In basketball, I have found that there are good stats, useless stats, and stats that need improvement.
To look at team defense and how teams stack up against each other, I would consider Defensive Rating to be 20x more valuable than opponent shooting %, opponent ppg, and opp. 3 pt %, but those are the stats that the national media will generally feed you. DRtg takes into account just about anything, including pace, offensive rebounds against you and the results, and any turnovers you create. The slight flaw, like a lot of other statistics is how garbage time affects it. I bet Cleveland's backups have hurt their number as an example.
Rebounding stats have been revolutionized, with D and O Rebound %. If the other team shoots 20%, the rebounds will be more plentiful and I like DReb% because you can't get bogged down by pace or having a great defense. And I mention this just as another example of a stat that has very good value to assess a situation.
There are a ton of stats out there that have some sort of value. If a guy looks great across the board on a ton of them, you can make a good conclusion that that guy is particularly good. This is what I have seen out of KG year after year, because he has great on/off court numbers, great Net PER, solid efficiency, solid DReb%, etc. May seem obvious to most, but it can be a great way to measure guys on different teams.
Like the statistical basketball mind Dean Oliver said:
The eyes give you a better idea about the game than the stats can, but the stats see all the games.