APBRmetrics

I haven't carefully evaluated his rank based on everything. What specific rank do you give him for last year and what was your most relied upon tool for that ranking?

last season anthony davis played 2358 minutes and blocked shots at 4.7% BS, rebounded at 13.7 reb/48min, scored 20.8 pts/g, shot a 56.9% ScFG% (2s, 3s, and FTs)...

looking at seasons of 2000+ minutes, blocked shots of 4.0%+ BS, rebounds of 13+ reb/48min, 20+ pts/g, and shooting of 55%+ ScFG%, you find only 8 players to have ever done this - kareem abdul-jabbar, tim duncan, patrick ewing, dwight howard, alonzo mourning, shaquille o'neal, hakeem olajuwon, and david robinson...

and of the 33 times this was done by these 9 players, anthony davis' 13-14 season was one of the most efficient on offense because he commited so few turnovers (1.6 TO/g)...

plus Synergy shows defensive numbers (PPP, FG%, and eFG% allowed) for davis on new orleans that are the best among the top 7-8 pelicans players in minutes played...

yet the espn ratings show anthony davis and boris diaw with similar WARs, and diaw with the higher RPM - if these ratings truly measure "impact", that doesn't pass the laugh test. just what is it that he is not doing that suggests he is not making an impact? make that a big impact...

simulation shows davis generating wins at the highest rate on a per minute basis among the league's PFs in 2013-14, and 2nd highest among Cs...

The synergy stats are counterpart or team allowed?

So you have Davis as best pf by you sim. Interesting. I'll chew on that a bit.

What is he not doing? Other than not getting on court team defensive efficiency anywhere near avg and barely above off and not enhancing rebounding compared to off? I'll look around a bit more. (He is doing both big time this season, but not last.)

His counterpart pts and per allowed estimates at 82 games were both a little worse than Diaw last season, fwiw.

I'll look for more when I am at a computer tomorrow or sometime later.

What is he not doing? Other than not getting on court team defensive efficiency anywhere near avg and barely above off

that's the team - not just him. again, he's by far the team's best shot blocker among the 9 pelicans with 1000+ minutes played, with the best or close to best Synergy defensive numbers. knowing that how can his (not his team's) defensive rating be anywhere near average?...

and not enhancing rebounding compared to off?

he lead the team in both off and def rebounds, with the best per minute off/def rebounding rates other than alexis ajinca who played just 2/5 the minutes davis did. how "enhanced" would their rebounding have been without him?...

I had Davis 5th in PF eWins, 6th per minute. His Blk/36 are scaled down due to strong team home bias.Among these 12, Davis has the 3rd lowest TO rate and also the 3rd lowest Ast rate.
His 3.78 Blk+Stl are easily tops; the other 11 avg 2.04

Two version of factor level rapm (1 yr) and apm (2yr) available. both estimate his individual defensive inpact as quite modest positive overall (less than 1 pt per 100 poss.) Actually estimated negative on opp efg% and def reb. impact on teammates (taking from their expected). His positives are on forcing turnovers and reducing foul shot given. Another thing he is not doing according to rapm at factor level is improving own team efg% or really anything at factor level on offense.

How can his individual defensive rating be anywhere near average? Possible negative consequences of going for blocks and missing and perhaps leaving his man open to attempt to score or not blocking out.
The adjusted factor level detail suggests this. Giving up more pts and a better per than diaw or league avg is another signal of non-overall greatness on d last season as well.

The adjusted defensive rebounding information is consistent with the raw on/off team rebounding information. The first is theoretical estimate. The second is a fact, part of what you are calling for.

How can his individual defensive rating be anywhere near average? Possible negative consequences of going for blocks and missing and perhaps leaving his man open to attempt to score or not blocking out.

this rationalization of the RPM rating does not jive with his Synergy defensive data...

The adjusted factor level detail suggests this. Giving up more pts and a better per than diaw or league avg is another signal of non-overall greatness on d last season as well.

you do realize that his combination of steals and blocks alone accounted for over 3 defensive stops per game (each steal and about 3/5-3/4 of the blocks are followed by a def reb). for his individual defense to have been "average", he would have had to allow a huge number of FGM or a very high percent of the FGA he faced be successful, and again the Synergy data does not infer this...

It jives with the apm and 82games data I have access to. I don't have access to the synergy data. You apparently did or do, so you could give the specifics on his overall defense and where it ranks amongst league pfs. comparing just to his generally poor teammates is not that enlightening and not the core question you specified.

You surely realize that plays with a block or steal are less than 10% of all plays. rapm realizes it as do his overall defensive stats at counterpart and team level.

rapm and 82games are not perfect but I hear synergy data wasn't either.

It is probably not the case that one side is "right" and other wrong. look at it all and try to sort it out. I an just sharing what I found that is contrary. already said I wasn't declaring a fully analyzed conclusion based in everything.

ws/48 had him as fourth best big over 6-9 playing major minutes. bpm not in the be finder yet.

How big of a concern are weights of priors? Does it perhaps take players too long to improve from poor rookie/sophomore campaigns (Durant, perhaps Davis), and too long to decline post-prime (Garnett)?

If this is a legitimate issue, how can it be remedied?

single season, non prior rapm would help. maybe from James brocato or talking practice.

2013 data not at shutupandjam.

Bob,you didn't answer whether the synergy data you were citing was counterpart or team. if it is counterpart and really strong that conflicts with 82 games. and he could still be overall nonelite on help defense. if it is team defense then your prior complaint that team isn't individual would apply.

On nba.com he gave up the 21st most at the rim baskets amongst PFs. with 382 total qualifiers I assume there were close to 80 PFs. I don't have per 100 possessions available at moment but this stat probably doesn't have him as elite. fg% very close to the avg at 49%.

On est. impact on teammate pps at je's site, Davis ranked 14th amongst pfs. on defensive adj. pps no better than 55th. Yeah the later is weird and might be off. But something to consider and in sync with apparent lack of big help of having Davis on court in his on / off numbers or 82games counterpart numbers.

BPM (RAPM scale but with box-score data only) ranked Anthony Davis as roughly the 18th best player last year (I believe). So the most reliable box-score metric liked him a lot better than RPM, but still didn't think he was "amazing".

Davis's rookie rating (which RPM uses as a prior for next year's rating) was possibly holding his 13/14 score down, though his 2014 single year RAPM (no-prior) wasn't that high on him anyway.

Any metric/methodology (RPM included) will have anomalies, and Anthony Davis may be one who is underrated. Of course, the opposite may also be true, and he's not as good as our eyes/lesser metrics would suggest.

Regardless, picking out the anomalies to try and discredit the methodology (which has proven to be much better than any other publicly available methodology) is silly.

Also, Synergy's defensive numbers are not nearly reliable enough to be used as some sort of "check" for RPM/RAPM.

http://hoopdon.weebly.com/

bchaikin wrote:RPM is not a valid but a reliable metric.

can anyone explain why espn's RPM for 2013-14 ranks anthony davis so low:

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_ ... position/6

he's listed just 25th among PFs with an RPM of 1.43...

It seems like every young guy has an bad RPM, or at least one that is worse than you'd expect. Wasn't Kevin Durant "seen" by RPM as one of the very worst players in the NBA his first few years? I assume it's priors.

The prior stuff has always really bothered me. I understand why it's used (sample sizes), but it just seems to be asking for a bunch of bias.