Stats: most useful and most useless. (And various other complaints)

[BballTim]

I'm sorry I just can't give to much credence to a stat that slants the stats based on the position played and bases a good portion of the statistic for an individual on the performance of the team as a whole like WP does.

Weighing the stat in favor of position relative to the league average and how the talent performs at each position in a given year is wrong when trying to measure the value of an individual. Each team has a different dynamic with each position having different difficulty to play and different importance. PG within the Hornets is different than PG within the Celtics. PG is not nearly as important a position in the Celtics as PG is for the Hornets or SF is for the Celtics. Within a triangle offense certain positions are easier to play and more or less important than Mike D'Antoni's offensive system. Yet the players are measure based on a weighted system that all PG position are harder to play than center positions and that everything is judged by a league average.

Also team performance is then icorporated into it as well. You could be the best player in the league but because of poor talent and overall play around you have a low WP and the opposite also holds true. Take a look at the top players for 2006-2007: 

1 Jason Kidd 24.8
2 Kevin Garnett 20.6
3 Dwight Howard 20.5
4 Tim Duncan 20.1
5 Shawn Marion 19.5
6 Steve Nash 19.4
7 Carlos Boozer 18.4
8 Dirk Nowitzki 18.0
9 Marcus Camby 17.6
10 LeBron James 17.4
11 Tyson Chandler 16.9
12 Ben Wallace 15.8
13 Kobe Bryant 15.3
14 Luol Deng 14.9
15 Manu Ginobili 14.1
16 Emeka Okafor 14.1
17 Elton Brand 13.6
18 David Lee 13.6
19 Amare Stoudemire 13.4
20 Chauncey Billups 13.3
21 Chris Paul 13.2
22 Chris Bosh 12.6
23 Vince Carter 12.5
24 Andre Iguodala 12.4
25 Al Jefferson 12.2

Am I to believe that David Lee was such an outstanding player in 2006-2007 that he played better than Chris Paul, Chris Bosh, or Andre Iguodala? Am I to believe that LeBron had a worse year than Marcus Camby or that there were 12 players in the league that were better than Kobe Bryant that year?

I'm sorry, I think this stat is seriously bogus. Spend some time reading where they contrived the numbers from. There is a lot of conclusions and variables that are used that have nothing to do with the players individual performance.

  I don't think that David Lee's appearance on that list shows that it is bogus. Even if it's an outlier, that's still a reasonably accurate representation of the better players in the league, unless there's a big player missing that I didn't notice.

  WP48 is like any other stat. It can be taken out of context and it doesn't take into account things like whether you start or play against subs, or whether you're the focus of a defense or someone left wide open to shoot. As Nick noted it's weighted by position so it's not that great at comparing centers vs pgs in terms of value. I think it's kind of a measure of how well players fill the roles that they are given more than predictors of how they would fill more prominent roles.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

Even if it's an outlier, that's still a reasonably accurate representation of the better players in the league, unless there's a big player missing that I didn't notice.
 

Tmac, Wade, Yao, Carmelo and Arenas all made the All-NBA team, but were left of the list. Pierce and Deron Williams didn't make it, either.

[BballTim]

Even if it's an outlier, that's still a reasonably accurate representation of the better players in the league, unless there's a big player missing that I didn't notice.
 

Tmac, Wade, Yao, Carmelo and Arenas all made the All-NBA team, but were left of the list. Pierce and Deron Williams didn't make it, either.

  Fine. I didn't give the list a great look, and mentally had a bunch of those guys as injured (I know, wrong year...).

  I'm still intrigued by the fact that it seems to be a good predictor, especially with our team last year. The newness of the situation and the expected variation in production of the big 3 on the same team instead of leading individual teams gave a lot of variation to estimates but they seemed to nail it pretty well as I recall.

[zerophase]

rule #1 of stats class, stats say whatever you want them to say.

[Edgar]

Posted by: zerophase 
Insert Quote
rule #1 of stats class, stats say whatever you want them to say.

Exactly

Study case No.1

  Roy Hobbs       Forums Manager 2006-12-30 16585  
  Wide Load       Forums ViceRoy 2006-12-30 12704  
  Edgar         Moderador español 2007-01-01 9693   
  Who       Don Nelson 2007-07-28 6079  
  Redz       Global Moderator 2007-01-05 5842  
  IndeedProceed       Global Moderator 2006-12-30 5002  
  nickagneta       Cedric Maxwell 2007-06-11 3893  
  Donoghus       Global Moderator 2007-06-01 3593  
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  Bankshot       Cedric Maxwell 2006-12-31 3196  

Someone could thing that guy in 3rd place knows anything about basketball
joining that distinguished companion
lol....

[carlherrera]

ok, I looked a little closer at WP and I have to say I'm now trusting it a bit less. Jason Kidd by far the best player in 06-07? That sounds strange considering he had a very poor shooting percentage that year. Everything else was excellent but WP is supposed to "punish" shooting efficiency and that was a big gap in Kidd's game that year... ok, I'm a bit perplexed by that one...
Still a good tool to get insights on players whose value we may be understimating like the big men who rebound and play good D.
One stat that bugs me is to look at PPG in isolation. You can score 25 points but how many shots did you take? what was your shooting efficiency? were they created on their own or from an easy assist? Where you aggressive and went to the line? Where you just throwing a bunch of threes like our old friend 'Toine? I think the league overvalues "scorers" too much and that's why so many kids are worried about scoring because they'll get paid that way...