Historical ASPM/VORP and Hall Rating

[DSMok1]

At long last, I have compiled ASPM, VORP, and a new stat, Hall Rating, for the years back to 1974, and created a clean dashboard to interact with and view the data.

Please see http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/aspm-a ... -nba-aspm/

Also on that page is the entire data set in Excel format for download (over 20 mb!). Data was sourced from Basketball Reference, with some additions by Neil Paine, who estimated TOV% for me for the years 1974 to 1977.

Also introduced is a new stat called Hall Rating, which I discuss here: http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/2013/n ... -released/ .

Basically, it is a translation of the Hall of Stats approach for baseball to Basketball, accounting for both peak and duration by using both VORP and Value over Average to form a composite rating.

By this measure, since 1974... well, Michael Jordan dominates.

If we were to include 1 player for each year since 1974, we'd have 40 players in the imaginary Hall. Numbers 38 through 43 would be:

38 Tim Hardaway
39 Dominique Wilkins
40 Larry Nance
41 Eddie Jones
42 Tony Parker
43 Dwight Howard

[Statman]

At long last, I have compiled ASPM, VORP, and a new stat, Hall Rating, for the years back to 1974, and created a clean dashboard to interact with and view the data.

Please see http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/aspm-a ... -nba-aspm/

Also on that page is the entire data set in Excel format for download (over 20 mb!). Data was sourced from Basketball Reference, with some additions by Neil Paine, who estimated TOV% for me for the years 1974 to 1977.

Also introduced is a new stat called Hall Rating, which I discuss here: http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/2013/n ... -released/ .

Basically, it is a translation of the Hall of Stats approach for baseball to Basketball, accounting for both peak and duration by using both VORP and Value over Average to form a composite rating.

By this measure, since 1974... well, Michael Jordan dominates.

If we were to include 1 player for each year since 1974, we'd have 40 players in the imaginary Hall. Numbers 38 through 43 would be:

38 Tim Hardaway
39 Dominique Wilkins
40 Larry Nance
41 Eddie Jones
42 Tony Parker
43 Dwight Howard

Awesome, GREAT stuff as always.....

I'm very excited to see how my results will compare to yours when I'm done with the NCAA historical stuff and go on to the historical NBA stuff.

I'll be eventually trying to do almost the complete history of the NBA - at least from when they started mpg for players. I'm on a big historical kick but I'm such a perfectionist about the data (plus my life with work/kids/wife/etc.) that it seems to be taking FOREVER to compile. Weeks fly by. I just took a little time off work this coming week - hoping to start posting historical NCAA ratings pretty soon (before the NBA draft). We'll see.

Thanks again for posting your work.

[DSMok1]

I know what you mean, Statman. I've been working on this for probably 3 or 4 years off and on...

[Mike G]

... accounting for both peak and duration by using both VORP and Value over Average to form a composite rating.

What, no playoffs?

[DSMok1]

... accounting for both peak and duration by using both VORP and Value over Average to form a composite rating.

What, no playoffs?

I agree, they need to be in there--but it is a tricky question on how. For one, the opponent adjustment is a little trickier, and the sample sizes are smaller. For two, how do you deal with, say, ASPM, where ASPM is a rate stat? Or VORP, which is rate*%minutes stat? You no longer have a consistent baseline # of minutes total for teams.

So for now, I haven't dealt with that (I don't think most baseball historical projects use playoffs, either--though that's a much smaller portion of the season). At some point I hope to.

[Mike G]

Could you assume that over the course of significant players careers, there tends to be little difference in strength of playoff opponents? Playoff opponents are in general better -- like .625 teams vs .500 in regular seasons -- and then careers are still judged by a consistent 'playoff standard'.

At .500/.625, we can expect a postseason WS/48 to be 80% of what it was in the regular season. More than that is better than average.
Yes, it would be better to analyze it annually, rather than as a career total. But maybe the first approximation is still a lot better than nothing.

Then you have to assign a relative value to playoff games. Are postseasons half as important as regular seasons? It has to depend on the playoff minutes involved. Maybe weigh playoff minutes 3X as much?

If we don't know how to weigh these things, is zero ever going to be the optimal weight?

[DSMok1]

Could you assume that over the course of significant players careers, there tends to be little difference in strength of playoff opponents? Playoff opponents are in general better -- like .625 teams vs .500 in regular seasons -- and then careers are still judged by a consistent 'playoff standard'.

At .500/.625, we can expect a postseason WS/48 to be 80% of what it was in the regular season. More than that is better than average.
Yes, it would be better to analyze it annually, rather than as a career total. But maybe the first approximation is still a lot better than nothing.

Then you have to assign a relative value to playoff games. Are postseasons half as important as regular seasons? It has to depend on the playoff minutes involved. Maybe weigh playoff minutes 3X as much?

If we don't know how to weigh these things, is zero ever going to be the optimal weight?

I'm not going to make any approximations--when I do calculate it I will determine all of the numbers directly. And I would likely weight the games the same as regular season, but have them broken out as a separate number.

I'd rather say it's not included than do a crude approximation.

[Mike G]

Do you suppose it's more of an approximation to assume playoff opponents are the same strength; and regular season opponents, when you have large disparity between East and West?

The much bigger difference would be playoff opportunity between players. Some guys, no matter how good or how well they play team ball, just don't reach the playoffs as often as others.

Which brings us to this: Playoff games/minutes may be a reasonable proxy for team play.
And of course, playoff excellence leads to even more games and minutes, and titles.

Looking at those interactive charts and graphs, I'm inspired to suggest this: Let the viewer weigh playoff minutes relative to season minutes. For example, if Dirk Nowitzki played 80 RS games and 20 playoff games; and I said I wanted PO to be 4X as important (per minute) as RS; then to total 100 'equivalent' games, his RS would be factored by 50/80, and his PO by 50/20.

If you said playoffs are 80% of the total, then guys like Horry and Fisher creep into the top 50.

[Neil Paine]

Do you suppose it's more of an approximation to assume playoff opponents are the same strength; and regular season opponents, when you have large disparity between East and West?

I remember Gabe Farkas (I think) looked at the whole regular-season schedule strength issue at the height of the supposed East-West disparity, and found that there was very little difference in actual quality of SOS faced between teams. Even looking at SRS, the leaders/trailers in SOS are always around +/- 0.8, which means the very biggest outliers in SOS in any season gain or lose only ~ 2 wins/82 games because of SOS. And the vast majority of teams are nowhere near that.

So the whole East-West disparity thing was always pretty heavily overstated. Almost all teams play a de facto .500 schedule during the regular season, in terms of true talent faced.

[AcrossTheCourt]

Seeing Malone and Stockton in the top three of the Hall rating seems indicative that you're valuing longevity too much in the model. It looks like you're using value of replacement level and value over average, right? Did you think about looking at a player's, say, top five seasons and weighing that heavily along with the career totals? Or anything else that would help peak guys?

[Mike G]

Here's an example using Win Shares, regular season plus some multiple of playoffs.
In column 1 is the alltime top 20 in WS, with no multiplier on playoff WS.
Column 2 is the top 20 with playoffs weighted twice; etc.

Code: Select all

. 1         2         4         8         16        32
Kareem    Kareem    Kareem    Kareem    Jordan    Jordan
Wilt      Wilt      Wilt      Jordan    Kareem    Kareem
Malone    Jordan    Jordan    Wilt      Wilt      Wilt
Jordan    Malone    Malone    Duncan    Duncan    Duncan
Stockton  Stockton  Duncan    Shaq      Shaq      Magic

Duncan    Duncan    Shaq      Malone    Magic     Shaq
Shaq      Shaq      Stockton  Magic     Kobe      Kobe
Erving    Erving    Erving    Kobe      LeBron    LeBron
Garnett   Kobe      Kobe      Erving    Erving    Russell
Gilmore   Magic     Magic     Russell   Russell   Erving

Oscar     Russell   Russell   LeBron    Malone    West
Kobe      Nowitzki  West      Stockton  West      Malone
Barkley   Garnett   LeBron    West      Stockton  Bird
Nowitzki  Oscar     Nowitzki  Nowitzki  Bird      Nowitzki
Robinson  Barkley   Barkley   Bird      Nowitzki  Stockton

Reggie    Gilmore   Reggie    Olajuwon  Olajuwon  Olajuwon
Moses     West      Olajuwon  Reggie    Pippen    Pippen
Russell   Reggie    Garnett   Barkley   Reggie    Reggie
West      Robinson  Robinson  Robinson  Barkley   Barkley
Magic     LeBron    Bird      Pippen    Robinson  Billups

Stockton and Malone remain in the top 10 until playoffs are weighted by 16 times regular seasons.
Russell rises into the top 10 when PO = 8*RS. Amazingly, LeBron passes him at higher multipliers.

[rshea]

Interesting that LeBron moved up so much as the playoffs were given more weight.

[DSMok1]

Seeing Malone and Stockton in the top three of the Hall rating seems indicative that you're valuing longevity too much in the model. It looks like you're using value of replacement level and value over average, right? Did you think about looking at a player's, say, top five seasons and weighing that heavily along with the career totals? Or anything else that would help peak guys?

I doubt that longevity is weighted too heavily, seeing that LeBron has already made it to number 4 overall. I think their placement is more from the fact that ASPM likes them. I mean, Malone has 7 seasons in the top 83, 12 seasons in the top 152 all time. Even if you just compare best 5 seasons (peak only), he is 6th all time in average ASPM behind MJ, LeBron, CP3, Wade, Robinson, and tied with Bird. So it is more that ASPM likes Malone (same goes for Stockton) than the weighting of compilers vs. peak.

[Mike G]

Count me as one who does not see any benefit in extra weight on "top 5 years" or anything of the sort. This just promotes guys who had right around 5 great years.
It's like admitting we all have a maximum 5 year attention span; or we should. When we see players still dominating in their 30s, we must say, "What, that guy's still playing?"

If anything, keeping your game solid for 10 or 15 or 20 years is even better than having to fill your job with a sequence of players. Your team has some continuity, which is almost always a good thing.

Maybe, along with "above replacement" and "above average", one could factor in "above allstar" level of production.

[DSMok1]

I just want to register my distaste for any extra weighting on "top 5 years" or anything of the sort. This just promotes guys who had right around 5 great years.
It's like admitting we all have a maximum 5 year attention span; or we should. When we see players still dominating in their 30s, we must say, "What, that guy's still playing?"

If anything, keeping your game solid for 10 or 15 or 20 years is even better than having to fill your job with a sequence of players. Your team has some continuity, which is almost always a good thing.

Maybe, along with "above replacement" and "above average", one could factor in "above allstar" level of production.

I agree with not weighting any particular interval more heavily--we just want to look at overall production.

I think the concept of using VORP coupled with VOA, as it is, has been well vetted on the baseball side--I think it does a good job of balancing elite peak and longevity. Weight peak more and LeBron is already #2 all time, which doesn't feel right to me. Weight it less and Malone/Stockton close in on Jordan, which doesn't feel right either.