March 10, 2011

Why can't basketball stats nerds separate the superstars from the ball hogs?: "To number-crunching nerds raised on baseball, in which pitcher and batter compete in statistically delicious one-on-one duels, such messy "interaction effects" are a lumpy blemish in the box score. In January, seasoned baseball sabermetrician (and occasional Slate contributor) Phil Birnbaum argued in his blog that basketball's so-called "advanced" box-score stats are so gnarled with this problem that they can't be trusted. (He went so far as to call them "the RBIs of basketball"�a brutal insult to lovers of well-validated statistics.) Is Birnbaum right? Is this why people can't agree on the value of Carmelo?"

posted by rumple to basketball at 03:30 PM - 0 comments