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We've all been talking about it in various threads, thought I would make one specifically for the discussion.

Oh, and for the record, Hollinger says no:

Mike (Raleigh )


Should Gerald Wallace be an All Star?

John Hollinger (12:15 PM)


No. He's rebounding amazingly well but his other #s are down from previous years. Likely East All-Star team is Wade, Bosh, LeBron and nine players from the Celtics, Magic and Hawks.

I'd bet against 9 players coming from 3 teams. Even though its the coaches pick, I doubt the league wants to be that concentrated. Diversity of teams makes for greater ratings so I'd think ties would go the Crash's of the world.

His other numbers are only down because of his (typical) slow start. In a few weeks they'll be back up to normal levels. I happen to agree with him on one thing, they always pick undeserving guys from good teams over the better player.

Hollinger is a dumb ass obviously. The question was "should" not "will" - so there is no need to tell us what is likely. Or even worse - he got it and said no and hided behind expected conservative selection.

For the record - Bonnell in his worst times is much more competnet than Hollinger.

For the time being, I agree with Hollinger.

e4Nf6 wrote:His other numbers are only down because of his (typical) slow start. In a few weeks they'll be back up to normal levels. I happen to agree with him on one thing, they always pick undeserving guys from good teams over the better player.

He obviously doesn't have nay formulas for slow starts so he wouldn't understand that at all if you'd tell him about it. He couldn't analyze that as data so he would react as crashed Windows - he would drop some random error-notification-like ridiculous statement. A tool.

It's not terribly hard to give some statistical evidence that Crash starts slow, watch....

Crash FG% in
October - .351
November - .452
December - .497

That wasn't so hard....

This is the problem with "pundits" anywhere. Hollinger didn't know that because Crash plays for a team that historically hasn't been very important. Of course Hollinger couldn't just say "I'm not that familiar with Crash actually" because he is the big expert and is expected to know everything about every player in the league.

If he's not injured by New Years then yes he will be voted in by the coaches.

Crash is #23 in the league in efficiency.

#9 in the East

#4 in the East among forwards (James, Smith and Bosh are ahead)

He's #3 in the league in rebounding.

He's leading by a significant margin the entire league in Defensive Win Shares.

He's leading the league in overall defensive rating.

Seems to me he's earned a slot on the team.

If you look at your numbers there Mezotarkus you make a valid argument that he should be, at this stage, a consideration for the DPoY as well?

Wallace needs to be in the damn AS game. We have yet to send a player to the AS game and with his rebounding #'s and now that he's kicked it into gear - put the man in the game. Did anyone see him last night in the 3rd Q?

e4Nf6 wrote:It's not terribly hard to give some statistical evidence that Crash starts slow, watch....

Crash FG% in
October - .351
November - .452
December - .497

That wasn't so hard....

This is the problem with "pundits" anywhere. Hollinger didn't know that because Crash plays for a team that historically hasn't been very important. Of course Hollinger couldn't just say "I'm not that familiar with Crash actually" because he is the big expert and is expected to know everything about every player in the league.

But then it dips back down again to .469, and then .440 in February. So he starts slow, then gets hot, then slows again, and then speeds back up in March? Looks like random noise to me, especially since some seasons he shot better than his full-season average in November (i.e., 07-08, 05-06).

There's no guarantee that when the coaches make their decision in February that Crash's December numbers will be more representative than his November. At the moment, despite his amazing rebounding, Wallace is rocking a 16.6 PER, partly due to shooting, partly because he is having the worst year of his career with the Bobcats in terms of turnovers, blocks, steals, and assists.

I have faith in Wallace that he's going to keep playing at a high level and end up deserving an all-star berth... but why should Hollinger?

Watch teh games, nerds!

BigSlam wrote:If you look at your numbers there Mezotarkus you make a valid argument that he should be, at this stage, a consideration for the DPoY as well?

Agreed. At least he should be on the All Star team, and as you say he's making a case for DPOY.

I'll admit I didn't look to close at the fg%....It was a throw-away stat that didn't stand up to scrutiny. I'm only an amateur statistician as you can tell...

Although there is something interesting there. If you look at the splits for Crash's career by month (not including October games as there are so few) the range of the data is much larger than a few players which i selected at random from the Bobcats page. (I would love to have league wide data for this instead of checking individuals at random)

so Crash's best month is March at 52.5% and his worst is February at 44%.

in comparison
Raja Bell: 41.4% to 45.3
Raymond Felton:38.9% to 41.8%
Stephen Jackson: 40.1% to 44%

and just for kicks a couple non-Bobcats.
Joe Johnson 43% to 45.6%
Kobe Bryant 44.6% 46.5%

So Crash's best and worst months are 8.5% apart while most guys (according to my very unscientific methods) are between 2% to 4%.

So why is this?

It could just be random chance... I'm not enough of an actual statistician to tell you whether that's statistically significant or not. I struggle to come up with an explanation for why such a gap would actually exist.

e4Nf6 wrote:So Crash's best and worst months are 8.5% apart while most guys (according to my very unscientific methods) are between 2% to 4%.

So why is this?

Have you checked the mix of home versus away games during those months for the Bobcats? Perhaps Crash feeds off the crowd more than others?

e4Nf6 wrote:If you look at the splits for Crash's career by month (not including October games as there are so few) the range of the data is much larger than a few players which i selected at random from the Bobcats page. (I would love to have league wide data for this instead of checking individuals at random)

Here you go:

http://www2.sportsnet.ca/basketball/nba/stats/