Eyes and regular stats > advanced stats (coming from a stat nerd), IMHO

[ryan in Maine]

Not to be that guy. But we have literal stats showing how much time a player has the ball.

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/touches?Season=2024-25&TeamID=1610612738&dir=D&sort=TIME_OF_POSS

Yeah It's a lot of it on the Celtics board. They'll never fail to stat me.

Advanced stats is kinda like GPS—useful when you're not familiar. How often does an advanced statistic genuinely surprise you about a player? Either positively or negatively.

I think they typically align with the eye test. And oftentimes when they don't, there's probably a dispute to be had over methodology and metrics. But usually pretty close.

Time on ball is not an advanced stat. This is one thing that has been confused. Everything that isn't on the regular box score is now called an advanced stat, but some of this stuff is just tracking, which is all the box score is doing too. Like if someone tracks charges, it's not an advanced stat because the regular box score doesn't show it.

Regardless of what anyone thinks, your brain is not that good at tracking, you can argue all you want about how you're special, but you aren't. So yes, in that instance, a players time on ball being tracked will be more accurate than how I personally feel about his time on ball.

Tracking is not really something people should feel they need to argue about. You can argue about the interpretation of tracking, but arguing that the tracking is wrong and my brain tracking is correct is like arguing that how fast you felt a car was going is more accurate than what the radar shows, it doesn't even make sense to be debating that.

I referred to both stats and advanced stats in my posts. Like you mentioned, it's often used to differentiate from the boxscore as well. I also referenced disputes on method and metric.

I also said they often line up with the eye test.

Not sure why you're so riled up.

[TheGeneral99]

In terms of Giannis and Shai, it's close and both are MVP players.

Giannis obviously has positives over Shai with respect to defense, interior scoring and imposing his physical will on the game...but Shai's ability to score, his shooting efficiency, his complete offensive game, makes him a more deadly playoff closer, and he's still an elite defender.

[dhsilv2]

But what if the stats contradict my eyes? My eyes tell me Tatum loves dribbling the air out of the ball, but other Celtics fans are all like nuh uh [stat!!! @ryan] and idk what to believe anymore. Their formulas or my lyin' eyes!? Does Tatum walk up to the three point line and dance with the ball, like, a lot, or does it just feel like it?!

Not to be that guy. But we have literal stats showing how much time a player has the ball.

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/touches?Season=2024-25&TeamID=1610612738&dir=D&sort=TIME_OF_POSS

Yeah It's a lot of it on the Celtics board. They'll never fail to stat me.

Advanced stats is kinda like GPS—useful when you're not familiar. How often does an advanced statistic genuinely surprise you about a player? Either positively or negatively.

I think they typically align with the eye test. And oftentimes when they don't, there's probably a dispute to be had over methodology and metrics. But usually pretty close.

When they first came out, a lot. Now days, I've adjusted my eyes a lot more.

But yeah, it's hard to know how much impact some defenders are having. It's easy...and always was to notice really good on ball defenders. The off ball guys however, especially guards are really tough to judge. Similarly, it can be hard to figure out the middle of the pack scorers. Who's somewhat of an "empty" stats guy and who's actually showing some additional value. There's also times where you know someone's bad. But HOW bad?

[og15]

Yeah It's a lot of it on the Celtics board. They'll never fail to stat me.

Advanced stats is kinda like GPS—useful when you're not familiar. How often does an advanced statistic genuinely surprise you about a player? Either positively or negatively.

I think they typically align with the eye test. And oftentimes when they don't, there's probably a dispute to be had over methodology and metrics. But usually pretty close.

Time on ball is not an advanced stat. This is one thing that has been confused. Everything that isn't on the regular box score is now called an advanced stat, but some of this stuff is just tracking, which is all the box score is doing too. Like if someone tracks charges, it's not an advanced stat because the regular box score doesn't show it.

Regardless of what anyone thinks, your brain is not that good at tracking, you can argue all you want about how you're special, but you aren't. So yes, in that instance, a players time on ball being tracked will be more accurate than how I personally feel about his time on ball.

Tracking is not really something people should feel they need to argue about. You can argue about the interpretation of tracking, but arguing that the tracking is wrong and my brain tracking is correct is like arguing that how fast you felt a car was going is more accurate than what the radar shows, it doesn't even make sense to be debating that.

I referred to both stats and advanced stats in my posts. Like you mentioned, it's often used to differentiate from the boxscore as well. I also referenced disputes on method and metric.

I also said they often line up with the eye test.

Not sure why you're so riled up.

I'm not riled up at all, this is text, there's no tone, emotion, etc, so of course it can seem that way.

I'm simply reminding us all that advanced stats and tracking aren't truly the same thing. Advanced stats are more of the formula based stat which is trying to determine something, while tracking is just additional stats and information, but they get lumped into the same thing.

I thought your initial post was tongue in cheek, so I wasn't specifically talking about a personal you or your, but a general one.

[dhsilv2]

My TL;DR point is: do we need an in-depth analysis of advanced metrics

That's a great idea. Conduct an advanced metrics analysis of advanced metrics analysis. I won't be part of it. I'll be watching the actual game. But, yeah, great idea.

Seriously, you figure out what a player is capable of by watching them. There is no substitute. Particularly when it comes to: (1) what they contribute when they are NOT handling the ball and (2) defense. Take Draymond Green for example, his offensive statistics are those of a middling performer and his career defensive rating ranks him in a tie for #200 in NBA history. Statistics are useless in assessing what he brings to the game. The same case can be made over and over again with countless other players. Watch the games. Watch the individual players. Your love and appreciation for the game will go up a notch. I guarantee it.

I mean you might start with using a useful stat.

the 29 year XRAPM data for starters has Draymond as an all time great (perhaps overrating him?). It has his offense in the 94th percentile (mind you top 6% of over 2k players, so there are a lot of guys better than him) and he's in the 99th percentile defensively. And to be blunt, it doesn't add decimals but he's likely in the 99.99 percentile just from the eye test (on the stats).

So XRAPM was able to see that Dray's overall career is a very good offensive player but not a star. And an all time great defender.

[Doctor MJ]

I opened this thread in the context of the Shai vs Giannis topic.
Of course, data is useful and, when interpreted properly, offers knowledge.
Because there's more than meets the eye.

My TL;DR point is: do we need an in-depth analysis of advanced metrics in order to figure out Giannis is a level above Shai?

(...)

I'll stop there in part because I don't expect agreement on this.

Actually, I agree with basically all you said.
Safe for that I'm confident Giannis would be an assassin off-ball if some good playmaker threw lobs for him to dunk.
And you didn't address the obvious physical advantages that allow him to catch 3x the rebounds and (even if declining, I agree on this too) being a superior defender.
We can't (and shouldn't) expect that from Shai.

That said, do you agree with me on that, if we take turns picking 5 players to win today, our first picks would be Jokic and Giannis?

I'm glad we can agree on things.

Re: confident Giannis would be great off-ball if playmaker threw lobs. Meanwhile I'd say that it's not hard to find point guards who can play with a great roll man - it's what guards are trained to do from day one coming up - so the fact that the Bucks went in a different direction despite Giannis not showing any great passing talent tells you something about Giannis' struggles to give his team's offense what they'd typically expect from a big.

Re: 3x the rebounds. We should recognize that it's a big's job to get rebounds and that it's not that other players are trying to do the same thing and failing, nor that other players are twiddling their thumbs doing nothing while bigs go after rebounds.

Re: superior defender. He's got more talent to be sure, but that doesn't mean he's actually doing the thing all the time. Meanwhile Shai just played a critical role in an incredible defense.

Re: take turns, first picks Jokic & Giannis. I'm not sure who I'd pick to be honest, it would depend on the specifics of the question.

A key thing though: If I'm in a two-team league where we get to choose the very best players in the league, my general expectation is that our first picks would be guys who were candidates for being top 2 level offensive players in the league, and I don't think Giannis is that.

So me, choosing Giannis means choosing an unsophisticated offense that will be predictable and able to be successfully schemed against in a way you can't with top tier offensive stars. Hence, the hope would be that he would add so much to defense that it would be okay that I sacrificed team offense to make that work.

[ryan in Maine]

Time on ball is not an advanced stat. This is one thing that has been confused. Everything that isn't on the regular box score is now called an advanced stat, but some of this stuff is just tracking, which is all the box score is doing too. Like if someone tracks charges, it's not an advanced stat because the regular box score doesn't show it.

Regardless of what anyone thinks, your brain is not that good at tracking, you can argue all you want about how you're special, but you aren't. So yes, in that instance, a players time on ball being tracked will be more accurate than how I personally feel about his time on ball.

Tracking is not really something people should feel they need to argue about. You can argue about the interpretation of tracking, but arguing that the tracking is wrong and my brain tracking is correct is like arguing that how fast you felt a car was going is more accurate than what the radar shows, it doesn't even make sense to be debating that.

I referred to both stats and advanced stats in my posts. Like you mentioned, it's often used to differentiate from the boxscore as well. I also referenced disputes on method and metric.

I also said they often line up with the eye test.

Not sure why you're so riled up.

I'm not riled up at all, this is text, there's no tone, emotion, etc, so of course it can seem that way.

I'm simply reminding us all that advanced stats and tracking aren't truly the same thing. Advanced stats are more of the formula based stat which is trying to determine something, while tracking is just additional stats and information, but they get lumped into the same thing.

I thought your initial post was tongue in cheek, so I wasn't specifically talking about a personal you or your, but a general one.

I said riled up because you ignored the only question i asked in my post to rant about stats, which turns a lot of posters off from stats, and posting on the general board.

I'll pose the question to you directly — How often does an advanced statistic genuinely surprise you about a player? Either positively or negatively.

[MMyhre]

But there are things Giannis can do that Shai simply can’t.

And there are things Shai can do that Giannis can't. Plus this is a terrible way to judge impact anyway. To give an extreme example, there were a lot of things an average NBA guard can do that Shaq couldn't yet Shaq was obviously way more impactful.

You’re right because I expressed myself terribly.

Of course, Shai has handles, a mid-range jumper… things Giannis doesn’t have.
But if we agree that SGA isn’t a pure playmaker, at the end of the day Giannis has other ways to score, grabs three times as many rebounds, generates gravity that allows him to get more assists despite having worse teammates, and thanks to his length and athleticism he’s a rim protector who can also contest or disrupt 3s.

If you teleported the current Shai to the 2022 Bucks against the Celtics, without Middleton, do you think he’d take them to a Game 7 while averaging 34/15/7?
If he played on last year’s even weaker Bucks team, could he have avoided a sweep against Indiana (they lost 4-1) while averaging 33 points, 15.4 rebounds and 6.6 assists on 65.1% TS?
And closing the series with a 30/20/13?

Shai, simply by being under two meters tall and weighing less than 90 kg, will never be able to do that.
And that’s not a knock on the third or fourth best player in the league (fourth, IMHO).

Go watch OKC - Rockets, and look at how many open shots are generated from them blitzing or doubling Shai. He has tons of gravity, and Shai is a better playmaker than Giannis so he has more assists, not counting those open looks that are created from teams trying to stop Shai from even just having the ball.

As for Giannis length and athleticism, go watch his 19-20 defensive montage, and compare it to the one you see playing now. He is is at least a tier down as an athlete and a defender, less of a motor and is turning 31 now. No MVP and DPOY candidate wins 48 games in the eastern conference with a 2nd guy averaging 25 pts and 7 assists on 62 + ts %.

Giannis certainly has peaked higher, but Shai is just entering his probable peak years so there is not guarantee he will not peak higher, I think he will get even better.

[og15]

I referred to both stats and advanced stats in my posts. Like you mentioned, it's often used to differentiate from the boxscore as well. I also referenced disputes on method and metric.

I also said they often line up with the eye test.

Not sure why you're so riled up.

I'm not riled up at all, this is text, there's no tone, emotion, etc, so of course it can seem that way.

I'm simply reminding us all that advanced stats and tracking aren't truly the same thing. Advanced stats are more of the formula based stat which is trying to determine something, while tracking is just additional stats and information, but they get lumped into the same thing.

I thought your initial post was tongue in cheek, so I wasn't specifically talking about a personal you or your, but a general one.

I said riled up because you ignored the only question i asked in my post to rant about stats, which turns a lot of posters off from stats, and posting on the general board.

I'll pose the question to you directly — How often does an advanced statistic genuinely surprise you about a player? Either positively or negatively.

It happens, I'll give an example that comes to mind. Avery Bradley's defensive impact numbers didn't match what he looks like defensively on the court. Some players have talked about the difficulty in getting the ball past him when he's pressuring, and his defensive acumen, but IIRC, his defensive impact numbers did not reflect that.

Another one that gets a lot of people, and certainly surprised me initially was Jokic's advanced defensive stats. While he would not look good in some things like contesting shots, and one can see that he was liable to some things on defense, over time he adjusted and the numbers were saying that he was actually pretty solid overall on defense.

I would also say that many times, stats are better at helping people navigate, "how good", "how bad", not so much the polar sides of good or bad. Most people by just watching and some basic ability to analyze and some basic stats can figure out a guy is "bad" or a guy is "good", but it becomes harder to analyze how good or how bad, or how one guy compares to another who is in a somewhat similar range of player.

The outliers everyone can spot, sure, no one needs any advanced stats or any intense film watching to know Jokic is great or that Austin Rivers was a below average NBA player, but they might find it valuable to get a better gauge of the value of Fred Van Vleet vs Demond Bane (just a super random example).

I don't know how people "throw" advanced stats at others because I'm not triggered by someone citing advanced stats. I do know people go overboard with them, but no more than people who go overboard with their opinion and feels, but I would say people on average might claim more authority with citing stats (YMMV) than the feels crowd. I think different people might be more reactive to one or the other of those swings. I find that the balanced approach of not thinking one's eyes are infallible, but also not forgetting that stats require context and analysis tends to be the best way.

[iggymcfrack]

Sorry, even simpler: like we used to do as kids, two people (not named Nico Harrison) take turns picking a five-man team to play and win today.

I’m convinced that the first pick for each would be Jokic–Giannis, Giannis–Jokic.

Honestly I think my first 2 picks would be SGA and Wemby. Jokic is an amazing, incredible player, and with an entire offseason to build a complex offense around him and train teammates to look for his passes, I think he’s the most valuable player in the league, but just 5 guys on a playground rolling the ball out? That’s not where he shines. That’s why he never plays that great in the all-star game.

Meanwhile, Giannis is nowhere near SGA’s level as a playmaker to get you automatic good offense every time down, but he’s also doesn’t have the motor to shut down the other team defensively the way he used to. I’m really not that sold on his skillset in 2025.

[cupcakesnake]

Nah, advanced stats are consistently better predictors than just PRA. Obviously the eye test is king IF you know what you’re talking about and IF you watch enough games. The issue is that stupid and uniformed people each have their own eye tests too.

Basically this.
All our eye tests are different and they aren't all equal. On one end of the spectrum, there's someone who's worked as an NBA video coordinator, played high level ball, has spent hours and hours and hours watching games, pressing the rewind button, learning and studying the game. On the other end there's a highlight watching teenager. We can't just say "eye test" as if it's some objective thing. The more you know about the game, the more you know what to look for, so the more you see when you're watching.

[hauntedcomputer]

LOL "eye tests are the only objective truth"