Re: Stan van Gundy dismisses the analytics crowd
I always thought Troy Murphy was an interesting case. One primary argument against him was that his rebounds weren't "earned". He was accused of hogging all of the uncontested rebounds, and didn't get the "big boy" contested rebounds.
Good news: there is a stat that sheds light on that, Contested Rebound Percentage! A "Contested Rebound" is a rebound that is grabbed by a player when an opposing player is within 3.5 feet of him. Remember the SportVU cameras? This stat is possible with those things. If you compare a players Total Rebounds to his Contested Rebounds, you get Contested Rebound Percentage. Your rough-and-tumble guys like Jeff Foster should have a larger percentage, and your pretty boys like Troy Murphy should have a low percentage.
Obviously, we can't go back in time and look at data for those Pacer legends. But, we can for the current season. Out of all the players who have played at least 40 games and average 7 or more rebounds per game, here is a list of players ranked in order of lowest Contested Rebound Percentage:
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=ASC
Same list, ranked from the highest:
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=DES
Lance is a poacher, mainly from Hibbert. How do I know that? By watching the games. We talk about it all the time on the podcast. It is a pretty obvious thing, and the Pacers have talked about it in the media.
But did you know that Hibbert grabs more contested boards than BAMF David West?
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=DES
Or that Stretch-4 Pretty Boy Kevin Love grabs the 3rd most contested rebounds per game?
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=DES
Well, are Kevin Love's rebounding numbers inflated by pace? Head over to the Timberwolves' basketball-reference page and look at Minny's Pace numbers and Love's individual rebounding %:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2014.html
If you were a GM, wouldn't you like to know that LaMarcus Aldridge sucks at grabbing contested boards, while Robin Lopez is a beast at it? Perhaps that might motivate you into trading for Lopez to pair with Aldridge, making your team jump from 24th to 2nd in the NBA in total rebounds in the process?
"But Dave, you could just watch the games to figure that out!"
If you are a GM, you need to know about ever player in the NBA. There are 30 teams in the NBA playing 82 games. If you use a DVR (or if you watch pre-edited versions of every game) and can watch each game in 1.5 hours, it would take you 184.5 days to watch every NBA game (assuming you watched for 10 hours a day with no breaks). Want to scout the D-League or Europe? Grab some coffee!
Or, you could use sophisticated stats like this to narrow down a list, and use Synergy's scouting service (which breaks down plays by type, like - say - every Robin Lopez rebound) to use your eyes to evaluate specific targets.
The application for coaches to gain wisdom about opposing players quickly as they are flying between games, running practices, and trying to sleep are so obvious it hurts.
Has anyone actually used Synergy's scout service? I have, and I know many others have as well. It will give you a stat (say, points per possession in spot-up shooting situations). That stat will be in blue text. Why? Because it is a direct link to a series of videos that this stat applies to.
And that is the goal. Collect the data. Refine the data. Add nuance to the data. And use the data to direct you to - and add context and understanding to - actual basketball plays.
In this sense, this stuff is very valuable. TS% and PER are kind of ancient. This new SportVU data is pretty amazing. But the most amazing part? Contested Rebound Percentage is child's play compared to what we will know once we have enough data to do some truly crazy stuff with this:
http://grantland.com/features/expect...nba-analytics/
Sorry for the TL;DR post. Guess I had a lot to say about this.
I always thought Troy Murphy was an interesting case. One primary argument against him was that his rebounds weren't "earned". He was accused of hogging all of the uncontested rebounds, and didn't get the "big boy" contested rebounds.
Good news: there is a stat that sheds light on that, Contested Rebound Percentage! A "Contested Rebound" is a rebound that is grabbed by a player when an opposing player is within 3.5 feet of him. Remember the SportVU cameras? This stat is possible with those things. If you compare a players Total Rebounds to his Contested Rebounds, you get Contested Rebound Percentage. Your rough-and-tumble guys like Jeff Foster should have a larger percentage, and your pretty boys like Troy Murphy should have a low percentage.
Obviously, we can't go back in time and look at data for those Pacer legends. But, we can for the current season. Out of all the players who have played at least 40 games and average 7 or more rebounds per game, here is a list of players ranked in order of lowest Contested Rebound Percentage:
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=ASC
Same list, ranked from the highest:
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=DES
Lance is a poacher, mainly from Hibbert. How do I know that? By watching the games. We talk about it all the time on the podcast. It is a pretty obvious thing, and the Pacers have talked about it in the media.
But did you know that Hibbert grabs more contested boards than BAMF David West?
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=DES
Or that Stretch-4 Pretty Boy Kevin Love grabs the 3rd most contested rebounds per game?
http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingR...&sortOrder=DES
Well, are Kevin Love's rebounding numbers inflated by pace? Head over to the Timberwolves' basketball-reference page and look at Minny's Pace numbers and Love's individual rebounding %:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2014.html
If you were a GM, wouldn't you like to know that LaMarcus Aldridge sucks at grabbing contested boards, while Robin Lopez is a beast at it? Perhaps that might motivate you into trading for Lopez to pair with Aldridge, making your team jump from 24th to 2nd in the NBA in total rebounds in the process?
"But Dave, you could just watch the games to figure that out!"
If you are a GM, you need to know about ever player in the NBA. There are 30 teams in the NBA playing 82 games. If you use a DVR (or if you watch pre-edited versions of every game) and can watch each game in 1.5 hours, it would take you 184.5 days to watch every NBA game (assuming you watched for 10 hours a day with no breaks). Want to scout the D-League or Europe? Grab some coffee!
Or, you could use sophisticated stats like this to narrow down a list, and use Synergy's scouting service (which breaks down plays by type, like - say - every Robin Lopez rebound) to use your eyes to evaluate specific targets.
The application for coaches to gain wisdom about opposing players quickly as they are flying between games, running practices, and trying to sleep are so obvious it hurts.
Has anyone actually used Synergy's scout service? I have, and I know many others have as well. It will give you a stat (say, points per possession in spot-up shooting situations). That stat will be in blue text. Why? Because it is a direct link to a series of videos that this stat applies to.
And that is the goal. Collect the data. Refine the data. Add nuance to the data. And use the data to direct you to - and add context and understanding to - actual basketball plays.
In this sense, this stuff is very valuable. TS% and PER are kind of ancient. This new SportVU data is pretty amazing. But the most amazing part? Contested Rebound Percentage is child's play compared to what we will know once we have enough data to do some truly crazy stuff with this:
http://grantland.com/features/expect...nba-analytics/
Sorry for the TL;DR post. Guess I had a lot to say about this.
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