Hollinger argues Minn worst then NJ. What's the point?

[Fafnir]

So again, no need to be insulting, in this case it is not warranted, needed or is your statement accurate. How about you discuss this without the semi veiled insults.

It wasn't a veiled insult nick. I respect your intelligence and basketball IQ. But you do not have a good grasp of statistics when applied to basketball. Its not an insult to be disgreed with, or have incorrect beliefs or understandings challenged.

Shooting percentages, offensive rebounding passing and turnover statistics are in way way shape or form a part of the offensive efficiency formulation. They are their own separate stats. That like saying steals and blocks and defensive rebounding is a part of the defensive efficiency stat. They aren't. Efficiency stats are simply how often a team scores in 100 possessions. That's it.

This is patently untrue. A basketball posession can end a couple of ways. A made shot, a turnover, free throws, or a defensive rebound (counting shots that deflect directly out of bounds as a "rebound").

So eFG%, TOV%, free throw rate (this is hard to use because of end of game fouling situations), and ORB% all directly effect offensive efficiency. They are not independent of offensive efficiency.

Steal, blocks, and defensive rebounding are not part of defensive efficiency, that's correct. What they are is part of the net possessions, the best teams get more possessions than their opponents to score. This is why their are a variety of offensive/defensive rating systems that incorporate net posessions into their formulations.

Your accustation that Hollinger was "ignoring" part of the story his stats are telling is unfounded.

And pace is not a part of those stats nor have they been taken out of them. teams that play at a faster rate just about always have higher defensive efficiencies because the pace often dictates the quality of the defense being played. Teams playing at faster rates will expend more energy on the offensive side and wear themselves down more and hence give up more points in 100 possessions. In the large picture, pace is not removed from the proper interpretation of offensive and defensive efficiencies.

This isn't true as far as I'm aware. There have been a great many teams that play at a fast pace but are still solid defensive teams. The current group of Lakers is a prime example, but there have been many others.

Maybe there has been some literature or studies that have shown there is an effect like you suggest, but I haven't seen it.

[fairweatherfan]

Steal, blocks, and defensive rebounding are not part of defensive efficiency, that's correct.

Sure they are, indirectly - if you steal the ball the team didn't score on that possession.  If you block it, they may retain possession and eventually score, but you may get the ball or force a shot clock violation.  And a defensive rebound is the most frequent way a stop is completed.  While the actual formula is blind to how the stop was made, all these things contribute to the overall number and so are not independent of it.  All else being equal, a team that is higher in any of these categories will have a higher defensive efficiency than a team that is lower.

[Fafnir]

Steal, blocks, and defensive rebounding are not part of defensive efficiency, that's correct.

Sure they are, indirectly - if you steal the ball the team didn't score on that possession.  If you block it, they may retain possession and eventually score, but you may get the ball or force a shot clock violation.  And a defensive rebound is the most frequent way a stop is completed.  While the actual formula is blind to how the stop was made, all these things contribute to the overall number and so are not independent of it.  All else being equal, a team that is higher in any of these categories will have a higher defensive efficiency than a team that is lower.

Yup, whoops. This is what happen when I make long posts at work!

I was thinking of differential not total rates.

[nickagneta]

So again, no need to be insulting, in this case it is not warranted, needed or is your statement accurate. How about you discuss this without the semi veiled insults.

It wasn't a veiled insult nick. I respect your intelligence and basketball IQ. But you do not have a good grasp of statistics when applied to basketball. Its not an insult to be disgreed with, or have incorrect beliefs or understandings challenged.

Shooting percentages, offensive rebounding passing and turnover statistics are in way way shape or form a part of the offensive efficiency formulation. They are their own separate stats. That like saying steals and blocks and defensive rebounding is a part of the defensive efficiency stat. They aren't. Efficiency stats are simply how often a team scores in 100 possessions. That's it.

This is patently untrue. A basketball posession can end a couple of ways. A made shot, a turnover, free throws, or a defensive rebound (counting shots that deflect directly out of bounds as a "rebound").

So eFG%, TOV%, free throw rate (this is hard to use because of end of game fouling situations), and ORB% all directly effect offensive efficiency. They are not independent of offensive efficiency.

Steal, blocks, and defensive rebounding are not part of defensive efficiency, that's correct. What they are is part of the net possessions, the best teams get more possessions than their opponents to score. This is why their are a variety of offensive/defensive rating systems that incorporate net posessions into their formulations.

Your accustation that Hollinger was "ignoring" part of the story his stats are telling is unfounded.

And pace is not a part of those stats nor have they been taken out of them. teams that play at a faster rate just about always have higher defensive efficiencies because the pace often dictates the quality of the defense being played. Teams playing at faster rates will expend more energy on the offensive side and wear themselves down more and hence give up more points in 100 possessions. In the large picture, pace is not removed from the proper interpretation of offensive and defensive efficiencies.

This isn't true as far as I'm aware. There have been a great many teams that play at a fast pace but are still solid defensive teams. The current group of Lakers is a prime example, but there have been many others.

Maybe there has been some literature or studies that have shown there is an effect like you suggest, but I haven't seen it.

Sorry, the individual results of a possession have nothing to do with offensive efficiency. What matters is whether the points are scored or not and how many. That's it. That's all that stat tells you.

Whether a team is turning a ball over, missing a shot, taking free throws, getting offensive rebounds or making shots matter only in those individual stats.

First, offensive rebounding only gets a team another possession, it has nothing to do with how efficient a team is. If someone gets a offensive rebound and puts is immediately in that might help offensive efficiency. But I have also seen on a regular basis where a team 3,4,5 times offensively rebound a shot, shoot it, miss get that rebound and shoot and miss and so on. That's going to make their offensive efficiency worse.

A team can have a great offensive efficiency and turn the ball over a ton. Boston two years ago is a prime example. Just because a team turns a ball over a lot doesn't mean that they are more or less efficient an offense. The same holds true for shooting percentages. A team can have a good shooting percentage but because they don't take a lot or make a lot of three point shots, their offensive efficiency will be much lower.

These are just a few examples. Sorry, but you are wrong.

These are individual stats that need to be independently interpreted and are not figured into in the offensive efficiency stat of a team. They all need to be taken into consideration separately and looked at as part of a whole and reviewed accordingly. That Hollinger ignores these stats to base his statements solely on point differential is irresponsible for someone who already believes so strongly in applying many different stats to review the overall play of individual players that he invented the Player Efficiency Rating that which encompasses many different stats to make up a whole new stat. Yet he ignores that in trying to judge two different teams.

As for the Laker, pace, defensive efficiency argument, I agree, they are excellent defensively for a team with a faster pace. But logic and knowing something about the game dictates that on average, faster pace teams pay less attention to defense than the do to offense. It's been that way for decades. I don't have a specially formulated report to identify that but having watched the NBA for 30 years, it's pretty obvious that it's true.

[Fafnir]

Sorry, the individual results of a possession have nothing to do with offensive efficiency. What matters is whether the points are scored or not and how many. That's it. That's all that stat tells you.

Whether a team is turning a ball over, missing a shot, taking free throws, getting offensive rebounds or making shots matter only in those individual stats.

This just wrong. Offensive efficiency is the sum result of every single offensive posession adjusted for pace. Each posession is a single event, and effects the whole.

First, offensive rebounding only gets a team another possession, it has nothing to do with how efficient a team is. If someone gets a offensive rebound and puts is immediately in that might help offensive efficiency. But I have also seen on a regular basis where a team 3,4,5 times offensively rebound a shot, shoot it, miss get that rebound and shoot and miss and so on. That's going to make their offensive efficiency worse.

Depends on how you count offensive rebounds, many systems consider it a single posession. But I do admit I'm not sure how Hollinger approaches it.

team can have a great offensive efficiency and turn the ball over a ton. Boston two years ago is a prime example. Just because a team turns a ball over a lot doesn't mean that they are more or less efficient an offense. The same holds true for shooting percentages. A team can have a good shooting percentage but because they don't take a lot or make a lot of three point shots, their offensive efficiency will be much lower.

Thats why I cited eFG% that controls for this. Nick you're just wrong about turnovers not effecting offensive efficieny. A turn over is the same as a missed shot as far as offensive efficieny numbers. Boston has a very efficient offense per 100 posessions in spite of their turn over issues. It does effect the statistic.

But logic and knowing something about the game dictates that on average, faster pace teams pay less attention to defense than the do to offense. It's been that way for decades. I don't have a specially formulated report to identify that but having watched the NBA for 30 years, it's pretty obvious that it's true.

Appealing to your own authority on the subject isn't going to convince me nick. Using pace adjusted statistics is about looking beyond our own opinions at objective data.

Coaching strategy is what effects pace the most in my view, but I'm not going to try and use that to discount what statistics say about teams.

Logic and commen sense is often wrong. The Suns under D'Antoni were often pidgeonholed as awful defensively. Really they were good to average during his time there.

[Tai]

Why Hollinger, who is a slave to his own derived mathematical formulations didn't go to his other Hollinger team stats to compare the two teams is beyond me because in those stats, Minnesota looks like they might be the slightly better team.

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats

In those stats Minnesota has a higher assist%, a lower turnover%, a higher eFG% and higher TS%, a lower defensive rebound rate, a higher offensive rebound rate and an almost identical rebound rate(48.0 to 48.1) and differential in the offensive and defensive efficiencies(13.8 to 13).

Funny how when Hollinger wants to make stat based arguments he always excludes anything that doesn't prove his point....even his own derived statistics.

nick even you have to know you're being ridiculous here you can't just compare stat categories like that to assess team strength. You have to look at the whole picture.

All those stats you summed up basically mean that Minnesota is a better offensive team than NJ. Which is reflected by their offensive rating! They're much worse defensively though, and their defense is bad enough to make their efficiency differential less than the Nets.

If you're going to rip Hollinger's stats at least take the time to understand them.

See, I already said this, and I'll repeat my comment on it; it sounds like both teams suck in different ways. Nets can't score, Minnesota can't defend. Then again, I don't know if the Nets giving up 97.9 points per game is defending, but it's about 7 points better than the Wolves so we take it, right?

Anyways, I also said if both teams didn't play each other yet this season, I'd be ok with Hollinger's assessment. The truth is though, the Nets scored 11 points lower against the Wolves (93) than what the Wolves are giving up per game this season (104.4). This was with everyone for the Nets being healthy except Sean Williams and Najera. Yi and Lopez both had double-doubles against the Wolves, and it wasn't enough.

The Nets haven't won since, the Wolves did, against the Nuggets, in Denver. Now, you have the Nets giving up 77 points against the Mavs in the 1st half. I know it's an anomaly, but to me this proves the Nets having given up 97.9 points per game isn't really that far from 100. Would we Celtic fans be ok with our team giving up 97.9 points per game? Don't make me laugh. Also consider that the Nets have given up 100 points in the last three games, and 4 out of the last 5. That 2 point differential advantage that the Nets have over the Wolves doesn't look so sexy with the way the Nets are going. MAYBE that will change the coaching overhaul, but that's a prayer left for Nets fans to kneel over.

I'd much rather you say Yi hasn't come back yet than say the Nets are better based on their performance. Even if you wanna argue the Wolves and Nets are even....at least the Wolves have won two games, one was against the Nets, and it doesn't seem like the Nets can "defend" anymore either.

I won't close the book on this, and neither should anyone else, not before either team even plays 20 games this season, but can you really look me straight me in the eye and say the Nets are better than the Wolves right now, as of December 3rd, 2009?

[Hoops]

I get what you're saying, Tai, but let me throw a question back at you - can you really say that the Wolves are better simply because they beat the Nets by a measly basket in a single game?

[Casperian]

Coaching strategy is what effects pace the most in my view, but I'm not going to try and use that to discount what statistics say about teams.

What effects pace the most is the opposing team.

Pace numbers this early in the season are meaningless.
It would be nice if every team would play every opponent the same number of times, since that messes with so many team-oriented statistics.
Injuries are also not part of the pace stat or the efficiency stats.
It doesn´t account for matchups, different refereees or certain changes of team strategies by the coaches over the course of a season.

To be quite honest, all these holes make me wonder how anyone can give a flying rat fart about these stats.

[Fafnir]

Pace numbers this early in the season are meaningless.
It would be nice if every team would play every opponent the same number of times, since that messes with so many team-oriented statistics, too.
Injuries are also not part of the pace stat or the efficiency stats.
It doesn´t account for matchups, or certain changes of team strategies by the coaches over the course of a season.

All of those factors are smoothed out over the course of a season. I agree its still early, but we're rapidly approached the point that the sample size is sufficient to give us a pretty good picture. Nearly 1/4 of the season has been played.

[Fafnir]

I won't close the book on this, and neither should anyone else, not before either team even plays 20 games this season, but can you really look me straight me in the eye and say the Nets are better than the Wolves right now, as of December 3rd, 2009?

I don't disagree with what you say overall. My main issue has been with Nick's approach to arguing the same conclusion as you.

You cite the horrific play of the Nets of late, don't forget that the Wolves almost tied a record losing streak themselves. Both teams suck.

[nickagneta]

Sorry, the individual results of a possession have nothing to do with offensive efficiency. What matters is whether the points are scored or not and how many. That's it. That's all that stat tells you.

Whether a team is turning a ball over, missing a shot, taking free throws, getting offensive rebounds or making shots matter only in those individual stats.

This just wrong. Offensive efficiency is the sum result of every single offensive posession adjusted for pace. Each posession is a single event, and effects the whole.

First, offensive rebounding only gets a team another possession, it has nothing to do with how efficient a team is. If someone gets a offensive rebound and puts is immediately in that might help offensive efficiency. But I have also seen on a regular basis where a team 3,4,5 times offensively rebound a shot, shoot it, miss get that rebound and shoot and miss and so on. That's going to make their offensive efficiency worse.

Depends on how you count offensive rebounds, many systems consider it a single posession. But I do admit I'm not sure how Hollinger approaches it.

team can have a great offensive efficiency and turn the ball over a ton. Boston two years ago is a prime example. Just because a team turns a ball over a lot doesn't mean that they are more or less efficient an offense. The same holds true for shooting percentages. A team can have a good shooting percentage but because they don't take a lot or make a lot of three point shots, their offensive efficiency will be much lower.

Thats why I cited eFG% that controls for this. Nick you're just wrong about turnovers not effecting offensive efficieny. A turn over is the same as a missed shot as far as offensive efficieny numbers. Boston has a very efficient offense per 100 posessions in spite of their turn over issues. It does effect the statistic.

But logic and knowing something about the game dictates that on average, faster pace teams pay less attention to defense than the do to offense. It's been that way for decades. I don't have a specially formulated report to identify that but having watched the NBA for 30 years, it's pretty obvious that it's true.

Appealing to your own authority on the subject isn't going to convince me nick. Using pace adjusted statistics is about looking beyond our own opinions at objective data.

Coaching strategy is what effects pace the most in my view, but I'm not going to try and use that to discount what statistics say about teams.

Logic and commen sense is often wrong. The Suns under D'Antoni were often pidgeonholed as awful defensively. Really they were good to average during his time there.

Well, obviously we completely disagree and I think you are clueless about what you are talking about and you think the same about me. We can just leave it at that.

[Tai]

I get what you're saying, Tai, but let me throw a question back at you - can you really say that the Wolves are better simply because they beat the Nets by a measly basket in a single game?

They won, didn't they? I already said the Wolves have 60 more games to prove they're better. Heck, maybe they can prove themselves Dec 23.

Also, I did say that the Nets couldn't even score 95 points on a team that gives up 104 points per game. The Nets offense seems that futile, and just like the Wolves' game, seems to offset their supposed "defense" all season so far. If the Nets are truly better than the Wolves, then let them beat the Wolves at home. They'll probably have gelled more by then, and even Yi might be back by that time.

[Casperian]

Pace numbers this early in the season are meaningless.
It would be nice if every team would play every opponent the same number of times, since that messes with so many team-oriented statistics, too.
Injuries are also not part of the pace stat or the efficiency stats.
It doesn´t account for matchups, or certain changes of team strategies by the coaches over the course of a season.

All of those factors are smoothed out over the course of a season. I agree its still early, but we're rapidly approached the point that the sample size is sufficient to give us a pretty good picture. Nearly 1/4 of the season has been played.

I don´t think the sample size is the problem. The problem is the stat itself.
It´s a generalizing stat that pretends to make a definitive statement in an everchanging environment.
Simply put, there are far too many variables to make it a complete stat.

To say these things even out over the course of a season is not correct.
The opposing team and their efforts in a certain matchup can´t be reproduced, their peformance isn´t evidence from which you can derive future performances. A summary of useless evidence is still useless evidence.

You know, the next time we´ll play the Hawks, you can bet that the Celtics will look a lot different than the last time, because they´ll have a different psychological momentum. They`ll have something to prove. It will be a completely different game, with different referees, maybe with different line-ups, when Baby comes back. And it will have a different pace.

The pace stat is static, but what he wants to explain is dynamic.
Even after a full season, all a stat like pace gives you is a trend, at best.
Stats like pace should never be the basis for an argument, in my opinion, and only be used to enhance the discussion.

(Nothing personal, I just really, really hate these stats).

[fairweatherfan]

I don´t think the sample size is the problem. The problem is the stat itself.
It´s a generalizing stat that pretends to make a definitive statement in an everchanging environment.
Simply put, there are far too many variables to make it a complete stat.

To say these things even out over the course of a season is not correct.
That´s exactly my point. The opposing team and their efforts in a certain matchup can´t be reproduced, their peformance isn´t evidence from which you can derive future performances. A summary of useless evidence is still useless evidence.

You know, the next time we´ll play the Hawks, you can bet that the Celtics will look a lot different than the last time, because they´ll have a different psychological momentum. They`ll have something to prove. It will be a completely different game, with different referees, maybe with different line-ups, when Baby comes back. And it will have a different pace.

The pace stat is static, but what he wants to explain is dynamic.
Even after a full season, all a stat like pace gives you is a trend, at best.
Stats like pace should never be the basis for an argument, in my opinion, and only be used to enhance the discussion.

(Nothing personal, I just really, really hate these stats).

All your criticisms are generally true, but there is always a middle ground between "stats are always right and tell you everything you need to know" and "stats are totally worthless and tell you nothing".  Anything that happens on an NBA court is multiply determined; some of the things that cause each event can be quantified and others cannot.  While we'll never be able to quantify things well enough to predict 100% of what events will happen in the future, we can do it well enough to predict well over chance accuracy, and well over the predictive ability of more conventional stats like W-L (don't forget, wins and losses are a statistic just like any other). 

People (not necessarily you) seem to expect that if there's anything at all that can't be captured by a given stat, then the stat is worthless.  But if pt differential or team efficiency is a better predictor, then it's a better predictor - that's all there is to it.  It doesn't mean there still isn't variance that the stat doesn't explain, because there always will be; it just means there's less unexplained variance when using the superior stat.  Using more than one successful predictor reduces unexplained variance further and makes your predictions more accurate as a whole.

Meanwhile, people like Hollinger continue looking for better predictors and ways to tweak current predictors so they explain more variance.  Over time, we get better at anticipating future events. Evidence has shown differential and other higher-level stats to generally be significantly better predictors of future success than the W-L statistic.  That's all there is to it.

[Fan from VT]

I think of it this way. In combination, Defensive and Offensive efficiency (and the difference between the two) are the best (and least specific) measures of how good a team is.

In other words, Defensive and Offensive efficiency is the WHAT.


All other categories: turnovers, rebounds, effg%, ETC. are attempts to find the WHY/HOW.


For example, let's compare Toronto and Boston offensively. If we look at substats, we could have a nice debate about which one is better: Toronto turns it over less, Boston shoots more efficiently, etc. However, the fact of the matter is that, given 100 possessions (and a possession begins when your team gains control and either scores or the other team gains full possession, so offensive rebounds don't matter), Toronto will score 109.5 points and Boston will score 107.7 points. Toronto is better on offense. THEN you can look at the substats to figure out WHY Toronto is better: probably because while Boston's true shooting percentage is higher, their turnover ration is significantly higher.

Then, of course, you look at Defense, which has very few substats that are trackable: turnovers forced, defensive rebounds, etc.



But the main point is that substats are not inherent markers of good or bad, but possible explanations (the WHY) for what a team might to do improve it's offensive efficiency (the WHAT).