APBRmetrics

[Kevin Pelton]

On behalf of all of our members, I'd like to welcome you to APBRmetrics.

Why are we here? First, because we're interested in the statistical analysis of the sport of basketball. Second, while the APBR_analysis discussion group has served this purpose well over the last three years, some members were looking for more functionality from our message board.

This phpBB board allows us to post code like this:

[edo]

Not sure whether this thread was intended to be replied to or not, but I wanted to thank you for setting the board up and I'm hoping we can get some good discussions going here.

I much prefer web-based interactions to emailing, and while I understand the reluctance of some to move away from that medium I hope we can reach some sort of critical mass here that makes juggling the two lists worthwhile.

Ed O.

[Kevin Pelton]

Thanks, Ed.

You're the guy who works around Pike Place, right? You're not another Sonics fan, are you? We're just going to take over the 'net at this rate.

[edo]

I do, indeed, work around Pike Place (actually near Pioneer Square, fwiw). This is good info for casual stalkers to have (my hard-core ones already know the street adress of my employer, of course).

As for my fanhood: no, I am not particularly a Sonics fan. Seattle seems to be where it's at with NBA statistical evolution, though, and I'm actually kind of excited to be here for it.

I grew up rooting for the Blazers and they're still the biggest reason that I watch entirely too much NBA basketball.

Although, since Whitsitt has left town, the team hasn't been the same and I find them much less interesting both on the court and off of it. I'm worried that Damon, SAR, and NVE are all going to walk at the end of the year and the Blazers are going to be a more financially sane team that I will find less interesting than in previous years.

Sorry for the series of tangents in the "welcome" thread.

Ed O.

[Guest]

This board looks great. Thanks very much for setting it up, Kevin. Hopefully, it will take off as I'm a much bigger fan of message boards than email-based groups such as the one on Yahoo.

And nice to see you here, Ed O.

[Mike G]

This message board is much more user-friendly than I'd anticipated. Threads rise to the top of the heap when they are responded to, rather than getting buried as some boards do.

I may yet figure out how to paste a piece of spreadsheet so the columns line up. Maybe it was described, but I had to do a lot of reading by the time I got over here.

Just a couple of minor peeves:

1- I can't tell which messages I've already read. There's a slight variation in color for the topic titles, but they're random.

2- Shouldn't the links for "next topic" and "previous topic" be at the bottom of the page? That's where I invariably am when I'm looking for it.

So I seem to do a lot of scrolling -- maybe unnecessarily.

Not a peeve but an uncertainty: There's potential for this group to grow exponentially. I already have trouble keeping up with all the posts. Nothing so far hasn't been worth reading, but ...

[benji]

[Dan Rosenbaum]

We got Bob Chaikin and Ken Massey to register today. Woo hoo! A very good day. Welcome Bob and Ken and everyone else that has registered before. I have learned a lot already from this site.

Sometimes it is nice to use a thread like this to introduce yourself.

I am an economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. My initial foray into the NBA was as a luxury tax expert and that has gotten me a fair bit of notoriety. (Yesterday, I noticed that when I google "dan nba," I come up second - before Dan Dickau. That scared me a bit.)

I guess my main contribution to this group has been my DanVal adjusted plus/minus ratings, which adjust regular plus/minus ratings for how good the other nine players on the floor are at any given time. Most of my teaching is in the area of econometrics (statistics for economists) and data analysis, so I have also tried to be helpful where I can with other issues as they come up.

[Ed Küpfer]

I am just some joe Raptors fan, with no college background and a blue-collar job (and a passion for 60s soul music and Muhammad Ali literature). I got hooked on APBRmetrics when I first read Gilovich's hot hand paper. Since then I've spent way too much free time squeezing and stretching the numbers, trying to extract some meaning from them. So far, I've learned only two things: offensive rebounds are more valuable than defensive, and trying to convince people of that is next to impossible
_________________
ed

[bchaikin]

I am an economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. My initial foray into the NBA was as a luxury tax expert and that has gotten me a fair bit of notoriety. (Yesterday, I noticed that when I google "dan nba," I come up second - before Dan Dickau. That scared me a bit.)

that's cause dan dickau got 19 pts and 16 assists in a hornets win the other day over an iverson-less 76ers club. if he was still in the pacific NW bench sitting, you'd have ranked above him :)

[HoopStudies]

[tsherkin]

Hey all,

I've registered for this forum because I've found a lot of the articles and discussions you've had to be very interesting. I can't say I'm especially good at math, I find I'm much more skilled at applying the formulae and methods you folks develop into drawing conclusions of my own about players and so forth. I've no background in statistics but interest and I believe I'll do a lot more reading than talking but I figured I'd say hi anyway.

Some of the stuff you guys have come up with is just fantastic to read (made all the moreso because I find I understand some of it...). Thanks for the thought-provoking material.

[Jonesy]

Hello everyone,

I'm in pretty much the same boat as tsherkin... I'm not the best with complex math, but I love breaking down statistics and formulating some sort of meaning from them. Mostly I'm just an obsessed fan (Go Sonics) that likes to get deeper than just watching the game. I'm just starting to discover all of this for basketball (I've been studying baseball stats for a while) so it's great to see a lot of the stuff that has been posted here.

Thank you all for your efforts and keep up the amazing work.

[wtbarron]

Hello all --

I joined APBR_analysis about 2 1/2 years ago, but I just couldn't stomach yahoo.com groups. Consequently, I hardly ever even lurked. By sheer luck I dropped in on the day someone (Dean?) proposed moving, so I knew enough to keep an eye open for this. This is a vastly better neighborhood, to say the least. My thanks to Mr. Pelton.

I'm a systems architect, which just means I design big (multi-user) software. One of my favorite things to program is anything related to basketball. I have a pretty decent statistical database I use to play with my own flavor of linear-weights and whatever else I think of. I wish I remembered more of the probability & statistics I took in school. No one told me I'd need it for basketball.

Tom

[kjb]

I've been interested in basketball stats since high school when I found a water-logged, mud-covered book about rotisserie baseball lying next to a soccer field. I was already a hoops fan, but that book got me thinking about creating a similar league for basketball. Which I promptly created (along with my brother). The league was complex and fun as hell -- we tried as best we could to mirror the same rules that restricted player movement in the NBA, but with fun twists that made keeping the very best players more difficult. We tried various permutations (including one season which we based on per minute stats multiplied by the number of minutes each team owner could assign in a playing rotation). Alas, the league fell apart after 5-6 seasons. Much of what I know about math is stuff I learned while trying to figure out some basketball stat question I had.

I've been writing about the Wizards and the NBA on Hoopsworld and RealGM for the past 6-7 seasons, and the crowning achievements of my alleged playing career was getting my shot blocked by Alonzo Mourning and getting dunked on by Grant Hill.

For a living, I write propaganda for an industry association. For fun, I also write creatively (last year, I completed a mystery novel set in DC) -- if anyone knows a book agent, please let me know.