--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "harlanzo" <harlanzo@y...>
wrote:
> Anyone have opinions on the nominees this year?  I'll give mine
> quickly:
>
> Robert Parish:  In, was very good (not great) for so long.

Agree, Parish should go in for several reasons:  humongous career
totals, key man on great teams; and he stepped up his game when Bird
faltered, keeping the Celtics respectable.

>
> James Worthy: I think he was actually a tad overrated.  good but
not
> so different from tons of other good scoring small forwards.

Ignoring the postseason, this would be a true statement.  Postseason,
he was monster.  Marginal Top 50 in my book.

>
> Dennis Johnson: all star on seattle and phoenix decent on Boston.
> closer but not quite.

DJ is a sentimental choice.  Had a knack for big plays and was a
defensive stalwart

>
> Adrian Dantley: had a nice scoring run on utah.  but he was a jerk
> and his teams were just as good (if not better) after he was traded/

Hmmm.  He was an offensive superman.  I don't see much in comparing
before and after a trade.  If the trade is even, there shouldn't be a
difference.

In 1983, AD was out all but 22 games, and Utah's W-L % was .349
In '84, he played 79 G, and Utah was .549
In '85, he played 55 G, and Utah was .496

Though that's only part of the story; but on this one, I think
Harlan's synopsis is stooping just a bit.

>
> Bobby Jones: wow.  this one is not even close.  role player not
much
> more.

I keep forgetting, there are superstars and role players, and nothing
in between.

....

Overall, agree with Harlan except for his shortchanging Dantley and
Jones, and Worthy's remarkable playoff performances.

While I'm at it, Harlan's website is itself terrific stuff.  He's
really steeped in the best basketball traditions, and knowledgeable
where it matters.  Check it out if you haven't:

http://www.hoopsanalyst.com/

--- harlanzo <harlanzo@...> wrote:
> Anyone have opinions on the nominees this year?
> I'll give mine
> quickly:
>
> Robert Parish:  In, was very good (not great) for so
> long.

Agreed
>
> James Worthy: I think he was actually a tad
> overrated.  good but not
> so different from tons of other good scoring small
> forwards.

Overrated, but also an key part of a great all-time
team. In the past this has been given a lot of weight.
I'm guessing Worthy gets in. I say he deserves the
honor too.
>
> Dennis Johnson: all star on seattle and phoenix
> decent on Boston.
> closer but not quite.

Long career, played for more than one champion. My
first impulse is that he doesn't belong, but if Worthy
gets in you have to look at DJ too, IMO.
>
> Adrian Dantley: had a nice scoring run on utah.  but
> he was a jerk
> and his teams were just as good (if not better)
> after he was traded/

Agreed. He could score, but didn't seem to have much
impact on his team's success.

>
> Bobby Jones: wow.  this one is not even close.  role
> player not much
> more.

Jones was all-defensive first team 10 times, two of
those in the ABA, and he played in 4 all-star games.
He was more than a role player, but probably not a
HOFer.


>
> Gus Johnson: was a great power forward but his
> career was a bit too
> short to get in in my opinion.
>
> Chet Walker: I never really considered him great or
> a star.  a
> player like this needs a longer career to get in.
>
> Maurice Cheeks: he really was a good player but
> always subsidiary to
> true stars.  there are many better pguards since.
>
> Walter DAvis: another really good shooting guard who
> was not much of
> a defender or passer.  I like him but I think there
> are better
> candidates.

Agreed on Johnson, Walker and Davis. Cheeks deserves a
longer look, IMO. Top ten all-time in steals and
assists. Career FG pct. of .523 is incredible for a
PG. I think there's a solid case here for Mo.

Ed
>
>

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "Mike G" <msg_53@h...> wrote:

> >
> > James Worthy: I think he was actually a tad overrated.  good but
> not
> > so different from tons of other good scoring small forwards.
>
> Ignoring the postseason, this would be a true statement.
Postseason,
> he was monster.  Marginal Top 50 in my book.

I would not want to overweigh his post season career too much.  With
Magic gone, Worthy was not great in the playoffs.  I would not want
to overcredit a subsidiary player in the playoffs if a similar
player (Mike Mitchell, Mike Woodson) might have been able to rack up
good playoff games with magic too.  This is not to say that these
guys are as good as Worthy but there are a bunch of SFs(Bernard
King, Adrian Dantley, Chris Mullin etc) who were good and had some
good playoff games too.

>> >
> > Adrian Dantley: had a nice scoring run on utah.  but he was a
jerk
> > and his teams were just as good (if not better) after he was
traded/
>
> Hmmm.  He was an offensive superman.  I don't see much in
comparing
> before and after a trade.  If the trade is even, there shouldn't
be a
> difference.
>
> In 1983, AD was out all but 22 games, and Utah's W-L % was .349
> In '84, he played 79 G, and Utah was .549
> In '85, he played 55 G, and Utah was .496
>
> Though that's only part of the story; but on this one, I think
> Harlan's synopsis is stooping just a bit.
>


Here are Dantley's yearly records on Utah and his ppg:

1979-80 24-58 and 28.0
1980-81 28-54 and 30.7
1981-82 25-57 and 30.3
1982-83 30-52 and DAntley injured for all but 22 games
1983-84 45-37 and 30.6
1984-85 41-41 and 26.7
1985-86 42-40 and 29.8
1986-87 44-38 and Dantley traded for Tripucka

On Detroit Dantley was good but the team won two championships after
he was traded.  My conclusion, Dantley was a good scorer but hardly
irreplaceable.  You combined that with the fact that a lot of people
hated him, there is strong argument is not HOF material.



> >
> > Bobby Jones: wow.  this one is not even close.  role player not
> much
> > more.
>
> I keep forgetting, there are superstars and role players, and
nothing
> in between.
>

Role player is an oversimplification but he went from good regular
to role player.  He still is not close to HOF.
  ....
>
>> While I'm at it, Harlan's website is itself terrific stuff.  He's
> really steeped in the best basketball traditions, and
knowledgeable
> where it matters.  Check it out if you haven't:
>
> http://www.hoopsanalyst.com/

Thanks for the pop Mike.  I'll use the opportunity to again solicit
articles for the site.  We have gotten a number of people posted on
the site from apbr_analysis.  anything hoops related you want to
write about is welcomed and encouraged.  If you don't want to write
too much, we also like people unveiling methods/formulae and lists
ranking players as a result.  DeanO recently did it, it's fun easy
and not time consuming.  You can  reach me at either
info@... or harlanzo@....  Thanks

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "harlanzo" <harlanzo@y...>
wrote:
> Anyone have opinions on the nominees this year?  I'll give mine
> quickly:
>
> Robert Parish:  In, was very good (not great) for so long.
>
> James Worthy: I think he was actually a tad overrated.  good but
not
> so different from tons of other good scoring small forwards.
>

I'll play dissenter here.  Parish and Worthy are very comparable
players in terms of overall contribution.  They were very valuable
when playing with great players.  They didn't have to do a lot
offensively or defensively.  What they did, they did very well.  The
fact that Parish did it longer doesn't mean much to me but means
something.  Neither were very successful when they had to go without
the big stars but their primes correlated with when the stars were
there and they were not in their primes when on their own.  From an
objective perspective, I keep these guys out of the Hall.  From a
relative perspective, I'm sure you can find guys in the Hall that
don't deserve it as much as these guys.  (Haven't looked at their
playoff numbers.)

152 and 110 are the respective HOF monitor points from the reference.

> Dennis Johnson: all star on seattle and phoenix decent on Boston.
> closer but not quite.
>

No.  134.

> Adrian Dantley: had a nice scoring run on utah.  but he was a jerk
> and his teams were just as good (if not better) after he was traded/
>

College career impressive and important.  Pro career -- was great
offensive player but horrid defensive player to the point it almost
neutralized his offense.  Guys didn't really like playing with him --
and I can't measure that.  He's a legit possibility for his pro
career, but I'd definitely hesitate.  130.

> Bobby Jones: wow.  this one is not even close.  role player not
much
> more.

Role player offensively but legitimately great defender.  If some of
those old Celtics could get in, he could.  But I maintain the high
standards of MikeT.  93.

>
> Gus Johnson: was a great power forward but his career was a bit too
> short to get in in my opinion.
>
> Chet Walker: I never really considered him great or a star.  a
> player like this needs a longer career to get in.
>
> Maurice Cheeks: he really was a good player but always subsidiary
to
> true stars.  there are many better pguards since.
>
> Walter DAvis: another really good shooting guard who was not much
of
> a defender or passer.  I like him but I think there are better
> candidates.

100.  113.  118.  112.

Worthy's HOF Monitor points actually among the lowest of the group.

aaronkoo wrote:
>
> --- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "Theron Skyles" <tgs3@c...>
> wrote:
> > I believe you're misinterpreting Neel's stat, but it could very
> well be
> > me.
> >
> > I think what Neel is saying is that Minnesota's offense per game (48
> > minutes) is 14.3 points better when Garnett is playing and the
> defense
> > is 10.1 points better. So Garnett is +24.4 per 48 minutes when
> compared
> > to the T-wolves without him. This is quite different from the NHL's
> +/-
> > stat.
> >
> > For example, if the T-Wolves average 100 PF and 94 PA per 48 minutes
> > when Garnett is on the floor, they would have to be at 85.7 PF and
> 104.1
> > PA per 48 minutes for the time when Garnett isn't playing (this
> assumes
> > no OTs and only 48 minutes per game) to come out to their actual
> numbers
> > of 97.8 PF and 95.6 PA. I don't know if this is true, but it
> certainly
> > sounds possible.
>
> That would make him the most valuable player this side of MJ in Space
> Jam.  No player in history has been even close to making that kind of
> difference in points scored and points allowed.

What I think you are forgetting here is that this is per 48 minutes, not a
plus-minus.  Using Theron's hypothetical numbers above, if Garnett averages
40 minutes is it possible that they average a +5 points when he is in the
game and -3 when he is not?  That's all it takes to get to this +24.4
figure.

--
Gary Collard
SABR-L Moderator
collardg@...

"If you embrace containment, you must accept proliferation, and
proliferation - not just unchecked but accelerated - will make the
violent century just passed seem an era of remarkable tranquility in
comparison."  -- Senator John McCain

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, Gary Collard <collardg@e...>
wrote:
> aaronkoo wrote:
> >
> > --- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "Theron Skyles" <tgs3@c...>
> > wrote:
> > > I believe you're misinterpreting Neel's stat, but it could very
> > well be
> > > me.
> > >
> > > I think what Neel is saying is that Minnesota's offense per
game (48
> > > minutes) is 14.3 points better when Garnett is playing and the
> > defense
> > > is 10.1 points better. So Garnett is +24.4 per 48 minutes when
> > compared
> > > to the T-wolves without him. This is quite different from the
NHL's
> > +/-
> > > stat.
> > >
> > > For example, if the T-Wolves average 100 PF and 94 PA per 48
minutes
> > > when Garnett is on the floor, they would have to be at 85.7 PF
and
> > 104.1
> > > PA per 48 minutes for the time when Garnett isn't playing (this
> > assumes
> > > no OTs and only 48 minutes per game) to come out to their actual
> > numbers
> > > of 97.8 PF and 95.6 PA. I don't know if this is true, but it
> > certainly
> > > sounds possible.
> >
> > That would make him the most valuable player this side of MJ in
Space
> > Jam.  No player in history has been even close to making that
kind of
> > difference in points scored and points allowed.
>
> What I think you are forgetting here is that this is per 48
minutes, not a
> plus-minus.  Using Theron's hypothetical numbers above, if Garnett
averages
> 40 minutes is it possible that they average a +5 points when he is
in the
> game and -3 when he is not?  That's all it takes to get to this
+24.4
> figure.

I'm somehow missing the math here and/or a clear understanding of
what the numbers being quoted mean.

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, Gary Collard <collardg@e...>
wrote:
> What I think you are forgetting here is that this is per 48
minutes, not a
> plus-minus.  Using Theron's hypothetical numbers above, if Garnett
averages
> 40 minutes is it possible that they average a +5 points when he is
in the
> game and -3 when he is not?  That's all it takes to get to this
+24.4
> figure.

Looking at KevinP's pdf file helped a lot.  Page 8 spells out the
details of the numbers.  KG and Dirk Nowitzki have major team
impacts.  Not sure if the addition/subtraction is appropriate, but
there is some sense of correctness to it.

Still has the long-standing problems of correlation with it, problems
associated with pace (Jason Kidd is seen as a major defensive
liability), but a useful indicator.

DeanO

harlanzo wrote:
>
> Anyone have opinions on the nominees this year?  I'll give mine
> quickly:
>
> Robert Parish:  In, was very good (not great) for so long.

In, easily, due to career value.

> James Worthy: I think he was actually a tad overrated.  good but not
> so different from tons of other good scoring small forwards.

In, not a slam dunk but his playoff performances and being a key to a
dynasty team puts him over the top.

> Dennis Johnson: all star on seattle and phoenix decent on Boston.
> closer but not quite.

Very close, falls a bit short to me but would not be a bad selection.

> Adrian Dantley: had a nice scoring run on utah.  but he was a jerk
> and his teams were just as good (if not better) after he was traded

Such a liability on defense and poor rebounder that I can't seriously
consider him.

> Bobby Jones: wow.  this one is not even close.  role player not much
> more.

The Bill Mazeroski candidate.  Great defensive player, but others have been
at least as good so no way.

> Gus Johnson: was a great power forward but his career was a bit too
> short to get in in my opinion.

Same for me, that short woudl require a dominant player.

> Chet Walker: I never really considered him great or a star.  a
> player like this needs a longer career to get in.

Like DJ, I do not support him but would not be horrified if he got in.

> Maurice Cheeks: he really was a good player but always subsidiary to
> true stars.  there are many better pguards since.

Yes, excellent but not a HOFer.

> Walter DAvis: another really good shooting guard who was not much of
> a defender or passer.  I like him but I think there are better
> candidates.

Not a serious candidate.

For the other North American non-college candidates, Chick Hearn,
Meadowlark Lemon and Tex Winter get my vote.

--
Gary Collard
SABR-L Moderator
collardg@...

"If you embrace containment, you must accept proliferation, and
proliferation - not just unchecked but accelerated - will make the
violent century just passed seem an era of remarkable tranquility in
comparison."  -- Senator John McCain

aaronkoo wrote:
>
> --- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, Gary Collard <collardg@e...>
> wrote:
> > aaronkoo wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "Theron Skyles" <tgs3@c...>
> > > wrote:
> > > > I believe you're misinterpreting Neel's stat, but it could very
> > > well be
> > > > me.
> > > >
> > > > I think what Neel is saying is that Minnesota's offense per
> game (48
> > > > minutes) is 14.3 points better when Garnett is playing and the
> > > defense
> > > > is 10.1 points better. So Garnett is +24.4 per 48 minutes when
> > > compared
> > > > to the T-wolves without him. This is quite different from the
> NHL's
> > > +/-
> > > > stat.
> > > >
> > > > For example, if the T-Wolves average 100 PF and 94 PA per 48
> minutes
> > > > when Garnett is on the floor, they would have to be at 85.7 PF
> and
> > > 104.1
> > > > PA per 48 minutes for the time when Garnett isn't playing (this
> > > assumes
> > > > no OTs and only 48 minutes per game) to come out to their actual
> > > numbers
> > > > of 97.8 PF and 95.6 PA. I don't know if this is true, but it
> > > certainly
> > > > sounds possible.
> > >
> > > That would make him the most valuable player this side of MJ in
> Space
> > > Jam.  No player in history has been even close to making that
> kind of
> > > difference in points scored and points allowed.
> >
> > What I think you are forgetting here is that this is per 48
> minutes, not a
> > plus-minus.  Using Theron's hypothetical numbers above, if Garnett
> averages
> > 40 minutes is it possible that they average a +5 points when he is
> in the
> > game and -3 when he is not?  That's all it takes to get to this
> +24.4
> > figure.
>
> I'm somehow missing the math here and/or a clear understanding of
> what the numbers being quoted mean.

I could be misunderstanding the system, but will try.

Let me try a hypothetical with round numbers for convenince.  Harry Hoops
plays 40 minutes a game, and he is a stud who has a +20 by that system,
broken down to +10 per 48 minutes when he is in the game and -10/48 when he
is out.  Since he plays 40 minutes and his team is +10/48, then his team is
10 * 40/48 = +8.33 points per game while he is in.  Since he sits for 8
minutes and his team is -10/48, they are -10 * 8/48 = -1.67 ppg when he is
out, thus the team is +6.67 points overall, not +20 or even +10.  The thing
is that the positive contrbution far outweighs the negative because he
plays so many more minutes than he sits.

But, as I said, I could be misunderstanding the system - Theron or anybody
else, do you know if this is correct?

--
Gary Collard
SABR-L Moderator
collardg@...

"If you embrace containment, you must accept proliferation, and
proliferation - not just unchecked but accelerated - will make the
violent century just passed seem an era of remarkable tranquility in
comparison."  -- Senator John McCain

aaronkoo wrote:
>
> --- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, Gary Collard <collardg@e...>
> wrote:
> > What I think you are forgetting here is that this is per 48
> minutes, not a
> > plus-minus.  Using Theron's hypothetical numbers above, if Garnett
> averages
> > 40 minutes is it possible that they average a +5 points when he is
> in the
> > game and -3 when he is not?  That's all it takes to get to this
> +24.4
> > figure.
>
> Looking at KevinP's pdf file helped a lot.

Sorry, missed this, where is this file?

--
Gary Collard
SABR-L Moderator
collardg@...

"If you embrace containment, you must accept proliferation, and
proliferation - not just unchecked but accelerated - will make the
violent century just passed seem an era of remarkable tranquility in
comparison."  -- Senator John McCain

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Collard" <collardg@...>
>
> aaronkoo wrote:
> >
> >
> > I'm somehow missing the math here and/or a clear understanding of
> > what the numbers being quoted mean.
>
> I could be misunderstanding the system, but will try.
>
> Let me try a hypothetical with round numbers for convenince.  Harry Hoops
> plays 40 minutes a game, and he is a stud who has a +20 by that system,
> broken down to +10 per 48 minutes when he is in the game and -10/48 when
he
> is out.  Since he plays 40 minutes and his team is +10/48, then his team
is
> 10 * 40/48 = +8.33 points per game while he is in.  Since he sits for 8
> minutes and his team is -10/48, they are -10 * 8/48 = -1.67 ppg when he is
> out, thus the team is +6.67 points overall, not +20 or even +10.  The
thing
> is that the positive contrbution far outweighs the negative because he
> plays so many more minutes than he sits.
>
> But, as I said, I could be misunderstanding the system - Theron or anybody
> else, do you know if this is correct?

Sounds right to me, but I'm really just making an educated guess myself.

> > Looking at KevinP's pdf file helped a lot.
>
> Sorry, missed this, where is this file?

The T-Wolves game notes linked here:

http://www.nba.com/timberwolves/news/notes.pdf

Theron

I bring this up, not as yet another new thread in the never-ending mega-thread
of the existence of hot hands, but rather as a follow-up to our discussion last
season.  Many of the original studies used a narrow, non-intuitive definition of
a hot hand (such as dependence of the probability of making a free throw on the
make/miss of the preceding free throw).

I said that I thought a better definition of a hot hand was more along the lines
of "is the guy going to score a lot of points in this game, with a good FG% (or
offensive efficiency)"? and offered as an example of hot hand predictability: 
Nick van Exel vs the Sonics.  He keeps lighting them up.

I believe van Exel was injured in the Mavs vs Sonics first game this season, but
last night against the Sonics he had the typical van Exel Hot Hand Against the
Sonics:  26 points on 10-16 shooting, all in 33 minutes with only one turnover.

On the other hand, with Payton gone, the Sonics' defense is undoutedly different
from what it had been like the past many years.  But somehow van Exel's torment
of the Sonics continues.


--MKT

Here's my own contribution to game-by-game consistency. Personally, I like it
the best because:

a. It's relatively easy to calculate, and easier to understand (okay, you do
have to know what a
standard deviation is, but anybody with a copy of MS Excel can run this metric),
and

b. The numbers it spits out are easy to read, and roughly analogous to ERA in
baseball.

NOTE: The following was posted to the Seattle Sonics Usenet NG yesterday, so if
you're re-
reading it, I apologize.

Okay, time for me to enter the fray here. I'm going to use a stat that I
just made up and for that reason will call Craven Scores. Basically, they
use the same methodology as Bill James Similarity Scores, meaning that for
every game you begin with a score of 1000 and deduct the following number
of points for every difference (positive OR negative) in numbers from a
player's seasonal average:

FG made: 2
3FG made: 1
FT made: 1
Rebounds: 1
Assists: 1
Blocks: 2
Steals: 1
Turnovers: 1

I made a test run with occasional starter Courtney Alexander and came up
with an average similarity of 991.25 with a standard deviation of 3.47.
Since there is a natural bias inherent in this system against players who
play more minutes, I then divided the standard deviation by Alexander's
minutes played per game and multiplied by 36. This gives him a final score
(the Craven score, for those of you keeping track) of 5.79. Now, on to the
rest of the guys:

Gary Payton      986.38  4.90  4.31
Kobe Bryant      979.13  5.61  4.84
Michael Finley   986.19  4.58  4.23
Ray Allen        984.97  4.37  4.34
Cuttino Mobley   985.78  3.83  3.28
Brent Barry      987.22  4.11  4.61
Doug Christie    986.19  3.58  3.64
Paul Pierce      981.75  5.38  4.87
Ricky Davis      984.28  6.49  5.87
Bonzi Wells      985.42  4.86  5.21
Ron Artest       985.96  3.97  4.22
Allan Houston    986.42  4.28  4.19
Allen Iverson    986.05  4.26  3.63

Well, there you go. If Allen Iverson looks remarkably consistent, that's
because the system makes him that way; my opinion watching him is that
he'll nearly always get his 25 points a night, whether it takes him 15 or
30 attempts to do so. That's not an error so much as a known bias of this
metric.

Here they are in order:

Mobley           3.28
Iverson          3.63
Christie         3.64
Houston          4.19
Artest           4.22
Finley           4.23
Payton           4.31
Allen            4.34
Barry            4.61
Bryant           4.84
Pierce           4.87
Wells            5.21
Davis            5.87

Mobley and Christie heading this list should come as no shock to anybody;
both players are regarded as workhorses who bring their game every night.
It's no coincidence that the other end of the list is manned by two
players who have had trouble this season getting consistent minutes from
their team. Given this, I expected Brent Barry to be ranked quite a bit
lower than he actually was. I think Paul Pierce's streakiness is well
documented; Kobe, however, comes as something as a surprise. I guess he
shouldn't, though; this is a guy who, over the course of one month,
averaged 10 points per game more than his season average.

John Craven

----- Original Message -----
From: "John W. Craven" <john1974@...>
To: <APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 3:55 PM
Subject: [APBR_analysis] Re: Consistency


> Here's my own contribution to game-by-game consistency. Personally, I like it
the
best because:
>
> a. It's relatively easy to calculate, and easier to understand (okay, you do
have to
know what a
> standard deviation is, but anybody with a copy of MS Excel can run this
metric), and
>
> b. The numbers it spits out are easy to read, and roughly analogous to ERA in
baseball.
>
> NOTE: The following was posted to the Seattle Sonics Usenet NG yesterday, so
if
you're re-
> reading it, I apologize.
>
> Okay, time for me to enter the fray here. I'm going to use a stat that I
> just made up and for that reason will call Craven Scores. Basically, they
> use the same methodology as Bill James Similarity Scores, meaning that for
> every game you begin with a score of 1000 and deduct the following number
> of points for every difference (positive OR negative) in numbers from a
> player's seasonal average:
>
> FG made: 2
> 3FG made: 1
> FT made: 1
> Rebounds: 1
> Assists: 1
> Blocks: 2
> Steals: 1
> Turnovers: 1
>

If you included missed FTs and FGs here, it would give you a better handle on
FG%.

<snip>

> Well, there you go. If Allen Iverson looks remarkably consistent, that's
> because the system makes him that way; my opinion watching him is that
> he'll nearly always get his 25 points a night, whether it takes him 15 or
> 30 attempts to do so. That's not an error so much as a known bias of this
> metric.
>
> Here they are in order:
>
> Mobley           3.28
> Iverson          3.63
> Christie         3.64
> Houston          4.19
> Artest           4.22
> Finley           4.23
> Payton           4.31
> Allen            4.34
> Barry            4.61
> Bryant           4.84
> Pierce           4.87
> Wells            5.21
> Davis            5.87
>

Here's my list, using the same players. Note that Iverson sits in the middle.
Shown in
order of decreasing consistency.

Player               PPg   rpg   apg   MC/g   CS
Gary Payton         20.8   4.7   8.7   21.7   2.6
Kobe Bryant         30.7   6.9   6.2   28.8   2.9
Michael Finley      20.0   5.9   3.0   18.1   3.6
Cuttino Mobley      18.3   4.4   2.9   16.1   4.0
Ray Allen           22.0   5.0   4.0   19.6   4.0
Brent Barry          9.8   4.0   4.9   14.2   4.1
Allen Iverson       27.3   4.3   4.9   19.6   4.2
Doug Christie       10.2   4.3   4.9   16.0   4.3
Paul Pierce         26.2   7.5   4.5   23.5   4.8
Ricky Davis         20.9   4.8   4.9   16.5   5.7
Ron Artest          15.3   5.5   2.9   16.0   5.9
Bonzi Wells         15.6   5.5   3.2   14.5   5.9
Allan Houston       22.0   2.8   2.8   15.7   6.3


My Consistency Score is

      Variance (ManleyCredits [tm]) / Mean (ManleyCredits [tm])

I still don't know what a consistency rating would be good for, except maybe
debunking
the notion that player consistency is valuable.


ed

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Tamada" <tamada@...>
To: <APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 2:07 AM
Subject: [APBR_analysis] Hot hand, a little more data


>
> I bring this up, not as yet another new thread in the never-ending mega-thread
> of the existence of hot hands, but rather as a follow-up to our discussion
last
>  season.  Many of the original studies used a narrow, non-intuitive definition
of
>  a hot hand (such as dependence of the probability of making a free throw on
>  the make/miss of the preceding free throw).
>

I did a study on the All Star 3 Point Shootout, which IMO provides an
opportunity for
the display of a more traditional "hot-hand."

http://shorl.com/butrebymimamo

Result: no hot-hand.

ed

-----Original Message-----
From: igorkupfer@... [mailto:igorkupfer@...]
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 2:41 PM


>From: "John W. Craven" <john1974@...>

[...]

>> Okay, time for me to enter the fray here. I'm going to use a stat that I
>> just made up and for that reason will call Craven Scores. Basically, they
>> use the same methodology as Bill James Similarity Scores, meaning that for
>> every game you begin with a score of 1000 and deduct the following number
>> of points for every difference (positive OR negative) in numbers from a
>> player's seasonal average:
>>
>> FG made: 2
>> 3FG made: 1
>> FT made: 1
>> Rebounds: 1
>> Assists: 1
>> Blocks: 2
>> Steals: 1
>> Turnovers: 1

One thing that bugs me about the similarity scores that have sprung up for
basketball the past year or so:  I haven't seen any theoretical nor statistical
foundation for them...well there's a bit of a statistical foundation for MikeG's
Euclidean distance, but I've got a couple of concerns about that metric as well.

The one above has double weight for FGM.  Reasonable enough, but why double
weight for blocks?   And single weight for everything else?  If Derrick McKey
and Bob Love are both identical to Jerome Kersey, but Mckey gets two blocks a
game whereas Kersey only gets one, and Kersey gets 2 assists per game but Love
only gets one, would we want to say that McKey is more distant from Kersey than
Love is (indeed twice as distant, if one chooses to interpret the numbers that
way)?  What makes blocks such a key determinant in measuring similarity?

>If you included missed FTs and FGs here, it would give you a better handle on
FG%.

Yes, I think that's pretty huge.  To ignore FGMissed is to throw away valuable
information.

I don't recall if MikeG's Euclidean distance measures include FGMiss; my
impression is that they do not because he doesn't seem to include them when he
lists players' similar stats.

But even after FGMisses and FTMisses are included, these measure are still
leaving out a hugely important variable for measuring player quality:  FG% (and
though less important, FT% also).

And simply counting a player's total FGA and FGM is NOT an adequate substitute
for looking at FG%.

This was my beef with the Tony Minkoff's Minkoff Player Ratings from several
years ago (ingenious regressions with minutes played as the dependent variable
and standard NBA counting stats as the explanatory variables).  They included
only the stats which represented counts of actions such as FGM, rebounds, etc. 
Minkoff (actually he was away for a period of time so I was emailling one of his
friends or co-researchers) resisted the idea of putting FG% in as an explanatory
variable because it's not something which represents a cumulative count.  But
they did agree to try adding FG% as an explanatory variable to the regression,
as an experiment.  It had a highly significant coefficient and improved the
regression's r-squared.  In other words, it belonged in the regression --
because FG% is an important factor in player quality, big surprise.  But because
they pre-emptively refused to look at ratio variables such as FG% or TO/Min or
PTS/TO, they never did make it part of their player ratings.

Same with similarity scores.  Career totals are fine things to include in the
regression, but key ratios such as FG% and min/game are also important stats for
evaluating players or determining similarity.

If I'm comparing various trips and routes, it simply is not adequate to only
look at distance travelled and time used; it's also important to look at
distance/time, i.e. speed.  And for basketball, it's not enough to look at FGM
and FGMiss, we have to look at FG% too.

I suspect the reason that many people are hesitant or resistant is because FG%
is measured in units which are on a totally different scale from FGM, rebounds,
etc.  But the seeming equivalence of counting FGM and assists and rebounds is
illusory to begin with; we're comparing apples to oranges and in order to
properly do this comparison we need some way of translating or equivalencing
apples and oranges.  In other words, determing what weights to put on apples,
oranges, rebounds, assists, etc.

Given that FG% is always between 0 and 1, whereas career points can be 20,000 or
more, the optimum weight on FG% will undoubtedly be a large one.  There's a
variety of possible approaches here:  z-scores (i.e. use standard deviations as
the units of measurement); making the weight on FG% a function of FGA (which
often leads to FG% dropping out of the similarity formula and FGM appearing with
a higher weight); etc.  Best would be an approach using multivariate statistical
methods:  principal components analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, etc.
This is especially easy for another new (to basketball) measure which is related
to Similarity Scores:  Hall of Fame Monitor scores.  Discriminant analysis,
probit or logistic (aka logit) regression, or even regular multivariate
regression can be used to easily come up with weights which can be used to
measure Hall of Fame probability, and which have some optimal statistical
properties (such as least squared error or maximum likelihood) as well.

>> Well, there you go. If Allen Iverson looks remarkably consistent, that's
>> because the system makes him that way; my opinion watching him is that
>> he'll nearly always get his 25 points a night, whether it takes him 15 or
>> 30 attempts to do so. That's not an error so much as a known bias of this
>> metric.
>>
>> Here they are in order:
>>

[...]

>> Payton           4.31

>> Bryant           4.84

[...]

>Here's my list, using the same players. Note that Iverson sits in the middle.
Shown in
>order of decreasing consistency.
>
>Gary Payton         20.8   4.7   8.7   21.7   2.6
>Kobe Bryant         30.7   6.9   6.2   28.8   2.9

In addition to the Iverson discrepancy, Ed's list has Payton and Bryant as two
of the most consistent players whereas JohnC's list has them as two of the less
consistent players.

I don't have much to say about these discrepancies; I haven't thought much about
how to measure consistency, except for my comments a couple of weeks ago as Ed
was tinkering with his consistency formula.  As Ed says:

>I still don't know what a consistency rating would be good for, except maybe
debunking
>the notion that player consistency is valuable.

I.e. it's a kind of fun but not real critical thing to investigate.

Similarity scores however have a variety of potentially important and useful
applications, but I do not find the similarity measures that I've seen to be
very convincing.  E.g. MikeG's list showing Steve Hawes to be the 4th most
similar player to Charles Oakley.  His list also included the likes of Curtis
Perry, Horace Grant, AC Green, etc. -- all instantly recognizable as kindred of
the PF banger Oakley.  But Hawes was an spot-up-shooting (79% on FTs -- few
non-Malone PFs achieve that), mediocre-rebounding center, nothing like the
Oakleys, Silases, Grants, Greens, etc. on that list.


--MKT

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Michael Tamada wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: igorkupfer@... [mailto:igorkupfer@...]
> Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 2:41 PM
>
>
> >From: "John W. Craven" <john1974@...>
>
> [...]
>
> >> Okay, time for me to enter the fray here. I'm going to use a stat that I
> >> just made up and for that reason will call Craven Scores. Basically, they
> >> use the same methodology as Bill James Similarity Scores, meaning that for
> >> every game you begin with a score of 1000 and deduct the following number
> >> of points for every difference (positive OR negative) in numbers from a
> >> player's seasonal average:
> >>
> >> FG made: 2
> >> 3FG made: 1
> >> FT made: 1
> >> Rebounds: 1
> >> Assists: 1
> >> Blocks: 2
> >> Steals: 1
> >> Turnovers: 1
>
> One thing that bugs me about the similarity scores that have sprung up for
basketball the past year or so:  I haven't seen any theoretical nor statistical
foundation for them...well there's a bit of a statistical foundation for MikeG's
Euclidean distance, but I've got a couple of concerns about that metric as well.
>
> The one above has double weight for FGM.  Reasonable enough, but why double
weight for blocks?   And single weight for everything else?  If Derrick McKey
and Bob Love are both identical to Jerome Kersey, but Mckey gets two blocks a
game whereas Kersey only gets one, and Kersey gets 2 assists per game but Love
only gets one, would we want to say that McKey is more distant from Kersey than
Love is (indeed twice as distant, if one chooses to interpret the numbers that
way)?  What makes blocks such a key determinant in measuring similarity?

It was just a "game time decision", so to speak. Blocks stop a shot that
was probably going to go in from even having a chance at going in, so I
gave it 2. Probably I could have given it a weight of 1.7535321 or
something, but again I was interested in simplicity, not absolute
accuracy.

>
> >If you included missed FTs and FGs here, it would give you a better handle on
FG%.
>
> Yes, I think that's pretty huge.  To ignore FGMissed is to throw away valuable
information.

As reflected in the brief comment about Allen Iverson's score, not
including them was a conscious decision on my part. To me, a guy like
Iverson, who consistently scores 20+ a night, no matter how many times he
misses, is a more consistent player than a guy like Paul Pierce, who will
occasionally stop shooting once he gets on a cold streak.

Like all statistics, this one includes the creator's bias.

>
> I don't recall if MikeG's Euclidean distance measures include FGMiss; my
impression is that they do not because he doesn't seem to include them when he
lists players' similar stats.
>
> But even after FGMisses and FTMisses are included, these measure are still
leaving out a hugely important variable for measuring player quality:  FG% (and
though less important, FT% also).
>
> And simply counting a player's total FGA and FGM is NOT an adequate substitute
for looking at FG%.

Well, then feel free to design your own metric. I've outlined my reasons
for why I chose not to include something for low-percentage shooters.

>
> This was my beef with the Tony Minkoff's Minkoff Player Ratings from several
years ago (ingenious regressions with minutes played as the dependent variable
and standard NBA counting stats as the explanatory variables).  They included
only the stats which represented counts of actions such as FGM, rebounds, etc. 
Minkoff (actually he was away for a period of time so I was emailling one of his
friends or co-researchers) resisted the idea of putting FG% in as an explanatory
variable because it's not something which represents a cumulative count.  But
they did agree to try adding FG% as an explanatory variable to the regression,
as an experiment.  It had a highly significant coefficient and improved the
regression's r-squared.  In other words, it belonged in the regression --
because FG% is an important factor in player quality, big surprise.  But because
they pre-emptively refused to look at ratio variables such as FG% or TO/Min or
PTS/TO, they never did make it part of their!
  p!
> layer ratings.
>
> Same with similarity scores.  Career totals

Actually, these were season-to-date totals. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

> are fine things to include in the regression, but key ratios such as FG%
> and min/game

Actually, I did control for minutes. Without that control, Brent Barry
would have been near the top of the list and Paul Pierce would have been
at the bottom.

> are also important stats for evaluating players or
> determining similarity.

On the other side of things, players like Ricky Davis or Bonzi Wells are
more likely to get extra minutes *because* they are on a hot streak or
whatever (actually, "hot streak" is not precisely accurate - Bonzi's more
likely to get minutes when matchups dictate that he'll outproduce Ruben
Patterson or Derek Anderson - but the outcome's the same). Essentially,
then, by looking at minutes per game as a factor to reduce similarity,
you're counting things twice.

>
> If I'm comparing various trips and routes, it simply is not adequate to
> only look at distance travelled and time used; it's also important to
> look at distance/time, i.e. speed.  And for basketball, it's not enough
> to look at FGM and FGMiss, we have to look at FG% too.

Depending on what you're looking for, sure.

>
> I suspect the reason that many people are hesitant or resistant is
> because FG% is measured in units which are on a totally different scale
> from FGM, rebounds, etc.  But the seeming equivalence of counting FGM and
> assists and rebounds is illusory to begin with; we're comparing apples to
> oranges and in order to properly do this comparison we need some way of
> translating or equivalencing apples and oranges.  In other words,
> determing what weights to put on apples, oranges, rebounds, assists, etc.

Again, if that's what you want to do, fine. Here, I was going for 1. ease
of use, 2. ease of assessing results, and only 3. straight accuracy. My
take on things is that if I make a complex Tendex or vector-based system
and judge players along those lines, the rankings of the players at the
end of the studies would be approximately if not exactly the same, anyway.

>
> Given that FG% is always between 0 and 1, whereas career points can be
> 20,000 or more, the optimum weight on FG% will undoubtedly be a large
> one.  There's a variety of possible approaches here:  z-scores (i.e. use
> standard deviations as the units of measurement); making the weight on
> FG% a function of FGA (which often leads to FG% dropping out of the
> similarity formula and FGM appearing with a higher weight); etc.  Best
> would be an approach using multivariate statistical methods:  principal
> components analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, etc.  This is
> especially easy for another new (to basketball) measure which is related
> to Similarity Scores:  Hall of Fame Monitor scores.  Discriminant
> analysis, probit or logistic (aka logit) regression, or even regular
> multivariate regression can be used to easily come up with weights which
> can be used to measure Hall of Fame probability, and which have some
> optimal statistical properties (such as least squared error or maximum
> likelihood) as well.

I've got to say that one of the things that I *really* like about
baseball's HOF Monitor scores in particular and Bill James statistics in
particular is that they are very accessible. I know that that's not always
a popular thing among statheads (accessibility), but I truly believe that
the primary difference between James and the guys who came immediately
before and after him is that his methods were straightforward and easy to
comprehend. As time went on, he factored in more and more things in stats
like Runs Created, but without that ease of use baseball stats would
essentially be where secondary basketball stats are now: outside of a
couple that have been used for eons, nobody trusts 'em.

> >> Well, there you go. If Allen Iverson looks remarkably consistent, that's
> >> because the system makes him that way; my opinion watching him is that
> >> he'll nearly always get his 25 points a night, whether it takes him 15 or
> >> 30 attempts to do so. That's not an error so much as a known bias of this
> >> metric.
> >>
> >> Here they are in order:
> >>
>
> [...]
>
> >> Payton           4.31
>
> >> Bryant           4.84
>
> [...]
>
> >Here's my list, using the same players. Note that Iverson sits in the middle.
Shown in
> >order of decreasing consistency.
> >
> >Gary Payton         20.8   4.7   8.7   21.7   2.6
> >Kobe Bryant         30.7   6.9   6.2   28.8   2.9
>
> In addition to the Iverson discrepancy, Ed's list has Payton and Bryant
> as two of the most consistent players whereas JohnC's list has them as
> two of the less consistent players.

Payton's one of the more consistent players according to my list,
actually. He isn't close to Cuttino Mobley, but then again, nobody is.

>
> I don't have much to say about these discrepancies; I haven't thought
> much about how to measure consistency, except for my comments a couple of
> weeks ago as Ed was tinkering with his consistency formula.  As Ed says:
>
> >I still don't know what a consistency rating would be good for, except maybe
debunking
> >the notion that player consistency is valuable.
>
> I.e. it's a kind of fun but not real critical thing to investigate.

I wonder... it seems to me that year-to-year inconsistency is actually
probably *more* valuable to have in terms of achieving the Ultimate
Goal. Again, I'll refer to a study James talked about in "Politics of
Glory" where he ran a simulation pitting a couple of 200-win pitchers, one
of whom had a high, brief peak, the other with a lower but longer one. The
guy with the higher peak ended up winning a few more titles over the 1000+
seasons he ran.

That, of course, begs several questions, including, to me, the biggie:
what simulation truly simulates any professional team sport? Still, the
logical progression makes sense.

As this applies to game-to-game consistency, that's tougher to say. As
Dean said a long while back, inconsistency is more valuable to bad teams
than to good ones, and the same would seem to apply in the playoffs; a
very inconsistent team like the Celtics, for example, could ride a couple
of favorable matchups into the Eastern Conference Finals (or be bounced in
the first round), while a very consistent team of the same talent level
couldn't reasonably expect to advance past the second. On the other hand,
the 1993-4 Sonics were, to me, the epitome of a great but woefully
inconsistent team, and we all saw what happened to them.

>
> Similarity scores however have a variety of potentially important and
> useful applications, but I do not find the similarity measures that I've
> seen to be very convincing.  E.g. MikeG's list showing Steve Hawes to be
> the 4th most similar player to Charles Oakley.

On basketballreference.com, he doesn't even appear in the Top 10 on
Oakley's list. Different methods of achieving similarity, I know, but
you've got to bear in mind that:

a. Basketball has been around nowhere near as long as baseball has, so
there simply isn't a huge pool of retired players each person can be
similar to, which is compounded by

b. The game itself has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, and
even more dramatically over the past 50. I am *not* attempting to rehash
the "which era was better" debate; I am simply pointing out that George
Mikan's career numbers really are somewhat similar to, say, Larry Jones'
or Geoff Petries' (okay, really only barely to Petries'), even if they
achieved them in radically different ways. Once we get a larger database
of players to choose from, we'll be able to tweak those scores and come up
with guys who are truly similar to each other.

c. In addition, several key statistics (3-pointers, turnovers, blocks,
steals) have only been tracked for the last 20-30 years, depending on the
metric. Turnovers alone, for example, make it very, very hard to
compare pre-1979 players to their post-1979 counterparts *even if* we
hadn't entered a dead-ball era around 1995-6.

>  His list also included
> the likes of Curtis Perry, Horace Grant, AC Green, etc. -- all instantly
> recognizable as kindred of the PF banger Oakley.  But Hawes was an
> spot-up-shooting (79% on FTs -- few non-Malone PFs achieve that),
> mediocre-rebounding center, nothing like the Oakleys, Silases, Grants,
> Greens, etc. on that list.

Mike's stat is far from perfect. However, we're still in relative infancy
regarding basketball sabermetrics (there has to be a better word for
this).

John Craven

john wallace craven wrote:
>
> I've got to say that one of the things that I *really* like about
> baseball's HOF Monitor scores in particular and Bill James statistics in
> particular is that they are very accessible. I know that that's not
> always
> a popular thing among statheads (accessibility), but I truly believe that
> the primary difference between James and the guys who came immediately
> before and after him is that his methods were straightforward and easy to
> comprehend. As time went on, he factored in more and more things in stats
> like Runs Created, but without that ease of use baseball stats would
> essentially be where secondary basketball stats are now: outside of a
> couple that have been used for eons, nobody trusts 'em.

What you say about accessibility and simplicity is true.  It would be
better for the state of the art if everything was "open source," but guys
want to sell books and website subscriptions.  Not that there's anything
wrong with that :)

--
Gary Collard
SABR-L Moderator
collardg@...

That would imply that Minnesota is about -22 points a game in the 10
or so minutes when Garnett is not on the floor. That's not even
remotely believable. Whoever did this pulled the wrong numbers out of
their butt.


--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "monepeterson" <mone@s...>
wrote:
> An interesting tidbit from Eric Neel's column on ESPN:
>
> "The most impressive stat I've heard all year (courtesy of Chad
> Ford's must-read NBA Insider column last week) is this: when Kevin
is
> on the floor, Minnesota scores 14.3 more points per game than when
> he's on the pine. And they hold the opposition to 10.1 fewer points
> when he's out there, too. Call it the NBA's plus-minus rating and
> call KG's 24.4. Then call around -- call L.A. (Kobe: 11.1), call
> Jersey (Jason: 13.0), call Orlando (T-Mac: 10.7) -- you won't find
> anyone close."
>
> Who's keeping track of these numbers? Where are they?
>
> Moné

I think you're all forgetting the HOF is combined college and pro. I
agree with the sentiment that Worthy was mightily overrated as a pro,
but collegiately  he was the national player of the year on a team
that won the NCAA title, which means he's walking right in. Worthy
was also MVP of the 88 finals, which has to count for something.

After Worthy, I'd take DJ over Parish for one reason: He was the best
player on a team that won the championship. He also made all-NBA
once. Chief could never come close to making that claim. DJ can go in
the Hall's new "All-Ugly" wing.

He's my third choice from the list, but I actually think Parish
belong as well. IMHO the Hall has too few professional players and
far too many college coaches.

Dantley is No. 4 on the list. 30 ppg four straight years is hard to
ignore, but he never made all-NBA first team and only made second-
team twice. I say leave him out.

The other guys are a bunch of Vada Pinsons. Nice stats, good players,
but stay out of my Hall please.





--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, Gary Collard <collardg@e...>
wrote:
> harlanzo wrote:
> >
> > Anyone have opinions on the nominees this year?  I'll give mine
> > quickly:
> >
> > Robert Parish:  In, was very good (not great) for so long.
>
> In, easily, due to career value.
>
> > James Worthy: I think he was actually a tad overrated.  good but
not
> > so different from tons of other good scoring small forwards.
>
> In, not a slam dunk but his playoff performances and being a key to
a
> dynasty team puts him over the top.
>
> > Dennis Johnson: all star on seattle and phoenix decent on Boston.
> > closer but not quite.
>
> Very close, falls a bit short to me but would not be a bad
selection.
>
> > Adrian Dantley: had a nice scoring run on utah.  but he was a jerk
> > and his teams were just as good (if not better) after he was
traded
>
> Such a liability on defense and poor rebounder that I can't
seriously
> consider him.
>
> > Bobby Jones: wow.  this one is not even close.  role player not
much
> > more.
>
> The Bill Mazeroski candidate.  Great defensive player, but others
have been
> at least as good so no way.
>
> > Gus Johnson: was a great power forward but his career was a bit
too
> > short to get in in my opinion.
>
> Same for me, that short woudl require a dominant player.
>
> > Chet Walker: I never really considered him great or a star.  a
> > player like this needs a longer career to get in.
>
> Like DJ, I do not support him but would not be horrified if he got
in.
>
> > Maurice Cheeks: he really was a good player but always subsidiary
to
> > true stars.  there are many better pguards since.
>
> Yes, excellent but not a HOFer.
>
> > Walter DAvis: another really good shooting guard who was not much
of
> > a defender or passer.  I like him but I think there are better
> > candidates.
>
> Not a serious candidate.
>
> For the other North American non-college candidates, Chick Hearn,
> Meadowlark Lemon and Tex Winter get my vote.
>
> --
> Gary Collard
> SABR-L Moderator
> collardg@e...
>
> "If you embrace containment, you must accept proliferation, and
> proliferation - not just unchecked but accelerated - will make the
> violent century just passed seem an era of remarkable tranquility in
> comparison."  -- Senator John McCain

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Tamada" <tamada@o...>
wrote:
>...> I don't recall if MikeG's Euclidean distance measures include
FGMiss; my impression is that they do not because he doesn't seem to
include them when he lists players' similar stats.

Shooting % is pre-included in the 'standardized' pts-per-36-min.
rate.  If Bob Love scores 24 ppg shooting .435, and Artis Gilmore
scores 16 ppg shooting .605, they might both be rated as 20 pt. guys.

Actually, I use not a raw FG% but a combined shooting % that
includes FT.

Giving credit for greater or lesser scoring based on scoring % is
obviously questionable on many levels.  I do it not so much as an
attempt to 'punish' or 'reward' players, but to 'project' how they'd
score in an 'average' situation.

In other words, on average, high-% guys 'should' shoot more; low-%
guys should shoot less.


> If I'm comparing various trips and routes, it simply is not
adequate to only look at distance travelled and time used; it's also
important to look at distance/time, i.e. speed.  And for basketball,
it's not enough to look at FGM and FGMiss, we have to look at FG%
too.

This is amazing.  I just had this conversation yesterday driving
back from Wisconsin.  Once I had a mother-in-law who was insistant
on driving the route which provided the highest speed.  Sometimes
I'd be tempted to mention that while we were indeed travelling fast,
we were going in the wrong direction.

Mike T here raises speed as an issue, but I can't tell which way he
leans here.  Is it better to drive faster and arrive at the same
time?  Is fuel economy also an issue?  Safety?


> I suspect the reason that many people are hesitant or resistant is
because FG% is measured in units which are on a totally different
scale from FGM, rebounds, etc....

As mentioned, shooting % can be used (along with other factors)
to 'scale' the scoring rate that is used.


>...multivariate
statistical methods:  principal components analysis, factor
analysis, cluster analysis, etc.
....  Discriminant analysis, probit
or logistic (aka logit) regression, or even regular multivariate
regression....

  This sounds like voodoo to me, and might be hard to translate to
the casual fan.


can be used to easily come up with weights which can be
used to measure Hall of Fame probability

Now you're talking.  But I think you have to be able to factor in
weird and (to me) irrelevant things like whether a guy played in New
York, and other 'popularity' issues.


> Similarity scores however have a variety of potentially important
and useful applications, but I do not find the similarity measures
that I've seen to be very convincing.  E.g. MikeG's list showing
Steve Hawes to be the 4th most similar player to Charles Oakley.
His list also included the likes of Curtis Perry, Horace Grant, AC
Green, etc. -- all instantly recognizable as kindred of the PF
banger Oakley.  But Hawes was an spot-up-shooting (79% on FTs -- few
non-Malone PFs achieve that), mediocre-rebounding center, nothing
like the Oakleys, Silases, Grants, Greens, etc. on that list.

Here's part of that list, for reference.  Per-36 rates.

.00 Charles Oakley 11.3 11.5 2.8 1.2 .3
.28 Paul Silas 10.5 10.6 2.5 .8 .3
.40 Wes Unseld 10.4 12.5 3.8 1.1 .7
.44  Steve Hawes 11.5 9.1 2.7 1.1 .6
.46   Jim Fox 12.6 9.4 2.2 .8 .4
.51 Anthony Mason 13.0 9.4 3.7 .8 .3
.52 Curtis Perry 11.4 10.1 2.3 1.3 1.0
.58 David Greenwood 11.6 10.0 2.2 .9 1.1
.61 Horace Grant 12.7 9.5 2.4 1.1 1.1
.61 Grant Long 11.9 8.1 2.1 1.5 .5
.64 Clifford Ray 10.0 11.1 2.9 1.1 1.4
.65 Kenny Carr 14.3 10.1 1.7 1.0 .6
.65 Bill Laimbeer 13.9 11.0 2.1 .8 1.0

what we have here are PF who do not score a lot, but pass a bit.
And centers who do not score a lot nor block a lot of shots, but
pass a bit.

What I don't attempt to include are 'stylistic' elements of scoring,
like whether points were gotten by outside or inside moves, FT or 3-
pters, overhand or underhand, etc.  There has to be a point we stop
comparing; so I stand by my 'points is points' doctrine.

Maybe Oakley would have been pressed into service as a center, had
he played with a '70s expansion team.  Maybe Hawes would have been
primarily a PF alongside a dominant center.  I don't think their
stats would be a lot different, and they'd still look 'similar' in
this list.

This spreadsheet does equate players of different eras and
positions.  I find it rather interesting that Hawes and Oak are
similar statistically.  Is it a shortcoming of the program?  Depends
what you are looking for.

> I think you're all forgetting the HOF is combined college and pro. I
> agree with the sentiment that Worthy was mightily overrated as a pro,
> but collegiately  he was the national player of the year on a team
> that won the NCAA title, which means he's walking right in. Worthy
> was also MVP of the 88 finals, which has to count for something.

Point of fact...Worthy was never a National Player Of The Year winner
(at least not of any of the major awards that the NCAA recognizes).
In fact, he was never even the Player Of The Year in his own
conference.

While I'll agree that you have to factor in his college career and
ackowledge his role as "The Man" on an NCAA title team....

...that said, his college career wasn't exactlty (or at least obviously) HOF
caliber itself.
He only played two
and a half years, averaged under 15ppg, never won his conference POY,  was only
first-team All-Conference once,  was *never* a unanamous first team All-American
(AP had him second team in '82).   His most noteworthy accomplishment - the
tremendous Final Four he had in '82 - is at least somewhat offset by the
godawful
one he had in '81  (5-for-19 with 15 pts over two games).

His college career was very much like his pro one......extremely short,  lots of
winning,
statistically unimpressive, and surrounded by so much talent that it's hard to
determine
how much responsiblity to give him.

I still say he's not HOF material, but given the weak  slate of nominees this
year he
probably gets in.

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, bchaikin@a... wrote:
>
>
> the fact that anyone would even consider james worthy for the hall
of fame is
> beyond me....
>
> looking strictly at his pro stats there is nothing overly
impressive about
> his numbers, other than to say he was a good solid player. case in
point - as
> his yearly minutes/game increased over time (calling for him to
shoulder more
> of the offense), his FG% dropped when asked to play major minutes
(39 min/g
> in his 9th and 10th seasons in the league) and his scoring per
game did not
> substantially increase.
> other than that his FG% earlier in his career was really good but
his scoring
> was never more than 20-21 pts/g, like many other players....
>
> he was never all-pro, plus never even 2nd team all-pro during his
career,
> while players like dantley, english, barkley, t.cumming, sampson,
mchale, and
> wilkins were...

When you think back to Worthy's draft the consensus top 3 were
Nique, Terry Cummings, and Worthy and the question was which would
go number one.  I know Worthy has a great rep but it is arguable
that he was the worst of three.  I don't know if nique would've
meshed as well with the passing happy lakers but it's worth
mentioning.

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, bchaikin@a... wrote:
>
>
> the fact that anyone would even consider james worthy for the hall
of fame is
> beyond me....
>
> looking strictly at his pro stats there is nothing overly
impressive about
> his numbers, other than to say he was a good solid player. case in
point - as
> his yearly minutes/game increased over time (calling for him to
shoulder more
> of the offense), his FG% dropped when asked to play major minutes
(39 min/g
> in his 9th and 10th seasons in the league) and his scoring per game
did not
> substantially increase.
> other than that his FG% earlier in his career was really good but
his scoring
> was never more than 20-21 pts/g, like many other players....
>

Sounds like Hornacek a little.  People use arguments like this:

"Given the temperment of each player and I am a supportive fan of
both, I woudl select Jeff over Reggie to win the ring."

There is a lot of bias in the HOF for players that created a ton of
shots even if they didn't win.  Hell, Isaiah Rider gets a lot of HOF
points based on some algorithms out there just because he shot A
LOT.  In evaluating players, I absolutely do not look at them for HOF
potential.  I look at how they contributed to their team success.  It
means that players like Hornacek and Worthy end up looking valuable
to their team's success, which they were.  This is in contrast to
players like Jerry Stackhouse, Allen Iverson, and other
pure "scorers", who have greater HOF potential.  AI actually has had
some very good years (and some mediocre ones), but Stack almost
continually is mediocre.  He drags his teams toward 0.500, but not
really above it.  Is that what you want?  Can Stack be part of a
championship team?  Not without changing his game a lot, as Ron
Harper did when he joined the Bulls.  On the other hand, could
Hornacek and Worthy have dragged bad teams up to 0.500 as well as
Stack?  I'd have to do the analysis, but I think they'd get close in
many situations, but not in a few.

The traditional standards of the HOF are vague but definitely put
Worthy as questionable.  The HOF doesn't necessarily have anything to
do with winning (see Pete Maravich).  It's eclectic that way.
Flamboyance, stats, and scoring over winning.  Worthy's inclusion
would be a vote for winning over stats (in contrast to Maravich).

Again, my standards are pretty high, so I'd keep the new guys all
out, I think.  But I don't think it's unreasonable that they be
considered.

DeanO

> he was never all-pro, plus never even 2nd team all-pro during his
career,
> while players like dantley, english, barkley, t.cumming, sampson,
mchale, and
> wilkins were...
>
> he played on three title teams, yet that team had won 2 titles just
before
> his arrival and those team's core players were still there
(magic/jabbar)....
>
> he was never the best player on his team, and one could argue not
even the
> 2nd best...
>
> was he a good player? yes....was he a really good player? again i'd
say
> yes...was he a great player? no, not in my opinion....and
not "worthy" of the
> hall of fame.....
>
> bob chaikin
> bchaikin@b...

>>>Again, my standards are pretty high, so I'd keep the new guys all
out, I think. But I don't think it's unreasonable that they be
considered.


Interesting you say that, because that's one big argument for/against
Worthy depending on how you look at it: The Hall is absolutely,
positively grossly overloaded with role players from championship
teams. Slater Martin, Jim Pollard, Cliff Hagan, Ed Macauley, Earl
Monroe, Bailey Howell, KC Jones, Clyde Lovellette, Vern Mikkelsen,
etc. -- do any of these guys get in if they had played their entire
career in Cincinnati or Syracuse?

On the other hand, the Hall is overpacked in general. There's 12
REFEREES, for crying out loud, and at least seven college coaches who
got in without winning a title -- and 63 coaches total. By contrast,
there are just 17 managers in baseball's hall, despite a much longer
history.

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "John Hollinger"
<alleyoop2@y...> wrote:
> ... one big argument for/against
> Worthy depending on how you look at it: The Hall is absolutely,
> positively grossly overloaded with role players from championship
> teams...

I've got an algorithm, if you will, and it says James Worthy's career
ranks #75 all-time, if you count playoff games equal in importance to
regular-season games.

Worthy's playoff career alone ranks #23 alltime.

When I add the square roots of these 'equivalent totals', he comes
out at #45.

I don't attempt to rank college careers, but Worthy is certainly
better than most HOFers in pro career.

Worthy didn't just get to the Finals several times and win a few
times.  He absolutely excelled in pressure situations.  He became the
go-to guy on the Lakers, even when Kareem was still capable, and
Magic was in his prime.

Why Worthy's game left him after only 10 years, is a mystery.  He
tried passing more; he shot a few more 3s.  But he was a scorer, and
he faded with the Laker dynasty.

Worthy was overrated in one sense:  he got named to too many Allstar
teams.  I recall Larry Nance being passed over a few times, in favor
of Worthy.

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "harlanzo" <harlanzo@y...>
wrote:
> When you think back to Worthy's draft the consensus top 3 were
> Nique, Terry Cummings, and Worthy and the question was which would
> go number one.  I know Worthy has a great rep but it is arguable
> that he was the worst of three.

None of these guys were bad, so 'worst' may not be applicable.

Wilkins was the best scorer, Cummings the best rebounder, Worthy the
best at assists, shooting pct, and turnovers.

I've got all 3 ranked between #40 and #46 alltime.

Nique was a playoff flop.  Cummings was pretty good in playoffs.

--- In APBR_analysis@yahoogroups.com, "John Hollinger"
<alleyoop2@y...> wrote:
> >>>Again, my standards are pretty high, so I'd keep the new guys
all
> out, I think. But I don't think it's unreasonable that they be
> considered.
>
>
> Interesting you say that, because that's one big argument
for/against
> Worthy depending on how you look at it: The Hall is absolutely,
> positively grossly overloaded with role players from championship
> teams. Slater Martin, Jim Pollard, Cliff Hagan, Ed Macauley, Earl
> Monroe, Bailey Howell, KC Jones, Clyde Lovellette, Vern Mikkelsen,
> etc. -- do any of these guys get in if they had played their entire
> career in Cincinnati or Syracuse?
>

That is a key question I pose with all players, often replacing
Cincinnati or Syracuse with the Clippers or the Grizzlies.  That's
the point of things like skill curves, too.  It is definitely easier
to be a positive contributor on a winning team than on a poor team.
The wide spread in basketball winning percentages is, I think, due to
the complimentarity that really exists among players.  Put 2 good
players together and it's more likely that a third becomes "good".
Put 3 together and it's even more likely that a 4th becomes "good".

There is research out there that says exactly the opposite but it
looks at things like tendex.  Even my research says this when looking
at value on the margin.  This means that, from game to game, players
do compensate for each other (or that the defense can often take one
or two options away but leaves the others available to do better).  A
good game by Kobe doesn't mean a good game by Shaq.  But the presence
of Shaq on Kobe's team does help Kobe's game and that's what I'm
talking about.

So should players be evaluated by how well they'd perform if on an
average team, on a 0.250 team, or on a 0.650 team?  Worthy was
clearly important on a 0.650 team.  How well would he do if the rest
of his team were a 0.250 version? Not as well as Jordan, Magic,
Russell, Chamberlain, etc.  That seems to be the high standard.

DeanO


> On the other hand, the Hall is overpacked in general. There's 12
> REFEREES, for crying out loud, and at least seven college coaches
who
> got in without winning a title -- and 63 coaches total. By
contrast,
> there are just 17 managers in baseball's hall, despite a much
longer
> history.