USG%... How accurate is it?

[now and 4 life]

Nope, I thought it was useful until I saw recently it wasn't either.

For example,LeBron has a USG% of 31.7 and Wade 31.9 while we all know LeBron has the ball in his hands a lot more and Wade plays off the ball mostly.

Yes it is inaccurate becuase it does not support the false claim that Lebron hogs the ball more than Wade.

[thedarkstark]

Like most advanced stats, it's completely worthless.

Advance stats heavily favor efficiency over production, which in a vaccum is great, but in actuality is very stupid.

My favorite example is Nene. Advanced stat whores love to point out how efficient he is, yet he's always been a 3rd option. He's so efficent because he's incapable of carrying a team and he gets most of his easy buckets by feeding off others.

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Were you just looking for any topic to put this into? How does usg% heavily favor efficiency? What does any of this have to do with Nene's efficiency?

In a way you're right, I probably would've put this in any advanced stat topic that came along. The point however remains the same.

I don't mean to single out Nene, I just hate how fixated people have become on advanced stats, and use them as gospel, and act like they're all high and mighty for using them and that anyone who uses traditional stats is somehow of lower intelligence.

Advanced stats have their place, but people are constantly using them improperly. And usage DOES favor efficency, players who take less shots have a lower usage rate despite the fact that they may be dribbling the air out of the basketball, or only taking wide open shots, meanwhile the go to scorer has to take all the difficult ones at the end of the shot clock, thus lowering his efficiency.

Hmm, and you undoubtedly would have said that Melo was by far the most valuable player on the team because of his scoring volume. Remind me what's happened Melo left.

Not saying Nene's a superstar, just saying value of the big volume star in that case doesn't seem clearly superior over the efficient teammate.

Not saying volume scoring is the be-all end-all either, but again somebody has to be the guy who takes the difficult shots, and I don't think the player should be damned for doing so.

[cucad8]

It doesn't favor efficiency at all. If a player took 100% of his teams shots, and missed them all, he'd have a 100% usg, but be inefficient with his shooting.
It doesn't FAVOR anything. It shows the percentage of possessions ended by a player. Simple as that. Whether someone else dribbled for 22 seconds before passing off to them or not. It is not a stat favoring anyone unless you are, clearly, looking for something else out of the stat that it is not trying to show.

[raptorforlife88]

Nope, I thought it was useful until I saw recently it wasn't either.

For example,LeBron has a USG% of 31.7 and Wade 31.9 while we all know LeBron has the ball in his hands a lot more and Wade plays off the ball mostly.

As it's been noted usage measures exactly what it says it does. Wade takes more shots on average and gets to the line more than Wade. And like I noted you have to take into account other stats to measure how much possession a player is using. Don't use a single standalone stat. Assist percentage is one thing to use, and Lebron's asssist% is 35 and Wade's is 23. So you can see from that in combination with usage that Lebron likely does have the ball more often than Wade, Lebron is being used in more of a creative as well as scoring role.

Also to the poster who said stats skew towards efficiency, usage doesn't take into account efficiency at all.

[picc]

So essentially, usage is a completely worthless and redundant stat considering all you have to do is look at fga per game.

[cucad8]

So essentially, usage is a completely worthless and redundant stat considering all you have to do is look at fga per game.

nope. It's useful for what it says it does. Some might find a use for it. Others will not. And still many many others will use it as it is not intended.

[thedarkstark]

It doesn't favor efficiency at all. If a player took 100% of his teams shots, and missed them all, he'd have a 100% usg, but be inefficient with his shooting.
It doesn't FAVOR anything. It shows the percentage of possessions ended by a player. Simple as that. Whether someone else dribbled for 22 seconds before passing off to them or not. It is not a stat favoring anyone unless you are, clearly, looking for something else out of the stat that it is not trying to show.

If you use usage rate alone, but nobody uses it alone because alone it doesn't show anything. People use it in conjunction with other stats to measure efficiency.

[cucad8]

It shows exactly what it says it shows. The percentage of a team's possessions ended in a turnover, FGA or FTA by a specific player. People look at it wrong. Don't say the stat is bad because of efficiency when it has nothing to do with that. That's user error.

[raptorforlife88]

So essentially, usage is a completely worthless and redundant stat considering all you have to do is look at fga per game.

It's also taking into account FTA and TO's.

[cucad8]

So essentially, usage is a completely worthless and redundant stat considering all you have to do is look at fga per game.

It's also taking into account FTA and TO's.

Yes but it doesn't tell me if those TOs led to points on the other end, so it's a completely worthless stat.

[An Unbiased Fan]

REAL USG% would be easy to measure if the stat counters actually looked for it. All you would need to do is calculate how many minutes a player actually has possesion of the ball.

[Paydro70]

Umm... good luck getting the stopwatches out for every single pass and then defining "possession." Besides, like 80% of most possessions is the point guard dribbling the ball up the court, to the point that it would throw off any results (not to mention the huge effect that a team running or not running would have on the level of PG possession time).

No, usage rate does a fine job of approximating what we care about here... how big a role that player plays in the offense.

[Chicago76]

Good points here. Clock usage in and of itself isn't particularly meaningul due to the PG bringing the ball up. Maybe looking at seconds of possession in the halfcourt once the offense has been "set", but even that doesn't particularly tell you a lot. What do you do when the ball is whipped all the way around the arc in 3-4 passes?

[floppymoose]

The existing usage stat is good for answering questions like "is Corey Maggette a black hole?"

[VictorPage44]

You could start tracking total passes received and made.

[Paydro70]

You could start tracking total passes received and made.

It wouldn't be a very useful stat, it'd be entirely system-based and you'd have no idea the level of difficulty. Big men might have an extremely high pass accuracy by that stat, because their only passes are swings on the perimeter or flicks back out from inside when they don't have great position.

I think the eye test is the only one we're ever going to have for passing.

[VictorPage44]

Point taken on the "system based" criticism of the total passes stat, however I think total passes received and made could have an infinite amount of uses when compared to other stats. We're measuring usage. Wouldn't it be nice to know that wade receives say 125 passes a game whereas someone like Joel Anthony recieves only 10 or 20. Moreover, Passes received vs. Passes made ratio tells you what the player is doing with the ball when he gets it.

Maybe I'm not explaining this well, but ya on it's own, knowing that melo receives 84 passes doesn't tell u anything on it's own. However say you knew that nO one else received more than 40 passes? Then you know offense went through melo for the most part with a lot of isolation. Differences in total passes can indicate what offensive system is being used as well. it's about finding the patterns.

I haven't put too much thought into this, but it seems like difficulty in accounting for hundreds if not over a thousand passes a game is the only real drawback. you would know exactly what Bruce Bowens usage was if u knew that he played 35 minutes and received only 20 passes.

[VictorPage44]

More uses for total passes received:

Can attempt to measure ball denial defense (using counterpart total passes recieved)

Can attempt to measure on the ball defense (using a ratio of counterpart passes received vs passes made taking into accept Fga, fta, and turnovers)

Mainly it can be used as a way to measure usage within one team or amongst teammates.

Problems like big men accumulating extra passes made due to defensive rebounding can be solved by just subtracting defensive rebounds from total passes made.

[DSMok1]

I agree. Passes made and received would be nice to have for a number of reasons.

[Chosen01]

Its a useful stat but its just the way people perceive it as a measure of ball dominance when it's not.