Anthony, Nuggets look ready to part ways

[Lamrock]

Yeah, its pretty bad. Trade an expiring for a shitty Center with a few years left on his big deal.

[Hedonist]

Do you think Brook Lopez sucks too? because their numbers are almost the same.

[shadowgrin]

Their numbers may be the similar but Brook Lopez is more efficient, shoots better, passes better, blocks better, and plays better on offense while having less usage %. Kaman's only better at rebounding.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... i?id=URV9M

[benji]

Kaman's only better at defensive rebounding and ball hogging.

Fixed.

[Hedonist]

Their numbers may be the similar but Brook Lopez is more efficient, shoots better, passes better, blocks better, and plays better on offense while having less usage %. Kaman's only better at rebounding.

all marginally (except blocks)

and Kaman probably plays better D overall

[shadowgrin]

Marginally? See ORtg. That's a margin of more than 10. Kaman sucks more so at offense.

Anything below 100 ORtg. I consider it sucky. More than 109 for DRtg as sucky.

[Lamrock]

If your below 100 ORtg and above 27% usage, you're a team cancer and worse than useless.

[Hedonist]

Marginally? See ORtg. That's a margin of more than 10. Kaman sucks more so at offense.

Anything below 100 ORtg. I consider it sucky. More than 109 for DRtg as sucky.

You're just changing the stats. I said marginally about ^^^ those stats.

But what does that prove about Brook shooting more than marginally better? I really don't see how that translates..

Btw I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that Brook's Drtg is worse, before looking it up.

Found it.. 110, so it is worse. Not a big difference though.

[benji]

It would be "marginally" if all the stats operated on a zero to max scale but they don't, there's inherent limits to the range the stats display results.

A difference between 99 and 112 is "marginal" in respect to an infinite scale. But when the scale for NBA players is only 89-123 a ten point difference is far more than marginal.

You also have to take in account the league average. A player using 27% of possessions who is nine points per possession below the league average is not just not contributing he's actively hurting the team, while a player who is 4-5 points per possession better than league average helps his team and the more he uses possessions the better.

Lopez shoots better, turns it over less, gets more offensive rebounds and gets to the line far more. (And shoots better there as well.) He does every single one of the four factors superior to Kaman.

DRtg is highly team correlated and thus noisy on a single year basis, and both Kaman and Lopez are marginally better than the team as a whole. In either case, we're not comparing Dwight Howard and Eddy Curry here on on defense. I doubt more detailed defensive numbers will establish either as a clearly superior, or stellar defender.

[Hedonist]

Again, we weren't discussing those stats so in no way whatsoever was I saying the difference in Ortg was marginal.

[benji]

You weren't?

Their numbers may be the similar but Brook Lopez is more efficient, shoots better, passes better, blocks better, and plays better on offense while having less usage %.

all marginally

Seems like you were to me.

ORtg is merely a summation of offensive productivity, so it includes everything you were discussing. Maybe Lopez is marginally better at shooting, passing, etc. when examining each individual component. But when you add up all the offensive components to see what his actual impact is he's drastically superior to Kaman. Over 100 possessions Lopez is going to bring you 13 more points than Kaman. And Kaman is going to bring you nine points less than an average player. Trying to evaluate based on every little individual difference in a vacuum might be fun, but players are a cohesive whole, somethings are more important than others, and there are mins and maxes to the ranges.

So sure, go ahead and go through every single piece of a player and point to all the "marginal differences!" But don't forget to add those up with proper weights when you're done, or else you're going to miss the big picture. (Which in this case is that last season Kaman was a complete disaster on offense, while Lopez was the only reason the Nets weren't worse than they were.)

[Hedonist]

Ortg is a team stat, higher rating doesn't equal playing better on offense.

[benji]

Except it's not just a team stat, and it very much does.

[shadowgrin]

You're just changing the stats. I said marginally about ^^^ those stats.

But what does that prove about Brook shooting more than marginally better? I really don't see how that translates..

I'm not changing it. Some of the different stat categories I previously mentioned are related/applied to ORtg.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=1120

%Poss: Possession % = 100 * Poss / ((MP / (Tm MP / 5)) * Tm Poss). Possession percentage (sometimes referred to as "usage %") estimates the % of team possessions a player consumes while on the floor. Along with ORtg, it is an essential component of assessing a player's offensive effectiveness and his role on the team. It is also important when building "skill curves" and plotting usage vs. efficiency.

ORtg: Offensive Rating = Individual points produced / individual possessions used. Along with %Poss, ORtg is vital to assessing a player's offensive productivity. Because it effectively combines TS%, OR%, AsR, and ToR into one metric, it is the ultimate measure of a player's offensive efficiency. That's not to say every player with a high ORtg is better than ones with lower ORtgs, though

Indvidual. Not team. Individual
Take note of the last sentence I quoted above. As I think a value difference of 10 pts is significant enough for us to consider Lopez being better than Kaman.

I don't know how you consider something to be "marginal" so I will just reference your previous post...

all marginally (except blocks)

I looked at the difference of their blk%, which is about only 1 percentage point (ppts for easy typing) or 0.7 ppt to be more specific.

ast% difference: 3.2 ppt
tov%: 1.2 ppt
usg%: 3.5 ppt

Those differences are definitely higher than your non-"marginal" consideration of blocks.

[Andrew]

If he gets sent to Minnesota, I will laugh and jump in joy. Especially if its for Kevin Love. Would love to see Anthony exposed as he leads the Wolves to a 20 win season. Another good idea is Melo for Maggette, since he's basically a poor man's Maggette (albeit younger) anyway, and nobody wants to live in Milwaukee!

I reckon he'll still get his payday and/or World Wide Wes and co will orchestrate a deal that sends him where he truly wants to go come the offseason.

[Hedonist]

Except it's not just a team stat, and it very much does.

Ok, wow, that's a real eye-opener.. let me get this straight...

The Birdman plays better on offense than Melo?
Arron Afflalo?

Noah better than Rose?

Jared Dudley and Robin Lopez better than Nash and Amar'e?

I guess so.

[Hedonist]

You're just changing the stats. I said marginally about ^^^ those stats.

But what does that prove about Brook shooting more than marginally better? I really don't see how that translates..

all marginally (except blocks)

I looked at the difference of their blk%, which is about only 1 percentage point (ppts for easy typing) or 0.7 ppt to be more specific.

ast% difference: 3.2 ppt
tov%: 1.2 ppt
usg%: 3.5 ppt

Those differences are definitely higher than your non-"marginal" consideration of blocks.

Ok, well sorry for the misunderstanding but I was just referring to their raw statlines.

[benji]

Ok, wow, that's a real eye-opener.. let me get this straight...

The Birdman plays better on offense than Melo?
Arron Afflalo?

Noah better than Rose?

Jared Dudley and Robin Lopez better than Nash and Amar'e?

I guess so.

Yes, in every single one of those cases the former were more efficient offensive players than the latter last season.

Here's where you either contend that players who shoot worse, turn it over more, get fewer offensive rebounds and don't get to the line as well help teams more than those who do those things, or you can provide a better way to determine who contributed more offensive production per possession used.

Actually, there's a third choice, where you take a highly disingenuous route. This is actually the most common one.

In any case, this distracts from the original blatantly clear point where even with his far lower usage Lopez matched Kaman in proliferation of points due to his vastly superior efficiency. Something not shocking considering Kaman has been one of the ten most worthless offensive players in the last decade.

Noah was the Bulls best player last season anyway.

[shadowgrin]

(With the exception of Minutes played) Who even considers "raw statlines" these days for player comparison?!? Have we gone back to the Middle Ages?!?

[benji]

Hedonist does. He did the same thing with Gay who played a bazillion minutes in the other thread.

[Hedonist]

(With the exception of Minutes played) Who even considers "raw statlines" these days for player comparison?!? Have we gone back to the Middle Ages?!?

ehr.. I think you brought shoots better up. Last time I checked that's in the raw statline.

[Lamrock]

Ever heard of TS%?

[Hedonist]

Ever heard of TS%?

yeah sure, but isn't seeing Kaman's .490 fg% + .75 ft% vs Brook's .499 fg% + .81 ft% good enough to tell me that Brooks shoots a little better than Kaman? I don't need TS% for that do I?

[Lamrock]

Well, it also considers how often players get to the line.

[benji]

Except Lopez gets to the line at a higher rate leaving him with 57% to Kaman's 53%. In other words, a shot from Lopez creates 1.14 points, a shot from Kaman creates 1.06. It distills more information into a single metric, if they took three pointers it'd also bring that in as well. Sure, we can use six different stats, or we can use the simpler single stat.