So, after all is said and done, is Marcus a "hit" draft pick

[The Oracle]

Put Smart on Warren's Suns or Lavine's Wolves / Bulls, and his winning plays, which are very valuable here, become an alternate version of the empty calories you speak of. 

Smart most likely adds very little to those clubs in terms of wins.  The market confirms this, in the form of 0 bad teams with cap space making a run at him.

For the average awful team picking #6 in the draft, a go-to-scorer is immensely more valuable than a bench defensive specialist.  Smart isn't a 'hit' at #6, but I'd say we got 'solid value.'

I don't think I really agree with this, either.

High volume scorers, especially ones that are not especially efficient and give up a ton on the other end, are overrated commodities.  They don't actually really help you win games.

I think most bad teams would win a lot more games if they had more players like Marcus instead of revolving around players like Lavine. 

But most bad teams don't want to win more games now, they want to assemble valuable assets and win later.

The difference is those teams are hoping that the bad young players like Lavine eventually become good at defense, more efficient at scoring, and provide more overall value.  The seeming upside is what persuades them to go for those guys and give them lots of touches.  They hope the Lavines and Parkers turn into stars or serve as significant parts of trades for stars (like when the Wolves traded Lavine for Butler).

Smart is never going to score 20 points per game, but he was helping the Celts win games pretty much as soon as he entered the league (even though the Celts were bad).

Warren's all time high win shares in his 3rd season (4.2) and Lavine's (3) are right there with Smart's high in year 3 (3.2).  Smart has 3 years with WS at 2.6+, Warren has 2, Lavine 2.

Those guys' teams were awful and that makes it hard to get win shares, but they're right there with Smart.  You're also calling these scorers 'inefficient', but they each shot 55%+ TS% in a 2 year stretch over their 2nd and 3rd years, while Smart's career TS% is 48%. 

His best season was his rookie year, 49.1%.  The win shares are close, and the guys you're calling inefficient look like Steve Nash compared to Smart.  Lavine has considerably more upside than Smart and Smart's highest PER is lower than Warren's lowest, and Warren's top 2 WS seasons beat Smart's best.  There is ample evidence to support my stance in stats and the market.

I also like Smart.  You said 'solid' in your other post- I said that previously on the same page.

Basketball Win Shares do not work like baseball win shares, in that they aren’t based on a team’s record.  For example, as a team, the Celtics had 51 win shares compared to 55 wins.  If you want to use Win Shares as an example, you can’t disqualify them in this manner.

If you want to look at other gestalt stats, Smart dominates both in VORP.  In most of the stats, all three had their worst year since their rookie season last year, so none can make a “trending upward” case.

they are still mostly based on actual team wins though so a guy on a bad team is absolutely hurt in the win shares department by playing on a bad team.

They’re not based on actual team wins at all.  The person who created the metric for basketball found that the total win shares accumulated by the individual players on a team was highly correlated with the total wins a team earned, but that was an after the fact test of his metric to see that it did a good job.  But an individual player’s win shares is team neutral.

and yet players with very similar stats have vastly different win shares if one is on a good team and one is on a bad team.

BTW, basketball-reference flat out states they are generally tied to team wins

www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html

From your own link:

Because this metric is designed to estimate a player's contribution in terms of wins, it makes sense to see if the sum of player Win Shares for a particular team closely matches the team win total. For the 2008-09 Cavaliers the sum of player Win Shares is 67.9, while the team win total is 66, an error of 66 - 67.9 = -1.9 wins. For the 1964-65 Royals the sum of player Win Shares is 43.5, while the team total is 48, an error of 48 - 43.5 = 4.5 wins. These errors are actually close to the "typical" error; looking at all NBA teams since the 1962-63 season (the last season we have complete player splits), the average absolute error is 2.74 wins and the root mean squared error is 3.41 wins.

They don’t start with a team’s wins and then assign players portions of those wins, which is what Bill James does for baseball.  They are not “tied” in any way to team wins.  It’s just been tested to show that you get very close to team wins, which means the statistic is doing its job.

I can’t explain to you exactly how players with similar stats on will have different win shares, but you’re welcome to buy a book that does. 

Offensive Win Shares are credited to players based on Dean Oliver's points produced and offensive possessions. The formulas are quite detailed, so I would point you to Oliver's book Basketball on Paper for complete details.

Crediting Defensive Win Shares to players is based on Dean Oliver's Defensive Rating. Defensive Rating is an estimate of the player's points allowed per 100 defensive possessions (please see Oliver's book for further details).

I never said that you started from teams wins and worked back.  They absolutely correlate to actual team wins though.  That is why a player like Lebron James can have worse stats in 08-09 and yet have significantly more win shares then he did in 07-08 when he had better stats.  Same player, similar stats, the only difference is one year the Cavs won 45 games and the next they won 66 games.  Team wins matter or else you wouldn't see the correlation that you do, even from season to season of the same player who has similar stats.

Honestly, Moranis, I’m not sure what you’re saying at this point.  “Based on team wins”, which you said, means that wins are a starting point for the calculation.  Otherwise they are not based on them.  Plain and simple.

As for this point:

That is why a player like Lebron James can have worse stats in 08-09 and yet have significantly more win shares then he did in 07-08 when he had better stats.  Same player, similar stats, the only difference is one year the Cavs won 45 games and the next they won 66 games.

In the calculations for win shares, team wins are absent.  It’s a function of “points produced”, a team’s relative pace, average points per possession league wide, and marginal points per win league wide (for offensive win shares). As I said before, go give Dean Oliver some money and buy his book where he comes up with his “points produced” metric, and maybe somewhere in there you’ll see a formula where team success is a factor.  I frankly doubt you’ll find that tho.  You keep harping that LeBron had similar stats, but without knowing how points produced is calculated, you can’t say what different stats mattered, not to mention that changes in team pace, average league offensive efficiency, and the marginal value of a point can fluctuate from year to year.  Saying “the only difference is win totals” is hogwash, and completely belied by the formula at the very link you presented, in which win totals are 100% absent.

The formulas that win shares are based upon are the offensive and defensive rating garbage that Dean Oliver came up with.  They can be found in the glossary on BBREF. 

[Moranis]

Put Smart on Warren's Suns or Lavine's Wolves / Bulls, and his winning plays, which are very valuable here, become an alternate version of the empty calories you speak of. 

Smart most likely adds very little to those clubs in terms of wins.  The market confirms this, in the form of 0 bad teams with cap space making a run at him.

For the average awful team picking #6 in the draft, a go-to-scorer is immensely more valuable than a bench defensive specialist.  Smart isn't a 'hit' at #6, but I'd say we got 'solid value.'

I don't think I really agree with this, either.

High volume scorers, especially ones that are not especially efficient and give up a ton on the other end, are overrated commodities.  They don't actually really help you win games.

I think most bad teams would win a lot more games if they had more players like Marcus instead of revolving around players like Lavine. 

But most bad teams don't want to win more games now, they want to assemble valuable assets and win later.

The difference is those teams are hoping that the bad young players like Lavine eventually become good at defense, more efficient at scoring, and provide more overall value.  The seeming upside is what persuades them to go for those guys and give them lots of touches.  They hope the Lavines and Parkers turn into stars or serve as significant parts of trades for stars (like when the Wolves traded Lavine for Butler).

Smart is never going to score 20 points per game, but he was helping the Celts win games pretty much as soon as he entered the league (even though the Celts were bad).

Warren's all time high win shares in his 3rd season (4.2) and Lavine's (3) are right there with Smart's high in year 3 (3.2).  Smart has 3 years with WS at 2.6+, Warren has 2, Lavine 2.

Those guys' teams were awful and that makes it hard to get win shares, but they're right there with Smart.  You're also calling these scorers 'inefficient', but they each shot 55%+ TS% in a 2 year stretch over their 2nd and 3rd years, while Smart's career TS% is 48%. 

His best season was his rookie year, 49.1%.  The win shares are close, and the guys you're calling inefficient look like Steve Nash compared to Smart.  Lavine has considerably more upside than Smart and Smart's highest PER is lower than Warren's lowest, and Warren's top 2 WS seasons beat Smart's best.  There is ample evidence to support my stance in stats and the market.

I also like Smart.  You said 'solid' in your other post- I said that previously on the same page.

Basketball Win Shares do not work like baseball win shares, in that they aren’t based on a team’s record.  For example, as a team, the Celtics had 51 win shares compared to 55 wins.  If you want to use Win Shares as an example, you can’t disqualify them in this manner.

If you want to look at other gestalt stats, Smart dominates both in VORP.  In most of the stats, all three had their worst year since their rookie season last year, so none can make a “trending upward” case.

they are still mostly based on actual team wins though so a guy on a bad team is absolutely hurt in the win shares department by playing on a bad team.

They’re not based on actual team wins at all.  The person who created the metric for basketball found that the total win shares accumulated by the individual players on a team was highly correlated with the total wins a team earned, but that was an after the fact test of his metric to see that it did a good job.  But an individual player’s win shares is team neutral.

and yet players with very similar stats have vastly different win shares if one is on a good team and one is on a bad team.

BTW, basketball-reference flat out states they are generally tied to team wins

www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html

From your own link:

Because this metric is designed to estimate a player's contribution in terms of wins, it makes sense to see if the sum of player Win Shares for a particular team closely matches the team win total. For the 2008-09 Cavaliers the sum of player Win Shares is 67.9, while the team win total is 66, an error of 66 - 67.9 = -1.9 wins. For the 1964-65 Royals the sum of player Win Shares is 43.5, while the team total is 48, an error of 48 - 43.5 = 4.5 wins. These errors are actually close to the "typical" error; looking at all NBA teams since the 1962-63 season (the last season we have complete player splits), the average absolute error is 2.74 wins and the root mean squared error is 3.41 wins.

They don’t start with a team’s wins and then assign players portions of those wins, which is what Bill James does for baseball.  They are not “tied” in any way to team wins.  It’s just been tested to show that you get very close to team wins, which means the statistic is doing its job.

I can’t explain to you exactly how players with similar stats on will have different win shares, but you’re welcome to buy a book that does. 

Offensive Win Shares are credited to players based on Dean Oliver's points produced and offensive possessions. The formulas are quite detailed, so I would point you to Oliver's book Basketball on Paper for complete details.

Crediting Defensive Win Shares to players is based on Dean Oliver's Defensive Rating. Defensive Rating is an estimate of the player's points allowed per 100 defensive possessions (please see Oliver's book for further details).

I never said that you started from teams wins and worked back.  They absolutely correlate to actual team wins though.  That is why a player like Lebron James can have worse stats in 08-09 and yet have significantly more win shares then he did in 07-08 when he had better stats.  Same player, similar stats, the only difference is one year the Cavs won 45 games and the next they won 66 games.  Team wins matter or else you wouldn't see the correlation that you do, even from season to season of the same player who has similar stats.

Honestly, Moranis, I’m not sure what you’re saying at this point.  “Based on team wins”, which you said, means that wins are a starting point for the calculation.  Otherwise they are not based on them.  Plain and simple.

As for this point:

That is why a player like Lebron James can have worse stats in 08-09 and yet have significantly more win shares then he did in 07-08 when he had better stats.  Same player, similar stats, the only difference is one year the Cavs won 45 games and the next they won 66 games.

In the calculations for win shares, team wins are absent.  It’s a function of “points produced”, a team’s relative pace, average points per possession league wide, and marginal points per win league wide (for offensive win shares). As I said before, go give Dean Oliver some money and buy his book where he comes up with his “points produced” metric, and maybe somewhere in there you’ll see a formula where team success is a factor.  I frankly doubt you’ll find that tho.  You keep harping that LeBron had similar stats, but without knowing how points produced is calculated, you can’t say what different stats mattered, not to mention that changes in team pace, average league offensive efficiency, and the marginal value of a point can fluctuate from year to year.  Saying “the only difference is win totals” is hogwash, and completely belied by the formula at the very link you presented, in which win totals are 100% absent.

The formulas that win shares are based upon are the offensive and defensive rating garbage that Dean Oliver came up with.  They can be found in the glossary on BBREF.

Salt knows that and the formulas are on the page I cited above.  While they don't have team wins in there, they absolutely correlate to team wins because the formulas include things like team PPG, opponent PPG, etc.  All things that correlate to actual team wins.  There is a reason that if you add up the WS of players on a team they closely correlate to actual team wins (bbref says the margin of error is 2.74 wins).  It isn't exact because they don't start with teams wins, but they absolutely use team statistics which yield the results on the court (i.e. wins and losses).  That is why a player can outperform another player on a different team and have less WS and why it is hard to use WS to compare players of similar roles but on vastly different level of team.

[Big333223]

https://youtu.be/0w9aAutbayY?t=3m48s

Chris Ryan thinks Smart was the best bargain of free agency. I don't know if he really thinks that or if its just an excuse to talk about Smart but I do think we're seeing the beginnings of a narrative that could lead to Smart getting some real respect on defense from the national media.

If he comes out of the gate strong and then Celtics stay one of the best defensive teams in the league, I wouldn't be surprised to see a DPOY narrative unfold.