http://me.woot.net
I agree with Craig: there usually isn't anything by him on Aaron's page.

http://www.dougstats.com/
Craig, I am not that familiar with basketball stats. The homepage listed above has a Tendex rating based on a formula for calculating the value of a player. Are you familiar with this formula and how does yours compare to it?

Way to suck all the fun out of yet another sport with a bunch of numbers, Burley. :)

Oh no. It really would be bad for me to start spending as much (or even a tenth the) time reading/thinking about basketball as I do about baseball, but those two blog entries were really cool. Erg, I'm gonna go learn more.

http://economics.about.com
That was fun. Now do hockey!

A Canadian blog that spends more time on basketball than hockey? Sacrilege!

I guess it's coz all you Leaf fans don't get to enjoy the fun of an 82-game playoff series like us Flames fans do. You already know you're going to the next round, so why bother? :)

Cheers,

Mike

Gerry, glad you know about Doug's stats page. Doug's stats are the font of all knowledge, I use them for both sports.

Here is Doug's Tendex rating...

(PTS - FGmsd - FTmsd/2 + 0.5*m3 + 1.25*st + 1.25*as + bl + reb - 1.25*to - tc - 2*ff - pf/2)
/ GamesPlayed

My understanding is that this is just sort of random. It's not that bad, but it doesn't represent anything. It's what Bill James calls a Frankenstein stat.

The nice thing about the PER system is it's based on the actual value of the baskets made and possessions used/generated. There are some guesses in PER too... notably the value of the assist, though at least there's an attempt to allocate the value of the field goal instead of just giving 2 points on some field goald and 3.25 on others.

The real good stuff in Doug's ratings is the defensive rating, which uses the player's opponent's game-by-game statistics. Very useful, and something I'm not able to evaluate in my homebrew setup yet.

It really would be bad for me to start spending as much (or even a tenth the) time reading/thinking about basketball as I do about baseball

Took the words right out of my mouth, Nick. Of course, I'm not really a stathead, even when it comes to baseball. I'm just always open to learning more about the Pastime, and find it impossible to ignore the statistical revolution. I feel the same way about all the advanced baseball metrics as Aaron does about Craig's fascinating work on basketball -- "producing a ranking that makes sense to me" is my most basic test of any system.

I don't watch the NBA very intently (or the NHL for that matter) during the regular season, limiting myself mostly to highlight reels. It's my little protest over watering down the product by letting half the teams advance to the playoffs and eliminating only those who had no chance from day one. So this comment is from a casual hoops fan, but my subjective viewpoint mostly agrees with the WAR rankings.

McGrady must be even better than I thought, and his supporting cast even worse. I'll definitely pay more attention to Kirilenko and Randolph next time I see them, because I hadn't noticed (yet) they were that good. Which I suppose is a lot like a Jays fan who rarely follows the National League and hasn't discovered Brandon Webb or realized Pujols' greatness. The stats may make you curious, then you'll eventually appreciate their talent.

Thanks, Craig.

When you have a 13-win team with one player who's 9.8 wins above replacement... that is a bad team.

Coach - Kirilenko is a phenomenally entertaining player to watch, one of the only players who can make defense almost as exciting as offense. Randolph is a subtler talent, but still enjoyable.
What surprised me was the high ranking for Shareef Abdur-Rahim. I knew he was good, just not HOW good. He just got traded to Portland, along with Theo Ratliff (an excellent shot-blocker and rebounder), for Rasheed Wallace (who appears nowhere in these rankings). What a terrible trade for Atlanta.

Oh... and... great work, Craig!

Yeah, Kirilenko has become one of my favourite players. He's a phenomenal talent and he plays hard too. He reminds me so much of Michael Cooper it's scary.

When you have a 13-win team with one player who's 9.8 wins above replacement... that is a bad team.

I should point out that the Wins Above Replacement isn't a win shares analysis, and it's keyed to a .500 team. I am working on a Win Shares analysis as well, but for now WinsAR looks at how much a player would improve a .500 team if he took all the minutes a replacement player had with that team. This is why I said (elsewhere) that it's a kludge.

What surprised me was the high ranking for Shareef Abdur-Rahim.

Shareef is a terrific player who is having his best season. But he's been unfairly tabbed as a "loser" because he's played for two of the worst GMs in the history of civilization. He's carried a lot of bad teams.

Wallace, on the other hand, is a headcase who is also one of the softest big forwards in the league. He is a phenomenal talent who would be one of the league's best players if he applied himself, but unless Billy Knight has secretly mastered the art of the brain transplant the Hawks are not going to be happy with how this one turns out.

Incidentally, Wallace ranked second on Portland and 43rd in the NBA with 4.4 WinsAR.

I remember the 2001 draft like it was yesterday, hoping, praying that Randolph would still be around when the Raptors picked 17th. He was. They ended up choosing Michael Bradley, who has shown nowhere near the upside of Randolph. Many teams likened Randolph to Tractor Traylor when he came out of Michigan State, assuming he would be another flop. If there was ever a time I was more frustrated with a Grunwald move, it was then.

Shareef is a terrific player who is having his best season. But he's been unfairly tabbed as a "loser" because he's played for two of the worst GMs in the history of civilization. He's carried a lot of bad teams.

As a casual basketball fan I thought that Shareef had a choker tag. Don't expect him to score the winner in the last minute. I have only seen him against the Raptors, but he never has come up with the big score. I think he hit one late basket this year, and that was a surprise.

On the Reef-Wallace trade - Atlanta made the deal to free up cap room. Wallace and Person are both free agents at the end of this season and both Reef and Ratliff are not. Atlanta has as much as said that they will not try and resign either Wallace or Person. In a salary cap trade you need to look beyond the trade and determine what they do with the money before you declare it a bust from Atlanta's perspective. By analogy, suppose that Atlanta were able to sign Kobe (I'm not suggesting they will be able to) with the $20+ million coming off the salary cap. Is a Reef/Ratliff for Kobe trade a good one or not? It's one of the ways that the firm cap makes life unique in the NBA.

I was wondering about the cap thing. NBA trades are ferociously complicated these days due to the capological ramifications of every deal. It's like high-energy physics.

Anyway, the deal makes much more sense for both teams now. Portland don't have a hope in hell of getting under the cap even with Sheed's contract expiring, so they are better off using that contract now as trade bait to land a good player, which they did.

Atlanta want to sign Kobe Bryant.

Good to see some fellow hoop nuts on this blog.A good source for NBA salary info is Hoopshype.

While I enjoy the rankings I'm having a little trouble reconciling Sam Cassell as the fourth most valuable player commodity in the league, especially in comparison to our own Steve Nash.

I think we need to look at the numbers contextually. I'd argue that Cassel's bump in value is attributable to being in the reflection of a truly great player, Garnett. Sam "I,am" has seen his 3 point % and assist numbers spike upwards this year when compared to his career averages. Is he suddenly a better shooter or playmaker? Perhaps,but I think we need to consider that many of those 3 pointers made this year, are open looks as the result of his defender doubling down on Garnett.His assist numbers have also gone up as he has the luxury of lobbing to a good low block finisher.

At any rate I enjoyed thse threads and the search for meaning in basketball numbers.

Wildrose, you may not have watched the T-Wolves much this year. Cassell was great last year too (better than Nash, yes) but he has completely blown up this year. He is playing phenomenally well, much more aggressive than on the soft, jumpshooting teams he has usually played for. He has been a penetrating freak (though he's not getting to the line much!?) and his jumper has been deadly.

As much as the All-World KG has been helping Cassell, Cassell's deadly shot and pinpoint passing is what is helping KG to his best year ever, too. Troy Hudson vs. Sam Cassell is night vs. day when it comes to skill at running the offense, both in transition and in the halfcourt.