Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable

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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#61 » by An Unbiased Fan » Wed Jul 6, 2011 2:26 am

For the love of God, i have never come across a more useless stat than APM. :lol:

All apologizes to John Hollinger, because at least PER has some value for fantasy leagues. APM is just a joke in player comparisons. Sure, if you extrapolate the sample size across 6 years or so, you may get results that somewhat look passable, but really, using a rotaion/lineup stat for player evaluation is just beyond the scope.

Just this year, we have Luke "Russell" Walton outperforming all Laker players exept trey Johnson and Joe Smith on defense. Fisher is rated in the postive!! I mean really??? Fisher is the worst defensive PG in the league. :o

Oh, but wait. We can't look at 1 year samples for some reason.....

Nope...we need to combine several years of data together. :-?

I mean really, when the stats you're using, is incosistent when a player switches teams, and gives off such incosistent results due to the fact, once again, that it's based on lineups, How in the World can you use it to evaluate players? Why not look at some like Synergy stats(which is based on actual play)?


Team depth, systems, coaching,e tc. all factor into those numbers. You can't correlate them to an individual player.


APM = the most overrated stat imaginable. 8-)
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#62 » by ElGee » Wed Jul 6, 2011 5:55 am

You know, when you don't understand something, it's not the best course of action to rail on it in a public forum. Your last description of APM saw described the OPPOSITE of what the stat is measuring.

APM over large samples is actually a fantastic stat, and one used quite successfully by many NBA teams like the world champion Dallas Mavericks.

There's plenty of material explaining it out there, so I can only assume you have no interest in understanding it.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#63 » by Doctor MJ » Wed Jul 6, 2011 7:09 am

An Unbiased Fan wrote:but really, using a rotaion/lineup stat for player evaluation is just beyond the scope.


How have you come to this conclusion?

An Unbiased Fan wrote:Oh, but wait. We can't look at 1 year samples for some reason.....

Nope...we need to combine several years of data together. :-?


Do you seriously not understand the motivation here? Well okay:

http://asubstituteforwar.com/2011/03/26 ... tatistics/

An Unbiased Fan wrote:I mean really, when the stats you're using, is incosistent when a player switches teams, and gives off such incosistent results due to the fact, once again, that it's based on lineups, How in the World can you use it to evaluate players? Why not look at some like Synergy stats(which is based on actual play)?


-All players statistics change with context, +/- is not unique there.

-I'm certainly not against Synergy stats. I think they're great.

-"which is based on actual play". Um, so is +/-.

An Unbiased Fan wrote:Team depth, systems, coaching,e tc. all factor into those numbers. You can't correlate them to an individual player.


Yes, in fact, I can.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#64 » by An Unbiased Fan » Wed Jul 6, 2011 7:30 am

Doc, I'll have a detailed explaination of why APM is a bad stat to use for player evalautions in the coming days. I've been meaning to address the stat for a while now, and I guess the time has come.

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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#65 » by Baller 24 » Thu Jul 7, 2011 7:48 pm

Seems like Kobe Bryant is the only player in league history that's immune to advanced statistics.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#66 » by DSMok1 » Fri Jul 8, 2011 12:58 pm

A new, 8 year APM was just posted by Jeremias Engelmann. ( http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/dsmok_edition )

Of the top 25 players, only 2 are negative on defense. Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant.

That's a pretty huge statement.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#67 » by Nivek » Fri Jul 8, 2011 2:23 pm

Baller 24 wrote:Seems like Kobe Bryant is the only player in league history that's immune to advanced statistics.


Nah, go around to just about any team and you'll find fans of individual players who will tell you why "the numbers" don't fully account for the greatness of their favorite player.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#68 » by An Unbiased Fan » Fri Jul 8, 2011 6:17 pm

DSMok1 wrote:A new, 8 year APM was just posted by Jeremias Engelmann. ( http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/dsmok_edition )

Of the top 25 players, only 2 are negative on defense. Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant.

That's a pretty huge statement.

Appraently, Billups is also a negative on D...lol

And Sam Cassell is better on D than Wade, Paul, Rondo, and Kidd. Who would have guessed...

Oh, and my favorite.....Derek Fisher, one of the worst defensive guards over the last 8 years....is +1.3. So Fisher is apparently better than Wade, Paul, Kobe, Rondo, Raja, and Kidd. Wowsers!

Thank you APM for enlightening us all.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#69 » by Nivek » Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:26 pm

An Unbiased Fan wrote:
DSMok1 wrote:A new, 8 year APM was just posted by Jeremias Engelmann. ( http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/dsmok_edition )

Of the top 25 players, only 2 are negative on defense. Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant.

That's a pretty huge statement.

Appraently, Billups is also a negative on D...lol

And Sam Cassell is better on D than Wade, Paul, Rondo, and Kidd. Who would have guessed...

Oh, and my favorite.....Derek Fisher, one of the worst defensive guards over the last 8 years....is +1.3. So Fisher is apparently better than Wade, Paul, Kobe, Rondo, Raja, and Kidd. Wowsers!

Thank you APM for enlightening us all.


Instead of picking out a few results that strike you as incorrect and providing such useful insights as "lol" and "wowsers," why don't you make a counter-argument. You know, make the case that Billups is a good defender. Make the case that Derek Fisher is one of the worst defensive guards of the past 8 years. Make the case that he's not as good defensively than the guys you list.

You know, provide some analysis about why the numbers are wrong.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#70 » by Jay30 » Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:46 pm

i guess this means he was definitely deserving of his all-defensive teams in 2008 and 2010 considering his excellent on/off defensive numbers those years (while playing 40 min a game). oh, and he was obviously deserving during his young days- in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. so that's 7 legitimate all-defensive teams, which makes him one of the best perimeter defenders in history. get mad haters!
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#71 » by Jay30 » Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:48 pm

DSMok1 wrote:A new, 8 year APM was just posted by Jeremias Engelmann. ( http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/dsmok_edition )

Of the top 25 players, only 2 are negative on defense. Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant.

That's a pretty huge statement.

and kobe/nash also have the best offensive numbers...
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#72 » by Jay30 » Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:49 pm

laika wrote:I think your analysis is pretty bad. Here's a few balancing points to consider.

-SG might be the weakest defensive position. There are no SGs that stick out defensively as great.
-Kobe's net production allowed has ranged from good to elite over his career.
-Fisher is horrible by any stat I can see. Constantly having to make up for Fisher could be an explanation for Kobe's relatively poor +/- on defense.
-Adj +/- has a lot of problems, especially with the Lakers as I have shown.
-There are no other reliable defensive metrics you can base your opinion on because the defensive stats are generally terrible.
-Kobe did play a little worse this year. But in previous years the Lakers had a great defensive team, especially in the playoffs.
-When Kobe played with Farmar instead of Fisher the Lakers were good to extremely good defensively. Farmar is underrated but he isn't that great.
For example last year the Fisher/Kobe/Artest combination allowed 99.9 ppg in the playoffs while Farmar/Kobe/Artest averaged 85.6 ppg. This is exactly the result you would expect if Kobe was a great defender being dragged down by Fisher.

Maybe Kobe didn't deserve it this year. Even this year though his net production allowed is elite.
But every other year you can make a pretty good case that he did in fact deserve it.

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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#73 » by Jay30 » Fri Jul 8, 2011 9:49 pm

EvanZ wrote:
ElGee wrote:With the all-defensive team, the results seem so disconnected from reality that it makes me wonder if something else is going here. Namely, that the lack of information (ie No defensive stats for decade after decade) renders the all-defensive team an exercise is whimsical reputations.



Is it really so disconnected from reality? At least, in ezPM, Bryant is the third highest rated guard:

Code: Select all

Dwight Howard   5.08
Tony Allen   4.14
Andrew Bogut   3.40
LeBron James   3.33
Tim Duncan   3.21
Rudy Gay   3.14
Ben Wallace   3.13
Andrei Kirilenko   3.08
Andre Iguodala   3.03
Carlos Delfino   2.96
Kurt Thomas   2.93
Ron Artest   2.90
Elton Brand   2.68
Paul Pierce   2.66
Luol Deng   2.62
Kobe Bryant   2.52
Kevin Garnett   2.51
Marc Gasol   2.50
Emeka Okafor   2.40
Josh Smith   2.32

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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#74 » by An Unbiased Fan » Fri Jul 8, 2011 11:10 pm

Nivek wrote:
An Unbiased Fan wrote:
DSMok1 wrote:A new, 8 year APM was just posted by Jeremias Engelmann. ( http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/dsmok_edition )

Of the top 25 players, only 2 are negative on defense. Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant.

That's a pretty huge statement.

Appraently, Billups is also a negative on D...lol

And Sam Cassell is better on D than Wade, Paul, Rondo, and Kidd. Who would have guessed...

Oh, and my favorite.....Derek Fisher, one of the worst defensive guards over the last 8 years....is +1.3. So Fisher is apparently better than Wade, Paul, Kobe, Rondo, Raja, and Kidd. Wowsers!

Thank you APM for enlightening us all.


Instead of picking out a few results that strike you as incorrect and providing such useful insights as "lol" and "wowsers," why don't you make a counter-argument. You know, make the case that Billups is a good defender. Make the case that Derek Fisher is one of the worst defensive guards of the past 8 years. Make the case that he's not as good defensively than the guys you list.

You know, provide some analysis about why the numbers are wrong.

As I said above, I will make a thread about APM soon. Don't worry.

But do I really need to make the case that Billups is a good defender, and that Fisher is a horrible one? Because anyone who has watched basketball over the last 8 years know this already

That's like creating a "beauty stat", and ranking Whoopi Goldberg over Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johannson, and Eva Mendez. And then saying, "Instead of picking out a few results that strike you as incorrect and providing such useful insights as "lol" and "wowsers," why don't you make a counter-argument. You know, make the case that Angeleina Jolie is a hot. Make the case that Whoopi Goldberg is one of the worst looking celebrities of the past 8 years. Make the case that she's not as good looks-wise than the chicks you list."

I mean really, anyone who has watched the Lakers knows that Fisher gets routinely destroyed on screens, man to man, and is slow on defensive rotations. Anyone who has seen Synergy stats knows these other guys are good on defense. But i guys actually watching NBA action and documenting what happens on defense, just can't compare to a rotation/lineup stat like APM.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#75 » by EvanZ » Sat Jul 9, 2011 4:32 pm

Synergy stats are interesting to look at, and can provide a different view when APM (or box score metrics) don't agree with our expectations.

It's worth looking at Synergy to compare Fisher and Billups. (Did anyone here actually do that?)

In isolation plays, Billups is indeed a lot better than Fisher, registering 0.55 PPP vs. 0.99 PPP. However, isolation plays only account for roughly 12-14% of each player's defended plays (12% for Billups, 14% for Fisher).

However, defending the pick and roll, which makes up a little over a third of the defended plays for each player, Fisher has a 0.76 PPP vs. Billups' 0.85 PPP. Remember these plays occur three times as frequently as isolation plays.

My feeling has been for a while that players get their reputation (their "eye rep", if you will) from isolation plays, on offense AND defense. That's the easiest thing for us to wrap our heads around. It's much harder to keep track of how players defend PNR or spot-up attempts (or even post plays). But isolation...well...just use your eyes!

If we look at the overall Synergy defensive efficiency, Billups comes out ever so slightly ahead with a 0.92 PPP vs. 0.90 PPP for Fisher. In this case, APM says one thing, and Synergy says something different, but what it doesn't appear to say is that Fisher is anything other than an *average* defender, which is also what his APM says. And for the latest and greatest APM metric, I point to Jeremias Engelmann's 5-yr RAPM which is the best out-of-sample predictor currently (that's been made public, anyway). That metric pegs Fisher at 0.4 on defense and Billups at -1.9. If anything, I think what the stats (if not our eyes) suggest is the possibility that we should re-consider whether Billups is as staunch a defender as some appear to think, and whether Fisher is as terrible as some may think.

Not using my eyes, and just going by the stats, I'd probably lean toward calling both players average defensive point guards.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#76 » by 34Dayz » Sat Jul 9, 2011 9:38 pm

I never felt Fisher was a terrible defender.. he is strong and moves quickly enough, not to seem biased but it seems like he has been used as a scapegoat for LA's failures more then anything, especially on the forums. oh they lost its cause fisher is so freaking bad... yea he's not the best PG in the league but he isn't the worst either.

I have to say that since 05 onwards Bryant definitly did not deserve any All defensive awards as there were many guards from that season on that were better then him defensively, the award is now a total joke and honestly I barely take defensive awards seriously anymore since i've started noticing things like this. Similar story with All-NBA teams aswell its just given out to the media darlings weather they deserve it or if there at 5-10 people that deserve it more.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#77 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Jul 10, 2011 1:14 am

Jay30 wrote:i guess this means he was definitely deserving of his all-defensive teams in 2008 and 2010 considering his excellent on/off defensive numbers those years (while playing 40 min a game). oh, and he was obviously deserving during his young days- in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. so that's 7 legitimate all-defensive teams, which makes him one of the best perimeter defenders in history. get mad haters!


Hmm.

First and foremost, what keeps getting said again and again and yet people never seem to get it: The issue with +/- is one of reliability. There's a lot of noise involved. This says nothing about the stats' validity, and reliability always improves with sample size. So when we take a multi-year sample, we're giving the stat good reliability to go with the validity.

In other words: We're going away from one year samples for a reason.

Now, can a player be inconsistent from year to year and thus make his multi-year sample be not an accurate statement of his peak impact? Absolutely. However, I've yet to hear anyone make that argument here.

Second, looking at RAPM, here's how Kobe's defensive numbers look going back to '02-03 (which is all we have):

Year Score
'11 -1.0
'10 +1.2
'09 +0.8
'08 +1.0
'07 -0.2
'06 -0.9
'05 -1.1
'04 -0.6
'03 +0.1

There isn't a single year in the bunch that would warrant All-Defensive selection if we used that metric. It's actually kind of remarkable.
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#78 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Jul 10, 2011 1:16 am

Jay30 wrote:
DSMok1 wrote:A new, 8 year APM was just posted by Jeremias Engelmann. ( http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/dsmok_edition )

Of the top 25 players, only 2 are negative on defense. Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant.

That's a pretty huge statement.


and kobe/nash also have the best offensive numbers...


Yup. Shall I make a follow up article?

Kobe Bryant: NOT the most overrated offensive player imaginable

:D
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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#79 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Jul 10, 2011 1:17 am

An Unbiased Fan wrote:Doc, I'll have a detailed explaination of why APM is a bad stat to use for player evalautions in the coming days. I've been meaning to address the stat for a while now, and I guess the time has come.

8-)


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Re: Kobe Bryant: the most overrated defender imaginable 

Post#80 » by Chronz » Sun Jul 10, 2011 2:07 am

Billups is another player living off his rep, luckily that rep is on fumes, I feel Kobe will enter that phase soon enough.

I still remember flips horrendous coaching decision to put Billups on Bron those many years back, even his own coach overrated his defense.

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