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Re: Jamesian blog
Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 3:02 pm
by kjb
huevonkiller wrote:Oh and Marcus Camby had 25 PER on 18.4% usage, and led the playoffs in offensive rating.
He just played too few minutes per game for me to care, but his rate stat is being dismissed surreptitiously, I'd say.
kjb wrote:
Are you talking about Michael Jordan? The guy who had on ortg of 118 on a usage rate of 33.3 for his career -- including two inefficient seasons at ages 38 and 39? Wow. I think most teams would be happy for their star players to "chuck" their way to Jordan-like results.
If this were a Paul George vs Michael Jordan debate, I would love and demand that Jordan take that many shots.
But were talking about 2009 (or 2008) Chris Paul vs an off-peak Jordan, so Chris scoffs at that kind of ballhogging. That's not going to cut it against the very best individual seasons.
I guess I missed the part about comparing an off-peak Jordan to a peak Chris Paul. Not sure the point of that comparison, but whatever. Jordan was a great player -- Paul still is. We'll see what Paul "scoffs at" when he gets to age 40.
I don't like the judgmental terms like "ballhogging," which I don't think are helpful in analysis. If you're talking the last two years of Jordan's career, I'd agree with the judgment -- his gunning hurt the Wizards. From his Bulls days? Maybe early on; maybe at the end. Other than that, he was remarkably efficient and productive.
Re: Jamesian blog
Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 3:18 pm
by huevonkiller
agentkirb wrote:@huevon: I think I can see where you are coming from. All I'm really saying is that the stat where Camby, Amare, and Paul were in the top 15 (I believe it was WS/48), isn't a reflection of the players greatness. And you don't seem to necessarily refute that point. Now I suppose you can throw the stat out there and say that said players put up pretty good performances for those years specifically.
I did a little more thinking about it, and I realize a lot of what's bothering me about applying the statistic to the GOAT debate is the inconsistency in how WS is among players. Marcus Camby is a good example because apparently he had pretty much an all-time great season WS-wise and the rest of his career was just above average.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... yma01.html
There's nothing odd about Marcus Camby peaking in his mid-to late twenties.
Leading the league in defensive rating, having a dwight howard rebounding percentage, and posting a 116 o-rating in a 103 o-rating environment easily explains his peak.
If you scroll down a bit you find WS and WS/48 numbers and his best WS season he was 10.3 (.233 /48), and the season is a good 25% higher than any other season he posted up. The next highest WS/48 he posted was .182 the year before and the next highest WS was 8.5 in one of his seasons in Denver, where he averaged a career high in minutes that year coincidentally. And all of the other years are around the 5-6 range for WS or .140 for WS/48. And note, that if you just look at normal stats, stuff like blocks, points, rebounds don't have the same noticeable spikes to correspond with having two great seasons and being just good for the rest of his career.
My point is, when you can have fluctuations in those kinds of statistics without a way to explain them... you start to wonder what the statistic is really measuring. Maybe that team he was on in New York was the perfect fit to the type of player he is and as a result he was able to post his two best WS/48 seasons.
When you deal with a smaller sample size in the post-season, players can get extremely hot, this is normal.
My criticism is simple, when other stats start validating WS/48 you choose to ignore that for some reason. I'm not surprised at all by the links I posted. This stuff happens sometimes.