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I was wondering what everyone thought the best statistic for a player to have is. My vote goes to the blocked shot. The obvious answer (of points) is derailed with the intimidation and presence of the blocked shot. Others' thoughts?

coolcono wrote:I was wondering what everyone thought the best statistic for a player to have is. My vote goes to the blocked shot. The obvious answer (of points) is derailed with the intimidation and presence of the blocked shot. Others' thoughts?

The one I look at the most is TSP (true shooting percentage). That shows scoring efficiency and isn't on the radar of the casual fan as much. Blocked shots are terrific but only are important really for post defenders and sometimes don't correlate with good defense (Manute Bol for example was a terrible defender and probably the best shot blocker ever).

PER is still the most attacked stat and if you only look at one, the best to look at, but it's sort of a composite and doesn't tell you that much . . . no one stat tells you much in isolation nor do any of the defensive stats that we keep really do good defenders justice.

Assists per game
Blocked Shots per game

Points per game

Rebounds per game
Steals per game

Pace
Offensive and Defensive Efficiency
TS%

The Roland Rating is a good one for me...

For the sake of making it look easier, have

x1 = Team +/- when player is on the court
x2 = Team +/- when player is off the court

(PER - oPER) + (x1 - x2) / 2 = Roland Rating

I think as an individual statistic and barometer, the Roland Rating is the most telling.

I agree with TS%. It is definitely one of the best statistics.

in the end it always it about points, coz the team with more of them wins!

for me (as a pointguard), I'm looking especially at 3 stats:
assists (getting my teammates involved)
turnovers (and therefore ass/to-rating)
and shooting-percentage (good shotselection)

For me its tied with points and assists. Because as mudyes said above me whoever scores more wins.

For me, assists per game are easily the least valuable.

PER is basically the stat most closely correlated to winning, so I'll go with that one.

Any stat (point guard) that Jose Calderon is in the top 5 (all of them) is a amazing stat.

Not PER.

PER is better than any one stat, but PER is really a combination of all stats so it really shouldn't count in this conversation.

I like to look at TS% in conjunction with points per minute. If a guy can score frequently with efficiency, it's a pretty sure bet he's a very good player.

TS% is good...but it's measuring half of the total game, and there are many, many players who sacrifice other elements of successful team play in order to get a high TS%...Adrian Dantley, Kiki Vandweghe, and Peja come to mind. It's okay, but it can fooled be pretty easily.

PER...meh. Saying it's the most effective overall statistic is saying very, very little. It's wrong so often. Saying that it "most correlates to winning" is ridiculous...it's a meaningless sound bite of a sales pitch. Lots of statistics correlate to winning. (I'm pretty sure that every team that has been in the finals in the past decade has been in the top ten in rebound differential, for instance.) PER can tell you that a great player is, in fact a great player. That, to me, is worthless. It's not pulling a rabbit out of a hat...it's pulling a rabbit out of a box of rabbits. I don't need an analytic tool to tell me that. PER gets markedly less effective at determining the value of non-elite players...and that's really what you want a stat like that to tell you. How nice to know that Jameer Nelson, Lamar Odom, Antonio McDyess and Al Horford are lousy (all under the league average of 15) this year!

IMO, the best statistic by far is rebound rate. It's the percentage of rebounds you get when you're on the court. It adjusts for time period. It adjusts for pace. You cvan compare it between players in different eras. It only compares one thing, but it does it better than any other statistic.

it's difficult to judge IMO..every stat has a flaw, so it's probably just better to combine stats to make an analysis..

TS% has flaws, like TrueLA said..shooting %'s in general are overrated IMO..Gilbert Arenas for example(because I looked it up before) had a high TS% last year, PARTLY due to his efficiency when he has a hot hand..there is no denying that GA is one of the best when he's making his shots..but out of all the star scorers in the NBA, he had the most off-shooting nights..for example, 1-10% from the field: once, 11-20%: five times, 21-30%: 10 times, 31-40%: 14 times..of course that doesn't count 3's, but when you include them..0%: 6 times(0-7)(0-8)(0-8)(0-5)(0-3)(0-7)..1-10%:1(11 attempts), 11-20%: 12(including a 15 attempt game, and a 10 attempt game)..

next to him were McGrady and Carter, which we can agree also have bad shot selection at times..

so while I'm not doubting any of their abilities to score(3 of the best), their %'s might look higher due to the games where they are hot, as opposed to the MANY games they hurt their teams with bad shots..

Team stats

1.)Team FG% differential
2.)Rebound differential
3.)TO differential

Player stat
1.)eFG (example:shaq,jordan)
3.)opponent FG%

TrueLAfan wrote:
PER...meh. Saying it's the most effective overall statistic is saying very, very little. It's wrong so often. Saying that it "most correlates to winning" is ridiculous...it's a meaningless sound bite of a sales pitch. Lots of statistics correlate to winning. (I'm pretty sure that every team that has been in the finals in the past decade has been in the top ten in rebound differential, for instance.) PER can tell you that a great player is, in fact a great player. That, to me, is worthless. It's not pulling a rabbit out of a hat...it's pulling a rabbit out of a box of rabbits. I don't need an analytic tool to tell me that. PER gets markedly less effective at determining the value of non-elite players...and that's really what you want a stat like that to tell you. How nice to know that Jameer Nelson, Lamar Odom, Antonio McDyess and Al Horford are lousy (all under the league average of 15) this year!

Nice post on PER. I pretty much agree.

To me no stat or number can tell you how good a player is. Thats pretty much impossible. Can it give you an idea of their production in certain aspects of the game? Yes, stats do that very well.

Games played is the most important number
I like TS%, eFG%, rebound rate, and for normal statistics, I actually like points per game. I know I know, these days thats like worshiping the devil, the more points a player scores, the worse he is. I just never understood why ppg gets so much flack/under-rating recently.

Tesla wrote:-= original quote snipped =-
Games played is the most important number
I like TS%, eFG%, rebound rate, and for normal statistics, I actually like points per game. I know I know, these days thats like worshiping the devil, the more points a player scores, the worse he is. I just never understood why ppg gets so much flack/under-rating recently.

Because so many people, (less here than in a typical bar argument,) assume that that is all you need to know. Allen Iverson is the best player of the last 10 years and a sure HOF player. Why? PPG . . . despite the fact that, until the last rule change, he was an inconsistent, inefficient, no defense, poor practice player who probably hurt his team in as many years as he helped them. Despite the stat geeks here, with the exception of reb/game for some big men and ast/game for some PGs, that is still the measure for most players and casual fans . . . and like Batting Average in baseball, it isn't well correlated to winning basketball.

penbeast0 wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



Because so many people, (less here than in a typical bar argument,) assume that that is all you need to know. Allen Iverson is the best player of the last 10 years and a sure HOF player. Why? PPG . . . despite the fact that, until the last rule change, he was an inconsistent, inefficient, no defense, poor practice player who probably hurt his team in as many years as he helped them. Despite the stat geeks here, with the exception of reb/game for some big men and ast/game for some PGs, that is still the measure for most players and casual fans . . . and like Batting Average in baseball, it isn't well correlated to winning basketball.

And thats what I'm talking about....
Well really casual fans may overrate ppg, but the more fanatics (people on message boards talking about basketball) to me underrate it. I think volume scoring gets mostly underrated. People assume that if a player scores 18points on 50% shooting, then he can score 30points on more shots.... its just not true most of the time.

btw, I think in Iverson has been a bit unfairly critized here. I don't like Iverson the player all that much, and there are plenty of weaknesses in his game, but he still is no instant negative as a lot of stat crushers would like to tell you. Iverson is also in my mind a sure HOF.

For a wholistic look at a player: Roland Rating
An individual stat for a player: Depends on the position, my favorite is assists
Best team stat: Point differential