Efficiency stats - Carmelo, Kobe the best

[jjin28]

http://www.roundballminingcompany.com/2 ... efficient/

Carmelo has some outstanding numbers. Kobe is top 3 in every stat except for having open shots. Lebron and Wade are beastly when they are open driving in the lane, but Wade is a terrible perimter player when contested.

[Tim_Hardawayy]

Oh hey everybody, a random blog from a Nuggets fan cherry picking numbers to show his favorite player's strengths and hide his weaknesses.

You're completely ignoring that ability to create and take open shots is a skill in and of itself if you take that data to mean what I think you are.

[jjin28]

Oh hey everybody, a random blog from a Nuggets fan cherry picking numbers to show his favorite player's strengths and hide his weaknesses.

You're completely ignoring that ability to create and take open shots is a skill in and of itself if you take that data to mean what I think you are.

LOL. where was I inaccurate. I said Lebron and Wade are beastly driving in the lane type of players to get open shots. And Wade is a pretty terrible perimter player. You dont even need to look at stats to realize that....And even from a nuggets blogger, it clearly shows that Kobe is a pretty amazing player given his age.

Wonder what Kobe's stats would be in this type of analysis at Lebron and Wade's age when he had the legs to get open shots. Im pretty sure he would own.

[Kobeskillz]

Oh hey everybody, a random blog from a Nuggets fan cherry picking numbers to show his favorite player's strengths and hide his weaknesses.

You're completely ignoring that ability to create and take open shots is a skill in and of itself if you take that data to mean what I think you are.

LOL. where was I inaccurate. I said Lebron and Wade are beastly driving in the lane type of players to get open shots. And Wade is a pretty terrible perimter player. You dont even need to look at stats to realize that....And even from a nuggets blogger, it clearly shows that Kobe is a pretty amazing player given his age.

Wonder what Kobe's stats would be in this type of analysis at Lebron and Wade's age when he had the legs to get open shots. Im pretty sure he would own.

I've seen Kobe play since he was a Rookie and Kobe and Open shots are like Oil and Water. Sure he will take it and make it but Kobe loves to be defended as tight as possible so he can make tough shots.

Look at his fade aways are almost always with man right in his face. I just know he loves it it. Sometimes he passes up an open shot and lets the defender set him self before he goes up for a in your face 3 pointer or something.

[NOOB77]

That is the problems with stats....One person can cherry pick stats and make a certain player look inefficient and then another person can cherry pick stats and make the same player look efficient. You can't judge everything by stats you have to actually watch the games.

[gino_giode]

ummmm, what was the sample for these stats?

Did he just sit down and watch how they played against the Raps and simply extrapolate?

I hardly believe that those numbers are as gaudy as he makes them out to be--namely Martin

These stats are BS unless he had a very uneventful summer and watched every single game tape of those guys.

[nonemus]

Many of these stats are hard to believe.... You're telling me that NBA defenses contest fewer than 50% of LeBron and Wade's shots?

[Jimmy76]

Where did they get those stats? If they're legit they're interesting.

I wouldn't try use them to justify Kobe as more efficienct though getting open looks is a good thing and a reason for higher efficiency not a way to discredit high efficiency.

[Ripp]

Pretty interesting blog post. Thanks, op!

[Jimmy76]

Interesting Durant has the smallest discrepancy between contested and open made percentage

It could be he's not that great a shooter (at least in terms of mid-range) he's just not that bothered by contests because of his length

[Doctor MJ]

http://www.roundballminingcompany.com/2010/10/19/carmelo-anthony-efficient/

Carmelo has some outstanding numbers. Kobe is top 3 in every stat except for having open shots. Lebron and Wade are beastly when they are open driving in the lane, but Wade is a terrible perimter player when contested.

You need to change the title here. There's nothing in that link that says what your title says.

[Doctor MJ]

Oh hey everybody, a random blog from a Nuggets fan cherry picking numbers to show his favorite player's strengths and hide his weaknesses.

You're completely ignoring that ability to create and take open shots is a skill in and of itself if you take that data to mean what I think you are.

Actually the blog is quite impressive, the OP just either doesn't understand it at all, or he's messing with us.

To summarize:

Melo & Kobe take a ridiculous amount of contested shots, and this is what drives their efficiency down. The blogger is trying to figure out this flaw in Melo's game, and gives his thoughts about how Melo can change to become a truly great scorer. (And the blogger is a Nugget fan)

At shooting open shots, Melo & LeBron are more impressive than Kobe, Wade, and Durant.

At making contested shots, Durant's the best followed by Kobe. Then comes LeBron, Melo, and Wade.

To me the most interesting point is Durant, who is clearly not an elite pure shooter at this point, but is already better than the very best at taking contested shots as well as drawing fouls.

[Doctor MJ]

Many of these stats are hard to believe.... You're telling me that NBA defenses contest fewer than 50% of LeBron and Wade's shots?

Notice that the percentages don't add up to 100%. These don't include layups & dunks, and of course consider that they don't factor in fouls.

Put it another way: LeBron & Wade are known for their ability to get inside, not for their all-world jumpshooting. So when they do shoot a jump shot, it's probably because they're open. As a result, the amount of contested jump shots they take is small.

[Doctor MJ]

I hardly believe that those numbers are as gaudy as he makes them out to be--namely Martin

These stats are BS unless he had a very uneventful summer and watched every single game tape of those guys.

You really need to read more thoroughly. Martin is shown to be the worst of anyone measured both at taking open shots AND contested shots. He only leads the stars in the percentage of shots he takes that are open, which is exactly what you'd expect for a player that doesn't have the defense geared toward stopping him.

[DSMok1]

That was a really cool article. He has Synergy and looked at all shots by these players in a random sampling of their games (the averages in those games totalling up to close to their year-long averages). If he can add free throws/drawing fouls and three-point attempts as a subset, that would be an amazing analysis.

[Nivek]

I'm not impressed by this bit of research. Cherry-picked data is suspect right from the start. He also doesn't define what's an open shot and what's contested.

When I tracked defense over a three-season period, I (for awhile) notated whether shots were contested, open or wide-open. Contested meant a hand in the face or there was a legitimate block attempt. Open meant that a defender was close or got a hand in the face after release. Wide-open meant that the shot was simply uncontested.

In my tracking, about a quarter of all shots were open or wide-open. I'm skeptical that 54% of Lebron's shot attempts, for example, could be classified as open. I that Carmelo's number is too high as well, and he shows up as having lowest proportion of open looks.

I also found his use pts per shot and FG% puzzling considering that better efficiency measures exist. If he's trying to measure shooting from the field, the best measure is eFG, which accounts for the 3pt shot. If he's looking for an overall measure of efficiency, ortg is best. (And, Carmelo shows up as significantly better than average using ortg last season -- 112 vs. a league average of about 108. Wade was at 115.)

Finally, his entire analysis is built around knocking down a strawman -- namely that "...statistics tell us that Carmelo Anthony is not an efficient scorer." Basic box score stats (like FG%) suggest that he's about average in terms of efficiency, which almost everyone would immediately understand means he's actually pretty efficient considering the scoring load he carries on that team. As soon as you turn to more meaningful advanced stats, Anthony's efficiency becomes more apparent. It's most apparent when you look at a quality advanced stat like ortg.

[Doctor MJ]

Finally, his entire analysis is built around knocking down a strawman -- namely that "...statistics tell us that Carmelo Anthony is not an efficient scorer." Basic box score stats (like FG%) suggest that he's about average in terms of efficiency, which almost everyone would immediately understand means he's actually pretty efficient considering the scoring load he carries on that team. As soon as you turn to more meaningful advanced stats, Anthony's efficiency becomes more apparent. It's most apparent when you look at a quality advanced stat like ortg.

Nuggets fans like the blogger tend to believe that Melo has the ability to be as good of a scorer as anyone in the league. When they criticize his efficiency, it's within the context of assuming his efficiency should be up there with LeBron and Durant. They aren't actually saying he's a bad scorer - they just have high standards.

[Nivek]

I agree with the suggestion that Carmelo could be even more efficient. His efficiency isn't bad, though considering his usage level. He's not in the class with Lebron and Durant, but that's a pretty tepid criticism. Lebron's ortg ranked among the top 20 most efficient seasons for a high-usage player (usg rate of 27 or higher) since the league began collecting the data necessary to calculate the stat in the 70s. Durant's 09-10 season ranked 38th all-time.

I'm hardly a Carmelo fan -- I think he's pretty overrated overall. But I think his efficiency is acceptable considering the offensive load he carries. Definitely he and the Nuggets should be working to make him more efficient. Cherry-picking 10 games, claiming they're representative and then using that as the basis for the critique seems sorta weak to me. Especially if you have something like Synergy where you could literally look at every shot he took all season, or extend the sample size to a more meaningful sample. Even with the guys examined, we're seeing data on only a couple hundred FGA.

More important than expanding the sample size, though is defining the criteria used to determine whether a shot was open or not. As someone with experience tracking this kind of thing, the numbers presented don't look credible to me.

[AussieBuck]

The blogger goes to a lot of trouble and it's a good read but I think the answer to Melo's troubles is a little simpler. He takes the second most amount of shots from 16-23 feet in the league at 7.1 a game and only hits them at 40%. A ton of long two's is always a dumb idea when you aren't Dirk.

http://hoopdata.com/shotstats.aspx

If you sort by attempts from 16-23 you see a who's who of guys who really should be more efficient given their skill sets. (Melo, Rose, Ellis, Hamilton, Luol "long two" Deng)

[Doctor MJ]

I agree with the suggestion that Carmelo could be even more efficient. His efficiency isn't bad, though considering his usage level. He's not in the class with Lebron and Durant, but that's a pretty tepid criticism. Lebron's ortg ranked among the top 20 most efficient seasons for a high-usage player (usg rate of 27 or higher) since the league began collecting the data necessary to calculate the stat in the 70s. Durant's 09-10 season ranked 38th all-time.

I'm hardly a Carmelo fan -- I think he's pretty overrated overall. But I think his efficiency is acceptable considering the offensive load he carries. Definitely he and the Nuggets should be working to make him more efficient. Cherry-picking 10 games, claiming they're representative and then using that as the basis for the critique seems sorta weak to me. Especially if you have something like Synergy where you could literally look at every shot he took all season, or extend the sample size to a more meaningful sample. Even with the guys examined, we're seeing data on only a couple hundred FGA.

More important than expanding the sample size, though is defining the criteria used to determine whether a shot was open or not. As someone with experience tracking this kind of thing, the numbers presented don't look credible to me.

Well, I think it's clear that where Melo really falls off from the true elite guys in the game is with the stuff beyond scoring. It's just particularly frustrating for people when you look at Melo's obvious talent at scoring and see that based on results there's just no way you can make a case that he's the best scorer in the game.

I would agree that the open/contested break down without really going into detail really makes me wonder about the credibility. I have not done such a detailed analysis in this area, but I know that if I did, determining exactly how to break things down would be occupy a lot of my thought, and hence would be discussed in my summary. With that said, the author seems pretty objective in his thinking to me. There's enough complexity here that I really don't know what agenda he'd really be pushing anyway. So the question to me is really how accurate his individual assessments were. It puts enough doubt in my mind that I'd be careful how I used this information going forward, but not enough that I see a need to dismiss it outright.