In addition, this visualization is including Hall Rating, a new stat modeled after the Hall of Stats’ approach for baseball. It is calculated as
(Value over Replacement Player) + x*(Value over Average)
where x is calculated such that the overall sum of VORP is equal to the overall sum of x*VOA. For all calculations, the minimum VOA is taken to be 0. This stat gives a good overall perspective on a player’s overall quality as a player, while not penalizing those who hung on to long.

Incidentally, Michael Jordan is the best player of all time (well, at least since 1974), by a huge margin. I never would have guessed that!

LeBron has his sights set on #2, and has already reached #4.

Usability note: to link a specific view of this dashboard, click on the linked chain icon at the bottom of the viz next to the envelope icon.

The full Tableau visualization will be permanently located at http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/aspm-and-vorp/ncaa-advanced-statistical-plus-minus-and-vorp/, under the “ASPM and VORP” menu above. I will reproduce it here for discussion:

EDIT: for those new to ASPM: it is an advanced box-score plus/minus estimation not based on play-by-play data. Its scale is in points per 100 possessions played (by the player). Zero is average; in the NBA, the super-elite players like Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, and LeBron James have ASPMs between +7 and +10. This is a rate stat, so playing time is not taken into account. VORP is (ASPM – replacement level) x %playing time, so it is points above a replacement-level player, per 100 TEAM possessions. Note–replacement level as a concept doesn’t really make sense in the NCAA.

First, let’s run down this visualization and what it can do:

There are 4 seasons present here, which is all the data publicly available. Filters are located at the top, for season, players, and teams.

There are two charts: the first chart shows overall average ASPM versus an estimate of the player’s position, and he second chart shows Offensive ASPM versus Defensive ASPM. Colors in all charts are based on the team color. If you select a dot in either chart, all of the seasons from that player will be highlighted on both charts. In addition, the table below the charts will be filtered to show only that player’s data. For example, select Victor Oladipo – 2013 in the first chart. He will be highlighted in both charts and only his data will show in the table below, showing his progression from an above-average freshman to an elite junior.

The team list to the right allows another method of filtering. You can select, say, A-10, and both charts and the table will be filtered to only show the A-10 teams. Or, you can multi-select (holding down CTRL and clicking) individual teams to compare a couple of teams. Since there is a lot of data to filter, though, this can be a bit slow.

Finally, you can select any player in the data table below the charts and that player will be highlighted in the charts. Again, multi-select works with this as well. You can compare Victor Oladipo’s incredible progression to Cody Zeller’s… non-progression (started elite, still exactly the same).

Enough about the nuts and bolts of the Tableau Viz… what does the ASPM say?

First of all: the 10 best player-seasons of the last 4 years (by ASPM, minimum 25 MPG):

1. 2012 Anthony Davis (Fr) (+15 ASPM, +7 Offense, +8 Defense):  Excellent on offense, spectacular on defense.  2nd best defensive rating among qualified players, and as a freshman, also!
2. 2013 Victor Oladipo (Jr) (+14.5/+8/+6.5):  Easily the best season by a wing in the 4 seasons.  Best wing defender in the past 4 years (well, tied with Aaron Craft in 2012).
3. 2011 Kyrie Irving (Fr) (+13/+9.5/+3.5): Low minutes because of the injury, but a tremendous offensive season.  In 2011, only Jimmer was better on O.
4. 2013 Trey Burke (So) (+12.5/+10/+2.5): So far this season Trey Burke is having the best offensive season of the past 4 years.
5. 2012 Jae Crowder (Sr) (+12/+6.5/+5.5): In the same mold as Oladipo: lock-down wing defender, do the dirty work… amazingly well.
6. 2013 Cody Zeller (So) (+12/+8/+4): Tremendous offensive post presence, relatively weak post defender.
7. 2013 Kelly Olynyk (Jr) (+12/+9.5/+2.5): Even better than Zeller on offense, but even worse on defense.
8. 2011 Kemba Walker (Jr) (+11.5/+8/5/+3): Excellent offensive lead guard, and not bad on defense for a PG, either.
9. 2012 Cody Zeller (Fr) (+11.5/+7.5/+3.5): Cody was also really good as a freshman, and hasn’t changed much.
10. 2012 Jared Sullinger (So) (+11.5/+6/+5): A beast in the post, outstanding on both ends of the court.
11. 2010 Evan Turner (Jr) (+11/+7/+4): The best of 2010–a down season.  A uniquely talented 3 on offense.

Thoughts:

• The results for ASPM, as applied to the NCAA, pass the smell test
• Point guards skew towards offense, posts towards defense (as it should be)
• There are a multitude of ways to slice this data and find interesting nuggets.
  • For example… Marcus Smart is the 5th best freshman in the past 4 years (behind Davis, Kyrie, Zeller, and Noel).
  • Or… there have not been many very good freshmen 3′s in the past 4 years.  Otto Porter?  Glenn Robinson?
  • The best defensive guards in the past 4 years are Marcus Smart and Aaron Craft, each well ahead of the rest of the pack

I wish that these advanced stats went a couple of years further back.  It’s hard to get a good handle on how elite, for example, Anthony Davis really was on D–we don’t have Greg Oden to compare him with, even.  I’d love to see Oden and Durant’s college numbers!

This is a good start for NCAA ASPM–what uses could there be for this data?

That data isn’t available in the NFL; in fact, it is hard to locate data on possession-based stats at all. Many stats are stated per game, which bothers me when pundits discuss the quality of the defense or offense–maybe New England just allows opponents more possessions, not more points per possession! However, Jim Armstrong at Football Outsiders compiles a number of possession-based stats.

Those aren’t adjusted for opponent, so I took the Pts/Dr data and recursively adjusted based on opponents, yielding an Adjusted Points per Possession value for both offense and defense for each NFL team.

Here are the results:

Notes:

• The Patriots have an average defense!
• Seattle, San Fransisco, and Atlanta (slow paced teams) look better by this than by looking at pure points (SRS); Chicago, Houston, New England, and Denver look a little worse.
• As I thought, New England’s O looks worse and D looks better looking through this lens… a little.
• There are 4 elite teams: Seattle, New England, San Fransisco, and Denver.
• The Giants are not far back… too bad they missed the playoffs!
• The Colts… how did they do it? They are ranked 27th by this measure!
• It looks like the Arizona defensive ratings are a bit out there. Not sure if there is a bug with that.

The new position vs. ASPM chart is quite interesting: there is an amazing lack of talent/performance right now at the 2,3, and 4 positions outside of a few elite players. There’s Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd (who’s sort of playing like a 2), LeBron James, and Kevin Durant…. and no one else in the same ballpark. They are all in the plus 6 to plus 7 range, while there are no other wings above +3.5 (Kawhi Leonard). Just a massive gap.

Other interesting notes:

• The elite players have separated from the pack, for the most part.  The players above +5 ASPM: Chris Paul, LeBron James, Jason Kidd, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Russell Westbrook, and… Mike Conley.  Kyle Lowry just misses the +5 mark, but no one else is above +4.3 (Tyson Chandler).
• Kevin Durant and LeBron James are neck-and-neck right now, both dominant.  LeBron is a hair better per minute, KD is playing a few more minutes.  Versus last year, LeBron has dropped quite a bit, from +8.8 to +7.0, while KD has risen from +5.1 to +6.8 ASPM.
• Exploring the position vs. ASPM chart, by team–the Detroit Pistons are ridiculously lopsided.  They have two very good centers (Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe) and nobody even remotely decent in the backcourt.
• Memphis, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City, on the other hand, are very balanced across the whole positional spectrum, with good to great players everywhere on the floor.
• Lonely superstars on poor teams: Kyle Lowry and Anderson Varejao (though Kyrie Irving is coming along).
• If you neglect Jason Kidd, there is a very tight race for second-best shooting guard in the league behind Kobe: Dwyane Wade, James Harden, Manu Ginobili, Tony Allen, Ray Allen, and Kevin Martin are all very close, though their skillsets vary widely.
• Rookie of the year is a three-horse race: Anthony Davis, Andre Drummond, and Damian Lillard.

2012-2013 ASPM & VORP have now been released! See the new 2013 ASPM page.

A few early notes:

• The cream is already rising to the top after 4 to 8 games for each team.
• LeBron James is #1 in total VORP, with an ASPM almost exactly the same as last year.
• The only big outliers right now are the Knicks, buoyed by a very hot start. I don’t think they will sustain the +20 efficiency margin… Jason Kidd currently has the second-best ASPM in the league. Small sample size warning!
• Kyle Lowry actually has the best ASPM, but he has only played 4 games before he got hurt.
• Anthony Davis with the very good start to his rookie season.
• Andrei Kirilenko is back!
• Keep your eye on Brandon Jennings, Mike Conley, and Jeff Teague as young point guards that could become elite this year.

This time, I am looking at offensive and defensive RAPM over the same 12 years, and comparing them to Offensive and Defensive Win Shares and PER. Again, I am limiting this to very large sample sizes (20,000+ possessions) where RAPM should be both accurate and stable.

Offense

Underrated

First of all: the R^2 of PER on ORAPM is 0.38 and the R^2 of OWS/48 on ORAPM 0.48. This indicates that Offensive Win Shares do a better job of measuring offensive value than does PER.

However, both box score stats underrate a similar set of offensive players: excellent point guards and creators. The most underrated players by both stats are Steve Nash and Baron Davis, both excellent passers/creators. Steve Nash is rated by ORAPM as the best offensive player of the past 12 years by a significant margin, rating out at +7.0, or 7 points per hundred possessions better than average. Second is D-Wade at +6.2; third is Kobe at +5.9.

Looking at the players most underrated by both box-score stats: Nash, Davis, Mike Conley, Ray Allen, Toni Kukoc, Damon Jones, Paul Pierce, Vladimir Radmanovic, Gilbert Arenas, and … Shaq.

I guess the exception proves the rule?

Overrated

Conversely, most of the overrated offensive players are post players. The most overrated player on offense by both systems is Andrew Bynum. Both box score stats rated him well above average, but ORAPM says he has been pretty bad. I am not totally sure what to make of this; it could be related to issues with ORAPM as well as him simply being overrated.

The most overrated players on offense: Andrew Bynum, Hakim Warrick, Yao Ming, Rajon Rondo (!), Marcin Gortat, Aaron Williams, Craig Smith, Dikembe Mutombo, Tony Battie, Eddy Curry, and Michael Curry. Outside of Rondo, that is a who’s who of “not creators” on offense! It appears that assists (at least with these implementations) are not enough to capture the effect of great creators on offense, and the effect of poor creators on offense.

Defense

Okay, let’s look at the other side of the ball.

First of all: note the confirmation of something John Hollinger has said often, but most people ignore: PER does not measure defense. At all. So I won’t even discuss PER for rating defensive players. It doesn’t.

Underrated

That leaves us to look at Defensive Win Shares. It is well known that the box score doesn’t really measure defense well. All we’ve got to go on are blocks, steals, rebounds, and the overall points allowed to the opposing team. That said, DWS/48 still manages an R^2 of 0.48 on DRAPM for this sample, oddly enough the same as was found for OWS/48 on ORAPM! When I previously looked at similar R^2 numbers with a different data set, I found OWS on ORAPM of 0.59, and DWS on DRAPM of 0.45. Some more investigation is needed on these subjects…

The most underrated defensive players of the last 12 years: Andrew Bogut, Brendan Haywood, Jason Collins, Amir Johnson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Dikembe Mutombo, Kevin Garnett, Shawn Bradley, Quinton Ross, Casey Jacobsen, and Nick Young (!!). It looks like Defensive Win Shares underrates the excellent rim protectors and mobile defensive bigs.

Overrated

On the other hand, let’s look at who is overrated by Defensive Win Shares: Carlos Boozer, Karl Malone, Andres Nocioni, Troy Murphy, Drew Gooden, J.J. Hickson, Chris Webber, Malik Rose, Steve Smith, and Jeff McInnis.

So the most overrated by Defensive Win Shares are again bigs–offensive minded bigs who are known for their poor defense. In other words–bigs MATTER on defense. Both the underrated and overrated lists for defense are populated mostly by bigs. Box score stats are not going to tell you how good your bigs are on defense with any certainty, but your bigs will definitely determine how good your team’s defense is.

I decided to use PER and WS/48 as my advanced stats to compare to, and I am limiting this to players with a very large sample size (though the user can adjust the threshold below). I’m using 20,000 possessions as the lower limit. At that level, RAPM should be very accurate in quantifying actual value to the team in points per 100 possessions.

Underrated

What do we see? Both PER and WS/48 underrate a similar group of players: Bruce Bowen, Shane Battier, Luol Deng, Rasheed Wallace, Ben Wallace, Metta World Peace, Jared Jeffries, Thabo Sefolosha, Baron Davis (?), and of course Kevin Garnett. PER, as John Hollinger has said, does not attempt to quantify defense at all, so it makes sense that the underrated players for PER are the great defenders. WS/48 in general correlates better with RAPM (R^2 of 0.47 compared to 0.35), but similarly has difficulty quantifying defense. In general, no box score stat can get very close to accurately measuring defense.

WS/48 doesn’t do as badly with the defenders. It does pretty well with good defenders who mostly add value through blocks, steals, and rebounding, such as Chuck Hayes or Anderson Varejao.

In general, most of the underrated players by both PER and WS/48 are defensive big men (mostly) or the players you have heard of as great perimeter defenders (Deng, Kyle Lowry, Conley, Battier)

Overrated

What about the overrated? Well, we know what PER overrates: scoring. Getting buckets. So we have great scorers with suspect defense, like Kevin Durant, Al Jefferson, Brook Lopez, Drew Gooden, Andrew Bynum, JaVale McGee, Carlos Boozer, even Karl Malone… Interestingly, most of the worst overrated offensive-minded big men. Glenn Robinson and Stephon Marbury are in there, also.

WS/48 overrates the same class of offensive big men, just not as badly. Carl Landry, Marcin Gortat, Troy Murphy, plus all of those mentioned by PER.

What’s the takeaway?

Box score stats miss defense. Defense matters more for big men; the variance for DRAPM seems to be greater for big men than for guards. In general, offensive/scoring big men are overrated and defensive big men are underrated. It seems that guards are rated pretty well, in general, though lock-down guards and swingmen are also underrated.

Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan have been ridiculously good over the last 12 years. Put either of them on an otherwise average team and that team becomes a title contender, if not winner.

Most underrated:

• Kevin Garnett
• Rasheed Wallace
• Baron Davis
• Luol Deng
• Jeff Foster
• Shane Battier
• Mike Conley
• Metta World Peace
• Jason Collins
• Bruce Bowen

Most overrated:

• Al Jefferson
• Andrew Bynum
• Troy Murphy
• Hakim Warrick
• Carlos Boozer
• Karl Malone (End of Career)
• Kevin Martin
• Kevin Durant
• Shareef Abdur-Rahim
• J.J. Hickson

See Part 2 of this series at Overrated and Underrated via RAPM (Part 2)

Jeremias Engelmann has produced an outstanding resource in his 12 year average RAPM data.  Since so many years are used, it is quite stable; however, one simply gets an “average” view of the players.

It is wonderful, though, for looking at broad trends–and perfect for looking at replacement level.  Remember–RAPM will regress all players toward a uniform prior, so for very-low-minutes players, the results are biased toward that value.  However, once, say, 1500 minutes are played, the results stop being biased toward the prior significantly.  This is visible in the graphic below.

So what is replacement level?  I would define it as a player that can easily be obtained at a minimum salary.  This likely would mean playing only some games (perhaps 30-40) at 8 or so minutes per game.

Using RAPM, we can identify a fairly linear relationship between MPG and RAPM performance, and thus derive an estimated replacement level for RAPM.

In this case, I would estimate replacement level at about -3.35 for overall, -2.65 for offense, and -0.70 for defense.

Here are my regular season projections:

I have updated these to deal with some issues with the ESPN Fantasy playing time projections (such as discussed below with Memphis).

Team	Conf.	Div.	Efficiency	SoS	Eff. Mar.	Pyth Wins
Miami Heat	East	SE	5.93	-0.42	6.36	57
San Antonio Spurs	West	SW	4.84	-0.02	4.86	54
Oklahoma City Thunder	West	NW	4.08	-0.01	4.09	52
New York Knicks	East	Atlantic	3.43	-0.25	3.69	51
Atlanta Hawks	East	SE	2.86	-0.30	3.16	50
Denver Nuggets	West	NW	3.13	0.05	3.09	49
Los Angeles Lakers	West	Pacific	2.81	-0.05	2.87	49
Memphis Grizzlies	West	SW	2.77	0.00	2.77	49
Los Angeles Clippers	West	Pacific	2.61	0.00	2.61	48
Indiana Pacers	East	Central	1.64	-0.32	1.96	46
Minnesota Timberwolves	West	NW	1.52	0.11	1.41	45
Boston Celtics	East	Atlantic	0.40	-0.14	0.54	42
Dallas Mavericks	West	SW	0.61	0.14	0.47	42
Chicago Bulls	East	Central	0.09	-0.13	0.22	42
Philadelphia 76ers	East	Atlantic	0.09	-0.10	0.20	42
Milwaukee Bucks	East	Central	-0.09	-0.16	0.08	41
Brooklyn Nets	East	Atlantic	-0.12	-0.14	0.01	41
Utah Jazz	West	NW	0.00	0.14	-0.13	41
Washington Wizards	East	SE	-1.17	-0.08	-1.09	38
Phoenix Suns	West	Pacific	-1.22	0.22	-1.44	37
Toronto Raptors	East	Atlantic	-2.23	-0.20	-2.03	35
Orlando Magic	East	SE	-2.33	-0.11	-2.23	35
Houston Rockets	West	SW	-2.06	0.23	-2.29	35
New Orleans Hornets	West	SW	-2.31	0.35	-2.66	34
Sacramento Kings	West	Pacific	-2.68	0.31	-3.00	33
Portland Trail Blazers	West	NW	-2.75	0.36	-3.11	33
Golden State Warriors	West	Pacific	-3.28	0.35	-3.63	31
Detroit Pistons	East	Central	-4.59	-0.09	-4.50	29
Cleveland Cavaliers	East	Central	-5.22	0.11	-5.34	27
Charlotte Bobcats	East	SE	-6.78	0.16	-6.93	23

(The original table:)

Team	Conf.	Div.	Efficiency	SoS	Eff. Mar.	Pyth Wins
Miami Heat	East	SE	5.35	-0.40	5.75	56
San Antonio Spurs	West	SW	4.72	-0.01	4.73	54
Oklahoma City Thunder	West	NW	4.14	-0.01	4.15	52
Memphis Grizzlies	West	SW	3.85	-0.05	3.90	51
New York Knicks	East	Atlantic	3.35	-0.26	3.60	51
Atlanta Hawks	East	SE	2.78	-0.30	3.09	49
Denver Nuggets	West	NW	3.09	0.06	3.03	49
Los Angeles Lakers	West	Pacific	2.81	-0.05	2.86	49
Los Angeles Clippers	West	Pacific	2.25	0.03	2.23	47
Indiana Pacers	East	Central	1.73	-0.32	2.05	47
Minnesota Timberwolves	West	NW	1.67	0.10	1.56	45
Boston Celtics	East	Atlantic	0.72	-0.16	0.87	43
Chicago Bulls	East	Central	0.20	-0.14	0.34	42
Philadelphia 76ers	East	Atlantic	0.20	-0.11	0.31	42
Dallas Mavericks	West	SW	0.31	0.17	0.14	41
Milwaukee Bucks	East	Central	-0.05	-0.17	0.12	41
Brooklyn Nets	East	Atlantic	-0.33	-0.13	-0.20	40
Utah Jazz	West	NW	-0.45	0.17	-0.62	39
Washington Wizards	East	SE	-1.13	-0.09	-1.03	38
Phoenix Suns	West	Pacific	-1.27	0.22	-1.49	37
Toronto Raptors	East	Atlantic	-2.09	-0.20	-1.88	36
Portland Trail Blazers	West	NW	-2.17	0.33	-2.50	34
Houston Rockets	West	SW	-2.34	0.25	-2.59	34
New Orleans Hornets	West	SW	-2.28	0.35	-2.64	34
Orlando Magic	East	SE	-2.81	-0.10	-2.72	34
Sacramento Kings	West	Pacific	-2.78	0.32	-3.10	33
Golden State Warriors	West	Pacific	-3.23	0.34	-3.57	31
Detroit Pistons	East	Central	-4.45	-0.10	-4.36	29
Cleveland Cavaliers	East	Central	-5.23	0.11	-5.34	27
Charlotte Bobcats	East	SE	-6.57	0.14	-6.71	24

• The Harden trade dropped OKC from around +5.0 to +4.14, or about 3 wins.
• Boston’s aging adjustments are killer
• ASPM likes the Knicks–it has them with 9(!) players that are at or above average this year, led by Tyson Chandler at +2.40.
• Wait-a-second… the Griz are equal to the Lakers?  Let’s see:

• Looks like a lot of that particular projection has to do with giving heavy minutes to the relatively young Memphis core, and light minutes to the older LAL core. EDIT: I have fixed this issue with the minutes on Memphis; see updated table at the top.
• Playoffs: Miami, NY, ATL, Indiana, Boston, Chicago, Philly, and Milwaukee in the East (with Brooklyn 1 game back), and San Antonio, OKC, Memphis, Denver, LAL, LAC, Minnesota, and Dallas in the West, (with Utah 2 games back).
• Isn’t it unfair for one team to have 7 of the top 100 players in the NBA?  That’s what the Spurs have, and the worst of those 7 is 76th!

And here are the projected top 100 players in the NBA, by ASPM: