12/22/24
April 07, 2004
MoneyBall for the NBA?: Cuban comes up with some stats that he thinks would have the greatest impact on success. Basketball, as fast paced as it is, would be a tough sport to accumulate these stats.
posted by jasonspaceman to basketball at 10:08 AM - 11 comments
Some of those would be pretty easy to keep track of. Things like charges taken / blocks given. I would be interested to see the numbers for that.. On a related note, there is the website 82games.com that keeps track of some stats you won't find on the espn website (at least, not that I know of). They keep track of points scored for/against while a player is on the court compared to while he is off the court, so players get a sort of plus/minus for each. Then you can look at what player is most valuable to his team by seeing who has the highest difference of plus/minus while on and off the court. It isn't surprising that Garnett and Kidd are 1-2 on that list. (It's amusing that for the 2002-03 rankings, Greg Ostertag (on Utah) is #7 overall, behind names like Garnett, Nowitzki, Duncan, McGrady.. I guess they didn't have another effective big man in Utah last year.) Anyway, they have some interesting features there that I thought people might want to look at. I've certainly wasted a bunch of time checking it out.. enjoy.
posted by blarp at 10:51 AM on April 07, 2004
Cuban's also going G14 on NBA players in the Olympics. Wonder how the recent complaint filed in Geneva by those clubs will turn out.
posted by billsaysthis at 12:41 PM on April 07, 2004
I think some of his stats would be useful but as they say you want to walk before you can run. Personally I've always thought a fg% is the most telling stats. I noticed that ESPN recently started keeping an adjusted fg% (I believe it adjusts for fta and ft%). Personally, I think that's on the right path. I'd like to see how a team built around high fg% guys would do.
posted by Mike McD at 01:13 PM on April 07, 2004
I agree Mike: in baseball it's all about hitting, in basketball it's all about shooting.
posted by dusted at 01:35 PM on April 07, 2004
On review, I realize my post isn't well written. The point I was trying to make is that there's probably some useful information in the existing statistics if NBA teams would look at them. I like Cuban's ideas but before he goes and start tracking deflections, I wonder if he's tried a regression analysis on the existing statistics?
posted by Mike McD at 06:06 PM on April 07, 2004
BTW, I think it would be a very interesting project. One would probably want to approach it the same way the Paul DePosdesta approached baseball. Project how many points you will score, how many points you will give up, and how many wins that translates into. Basketball would be cool because picking your independent variables is so hard. In baseball for example, I think your independent variables might not have as many problems. A 0.300 hitter tends to be a 0.300 hitter regardless of the team he is on. But in basketball ... a 20 pts/game scorer on a bad team (i.e. Tony Campbell on Minnesota) may be a 10 pts/game scorer on a good team.
posted by Mike McD at 06:15 PM on April 07, 2004
I thought Cuban was preoccupied with tracking stats on NBA officials.
posted by dusted at 12:27 AM on April 08, 2004
in basketball it's all about shooting. What ever happened to defense wins championships? Or was it rebounding? Actually a great deal of the statistical modeling I see with NBA stat heads revolve around possessions of all things. For example. Go Dean Go!
posted by lilnemo at 05:02 PM on April 08, 2004
defense wins championships Well, good defense forces bad shots and lowers shooting percentage, so we agree.
posted by dusted at 12:37 AM on April 09, 2004
What ever happened to defense wins championships? Or was it rebounding? That's exactly what Depodesta would encourage. Run a regression analysis to see if defense really wins championships. See if blocks and steals are better indicators of wins than points and fg% for example.
posted by Mike McD at 12:02 PM on April 09, 2004
What he came up with: 1. Deflections, Deflections for turnovers 2. Defensive Penetrations Allowed, Defensive Penetrations stopped (did you stop your man from penetrating in the paint before he shot or gave up his dribble) 3. Assists in paint, Assists outside of paint, within each, assists leading to jumpshots, assists leading to layups, assists leading to foulshots, and within each of these, are they part of fastbreak or not. 4. Rebounds in traffic, Rebounds from free throws 5. Shot percentages - location zone of shot, and within each, whether guarded or open 6. Turnovers - forced, unforced, rule violation turnovers by type (traveling, palming, etc.) 7. Touches - How often, where, duration in seconds, conclusion (pass, assist, shot, turnover as a percentage of total touches) 8. Charges taken, blocks given 9. Blocks above head, blocks that were strips, fouls on block attempts by each 10. Turnovers caused - steals, forced by defense (i.e., preventing your man from crossing 8 sec line, or guarding your man for more than x seconds leading to 24 sec clock violation)