Rondo vs the other elite PGs: by the numbers

[drza44]

There was a thread this morning asking why Rondo doesn't measure out as well in John Hollinger's PER stat as we might think he is...that Rondo ranked 47th in PER, so what is it about his game that doesn't translate to that advanced stat?  Now, there's another thread about how Rondo compares to Nash (based on a quote from Marcin Gortat).  Well, that got me thinking.  I'm really into the APBR-metric stats in basketball, as I think they give us a LOT of information that either isn't apparent or else just flat out isn't in the box scores.  But in order for them to be effective, IMO, you need to a) understand a bit about how they work, b) understand a bit about their strengths and weaknesses, and c) look at a large enough cross-section of the "advanced stats" to get a full picture of a player.

So I wondered: how do our players measure out vs their peers, according to the nerd stats?  We have a lot of internal debates around here as far as how good our guys are, and because of the way the Cs play their impact isn't readily obvious in the traditional points/rebounds/assists summary/Sportscenter blurbs.  So, what do the advanced stats say about our guys?

I'm going to look into all 4 of our All Star caliber starters, but I'll start it off today with Rondo since he was the subject of the post that got me on this.  I'll compare him against 9 other newsworthy point guards (7 that I thought of by name, then the best point guards out of each of the last 2 draft classes by reputation).  I'm going to look at 5 different stats: Hollinger's PER, Basketball-reference's win shares, Dave Berri's Wins Produced, 82games.com's Roland Rating, and BasketballValue's 1-year adjusted +/-.  I'll give a brief blurb about each stat based on my experience with them, and then at the end we'll look and see how those stats would rank our guy vs the other bests at his position.

Today we're looking at Rondo vs Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Steve Nash, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Tony Parker, Ray Felton, Steph Curry and John Wall.

PER: Hollinger's stat, probably the most popular of the "advanced stats", favorable (compared to other advanced stats) to volume scorers and players that generate a lot of free throws; generally ranks those considered "great" by the general public well, though also will tend to have role players with good scoring-per-minute very highly.  Here is how each of our PGs ranks in PER:



   PER
Paul    26
Nash    24.05
Westbrook    24.02
Williams    23.08
Rose    22.89
Parker    21.06
Curry    20.67
Rondo    18.55
Felton    17.31
Wall    15.35


Win Shares: From Basketball-reference.com, shooting/scoring efficiency; loves points per shot (thus values FTs drawn).  To account for different minutes played, we're going to look at Win Shares per 48 minutes played. 


   WS48
Paul    0.284
Nash    0.195
Rose    0.189
Williams    0.184
Parker    0.179
Westbrook    0.155
Rondo    0.151
Curry    0.145
Felton    0.097
Wall    0.038


Wins Produced: Dave Berri's controversial stat (most likely to be trashed on an APBRmetric board) is also the one seemingly growing fastest in popular usage; wins produced values what he defines as possessions, so loves rebounds, steals, and blocks and doesn't like TOs; doesn't value shot creation, but does value assists.  We'll look at Wins Produced per 48 minutes.


   WP48
Paul    0.4
Nash    0.335
Rondo    0.31
Williams    0.229
Westbrook    0.208
Rose    0.194
Parker    0.184
Curry    0.15
Felton    0.128
Wall    0.104


Roland Rating: 82games.com's Roland Rating is based upon a combination of PER and +/- stats.  It looks at the individual PER of each player, the PER of their primary defensive assignment, and subtracts the 2 for a 1-on-1 value then they combine that 1-on-1 value with a team-impact based on-court/off-court +/- stat to get the rating.  Tends to produce fewest "what???" rankings, because players that rank out highly in both the 1-on-1 and team stats are almost universally who we consider to be among the best in the game...though the order at the top isn't always what you'd expect.


   Roland Rating
Nash    15.8
Paul    12.5
Rondo    9
Rose    7.1
Williams    4.1
Parker    4
Curry    3.5
Westbrook    2.9
Wall    -2.9
Felton    -5.2


1-year Adjusted +/-: This is Basketballvalue.com's APM calculation.  I don't love it because APM is so incredibly noisy that a single year (or less) doesn't give conclusive answers.  Even 2 years may be too short for an APM calculation.  I like longer APM calculations, 4 years or more, to really clean up the noise and give a robust effect.  Nevertheless, we're talking about this year so this is both the 1-year APM as well as the (huge) standard errors for each guy:

Name      APM      SE Rose          17.81    10.76 Paul         17.46    9.55 Williams     11.66    9.34 Nash          10.75    9.68 Curry          9.09    5.69 Rondo          5.53    6.83 Westbrook    -0.3    10.11 Parker          -1.49    7.31 Felton          -10.52    6.81 Wall          -12.33    6.01

Overall Rank orders: Giving each of our 10 guys a '1' through '10' ranking based on where they ranked in each stat, here is a summary of how each guy did.  I'll add an average across the 5 stats (with standard error) to give us a better idea how our seat-of-the-pants-advanced-stat-cross-section-view ranks Rondo with respect to 9 of the best point guards in the NBA:

Name      Average   Std. Error Paul              1.4        0.24      Nash             2.2     0.49 Rose             3.8     0.86 Williams       4.0     0.32 Rondo           5.4     1.03 Westbrook    5.8     0.86 Parker          6.4        0.51 Curry            7.0    0.55 Felton          9.2     0.20 Wall             9.8     0.20

Conclusions:

Just about every advanced stat, no matter how calculated, agreed that Chris Paul and Steve Nash have been the 2 best point guards in the NBA this year.  Likewise, just about every stat concurs that John Wall and Ray Felton have been clearly the worst of this top-10.

Rondo is smack-dab in the middle of the rest of those vying for a top-spot.  With standard error considered Rose, Deron Williams and Rondo all overlap with each other for the 3 - 5 slots.  Likewise Westbrook, Parker and Curry all overlap each other for the 6 - 8 slots.  But Rondo is so well clustered that his ranking would overlap with everyone from Rose (nominally 3rd) to Parker (nominally 7th).

On the whole, I'm satisfied with that ranking for Rondo.  He's not quite as good on the whole as Paul or Nash, but he's right there with Rose, Williams and the rest with a strong argument for top-5 PG in the NBA this year.  Sounds about right to me.

[BballTim]

  Rondo's place in those rankings are affected by the fact that he's been playing through those hamstring/foot injuries.

[Greenbean]

Offensively, I agree. What happens when you factor in defense?

TP by the way for a fantastic collectino of data!

[drza44]

Offensively, I agree. What happens when you factor in defense?

Thanks for the TP (1 back atcha).  And if you'll note, both the Roland Rating and the Adjusted +/- factor in defense.  Rondo measures out 3rd and 6th in those 2 particular stats, among the PGs listed here.

Here's the thing about Rondo's defense that I don't think many of us like to consider: point guard is the position that impacts defenses the least.  I definitely prefer to have Rondo's defense at our PG slot, but the reality is that his presence doesn't make a big difference to the Celtics' team defense (The Cs defense actually does slightly worse with Rondo on the floor than when he's out, per 100 possessions).  At point guard your biggest influence on the game is going to be offensive, which is why Paul and Nash graded out as higher despite Rondo's better defense.

Rondo's rebounding and hustle to loose balls can be game-changing at times and his steals are great.  But on the whole, the majority of his impact is going to come on the offensive side of the ball.

[Vermont Green]

I think this ended up about where I would expect with the possible exception of Curry.  I don't see him much so maybe he is better than my perception of him.  This analysis has Rondo in the mix with Westbrook and Parker below Paul, Williams, Nash, and Rose.  I feel Billups should be in there too probably in place of or next to Curry but overall I agree.

[jarufu]

TP!

Thanks for this .. I know it's only statistics but it does give a perspective of Rondo and his peers ..

Now, would I personally want any of the others in place of Rondo just because they're above him in the metrics?  Nope.

[drza44]

I think this ended up about where I would expect with the possible exception of Curry.  I don't see him much so maybe he is better than my perception of him.  This analysis has Rondo in the mix with Westbrook and Parker below Paul, Williams, Nash, and Rose.  I feel Billups should be in there too probably in place of or next to Curry but overall I agree.

Yeah, I tried to be careful with my wording early on because I didn't conceive of this as a true top-10 ranking (I'd be shocked if Billups wasn't higher than both Wall and Felton, for example).  I started with who I really thought were the top-6 or 7 PGs, then I added in Felton because of the All Star buzz he's gotten, then I added in Wall because of the rookie buzz he was getting, and that left me at 9...seemed like a top-10 made more sense.  I was going to put in Monta Ellis as the 10th, then saw he was listed as the SG with Curry as the PG, figured Curry was almost last year's ROY, and made him the 10th.  But it definitely could have, maybe should have been Billups in there...

[Celtics17]

Which one of the above mentioned point guards had 15 second half assists against the World Champion Lackers on their homecourt? Case closed!

[soap07]

This is fantastic. Really well done, thanks so much.

Couple quick questions if you can answer them:

Wins Produced: Dave Berri's controversial stat (most likely to be trashed on an APBRmetric board) is also the one seemingly growing fastest in popular usage; wins produced values what he defines as possessions, so loves rebounds, steals, and blocks and doesn't like TOs; doesn't value shot creation, but does value assists.  We'll look at Wins Produced per 48 minutes.

If you are good at creating your own shot, why would that not count as a possession?

[Fafnir]

Basically Berri's statistic only value efficient scoring, if you score inefficiently it punishes you.

It also is dominated by rebounding, and since its position adjusted good rebounders at positions like PG/SG which don't get many rebounds are inflated.

The stats rates Landry Fields as a max contract level player because he gets a lot of rebounds and is listed as a SG.

[2short]

wow my adult a.d.d. must be kicking in   
couldn't read it, sounds a lot like baseball to me

deron williams
chris paul
rondo
westbrook
rose
nash/parker tie

I came up with this equation through a salad for dinner and a (big) glass of wine

[BballTim]

Here's the thing about Rondo's defense that I don't think many of us like to consider: point guard is the position that impacts defenses the least.  I definitely prefer to have Rondo's defense at our PG slot, but the reality is that his presence doesn't make a big difference to the Celtics' team defense (The Cs defense actually does slightly worse with Rondo on the floor than when he's out, per 100 possessions).  At point guard your biggest influence on the game is going to be offensive, which is why Paul and Nash graded out as higher despite Rondo's better defense.

  I think you're underrating his defense. He finished 5th last year in DPOY voting, which seems to be the highest finish by a point guard in the 9-10 years I checked. The coaches seem to think he makes more of an impact than you do. Possibly by coincidence, there's an article in the daily links ("Rondo The Most Complete Guard Since MJ?") talking about Rondo's defensive win shares compared to other guards in their first 5 seasons. Since this discussion is about Rondo by the numbers, it seems relevant. The author was using a search engine on basketballreference that lets you search all guards and compare their total stats.

  If Rondo amasses the amount of offensive and defensive win shares over the rest of the season he's on pace for:

  He'll be 2nd in total defensive win shares (first 5 years) out of all guards (point or shooting) since 1946. The 3rd place guy (Norm Van Lier) would be as close to 9th as 2nd. Rondo's currently 6th but less than 1 win share from 2nd. Out of the 23 guards with 16 or more total defensive win shares in their first 5 years, 20 of them have played more minutes than Rondo. The only person in the list with more def win shares per minute played than Rondo is Manu, who was older than Rondo is now when he was a rookie.

  He'll be about 25th in total win shares with CP and DWil the only active pgs ahead of him (this includes the first 5 years of Nash, Kidd, Billups, etc.)

  He's 33rd in Win share/48 (first 5 years), with CP the only active pg with a better number. (for win shares/48 in the first 5 years I used a cutoff of around 200 games.

  If the Celts make the playoffs and Rondo plays he'll end up with the most defensive win shares, first 5 years, in the playoffs for all guards. The only guard in the top 15 with more defensive win shares/minute than Rondo is Sam Jones.
  

[drza44]

Here's the thing about Rondo's defense that I don't think many of us like to consider: point guard is the position that impacts defenses the least.  I definitely prefer to have Rondo's defense at our PG slot, but the reality is that his presence doesn't make a big difference to the Celtics' team defense (The Cs defense actually does slightly worse with Rondo on the floor than when he's out, per 100 possessions).  At point guard your biggest influence on the game is going to be offensive, which is why Paul and Nash graded out as higher despite Rondo's better defense.

  I think you're underrating his defense. He finished 5th last year in DPOY voting, which seems to be the highest finish by a point guard in the 9-10 years I checked. The coaches seem to think he makes more of an impact than you do. Possibly by coincidence, there's an article in the daily links ("Rondo The Most Complete Guard Since MJ?") talking about Rondo's defensive win shares compared to other guards in their first 5 seasons. Since this discussion is about Rondo by the numbers, it seems relevant. The author was using a search engine on basketballreference that lets you search all guards and compare their total stats.

  If Rondo amasses the amount of offensive and defensive win shares over the rest of the season he's on pace for:

  He'll be 2nd in total defensive win shares (first 5 years) out of all guards (point or shooting) since 1946. The 3rd place guy (Norm Van Lier) would be as close to 9th as 2nd. Rondo's currently 6th but less than 1 win share from 2nd.

  He'll be about 25th in total win shares with CP and DWil the only active pgs ahead of him (this includes the first 5 years of Nash, Kidd, Billups, etc.)

  He's 33rd in Win share/48 (first 5 years), with CP the only active pg with a better number. (for win shares/48 in the first 5 years I used a cutoff of around 200 games.

A few points in rebuttal:

1) Yes, Rondo finished top-5 in DPoY vote.  In my opinion it was a very poor vote, but obviously I'm not going to complain for a Celtic getting props.  (More on this below)

2) Yes, Rondo measures out well in defensive win shares (more on this below).  But the thing is, those defensive win shares are included in the win shares/48 minutes number that I posted in the OP, and he still is currently 7th of the 10 PGs I mentioned in the win shares category.  Defense is also factored into the Roland Rating and Adjusted +/- stats as well.  My point in the blurb that you quoted wasn't that Rondo was a poor defender, more that his defense wasn't impactful enough to be a sea-changer when compared to the other PGs on this list.  Yes, Rondo is likely the best defensive PG of this list, but point guard defense doesn't make a huge enough change to compare with point guard offensive impact...which the numbers support.

3) (The "more on this" I promised): here's the thing with defense, and defensive stats/Defensive Player of Year votes.  Traditionally, the way we rate defense has been tied almost entirely to the box-score stats of steals, rebounds and blocks.  And those have traditionally been about the only thing that DPoY voters have had to work with.  And Defensive Win shares are calculated in large part using those stats, as well as the team's overall defensive rating.

But here's the thing...for about the last 8 years, since 82games.com began, we actually have direct numbers to look at to gauge actual defensive impact.  Defensive win shares is a mathematical model used to estimate how a team's defense likely does based on an individual player...but now, we can actually MEASURE how a team's output changes with and without a player.  And for 4 years running, now, we've seen that whether Rondo is on or off the court doesn't really make that much difference to the Celtics' overall defensive output.  To whit, here is the Celtics' points per 100 possessions difference when Rondo's out for the last 4 years:

2008: 1.3 points worse Rondo off court
2009: 0.2 points better Rondo off court
2010: 1.3 points worse Rondo off court
2011: 2.7 points better Rondo off court

In other words, for the most part Rondo doesn't have a huge impact on how the defense performs over a season.  Yes, he will have some really great games where he disrupts the opponent, or when he really crashes the boards.  He can make impact plays getting to loose balls or creating steals.  But on the whole, the defense works about the same with or without Rondo. 

And it's not just Rondo, it's the point guard position as a whole.  If you want, tomorrow I'll post some links to someone that has tried to demonstrate a bit of why big men play a bigger role in the defense, but it's a bit intuitive.  Big men hold the key to diminishing the highest percentage shots in the lane, and they have to defend both their own men and help anyone else that gets into the lane.  Point guards just can't have that big of an effect.  Especially now, with the ramp up in handcheck rules, point guards just can't have that huge of an impact defensively. 

THAT'S what I mean about Rondo's defensive impact.  He's a great defensive point guard.  But defense is just not as important as offense for that position.  Of course, Rondo is also an outstanding offensive point guard, which is why he's still probably one of the top-5 PGs in the league.  But his defense isn't enough to overcome someone like Nash's huge offensive advantage IMO...and the numbers, for whatever they're worth, support that opinion.

[BballTim]

Here's the thing about Rondo's defense that I don't think many of us like to consider: point guard is the position that impacts defenses the least.  I definitely prefer to have Rondo's defense at our PG slot, but the reality is that his presence doesn't make a big difference to the Celtics' team defense (The Cs defense actually does slightly worse with Rondo on the floor than when he's out, per 100 possessions).  At point guard your biggest influence on the game is going to be offensive, which is why Paul and Nash graded out as higher despite Rondo's better defense.

  I think you're underrating his defense. He finished 5th last year in DPOY voting, which seems to be the highest finish by a point guard in the 9-10 years I checked. The coaches seem to think he makes more of an impact than you do. Possibly by coincidence, there's an article in the daily links ("Rondo The Most Complete Guard Since MJ?") talking about Rondo's defensive win shares compared to other guards in their first 5 seasons. Since this discussion is about Rondo by the numbers, it seems relevant. The author was using a search engine on basketballreference that lets you search all guards and compare their total stats.

  If Rondo amasses the amount of offensive and defensive win shares over the rest of the season he's on pace for:

  He'll be 2nd in total defensive win shares (first 5 years) out of all guards (point or shooting) since 1946. The 3rd place guy (Norm Van Lier) would be as close to 9th as 2nd. Rondo's currently 6th but less than 1 win share from 2nd.

  He'll be about 25th in total win shares with CP and DWil the only active pgs ahead of him (this includes the first 5 years of Nash, Kidd, Billups, etc.)

  He's 33rd in Win share/48 (first 5 years), with CP the only active pg with a better number. (for win shares/48 in the first 5 years I used a cutoff of around 200 games.

A few points in rebuttal:

1) Yes, Rondo finished top-5 in DPoY vote.  In my opinion it was a very poor vote, but obviously I'm not going to complain for a Celtic getting props.  (More on this below)

2) Yes, Rondo measures out well in defensive win shares (more on this below).  But the thing is, those defensive win shares are included in the win shares/48 minutes number that I posted in the OP, and he still is currently 7th of the 10 PGs I mentioned in the win shares category.  Defense is also factored into the Roland Rating and Adjusted +/- stats as well.  My point in the blurb that you quoted wasn't that Rondo was a poor defender, more that his defense wasn't impactful enough to be a sea-changer when compared to the other PGs on this list.  Yes, Rondo is likely the best defensive PG of this list, but point guard defense doesn't make a huge enough change to compare with point guard offensive impact...which the numbers support.

3) (The "more on this" I promised): here's the thing with defense, and defensive stats/Defensive Player of Year votes.  Traditionally, the way we rate defense has been tied almost entirely to the box-score stats of steals, rebounds and blocks.  And those have traditionally been about the only thing that DPoY voters have had to work with.  And Defensive Win shares are calculated in large part using those stats, as well as the team's overall defensive rating.

But here's the thing...for about the last 8 years, since 82games.com began, we actually have direct numbers to look at to gauge actual defensive impact.  Defensive win shares is a mathematical model used to estimate how a team's defense likely does based on an individual player...but now, we can actually MEASURE how a team's output changes with and without a player.  And for 4 years running, now, we've seen that whether Rondo is on or off the court doesn't really make that much difference to the Celtics' overall defensive output.  To whit, here is the Celtics' points per 100 possessions difference when Rondo's out for the last 4 years:

2008: 1.3 points worse Rondo off court
2009: 0.2 points better Rondo off court
2010: 1.3 points worse Rondo off court
2011: 2.7 points better Rondo off court

In other words, for the most part Rondo doesn't have a huge impact on how the defense performs over a season.  Yes, he will have some really great games where he disrupts the opponent, or when he really crashes the boards.  He can make impact plays getting to loose balls or creating steals.  But on the whole, the defense works about the same with or without Rondo. 

And it's not just Rondo, it's the point guard position as a whole.  If you want, tomorrow I'll post some links to someone that has tried to demonstrate a bit of why big men play a bigger role in the defense, but it's a bit intuitive.  Big men hold the key to diminishing the highest percentage shots in the lane, and they have to defend both their own men and help anyone else that gets into the lane.  Point guards just can't have that big of an effect.  Especially now, with the ramp up in handcheck rules, point guards just can't have that huge of an impact defensively. 

THAT'S what I mean about Rondo's defensive impact.  He's a great defensive point guard.  But defense is just not as important as offense for that position.  Of course, Rondo is also an outstanding offensive point guard, which is why he's still probably one of the top-5 PGs in the league.  But his defense isn't enough to overcome someone like Nash's huge offensive advantage IMO...and the numbers, for whatever they're worth, support that opinion.

  Ok, a few things: you said that point guard was the least important offensive position. When Rondo's on the court he's not our least important defensive player. And, yes, they do have those on/off numbers on 82games. They don't really take into account what lineups are in the game and whether you're going against starters or reserves. It's also a fairly noisy stat, by the way. There are plenty of advanced stats that have Rondo in the top 10-20 defenders in the league. He holds opposing players to among the lowest scoring efficiency every year and he forces a lot of turnovers in addition to being a good rebounder.

  I'd also like to point out that you're claiming that a point guard's defense is less important than his offense because of the impact of his defense on the team, while at the same time you're comparing point guards to each other based mainly on individual offensive production. What's a bigger impact, Westbrook having a higher PER and a higher offensive win share or Rondo directing the team with the best eFG% in the league?

[guava_wrench]

Doc claims the PG pressure is extremely important to the defense so that a lot of time is taken off the shot clock before the other team gets into their offense.

In other words, the PG could mean 5 or 6 less seconds of playing defense per possession for teammates. This also means more bad shots by opposing teams and less defensive breakdowns.

While this does not in itself mean that Rondo is necessarily a defensive lynch pin, it does point to the potential high impact of the PG.

Add to that the amount of time that the opposing PG has the ball and needs to be defended and pressured to disrupt the offense and the prevalence of pick and roll plays w/ PGs and I question why PGs should be any less significant than other players on defense.