2013 RAPM/IPV/etc.

[NO-KG-AI]

It's starting to look like every statistic or measure in the history of mankind was made with the single intent of overrating Kevin Garnett's impact. A few guys on this board aren't going to be thrilled about this

[Dr Pepper]

Matt Bonner being a +/- king also helps him rank no.17 overall in these numbers, right under Kevin Durant! Spurstalk is not going to like that lol, last thing they want to hear is play Bonner over Splitter although I suppose Bonner's floor spacing is underrated

Bogut's defensive rating isn't bad either

[mysticbb]

I'm not an advanced stats savant, so pardon this question: but what exactly is the point of prior-informed? If you're talking about 2013 by itself, what does one gain from taking into account previous years? It becomes a multi-year study then (which I've seen of course), so why not call it that.

No, a prior does not make it a multi-year study. A prior is used to give the algorithm a distribution of the values in order to make the result more stable. In that way outliers in a smaller sample are easier "eliminated" and you basically needs just a 25% of a season in order to get a comparable error (even though the results are biased and a standard error makes not much sense for ridge regression) as OLS on a big multi-year sample. Obviously, in order to get good enough results for every player, the player also needs to play that amount of games. For Nowitzki for example there are a lot of missed games until ASB, which means his prior value isn't much effected. That should look different now, even though he improved his playing level significantly in recent games.

Anyway, RAPM is not meant to be a "best player list", it is meant to give you a predictive tool based on the result of different game snippets; using those values gives you a better estimation of future game results. Obviously, it doesn't take production, efficiency and fit into account. Things, which would need to be addressed differently in order to really get a "best player list". So, everyone who wants to critize the values should keep that in mind, because I already saw some posts which made it rather obvious that the people really don't understand the method and how to interpret the values.

[Dr Pepper]

It's starting to look like every statistic or measure in the history of mankind was made with the single intent of overrating Kevin Garnett's impact. A few guys on this board aren't going to be thrilled about this

It also seems like most stats makes Kobe's overall impact seem very, very overrated compared to his peers like KG, even though Kobe can stuff the statsheet and play heavy minutes still

[Dr Pepper]

Obviously, it doesn't take production, efficiency and fit into account. Things, which would need to be addressed differently in order to really get a "best player list".

Has such a "best player list" been attempted using RAPM values in addition to what you listed?

EDIT: If you're willing to answer a layman's question: What can we take away from Kobe's ranking, if anything? 0.8 overall, 3.2 offensively, -2.4 defensively, ranking no. 119

[mysticbb]

Matt Bonner being a +/- king also helps him rank no.17 overall in these numbers, right under Kevin Durant! 8-) Spurstalk is not going to like that lol, last thing they want to hear is play Bonner over Splitter although I suppose Bonner's floor spacing is underrated

Keep in mind that Bonner only works with certain lineups, and the really important thing: It works with Splitter and Bonner on the court. Overall, it just shows that Popovich knows what he is doing, and at that better than a typical fan. But well, that shouldn't be a surprise.

[Dr Pepper]

Matt Bonner being a +/- king also helps him rank no.17 overall in these numbers, right under Kevin Durant! Spurstalk is not going to like that lol, last thing they want to hear is play Bonner over Splitter although I suppose Bonner's floor spacing is underrated

Keep in mind that Bonner only works with certain lineups, and the really important thing: It works with Splitter and Bonner on the court. Overall, it just shows that Popovich knows what he is doing, and at that better than a typical fan. But well, that shouldn't be a surprise.

Bonner in the past also lit up the +/- numbers with Duncan. Good point about Pop/Spurs maximizing what they have. Unfortunately Bonner's 3 point shooting falls by the wayside in the playoffs and his defense seems to only get exploited more too Bonner's floor spacing definitely opens up the floor though

[mysticbb]

Has such a "best player list" been attempted using RAPM values in addition to what you listed?

Well, I did. And I could use those values to do that again for the current season. So, I'm in contact with v-zero in order to get the matchupfile for my own RAPM, because I failed so far to get that clean matchupfile via parsing from pbp and boxscores. Given the amount of work needed to get such a clean matchupfile, he is reluctant to give it away (and I understand his reasoning completely).

EDIT: If you're willing to answer a layman's question: What can we take away from Kobe's ranking, if anything? 0.8 overall, 3.2 offensively, -2.4 defensively, ranking no. 119

Well, that Bryant is improving the Lakers by 3.2 points per 100 possession over an average player offensively, and is making them worse by 2.4 defensively. Not a really surprising result, Bryant is still a really, really good offensive player, he can score and create for others, but his team defense is pretty bad and he is hurting the Lakers on that end, even though his 1on1 defense against ball handlers is actually quite good (even more than that).
But we really need to take into account, how much production (and how efficiently) Bryant can give us as well. And that is still at ca. +5 level per 100 possessions (according to my SPM version, also above average). Put that together and we get roughly a +3 player (I would need to calculate the proper coefficients for the blending), which would put him between #15 and #20 in a typical year.

[Dr Pepper]

Thanks for the quality feedback, good luck on getting that matchup file, it'd be interesting to check out your ranking system. Kobe being ranked in the top 20 definitely seems more accurate in terms of overall rankings too.

[Doormatt]

well yeah and i think if kobe's team defense wasnt so god awful for like 80%-90% of the season he would be much higher.

[An Unbiased Fan]

At some point people will realize that RAPM is simply not a useful metric.

[Doormatt]

why?

[Dipper 13]

The figures on J.E.'s site for the 90s are a completely different stat, they're essentially built of a simulation of PbP from the 90s based on the box-score. I wouldn't really take ANYTHING from those numbers, and there's no basis to compare them to these.

If this was around in the mid-90s one player who would surely rank very high is Horace Grant.



Chicago Tribune - May 13, 1995

"Horace is the best defensive player I've ever been around," said Magic assistant and former Mavericks coach Richie Adubato. "He comes every night mentally ready to play, knock people down, make big plays; and it's started to rub off on our players."

"He's the anchor of the back of the defense," said Adubato. "He recognizes things he shouldn't recognize. When the pick-and-roll guy on the other side gets beat, he sees that and comes up right away. I don't know who taught him how to play. But he's one of the most fundamentally sound players I've ever seen."

[Doctor MJ]

My mistake. I didn't initially recall your "spinning his wheels" remark. I guess that is in reference to the defensive end, and I assume you were referring to his 1962-63 season.


viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1207876&start=150#p33353208

Cool. Quoting the directly relevant part of my old post then:

3. However, at the same time the really alarming thing about Wilt's career is that the evidence is indicating that there was a lot of time when he was REALLY spinning his wheels, which is not something I think is happening to guys like Howard or Hibbert. I don't think it's crazy to say that in Wilt's lower moments he was having less impact than Hibbert, as long as it's clear that Hibbert's peak is not in Wilt's league.

Let me also add that the tendency of players today to do less "spinning of wheels" is absolutely meant to be a statement of how they get used, not that they are by any means inherently superior at preventing wheel slippage.

At the same time, I'm not going to pretend that I don't see issues with Wilt's mental habits. I do...but I'm not going to say I'd draft Hibbert over Wilt or anything like that.

To elaborate more on where I see Wilt doing his "spinning", it's on both sides of the ball really. Wilt would do things that on a first order statistical pass looked right, but would be problematic when you looked at the nuance. I think the most glaring example of this as it relates to why you can't really judge Wilt's impact by his stats is '64-65. Those defending Wilt saying he was hurt that year are dead right...but the fact that he could basically lose all his impact and barely see an impact in his stats meant that his impact had everything to do with HOW he got his stats, and that was something that changed a good deal with context.

[colts18]

explain 1963 for me in regards to Wilt. That year he had the best PER in history yet his team went 31-49. How is that possible?

[Doctor MJ]

It's starting to look like every statistic or measure in the history of mankind was made with the single intent of overrating Kevin Garnett's impact. A few guys on this board aren't going to be thrilled about this

lolz. Facts have indeed turned out to have pro-Kid bias.

[Doctor MJ]

It's starting to look like every statistic or measure in the history of mankind was made with the single intent of overrating Kevin Garnett's impact. A few guys on this board aren't going to be thrilled about this

It also seems like most stats makes Kobe's overall impact seem very, very overrated compared to his peers like KG, even though Kobe can stuff the statsheet and play heavy minutes still

I understand that takeaway. Given that many people championed Kobe as the Player of the Decade over Duncan and Garnett, the fact that they both typically kicked his butt by these metrics makes him overrated in that sense...but it's a pretty forgivable error:

Everyone can still agree Kobe was better on offense and worse on defense than the other two. What these stats say is that the edge on defense is bigger than people realized.

Meanwhile if you're looking at all around offense-first superstars, Kobe basically as good as they come in the era between Shaq & LeBron. That might be damning with feint praise to some, but it's a pretty big accomplishment.

[Doctor MJ]

At some point people will realize that RAPM is simply not a useful metric.

What do you think about the fact that guys keep getting hired to do this analysis for NBA teams? As in, we literally are lacking good data for '12-13 because several iterations of these guys have been hired into silence.

What is it that you're realizing that NBA teams still fail to realize more than a decade into them using this data?

[Doctor MJ]

Though I still don't get how the estimates show the '67 team as that much worse defensively than '66 or '68, when every source (video and written) indicates otherwise. I guess there is indeed a margin for error in those figures.

There is definitely a margin for error. I tend not to take those numbers as a serious indictment on the '67 defense. What this clearly was was a team dominating like no one had seen before AND there most salient feature was an offense really well above anything that had been seen before. When you can dominate because you literally seem unstoppable on offense, your defense is not really being tested on a nightly basis.

[NO-KG-AI]

At some point people will realize that RAPM is simply not a useful metric.

What do you think about the fact that guys keep getting hired to do this analysis for NBA teams? As in, we literally are lacking good data for '12-13 because several iterations of these guys have been hired into silence.

What is it that you're realizing that NBA teams still fail to realize more than a decade into them using this data?

It's because he's looking at stats all wrong. If his guy isn't looked at favorably... you throw it out. I love seeing the differences in the top 100 over the years with more data and analysis becoming available. Proves that for the most part, we've been able to admit when we were wrong and correct ourselves.

Still have the same people that come in and dismiss stats that don't work for their guy, etc, but we're making progress.

What's really odd is that I feel like I've watched as much Garnett footage as anyone over the years, and I still underrated his defensive impact (though I did think he was the best defender of the 2000's, even before he got to Boston).