APBRmetrics

Analyze This · Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 364

I agree with you that Berri created his metric as a tool to do economic research. But his book gets a lot of attention in the mainstream media. And that is not because he talked about the competitive balance in the nba. It is because of the nba metric. Dean Oliver his book has sold more than a few copies. So perhaps a bigger part of the population than you think has interest in this kind of work. Perhaps an academic journal is not the best way to get a lot of attention. But it's a start. And why not publish your work in a book? I would buy a copy Smile

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**Dan** **Rosenbaum** · Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 2:14 pm Post subject:

Analyze This · Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 364

Yeah but a board is -how do you say that in English- " it passes faster". It's not as permanent as a book. And your ideas are spread over heaps of topics, there is not so much structure. You will also reach less people. And you can twist and turn as much as you want but for a lot of people not publishing but only writing on the net, will give you less authority/ make you less important and so your impact will be smaller. Not with the happy few, but outside the apbrmetrcis community this will be the case. You can replace a book by a academic journal and make the same remarks (exept the reaching more people part) . If you really want to start a big debate, or give more than "the happy few" a better understanding of basketball you need to publish in my opinion. If you just want to sell your stuff to an nba team and work behind the scenes for an nba team, than of course you don't need to publish. That's my opinion.
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ziller · Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Posts: 126 Location: Sac Metro

Another guy with an audience addresses the subject: King Kaufman at Salon.

Kaufman did pan the book previously. He bases his arguments not on math necessarily, but the fact Dennis Rodman was never more valuable than Michael Jordan.

EDIT: I should note this very thread is linked in the piece, thus completing the cycle.
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kjb · Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 865 Location: Washington, DC

Neil Paine · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

**Dan** **Rosenbaum** · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:55 am Post subject:

At Wages of Wins,

kjb · Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 865 Location: Washington, DC

tpryan · Joined: 11 Feb 2005 Posts: 100

Ben F. · Joined: 07 Mar 2005 Posts: 391

More on the whole subject, this from TrueHoop which links to I think a very soundly reasoned post.

Ben F. · Joined: 07 Mar 2005 Posts: 391

Matthew Yglesias weighs in as well. I found this quote particularly interesting in light of the usage vs. efficiency debate, and it seems to espouse the conventional wisdom in a simple and articulate way:

bchaikin · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 689 Location: cleveland, ohio

I found this quote particularly interesting in light of the usage vs. efficiency debate, and it seems to espouse the conventional wisdom in a simple and articulate way:

Matthew Yglesias wrote:
Looking at WoW I think something almost all basketball fans have trouble with is the seeming implication that if you put five high-efficiency, low-volume shooters who were good at rebounding and avoiding turnovers on the floor simultaneously that you'd have a really effective team.

why wouldn't you have a really effective team? as long as one was a PG, another an SG, and one a SF, a PF, and a C, why wouldn't the team be really effective?...

This seems wrong to most of us; it seems as if in that situation the team would either see turnovers skyrocket (shot clock violations) or else shooting efficiency decline.

not sure why one would think this - perhaps if this individual listed some of these players he had in mind it might help. i mean, if right now in 06-07 you fielded a team of antonio daniels, josh childress, quinton ross, shane battier, and ben wallace, would you seriously expect this team to have their turnovers skyrocket or their shooting efficiency dramatically decline from their current turnover rates and shooting efficiencies?...

And it would be good to have a formula that took that sort of thing into account. To construct a formula like that, though, you'd either need to just guess what would happen, or else you'd need much more data out of which to try and build an empirically grounded non-linear analysis.

turnovers have been kept since 1977-78. that's 29 years of data, 758 team seasons (i.e. the celtics have had 29 team seasons during this time), close to 14,800,000 total minutes of player regular season data in all. how much more data do you need?...

But since as best I can tell no coaches actually field lineups like that (they, like most people, are just assuming it wouldn't work) there isn't much to be done.

does this statement make any sense? any team a coach puts out for a full season is going to have similar team possessions as their opponents (within 4 for every game), and somewhat similar total touches or scoring opportunities over the span of a season. you field a team that previously had players/starters from different teams at each position that had say 20% less scoring attempts per minute than the average player at their positions in the league, then put them all together on the same team they are obviously going to increase their overall scoring attempts, with the certain amount of each increase being dependent on each player's touches/min and what they did per touch....

as for whether one thinks their turnovers would increase instead, there is plenty of data to show how players have performed with an increase (or decrease) in scoring attempts per minute over their careers, on the same team and also on different teams...

deepak · Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 665

bchaikin · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 689 Location: cleveland, ohio

You might have an effective team, but probably not. The reason is if all the players are low usage players, then there's a good chance they don't have the requisite skills for creating shots for themselves or teammates effectively (ball handling, general offensive versatility, etc.). If you don't have such players on the court, they will have a tough time getting good shots against a decent NBA defense. I think that's the intuition most people have.

what about the five i mentioned - daniels, childress, ross, battier, and wallace? is this a good example or a bad example of a team that would not be effective? let's forget the generalizations here - can anyone list a couple of examples of 5 players, one at each position, that are high efficiency, low volume players, maybe good rebounders or if not then good defenders, but also good at avoiding turnovers, that if playing together would have their turnovers skyrocket and/or their shooting efficiency drop?...

Analyze This · Joined: 17 May 2005 Posts: 364