Shares in 05-06 and he was 16th in Wins Produced.

I like it's ability to combine efficiency and factors in team play, because in basketball team play is highly important in how a player performs.
 

I already looked there. It was too much to read...more than anything I'd like to see how they came up with their formula? Regression modeling? Can't find an answer.

I've seen the actual models Wins Produced was built on, including t-Stats, R^2, etc. I understand less of that stuff now than when I was in college, I just remember being completely convinced that Wins Produced was legit...to put R^2 and the other crap into layman's terms: the model explains 98% of winning. To put that into perspective, a model that explains 85% of anything (controlling for confidence intervals, and whatnot) is a pretty good model.

I feel like I said all of that just to sound smart. What a douche.
 

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