Wayne Winston TrueHoop interview (deepak, 2009)

Crow · Post by **Crow** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 2:49 am

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deepak

Joined: 26 Apr 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 4:03 pm Post subject: Wayne Winston TrueHoop interview Reply with quote
Interesting read so far. Wayne Winston sure doesn't hold back on his opinions.

Part 1:

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-4 ... shful.html

Part 1 followup:

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-4 ... -Post.html

Part 2:

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-4 ... art-2.html
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mtamada

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 4:57 pm Post subject: Re: Wayne Winston TrueHoop interview Reply with quote
deepak_e wrote:
Interesting read so far. Wayne Winston sure doesn't hold back on his opinions.

Yeah, "outspoken" definitely applies to him. Those are good reads, they in fact provide a pretty large chunk of what Winston said at NESSIS, both in content and style (so it's almost like being at NESSIS, the only big thing missing from the articles is his gravelly voice).

Most of what he and the articles say is good solid stuff: APM can capture defensive contributions that box score stats cannot; APM measures what we care about i.e. are we outscoring the other team; etc.

The articles also give hints about the big question marks about APM: the standard error question (if the Mavs do really well when Player X matches up against Player Y in Game 1, how well does that really predict the chance that the Mavs will have the same success if they try to exploit that matchup in Game 2?); and the question of context or fit (players moving from a bad team to a good one and magically becoming better defensive players).

Both of those are in principle researchable questions. E.g. how stable are the APM figures (either for players or for lineups) within a playoff series? And by how much do individual players' APMs, or APM-based defensive or offensive ratings, change when they change teams -- and how does that figure compare to the changes experienced by players who stay with the same team?

(Those questions may very well have been addressed in this site already, I don't recall off the top of my head.)
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erivera7

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 5:23 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
I have a question and I didn't really know where to post it, but I figured after reading what Winston wrote, it's somewhat relevant. When I asked Stan Van Gundy some questions at Media Day, one thing he pointed is that he hasn't seen a numerical system that accurately rates how good or how bad a player is, defensively.

My question is, how would people here respond to that? When I look at defensive numbers, usually I ref to adjusted defensive plus/minus, net defensive plus/minus, opponent PER, and whatever else. I know those metrics have their limitations in determining the worth of a player's defense, but is it a start?
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bchaikin

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 5:27 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
nor does he hold back here either:

http://waynewinston.com/wordpress/?p=108

here he calls sebastien telfair "an outstanding point guard". yet when you look at the stats, in 08-09 telfair played 2095 minutes, and among the 44 PGs in the league that played at least 1500 minutes in 08-09 he had:

- the 3rd worst overall shooting (47.5% ScFG%, 39.9% on 2s, 34.6% on 3s), that's just 42nd out of 44 PGs...

- the lowest/worst rate of rebounding (2.9 reb/48min), dead last among those 44 PGs...

- just average rates for assists per minute and steals per minute for a PG...

but because adjusted +/- is "calculated" as high for him he's outstanding?...

so here's my question for mr. winston (or any other adjusted +/- adherents) - just what exactly did sebastien telfair actually do that was outstanding?...

plus this statement is classic:

Another guy who is totally overrated is Amare Stoudemire. I mean, he's a stat stuffer.

totally overrated? in 04-05, 06-07, 07-08, and 08-09 (he missed the 05-06 season), stoudemire played the most total minutes on a phoenix suns team that averaged a 56-26 record (3rd best record among all teams those 4 years), and lead the team in total rebounds, blocked shots, and scoring, shot an excellent 61.6% ScFG%, and was the most efficient player on offense in the nba those 4 years (the best points scored per zero point team possession personally responsible for among the 340 different players that played at least 2500 total minutes those 4 seasons)...

how is the player that does all that on a team that averages 56 wins a season overrated? if stoudemire is getting all those rebounds, all those blocked shots, and all those points (very efficiently mind you), on an excellent winning team, who else praytell might be responsible for all those wins?...
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BobboFitos

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 7:12 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
although I enjoy Wayne Winston's perspective, from reading his blog posts it seems he's as dogmatic about his own version of APM as Berri is about WOW. I am somewhat surprised these individuals don't realize there is a lot of gray rather then black/white as to evaluating players. It's really off-putting.
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Ryan J. Parker

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:38 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
erivera7 wrote:
I have a question and I didn't really know where to post it, but I figured after reading what Winston wrote, it's somewhat relevant. When I asked Stan Van Gundy some questions at Media Day, one thing he pointed is that he hasn't seen a numerical system that accurately rates how good or how bad a player is, defensively.

My question is, how would people here respond to that? When I look at defensive numbers, usually I ref to adjusted defensive plus/minus, net defensive plus/minus, opponent PER, and whatever else. I know those metrics have their limitations in determining the worth of a player's defense, but is it a start?

Nothing is going to give us a perfect measure without error, so we'll never have anything accurate with respect to any measure of player ability. Based on your blog post, I believe Van Gundy is simply referring to the notion that defensive stats don't jive with what he sees on video.

There are certainly ways to measure accuracy with predictions, and it's what I've been focusing on lately in this and this post. There is a lot we might want to predict, so I think this is just the tip of the iceburg. Perhaps there are other data points that identify how well a player is performing on defense that we can try to predict.

I'd be interested in Van Gundy's opinion with respect to how these models estimate defensive ability, since there is certainly much room for improvement with the team nature of defensive basketball. My guess is he's referring to maybe linear weight models that measure the value of blocks, turnovers, etc. Clearly these are flawed.
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Ryan J. Parker

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:42 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
BobboFitos wrote:
although I enjoy Wayne Winston's perspective, from reading his blog posts it seems he's as dogmatic about his own version of APM as Berri is about WOW. I am somewhat surprised these individuals don't realize there is a lot of gray rather then black/white as to evaluating players. It's really off-putting.

I give Winston credit for at least talking about uncertainty (in some portions of Mathletics, at least). But I do agree that there is a lot more room for talking about the uncertainty involved than we currently see from the most popular public figures of basketball statistics.
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deepak

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:19 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Part 3:
http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-4 ... art-3.html

This part was interesting. Is there agreement here that taking a 3-pointer at the end of the game, when down 2, is the smartest play? I never heard that before.

Quote:

Then it came down to this big debate. Do you foul when you're up three? They let Steve Nash hit a 3 to tie that game. Almost no coach will foul until there's five seconds left in the game. I think that's something we don't know the answer to. But that's something we could study.

You should definitely go for 3 at the end of the game if you're down two. I think there's no question of that. Most coaches don't. The only team that did that, that I know, was Reggie Miller and the Pacers. They always did that. They always let Reggie take that shot. They would want the buzzer to go off with the ball in the air and it worked a lot of times.

I feel like I've seen Kobe do that.
Yeah, I mean Kobe's probably done it too. But the math is solid there. If I've got the ball and I can take the shot with the horn going off, you should go for 3. You only win the overtime half the time. Suppose you have a 50% chance of hitting the two. So you make a shot half the time, and then you win in overtime half the time, you win the game just 25% of the time.

But if you shoot the 3, you've got at least a 30% chance. That's all you need to know.
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erivera7

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:37 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Ryan J. Parker wrote:

Nothing is going to give us a perfect measure without error, so we'll never have anything accurate with respect to any measure of player ability. Based on your blog post, I believe Van Gundy is simply referring to the notion that defensive stats don't jive with what he sees on video.

There are certainly ways to measure accuracy with predictions, and it's what I've been focusing on lately in this and this post. There is a lot we might want to predict, so I think this is just the tip of the iceburg. Perhaps there are other data points that identify how well a player is performing on defense that we can try to predict.

I'd be interested in Van Gundy's opinion with respect to how these models estimate defensive ability, since there is certainly much room for improvement with the team nature of defensive basketball. My guess is he's referring to maybe linear weight models that measure the value of blocks, turnovers, etc. Clearly these are flawed.

Makes sense, thanks for answering my question(s).
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Ryan J. Parker

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:49 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
deepak_e wrote:
Part 3:
http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-4 ... art-3.html

This part was interesting. Is there agreement here that taking a 3-pointer at the end of the game, when down 2, is the smartest play? I never heard that before.

Quote:

Then it came down to this big debate. Do you foul when you're up three? They let Steve Nash hit a 3 to tie that game. Almost no coach will foul until there's five seconds left in the game. I think that's something we don't know the answer to. But that's something we could study.

You should definitely go for 3 at the end of the game if you're down two. I think there's no question of that. Most coaches don't. The only team that did that, that I know, was Reggie Miller and the Pacers. They always did that. They always let Reggie take that shot. They would want the buzzer to go off with the ball in the air and it worked a lot of times.

I feel like I've seen Kobe do that.
Yeah, I mean Kobe's probably done it too. But the math is solid there. If I've got the ball and I can take the shot with the horn going off, you should go for 3. You only win the overtime half the time. Suppose you have a 50% chance of hitting the two. So you make a shot half the time, and then you win in overtime half the time, you win the game just 25% of the time.

But if you shoot the 3, you've got at least a 30% chance. That's all you need to know.

I believe a general rule is that your odds of making a 2pt shot times the odds of winning in OT need to be greater than the odds of making the 3pt shot.

So if you only make the 3pt shot 30% of the time, then you should go for the tie if you can get a 70% 2pt shot and figure to win 50% of the time in OT. In this case your odds of winning are 35% instead of 30% for the 3pt shot.

I haven't done a thorough study of this, but in practice your best bet is probably going to be the 3pt shot. Like anything else, though, "it depends". Smile
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deepak

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 4:29 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Ryan J. Parker wrote:

I believe a general rule is that your odds of making a 2pt shot times the odds of winning in OT need to be greater than the odds of making the 3pt shot.

So if you only make the 3pt shot 30% of the time, then you should go for the tie if you can get a 70% 2pt shot and figure to win 50% of the time in OT. In this case your odds of winning are 35% instead of 30% for the 3pt shot.

I haven't done a thorough study of this, but in practice your best bet is probably going to be the 3pt shot. Like anything else, though, "it depends". Smile

Yes, the math makes sense when you put it that way. Though depending on where you're playing, and how much more talent you have, your odds of winning the overtime period could be significantly more than 50%. And I don't know this for sure, but my guess is that the last 5 minutes of a game (or an overtime period) will tend to favor the better team more than any randomly picked 5 minute stretch during the game.
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DLew

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 8:09 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Bob,

I understand your points, but I think in this case the burden of proof is on you (or anyone who doesn't think Telfair is good) to explain why the Wolves were so much better with Telfair on the court. Winston doesn't seem to be referring to some 'calculated' adjusted plus-minus there, he is simply reciting some basic plus-minus stats. The Wolves did a lot better with Telfair in the game last year and if you don't think Telfair is good then you have to offer some other explanation. Now, luck is a perfectly valid response, and that's probably the case here (I certainly think so at least), but I think you at least have to say that you think Telfar just got lucky and then use the box score to support that. The fact of the matter is that Winston does have some evidence to support his claim.
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IrishHand

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 8:37 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Context matters. Minnesota was paper-thin and Telfair - though clearly well below-average as a PG - was still measurably superior to their other options at PG.

If you started an average D1 PG on an NBA team and backed him up with an average D2 PG, then the other players on the team will almost certainly play better with the former. It's unclear to me that that makes any sort of commentary about the player's value relative to any other PG in the league and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of "outstanding point guard" unless the only frame of reference is "point guards playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2008/09".
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BobboFitos

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:59 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
DLew wrote:
Bob,

I understand your points, but I think in this case the burden of proof is on you (or anyone who doesn't think Telfair is good) to explain why the Wolves were so much better with Telfair on the court. Winston doesn't seem to be referring to some 'calculated' adjusted plus-minus there, he is simply reciting some basic plus-minus stats. The Wolves did a lot better with Telfair in the game last year and if you don't think Telfair is good then you have to offer some other explanation. Now, luck is a perfectly valid response, and that's probably the case here (I certainly think so at least), but I think you at least have to say that you think Telfar just got lucky and then use the box score to support that. The fact of the matter is that Winston does have some evidence to support his claim.

Good point - clearly I can't argue with the fact the wolves were so much better w/ telfair on the court - what I could argue is that they were better possibly in spite of telfair, not because of his on court contributions.

i would be thrilled to see the clippers 2nd unit perform fantastically because of telfair, but i really dont think that will happen.
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bchaikin

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:00 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
"...I think in this case the burden of proof is on you... to explain why the Wolves were so much better with Telfair on the court..."

so the t-wolves were so much better with telfair on the court - that makes him an outstanding PG? outstanding compared to what - the t-wolve backup PGs? the t-wolves finished at 24-58, one of the worst records in the league, and telfair played the most minutes at PG of any player on the team. if telfair was outstanding, what was chris paul in 08-09 (all-NBA 2nd team, all-D 1st team)?...

when i think of oustanding nba PGs i think of PGs like chris paul and chauncey billups, not sebastien telfair...

tell me - had either paul or billups been telfair's backup in 08-09, and not kevin ollie, bobby brown, and to some extent randy foye, and the t-wolves would have done much better when telfair was not on the floor than they actually did in 08-09, would telfair have still been outstanding with the same individual and team stats as actually occured in 08-09 when he played?...

or would his adjusted +/- or just his +/- have been worse because when he did not play then either paul or billups would have played. would you then come to some other conclusion, even though the team's stats when telfair played were the same as they were in 08-09?...
The Wolves did a lot better with Telfair in the game last year and if you don't think Telfair is good then you have to offer some other explanation.
you mean other than the explanation i gave above? read it again - telfair was (1) one of the worst overall shooting and was (2) the worst rebounding PG in the league (among all PGs with at least 1500+ minutes played). his (3) steal and assist rates were average at best, and (4) outside of his defensive rebounding, steals, and blocked shots his defense was nothing special. how does that make him outstanding?...

also as good as his unadjusted +/- was in 08-09 (+7.2), it was just as bad in 07-08 (-7.3):

http://www.82games.com/0809/08MIN1.HTM#onoff
http://www.82games.com/0708/07MIN1D.HTM

but you know what? take a close look at his stats both seasons - his stats were virtually identical both seasons (and quite poor), and the team's W-L record was poor and almost identical (just 22 vs just 24 wins)...

so here is my question to all adjusted +/- adherents - this was the minnesota per 100 possession scoring in 08-09 with and without telfair:

------with telfair---w/o telfair
min------110.1-------103.3
opp------112.6-------113.0

now what if it had looked like this?

------with telfair---w/o telfair
min------110.1-------113.0
opp------112.6-------103.3

would telfair's +/- and adjusted +/- be different? because how does what happened when telfair was not on the floor determine how good he was when he was on the floor? i ask because his stats, and his teammates stats when he played, are identical in both instances....

this is similar to the thread entitled "adjusted plus-minus update" where adjusted +/- adherents were claiming that chris paul's defense was poor one season but excellent the next despite what happened when he was on the floor both seasons being literally the same...

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IrishHand

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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 6:14 am Post subject: Reply with quote
^

Good post.
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DLew

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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:05 am Post subject: Reply with quote
Bob,

I don't want to upset you here. I hope you noticed that in my post I agreed with your assessment by saying that I thought Telfair's strong plus-minus last year was most likely due to luck (or randomness, whatever you want to call it). I think your new post provided a better argument for why we should believe this to be the case.

With regards to your more general question as to why what happens when he's off the court matters, the logic behind such methods is that team performance is mostly due to players other than Telfair (80% when he's on the court, 100% when he's off the court) so just looking at team performance isn't going to tell us much about him. However, by looking at what happens when he's off the court we can figure out how good his teammates are, and then we can compare that to how good his team is when he's in the game and see his effect. Now, as you have pointed out this approach is flawed for a number of reasons, but I think you would have to acknowledge that it is not without some logical underpinnings.
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Qscience

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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 10:15 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Here is what is missing from his game:
He only has about 17 ft of range to his shot.
He is not a good rebounder
His court IQ is really low for a point guard.
Low Pct from the field
Perimeter Defense ranked 50th among guards = per
His ability to dish in the paint accuracy 5His win val was just under 2 for playing over 24minutes a game that was very weak.
3rd per

So if he doesnt shoot, drive, pass, rebound, or make good decisions on the move. Then why would he even call out Telfair for being a good player?(wait an outstanding player) He is simply at "this stage" in his career a borderline 8-10th man.

Quote:
I am sure the Timberwolves did not realize that in Telfair they already had an outstanding point guard
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Mike G

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:41 am Post subject: Reply with quote
Qscience wrote:

He only has about 17 ft of range to his shot...

From the arc, he hit .519 eFG% -- quite a bit higher than his overall .481 TS%.

No idea what to make of these notations:
Quote:
Perimeter Defense ranked 50th among guards = per
His ability to dish in the paint accuracy 5His win val was just under 2 for playing over 24minutes a game that was very weak.
3rd per

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bbarnwell

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:37 am Post subject: Reply with quote
When there's such a bizarre shift in team performance that stands in the face of Telfair's personal performance, I think there needs to be some examples provided beyond a single year of one player's career to prove Winston's point here.

If what we were seeing regarding Telfair was a skill, there should be evidence that a) Telfair's been able to produce this sort of performance out of his teammates in the past and/or b) There are other players who have had similarly poor individual lines in the past (or been tossed around the league like so much flotsam), but have driven a significant rise in their teammates APM.
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Ilardi

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:48 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
bbarnwell wrote:
When there's such a bizarre shift in team performance that stands in the face of Telfair's personal performance, I think there needs to be some examples provided beyond a single year of one player's career to prove Winston's point here.

If what we were seeing regarding Telfair was a skill, there should be evidence that a) Telfair's been able to produce this sort of performance out of his teammates in the past and/or b) There are other players who have had similarly poor individual lines in the past (or been tossed around the league like so much flotsam), but have driven a significant rise in their teammates APM.

Telfair's overall average APM in my six-year model (03-09) was -2.86 (-0.48 offense; -2.37 defense). That makes him one of the weaker PGs in the league over that span. Nonetheless, his APM last year (using the same 6-year dataset to reduce errors, but weighting ~68% toward last season) was much better: +2.28 (+3.37 offense; - 1.08 defense; se = 1.09).

Telfair came into the league 5 seasons ago at age 19, and we certainly expect to see some improvement in APM from 19 to 24: on average, about +3.0 points. Thus, even though he has been a clearly below-average player over the entire span of his career, it doesn't strike me as implausible that he had a more positive impact last season. On the other hand, to call him "outstanding" (a la Winston) seems like a stretch . . .
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bchaikin

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:07 am Post subject: Reply with quote
"...it doesn't strike me as implausible that he had a more positive impact last season..."

really? i notice that you did not say that the team simply played better when telfair was on the floor, or that telfair's "...strong +/-... was most likely due to luck...". you have actually said that he had a more positive impact last season...

so here's my question - doing what? what did telfair actually do in 08-09 such that he had a more positive impact in 08-09 than in 07-08 (or in any of his previous seasons)?...

i ask as here is a comparison of his 08-09 versus his 07-08 stats (and also his stats previous to 07-08 ):

year--ScFG%--2FG%--3FG%--FT%--reb/40-ast/40-to/40-st/40-pts/40
3yrs---.468----.411----.309----.778----2.9-----6.0----3.0----1.3----13.9 (04-05 to 06-07)
0708--.457----.432----.281----.743----2.8-----7.3----2.3----1.2----11.5
0809--.475----.399----.346----.819----2.4-----6.5----2.8----1.4----14.1

and just for comparison, here are the league averages for PGs (minus telfair's stats) from those same seasons:

year--ScFG%--2FG%--3FG%--FT%--reb/40-ast/40-to/40-st/40-pts/40
3yrs---.517----.454----.353----.798----3.9-----6.7----2.7----1.5----15.8 (04-05 to 06-07)
0708--.524----.465----.361----.799----4.0-----6.9----2.6----1.5----15.7
0809--.525----.459----.363----.817----4.1-----6.7----2.7----1.5----16.0

i don't see much difference in telfair's 08-09 vs his 07-08 stats. he shot poorly both seasons, 5%-7% worse overall (ScFG%) than what just the league average PG shot, and upwards of 12%-14% worse overall than the best shooting PGs, his rebounding was significantly worse than just the league average PG, and for example in 08-09 his rate of turnovers per 40 minutes was more but his rates for assists and scoring less than just those of the league average PG...

the fact is that statistically his numbers look quite poor in both 08-09 and 07-08, and these webpages:

http://www.82games.com/0708/07MIN1C.HTM
http://www.82games.com/0809/08MIN1.HTM#bypos

seem to infer that his defense was worse than average to poor, but that certainly minnesota defense against PGs when telfair played was not very good, only average at best. so i don't see any evidence that he was an excellent or even a very good defender...

i do see that the t-wolves shot a bit better in eFG% when he was on the floor in 08-09 versus 07-08:

http://www.82games.com/0708/07MIN1D.HTM
http://www.82games.com/0809/08MIN1.HTM#onoff

telfair----on------off
0708---.478----.489
0809---.493----.469

did you see telfair play alot in both 07-08 and 08-09? might you have some statistical evidence that it was telfair's non-assist passes (rather than assist or non-assist passes of other t-wolves players) that resulted in the t-wolves higher eFG% in 08-09? i ask because again telfair's rate for assists per minute was less in 08-09 than it was in 07-08...

adjusted +/- adherents like to claim that box score stats don't tell the whole story, and that adjusted +/- tells more. but you know what's funny about all this? here you have 3 different people all doing adjusted +/-, yet:

- one claims telfair was "...outstanding..." in 08-09...
- another claims "outstanding" seems like a stretch but that telfair had "...a more positive impact last season..." than in previous seasons...
- and a third saying "...I thought Telfair's strong plus-minus last year was most likely due to luck..."

so which is it? what does adjusted +/- say about sebastien telfair in 08-09? because the stats certainly do seem to indicate that he's played poorly in both 07-08 and 08-09...

and please don't respond with:

...If you choose to make an effort to understand adjusted plus-minus then you'll likely come around, but I suspect you've already made up your mind about it...

because lots of people in this discussion group, me included, are making an effort to try to understand it...

nor respond like this:

"...I will say that questioning along these lines indicates that you still don't understand what we have been saying about the noise associated with adjusted plus-minus. Because of the large standard errors on the coefficient estimates in all the results that are publicly available it is pointless to engage in most player vs. player debates. This is not to say that you can't empirically test the validity of adjusted plus-minus using the publicly available numbers, you can, but not with a sample size of two players..."

because this current debate is not between just adjusted +/- adherents and those who do not calculate it, but is between 3 different proponents of calculated adjusted +/- coming up with 3 different evaluations for the same player...
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TrueHoop

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:41 am Post subject: Winston addressed bad backups, in the case of Telfair Reply with quote
Probably doesn't change all that much, but FYI, from his blog http://waynewinston.com/wordpress/?p=139:

Quote:
Several of you thought that Telfair’s +6 points rating (per 48 minutes) was probably due to the “bad backups.” This is not the case. Telfair’s primary backups Foye and Ollie were not bad last season. Foye had a +3 rating and Ollie a +2 rating. My figures in previous post were adjusted +/- by the way. I guess maybe the lesson is that Foye and Ollie played poorly at the point, but then surely they played great during the rest of their time on the court.
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kjb

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:51 am Post subject: Reply with quote
So, Telfair was "outstanding," and Foye and Ollie were "not bad." Sorta makes me wonder how Minnesota managed just 24 wins with such strong performance from the PG position.
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Mike G

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:21 am Post subject: Re: Winston addressed bad backups, in the case of Telfair Reply with quote
TrueHoop wrote:
.. from his blog http://waynewinston.com/wordpress/?p=139:
Quote:
...Foye and Ollie played poorly at the point, but then surely they played great during the rest of their time on the court.

I'm guessing this is tongue-in-cheek.

Telfair, Foye, and Ollie totalled 66.4 mpg last year. Telfair and Ollie, the more 'pure' PG's, totalled 36 mpg. Leaving just 12 mpg in which Foye could have been the PG.
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gabefarkas

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:47 pm Post subject: Re: Winston addressed bad backups, in the case of Telfair Reply with quote
TrueHoop wrote:
Probably doesn't change all that much, but FYI, from his blog http://waynewinston.com/wordpress/?p=139:

Quote:
Several of you thought that Telfair’s +6 points rating (per 48 minutes) was probably due to the “bad backups.” This is not the case. Telfair’s primary backups Foye and Ollie were not bad last season. Foye had a +3 rating and Ollie a +2 rating. My figures in previous post were adjusted +/- by the way. I guess maybe the lesson is that Foye and Ollie played poorly at the point, but then surely they played great during the rest of their time on the court.

So Telfair, Foye, and Ollie all had positive +/- ratings, and between them they played in excess of 5400 minutes. However, the T-Wolves scored 97.18 points per 48 minutes, and gave up 102.06 points per 48 minutes. That's a difference of -4.88 points per 48 minutes. Given this, I'm left wondering who was on the court at PG for Minnesota when they were giving up nearly 5 more points per 48 than they were scoring.
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jsill

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 5:28 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Quote:
So Telfair, Foye, and Ollie all had positive +/- ratings, and between them they played in excess of 5400 minutes. However, the T-Wolves scored 97.18 points per 48 minutes, and gave up 102.06 points per 48 minutes. That's a difference of -4.88 points per 48 minutes. Given this, I'm left wondering who was on the court at PG for Minnesota when they were giving up nearly 5 more points per 48 than they were scoring.

I don't blame folks for being a bit skeptical of the APM-based conclusion that Telfair was quite good last year. However, I don't think a criticism of this form is necessarily valid. In theory, at least, it could simply be the case that all of Minnesota's PGs were better-than-average NBA players last year, but the team was bad overall because the Minnesota PG play was more than cancelled out by their weaknesses at other positions.

Now, it may seem somewhat surprising that the APM technique could reach that conclusion, since (as you suggest) *somebody* had to be running the point while Minnesota was getting outscored. Don't forget that more than one of those guys can be on the floor at the same time, though, so if the team tends to do better in those cases, then the APM technique may be inclined to infer that those guys are good. There may also be other, more subtle reasons why APM comes to the conclusion it does (after all, it is a giant regression and as such is a bit complicated and can't be reduced completely and precisely to a one or two sentence description).

In any case, there's nothing contradictory about claiming that all the players who played at a certain position for a bad team were good. Of course, that's not to say that APM is necessarily right in this case.
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IrishHand

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:28 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
I think the point of the objection is that pretty well any other analytical approach contradicts the notions that Telfair was outstanding and Ollie/Foye were not bad.
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Qscience

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:17 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Quote:
So Telfair, Foye, and Ollie all had positive +/- ratings, and between them they played in excess of 5400 minutes. However, the T-Wolves scored 97.18 points per 48 minutes, and gave up 102.06 points per 48 minutes. That's a difference of -4.88 points per 48 minutes. Given this, I'm left wondering who was on the court at PG for Minnesota when they were giving up nearly 5 more points per 48 than they were scoring.

Why was Telfair playing 27min a game and his quote backup Foye 35?
It sounds like either bad coaching or that possibly some bad data has been passed on to Wayne cause if Minn. was -4 pts how was every guard positive

Still a good read either way
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Mike G

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:52 am Post subject: Reply with quote
jsill wrote:
... the team was bad overall because the Minnesota PG play was more than cancelled out by their weaknesses at other positions.

... more than one of those guys can be on the floor at the same time, though, so if the team tends to do better in those cases, then the APM technique may be inclined to infer that those guys are good. ..

Isn't this the only possible interpretation? Other than that the APM is simply wrong, that is?

IrishHand wrote:
... pretty well any other analytical approach contradicts the notions that Telfair was outstanding and Ollie/Foye were not bad.

Not sure if these qualify as 'analytical', but Win Shares, PER, and eWins seem to concur. An 'average' player has PER = 15, WS and eW per 484 min = 1.0 .
In order of minutes (divided by 82, for per-game 'availablility'):
Code:
per 36 min. eWins Win Shs
Wolves pos M/82 Sco Reb Ast /484 PER /484
Gomes SF 32 15 6 2 .74 12.5 .46
Foye PG 30 16 3 4 .84 13.7 .60
Miller SG 29 12 8 4 .87 13.8 .84
Telfair PG 26 12 2 5 .46 10.8 .18
Love PF 25 15 14 1 1.41 18.3 1.25

Jefferson C 22 23 12 1 2.09 23.1 1.29
Smith,C PF 18 19 7 2 1.11 16.9 1.03
Carney SG 15 13 4 1 .44 12.1 .60
Cardinal PF 11 7 6 2 .09 8.1 .48
Ollie PG 10 8 3 4 .20 9.9 .68
McCants SG 8 14 4 1 .44 9.9 -.23

These 3 methods concur that the only above-avg members of the team (playing > 5 mpg) were their front line of bigs. Miller's line looks more like that of a PF than a G.

Still, if Jefferson, Love, and Smith are 'overrated' by their stats, and the PG's are underrated, that's exactly the kind of thing we hope APM reveals, isn't it?

I notice the Wolves were 19-51 with Foye in the lineup and 5-7 when he was missing. It would seem they'd be especially taxed to come up with adequate guard play at these times; and that Telfair would be especially crucial during these games.

They were 17-32 (and 13-17 under McHale) when Jefferson went down, so 7-24 without him.

Crow · Post by **Crow** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 5:01 am

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gabefarkas

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:35 am Post subject: Reply with quote
jsill wrote:
Quote:
So Telfair, Foye, and Ollie all had positive +/- ratings, and between them they played in excess of 5400 minutes. However, the T-Wolves scored 97.18 points per 48 minutes, and gave up 102.06 points per 48 minutes. That's a difference of -4.88 points per 48 minutes. Given this, I'm left wondering who was on the court at PG for Minnesota when they were giving up nearly 5 more points per 48 than they were scoring.

I don't blame folks for being a bit skeptical of the APM-based conclusion that Telfair was quite good last year. However, I don't think a criticism of this form is necessarily valid. In theory, at least, it could simply be the case that all of Minnesota's PGs were better-than-average NBA players last year, but the team was bad overall because the Minnesota PG play was more than cancelled out by their weaknesses at other positions.

I'd be curious how many other cases we can find where all players in a certain position for a certain team had the same sign on their APM. In other words, how many other cases are there where all SG's for Team X had positive APM, or all PF's for Team Y had negative APM, etc?
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DLew

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:45 am Post subject: Reply with quote
As mentioned before, it is likely to occur in situations where players at the same position sometimes play together and do well. This past year the Wolves must have played particularly well when they played Telfair plus another guard (Foye, Ollie). 82games seems to support this hypothesis: http://www.82games.com/0809/0809MIN2.HTM.
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Neil Paine

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 10:04 am Post subject: Reply with quote
DLew wrote:
82games seems to support this hypothesis: http://www.82games.com/0809/0809MIN2.HTM

My question is, what were their other lineups that aren't listed on that page, since those listed were only outscored by 38 pts in 1746 minutes... That means their other lineups were outscored by 365 pts in 2215 MP, or 7.9 P/48! By comparison, the '93 Mavs had the worst +/- per 48 MP mark of any team ever, and it was only -3.0. Who was Minnesota trotting out in those lineups? We know Telfair was included in those awful lineups at some point, because the ones listed on that page only comprise 50% of his minutes.
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Mike G

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 10:50 am Post subject: Reply with quote
Neil Paine wrote:
.. the '93 Mavs had the worst +/- per 48 MP mark of any team ever, and it was only -3.0. ..

That's -3.0 per position, or -15 per average lineup, per48.
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Neil Paine

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:01 am Post subject: Reply with quote
Oh, those pesky "team minutes"! Still, after amending the calculation, only 50 teams in NBA history have ever been outscored by 7.9 pts/48. No matter how you slice it, those other lineups were really bad.
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DJE09

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:36 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
DLew wrote:
As mentioned before, it is likely to occur in situations where players at the same position sometimes play together and do well. This past year the Wolves must have played particularly well when they played Telfair plus another guard (Foye, Ollie). 82games seems to support this hypothesis: http://www.82games.com/0809/0809MIN2.HTM

Yes, the unfortunate consequence of this is that when the lineup with another player does badly, APM apportions blame to the replacement player, as they were not part of the good performing lineup ...

basketballvalue has all the team lineups played, the first thing that jumps out at me is how many lineups the T'Wolves played, and all for such little ammounts of time. 7 of their 8 most played lineups feature Al Jefferson, so after he was injured, it seems (and this matches my memory) there was no settled lineup. this seems to be part of their problem.

To answer Neil's question, MIN played 411 lineups last season, binning the linups by team minutes, and providing BOS for comparison (team with dominant player who missed large chunk due to injury) I found:
Code:

MP MIN %TmM Pts OPts +/- BOS %TmM Pts OPts +/-
<5 245 13.1% 984 1081 -97 229 9.7% 252 282 -30
<10 83 14.9% 1164 1281 -117 43 8.0% 303 359 -56
<20 48 17.4% 1395 1503 -108 36 14.0% 687 722 -35
<50 21 17.2% 1374 1422 -48 22 17.5% 1354 1295 59
<100 9 16.0% 1303 1362 -59 4 8.4% 1229 950 279
>100 5 21.4% 1799 1773 26 4 42.3% 3910 3577 333
Ttl. 411 3961 8019 8422 -403 338 3736 7735 7185 550

The column under the team name is frequency of lineups that played that number of minutes, the %age is % of total teal minutes (at bottom of column). +/- is raw not adjusted.

Telfair seems to have played in most of MIN's best lineups, and not in the worse performing ones ... seems reasonable to expect he would look good, as DLew pointed out MIN seems to have performed best in the 1100 min Foye and Telfair were on the court together.
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gabefarkas

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 12:24 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
DLew wrote:
As mentioned before, it is likely to occur in situations where players at the same position sometimes play together and do well. This past year the Wolves must have played particularly well when they played Telfair plus another guard (Foye, Ollie). 82games seems to support this hypothesis: http://www.82games.com/0809/0809MIN2.HTM.

Looking at the +/- of all lineups with Telfair and Foye together:
+ 22 + 12 + 11 + 19 - 43 = + 21. In 771 minutes.

That's +1.3 per 48 minutes. However, Telfair's individual rating was +6 per 48, and Foye's was +3 per 48, according to Winston.

In general, I like APM and think it has value. Perhaps I'm alone here, but in this particular case I'm struggling to reconcile in my mind the apparent disparity in those particular numbers.
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kjb

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 1:01 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
You're not alone, Gabe. I think when every piece of information about a guy says one thing, and piece of information says something different, it's advisable to be skeptical of that one. Maybe APM is picking up something that's not showing up anywhere else, but in Telfair's case, I'm very dubious.
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Mike G

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 2:47 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
But +1.3 points per 48 is a lot better than the -4.9 the team averaged overall. In fact, it's 6.2 pp48 better.
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DLew

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 2:52 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
I'm not sure the disconnect is all that baffling here. Winston's APM is picking up the lineup data that Gabe mentions, and that the team was really bad in the other minutes that the T-Wolves played and drawing the conclusion that the reason for this pattern in the data is that Telfair and Foye were good players. The alternative explanation, which is perfectly plausible and borne out by the standard errors on 1 year APM, is that this pattern is the result of randomness. That is to say, the alternative explanation is that the reason that the team played better with Telfair on the court was because of reasons that are unrelated (orthogonal) to his presence on the court. It is entirely possible that the other guys on the T-Wolves played better, made more shots, had their opponents make fewer shots against them (etc), when Telfair was on the court due to luck. In fact given the number of players and combinations in the NBA, we would expect this to happen due to luck very often in any given NBA season. So, APM is telling us that there is a pattern in the data that suggests Telfair was good last year based upon the conceptual framework of basketball that APM assumes (i.e. that we can discern a player's performance from team performance with him on and off the court). Now, we have to think about the cause of this pattern. The two choices are (1) Telfair is the cause or (2) other unrelated factors that I will refer to randomness or luck (although they could be non-random factors that the model does not account for) are the cause. Given what we know about Telfair, and the standard errors on one year APM (which Winston hasn't provided, but basketballvalue has at 4 on a rating of +8 for Telfair) I think the most logical thing to do would be to acknowledge that the team played better with Telfair out there but conclude that this was more likely the result of randomness than outstanding play on the part of Telfair.
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kjb

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:23 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
The disconnect (for me) comes from Winston's words. He characterizes Telfair as "outstanding," which is a claim that isn't supported by anything except the +/- numbers. The fact that the team was better when Telfair was on the floor does not mean that Telfair was "outstanding."

I think it's extremely important to examine what the numbers actually are telling us when we're doing statistical analysis. And I don't think the numbers are telling us that Telfair is "outstanding." I think they're saying his team is better when he's on the floor. The exact reason for that isn't clear, and can't be determined using APM anyway. The other measures of productivity and player performance available to us would suggest that the reason is probably something other than Telfair.
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DLew

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:19 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
I completely agree. I guess to me there is no disconnect because I see Winston as just reading numbers out of excel without much examination of the type we are doing here, so I'm not surprised that he said Telfair was outstanding, as opposed to saying that Telfar had an outstanding APM rating last year. When Winston says the first, I hear the second.
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IrishHand

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:56 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
DLew wrote:
I completely agree. I guess to me there is no disconnect because I see Winston as just reading numbers out of excel without much examination of the type we are doing here, so I'm not surprised that he said Telfair was outstanding, as opposed to saying that Telfar had an outstanding APM rating last year. When Winston says the first, I hear the second.

He gave an interview in his capacity as "Mavs stat guru" (or with respect to some of the above, posted on his blog in that same capacity, with similar expectation of public dissemination/discussion).

You're suggesting that he was just shooting from the hip, offering conclusions from data without analysis or context?
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DJE09

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:33 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
gabefarkas wrote:
DLew wrote:
As mentioned before, it is likely to occur in situations where players at the same position sometimes play together and do well. This past year the Wolves must have played particularly well when they played Telfair plus another guard (Foye, Ollie). 82games seems to support this hypothesis: http://www.82games.com/0809/0809MIN2.HTM.

Looking at the +/- of all lineups with Telfair and Foye together:
+ 22 + 12 + 11 + 19 - 43 = + 21. In 771 minutes.

That's +1.3 per 48 minutes. However, Telfair's individual rating was +6 per 48, and Foye's was +3 per 48, according to Winston.

In general, I like APM and think it has value. Perhaps I'm alone here, but in this particular case I'm struggling to reconcile in my mind the apparent disparity in those particular numbers.

If you go here, the official source so to speak, you will see that Telfair and Foye were only +9 on all 1110 minutes together - or only 0.4 Pt/48. Of course the team was -412 in the remaining 2851 min or -6.9 Pt/48 ...

It seems to me here that APM seems to have picked up a relative difference between the performance of Telfair and his team mates, and not correctly positioned them with respect to the rest of the league. I think Mike G's point that Telfair was clearly 6 pts better than the other T'Wolves is accurate.

Given the (noisy) 1yr APM at basketball value is 8.1 (Se4.2) for 2009 and -2.4 (SE 4.6) for 2008, the other thing we can conclude is that Telfair's play has improved. I would also agree with this statement from a basketball perspective, perhaps not to point where he is one of the best players in the league, but certainly to a point where his contributions to a team were positive.

Last edited by DJE09 on Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
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DLew

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 5:40 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Irish Hand,

I am merely suggesting that Winston has a certain approach to analysis and context that most people here seem to deem insufficient or inadequate. From what I can tell he seems to have a lot of trust in the in-out data and the adjustments and conclusions derived from that. People here seem to be less trusting.

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gabefarkas

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:58 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Mike G wrote:
But +1.3 points per 48 is a lot better than the -4.9 the team averaged overall. In fact, it's 6.2 pp48 better.

Compared to Telfair's +6 rating, I guess that makes a little more sense.
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Gary C

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 7:25 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
I was surprised to see Winston was let go today. Hopefully the interview had nothing to do with it.
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schtevie

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PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 1:41 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Belated clean up on Aisle Bob. In his ongoing project to cast doubt on the utility of APM by any means necessary, he both overreaches and falls amusingly short.

First, there is this:

bchaikin wrote:

adjusted +/- adherents like to claim that box score stats don't tell the whole story, and that adjusted +/- tells more. but you know what's funny about all this? here you have 3 different people all doing adjusted +/-, yet:

- one claims telfair was "...outstanding..." in 08-09...
- another claims "outstanding" seems like a stretch but that telfair had "...a more positive impact last season..." than in previous seasons...
- and a third saying "...I thought Telfair's strong plus-minus last year was most likely due to luck..."

so which is it? what does adjusted +/- say about sebastien telfair in 08-09? because the stats certainly do seem to indicate that he's played poorly in both 07-08 and 08-09...

and please don't respond with:

...If you choose to make an effort to understand adjusted plus-minus then you'll likely come around, but I suspect you've already made up your mind about it...

because lots of people in this discussion group, me included, are making an effort to try to understand it...

nor respond like this:

"...I will say that questioning along these lines indicates that you still don't understand what we have been saying about the noise associated with adjusted plus-minus. Because of the large standard errors on the coefficient estimates in all the results that are publicly available it is pointless to engage in most player vs. player debates. This is not to say that you can't empirically test the validity of adjusted plus-minus using the publicly available numbers, you can, but not with a sample size of two players..."

because this current debate is not between just adjusted +/- adherents and those who do not calculate it, but is between 3 different proponents of calculated adjusted +/- coming up with 3 different evaluations for the same player...

Let's try to be honest. On the one hand, there is Wayne Winston, who, if the general conversation has been followed, alleges a proprietary fix on the multicollinearity problem with 1 year APM. (See Mike Tamada's recounting of the NESSIS presentation.) Maybe he is correct; maybe he isn't. He doesn't divulge his reasoning, so his claims must be left aside. On the other hand are the opinions of David Lewin and Stephen Ilardi, and Bob alleges that they have divergent views on the issue of Sebastian Telfair's performance last year.

Regarding this, I don't think that reasonable people can disagree. I cannot speak for Steve, and David has spoken for himself, but their interpretations are two sides of the same coin. There is an anomalous season, and the issue is what explains it. One year APM cannot speak definitively on the topic, by definition. David says that the absence of box score support makes it likely that the correlation is spurious. And Steve merely makes note of the generally accepted fact that young players develop. Hence, it is possible that non-box score contributions on the part of Sebastian Telfair help explain the result in question.

Moving on from bad faith to amusing, we have Bob's displeasure at APM questioning the value of Amare Stoudemire.

bchaikin wrote:
plus this statement is classic:

Another guy who is totally overrated is Amare Stoudemire. I mean, he's a stat stuffer.

totally overrated? in 04-05, 06-07, 07-08, and 08-09 (he missed the 05-06 season), stoudemire played the most total minutes on a phoenix suns team that averaged a 56-26 record (3rd best record among all teams those 4 years), and lead the team in total rebounds, blocked shots, and scoring, shot an excellent 61.6% ScFG%, and was the most efficient player on offense in the nba those 4 years (the best points scored per zero point team possession personally responsible for among the 340 different players that played at least 2500 total minutes those 4 seasons)...

how is the player that does all that on a team that averages 56 wins a season overrated? if stoudemire is getting all those rebounds, all those blocked shots, and all those points (very efficiently mind you), on an excellent winning team, who else praytell might be responsible for all those wins?...

Here, opposite to the case of Telfair, we apparently have a player whose box score stats unquestionably redeem his status. Strike two for APM?

Some years have passed since the debate on the relative value of the Suns' star players, but needless (?) to say the data have spoken. Looking at 1 year APM, there is remarkable consistency - and consistency is what matters. In short, Nash is and was the man, not Stoudemire (and for what it's worth, Marion was number two). And given that Bob notes Amare's missing year, there is a funny thing about that. Check the change in the Suns' offensive and defensive ratings that year, then compare it to the abutting estimates of AS' value in terms of APM, both on the offensive and defensive side. Coincidence?

Perhaps there was stat stuffing in his total rebounds and perhaps there was stat stuffing on the part of the scorekeepers with his blocks (see recent Mike G commentary). The bottom line is how things changed on the score board, and the year to year consistency in these results speaks loudly and clearly.
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gabefarkas

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 12:20 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
schtevie wrote:
There is an anomalous season, and the issue is what explains it. One year APM cannot speak definitively on the topic, by definition.

I'm not sure how the above can be reconciled with:
schtevie wrote:
Looking at 1 year APM, there is remarkable consistency - and consistency is what matters.
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schtevie

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 1:24 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Gabe,

The quoted statements are reconciled in the sense that if each year is effectively an independent draw (and it may not quite be, but that is another issue) and each year you get the same result (in a statistical sense) then the notion that every one of these draws is an outlier becomes highly implausible.

As for the particular case in point, these are the 1 year APMs of Amare Stoudemire's career (save his rookie and sophomore seasons, as I don't have Dan Rosenbaum's estimates for that, though we do know that he wasn't one of the league leaders. And let's never mind the fact that some of these 1 year APMs are actually two year APMs weighted heavily for the reference year.) Courtesy of David Lewin, 2004-05 was 2.60. 2005-06 was an injury year. Courtesy of Steve Ilardi (and modified to be on a per 100 possession basis), 2006-07 was 1.57. Courtesy of basketballvalue, we have 2007-08 being -2.23 and 2008-09 being -1.22.

Finally, we have Steve's unweighted six year average (which then includes the sophomore season) being 1.48, divided up between 1.88 on offense and -0.40 on defense. And for good measure, Steve's six season stabilized estimate for 2008-09 which has and an APM of -0.25, split between an offensive mark of -2.38 and defense of 2.13.
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mtamada

Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 375

PostPosted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:52 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Gary C wrote:
I was surprised to see Winston was let go today. Hopefully the interview had nothing to do with it.

I haven't seen anything about this. Was his consulting contract terminated?
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gabefarkas

Joined: 31 Dec 2004
Posts: 1313
Location: Durham, NC

PostPosted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 9:00 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
schtevie wrote:
The quoted statements are reconciled in the sense that if each year is effectively an independent draw (and it may not quite be, but that is another issue) and each year you get the same result (in a statistical sense) then the notion that every one of these draws is an outlier becomes highly implausible.

Thanks for the well-thought-out response. I understand how what I've quoted above speaks to, and reinforces, the consistency aspect. However, if by definition "one year APM cannot speak definitively on the topic", then what does the consistency give us?
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IrishHand

Joined: 15 Jul 2009
Posts: 115

PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:50 am Post subject: Reply with quote
mtamada wrote:
Gary C wrote:
I was surprised to see Winston was let go today. Hopefully the interview had nothing to do with it.

I haven't seen anything about this. Was his consulting contract terminated?

Cuban is internet savvy. He obviously read the TrueHoop blogs. Cool
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bastillon

Joined: 04 Nov 2008
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:24 am Post subject: Reply with quote
Quote:
how is the player that does all that on a team that averages 56 wins a season overrated? if stoudemire is getting all those rebounds, all those blocked shots, and all those points (very efficiently mind you), on an excellent winning team, who else praytell might be responsible for all those wins?...

I wrote a very long post about Stoudemire then my PC had a meltdown and it's all gone and I'm really pissed so I'll just sumarize.

Amare is actually below-average rebounder who benefited from having poor rebounding team. when Shaq arrived in 2008, his rebounding per36 dropped from 10.17 to 8.89. last year was even worse as he averaged 7.9 rebs per36(12.7 TRB%).

in terms of blocks he was a stat-stuffer who sneaked-up on people and was most of the time late in the rotation. as a Suns fan I saw this time and time again. didn't show up in the boxscore, did show up in team's DRtg.

besides that, he was below average in respect to everything but scoring. poor passer(1.4 APG for career and ~2 ast/passingTO ratio) who turns the ball over very often and can't play defense, either man2man or help D.

so when you have such one-dimensional player as Amare, his scoring won't make him an elite player or even all-star caliber. and he isn't an elite scorer either, before Nash era, he posted 17.5 points per36 with 53.3% TS. since Nash era, it was 24.2(+6.7) and 63.1% TS(+9.Cool.

I wrote much more on Nash's impact, Amare and so on but overall Amare is just an average player, because the only thing he gives you that's above average is points and well... he's not an elite scorer. supposing Nash hadn't arrived, Stoudemire could have been ~20 PPG 55% TS scorer but not much above that.

so when you are below average in respect to just about anything but scoring and you're not much above average as a scorer either, then you're most likely overrated, because average fans look mainly(not to say only) at scoring. that's how Amare became overrated and in reality he's an average player(or not much better than that).

1.5 hour of writing to re-write my post Evil or Very Mad