Stat Geekery

TheMagnus wrote:

This is more a of a Utah Jazz centric post, and you and Calg started to hint at this earlier before you talked about the "D-Will advantage".

I've read a lot of articles recently about how the NBA is moving past the traditional 5 positions and redefining on court roles. This is being driven by the stats.

One of the fundamental theories of Sabermetrics is that you need to look past classic roles and numbers and focus on the fundamental concept of winning games. What wins games? Scoring more points than your opponent. That's it. It's a simple premise, but sometimes get's forgotten in the midst of cliche's about "Defense wins championships" and "Defending the paint" and whatnot.

So one of the fundamentals of this type of statistical analysis is trying to find out how every action and every stat contributes to winning (scoring more points than the other team), regardless of position.

In addition to that, it involves breaking through the conventional thinking about roles and positions, and putting players in roles and positions where they have the greatest impact on the teams winning.

So lets apply that concept to the Jazz right now and see what it tells us.

First off, lets look at it from a pure production standpoint....

There are only 4 players right now that are clearly superior to the other Jazz players in terms of production, no matter what Metric you are using, and they are ranked in this order...

1) Millsap
2a) Favors
2b) Jefferson
2c) Carroll

Carroll may be a bit of an anomaly due to the fact that he is coming off a nearly perfect game, but even before that he was popular with the WS and +/- metrics.

Here's how those 4 rank in minutes played per game...

Millsap - 3rd
Favors - 7th
Jefferson - 2nd
Carroll - 10th


Now lets look at the other side, what players are clearly below the performance of the other Jazz players? This is also remarkably clear cut, and also is basically 4 players listed her from worst to best...


13) Murphy
12) Burks
11) Tinsley
10) Kanter

and how do those guys rank in terms of minutes?

Murphy - 13th
Burks - 11th
Tinsley - 8th
Kanter - 9th

So immediately I see opportunity to win more games and be a better team. Theoretically, if you cut those 4 guys out of the rotation and gave every minute they played to one of the 9 remaining guys, and also played the 4 most effective players minutes consistent with their performance, the Jazz would be at least 1 win better so far this season.

This thread backs up why I've always said Jazz fans are smarter than other teams' fans! Unfortunately, I'm just not smart enough to keep up with it all. Stats analysis is amazing (most of us have seen the movie "Moneyball"), but, I'm not sure how to take it all in. Actually, I haven't seen the movie "Moneyball" so I'm a little confused (particularly since I know the movie "Moneyball" was about the Oakland Atheletics-- and it didn't work out for them). So, I guess my question is: what do all these stats mean?

Saint Louis wrote:

So, I guess my question is: what do all these stats mean?

Not a heck of a lot this early in the season, but imo they are fun to look at nonetheless. By midseason or earlier, the leaders and losers at the various stat measures of productivity generally tend to conform to what we believe about players, and the usual suspects like Lebron, Paul, Durant, Kobe and Duncan lead the per 48 minute productivity measures. Even then, many stat services will further break down the stats in to "qualified" and "non qualified" players, recognizing that players that don't play at least 20 mpg or so (tendex uses 20mpg), may have skewed results. For example, I tend to discount Burks' negative tendex stats right now. I don't think he has had enough time in games to get comfortable and settle in to any kind of rhythm. I doubt he suddenly got way worse than last season.

On another note, the Nets are starting to make my posts criticizing DWill look silly. They just keep winning, and as long as they are winning, it is hard to argue that DWill isn't getting the job done. On the other hand, I think the Nets have had an extremely easy schedule and likely have a dramatically better winning percentage than they will end up with. Miami was the best team they played, and they got killed by Miami. Boston was their next biggest challenge; Nets won, but they managed to catch Boston without Rondo in the lineup. Minnesota was the third best team New Jersey played, and the Nets lost to them.

Mit Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

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This year's model is the seventh edition of a conference that began in 2006 as a small gathering of likeminded folks eager to share cutting-edge analysis that would sharpen their understanding of sports, and has since exploded into a major annual industry event. Sloan 2013 boasts more than 2,700 paid attendees, representatives from more than 90 pro teams across six different sports (including 29 of 30 NBA teams; the Los Angeles Lakers, alone, appear to be unrepresented), a slew of big-name panelists and big-money sponsorship from the likes of Under Armour, StubHub and primary underwriter ESPN, spread throughout the sprawling Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.......