A few ideas for new stats

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Keller61
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A few ideas for new stats 

Post#1 » by Keller61 » Wed Sep 11, 2013 8:56 pm

I guess I should post this here, since it got locked on the general board. If you could invent new stats for the NBA, what would you do? These are my ideas:

1.) "Shooting Possessions" - This would simply count the number of times a player uses a possession trying to score, whether it be with a shot or with a trip to the line that uses a possession (not an and-one, technical, flagrant, or clear path). You could then look at "points per shooting possession" as a good efficiency indicator, doing away with the ambiguity of TS%, which uses a formula which estimates each FT to use 0.44 possessions (It may be a good estimation over a season, but not for single games).

2.) "Fouls Drawn" - People usually look at FT attempts to evaluate how well a player draws fouls, but I think that is flawed. Some players are better than others at getting and-ones (which is also why TS% is flawed), and some players have their FT numbers inflated slightly by being the technical foul shooter. Also, players sometimes make an aggressive move and get fouled before they can get up a shot. That's still a good play, as it gets the other team closer to the penalty, but it doesn't result in FTs. I think a simple stat to track how many times a player is fouled could be useful.

3.) "Assist Attempts" - I think that assists are one of the more overrated stats in the NBA, at least for single-game comparisons, i.e. "Player X had 8 assists, while Player Y only had 6 assists." Maybe Player X made 12 good passes and his teammates converted 8 of them, while Player Y made 15 good passes, but his teammates only converted 6 of them. "Assist attempts" would just track the number of passes a player makes which lead to shots that would count as assists if they go in. I also think that if a player makes a good pass and the recipient gets fouled in the act of shooting, that should count as an assist.

4.) "Assisted/Unassisted FG%" - Currently, there is an advanced stat which tracks the percentage of a player's made baskets that are assisted, but no stat which tracks how many of their shots (make or miss) would be considered assisted. In this case, "Assisted FG%" would be the player's FG% on shots which would be classified as "assist attempts" as defined above. Comparing this to unassisted FG% would give you an idea of how much the player's efficiency depends on someone else setting them up.

5.) "Half-rebounds" - This one might be a little crazy, but you'll notice that players will often tip a missed shot to a teammate, with the latter getting credited for the rebound. Perhaps in this scenario both players should be credited with half of a rebound, similar to how NFL players can be credited for half a sack.

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