League's most underutilized/overutilized '08 + oher lists

[threrf23]

I went ahead and put together player composite scores for everyone in the league using my own formula. I did this last year using a substantially similar formula. For credibility, these were last year's lists:

Underutilized (top 20, in order):

millsap,paul
thomas,tyrus
barry,brent
calderon,jose
boone,josh
balkman,renaldo
armstrong,darrel
ginobili,manu
williams,louis
brewer,ronnie
bonner,matt
mcdyess,antonio
johnson,linton
daniels,antonio
maxiell,jason
powe,leon
marshall,donyell
varejao,anderson
harris,devin
wilks,mike

Overutilized:

mason,desmond
morrison,adam
williams,marvin
blount,mark
curry,eddy
parker,smush
frye,channing
bell,charlie
gomes,ryan
green,willie
claxton,speedy
harrington,al
butler,rasual
korver,kyle
hassell,trenton
jeffries,jared
haslem,udonis
crawford,jamal
warrick,hakim
felton,raymond

(many of the above were moved last offseason)

I am inclined to put faith in this year's lists - I promise I made no conscious effort to see Amir Johnson and JR Smith at the top of the underutilized list. Interestingly enough, Eddie House came in at #7 (though Rondo was still the better player).

Underutilized '08:

Johnson, Amir
Smith, J.R.
Graham, Stephen
Wright, Julian
Nesterovic, Rasho
Noah, Joakim
House, Eddie
Head, Luther
Vujacic, Sasha
Fazekas, Nick
Landry, Carl
Thomas, Tyrus
Young, Thaddeus
Miles, C.J.
Dooling, Keyon
Williams, Louis
Frye, Channing
Szczerbiak, Wally
Diop, DeSagana
Farmar, Jordan

Overutilized '08:

Telfair, Sebastian
Powell, Kasib
Richardson, Quentin
Brand, Elton
Green, Jeff
Davis, Ricky
Haslem, Udonis
Marbury, Stephon
Cook, Daequan
Tinsley, Jamaal
Bowen, Bruce
Pavlovic, Sasha
Foye, Randy
Curry, Eddy
Gooden, Drew
Francis, Steve
Anthony, Joel
McInnis, Jeff
Brewer, Corey
Mobley, Cuttino

Top 25 overall:

James, LeBron 100.0000067
Garnett, Kevin 99.08494731
Paul, Chris 98.97093534
Billups, Chauncey98.59809511
Iverson, Allen 97.66616558
Bryant, Kobe 95.47634639
Bosh, Chris 95.25504141
Ginobili, Manu 95.24994743
Pierce, Paul 94.30637762
Nowitzki, Dirk 94.10776352
Marion, Shawn 92.64258778
Duncan, Tim 91.88526651
Butler, Caron 90.6514781
Iguodala, Andre 90.57333426
Carter, Vince 90.34250468
Lewis, Rashard 90.1679753
Ming, Yao 89.81660734
Roy, Brandon 89.78349166
Davis, Baron 89.11117901
Howard, Dwight 88.98165425
Nash, Steve 88.48149303
Jamison, Antawn 88.02049882
Williams, Deron 87.8608536
Johnson, Joe 87.40627821
Howard, Josh 86.51390213

Bottom 25 overall:

Morris, Randolph 5.515034252
Madsen, Mark 9.299196609
Ager, Maurice 10.32120252
Thomas, Kenny 10.76994624
Hudson, Troy 11.15481648
Brezec, Primoz 11.93679753
Jones, Solomon 12.34853118
Howard, Juwan 12.75381062
Wafer, Von 13.08437864
Brown, Shannon 13.45830303
Davis, Paul 15.79559728
Pecherov, Oleksiy15.94844868
Snow, Eric 16.03837271
Harrington, Othella16.52837178
Mihm, Chris 17.79203986
Pruitt, Gabe 18.15857097
Strawberry, D. J.18.58134279
Piatkowski, Eric 18.76103798
Rose, Malik 18.80809598
Frahm, Richie 18.99307052
Davidson, Jermareo19.05092767
Storey, Awvee 19.59840992
Collins, Mardy 19.88265781
Garrity, Pat 20.19072488
Jacobsen, Casey 20.26738448

Top 20 defense:

Garnett, Kevin 100
Marion, Shawn 94.98295393
Bosh, Chris 92.84657712
Iguodala, Andre 90.37140068
Smith, Josh 89.55629873
Moon, Jamario 89.55315718
Ming, Yao 88.69961627
Duncan, Tim 88.59576311
Odom, Lamar 86.50237606
Pierce, Paul 86.41626771
Ilgauskas, Zydrunas86.09795548
Lewis, Rashard 85.13843084
Kaman, Chris 83.97689981
Artest, Ron 83.64280665
Hill, Grant 83.40735073
Howard, Josh 82.70243289
Howard, Dwight 82.48388209
Nowitzki, Dirk 82.14309591
Miller, Brad 81.75389845
Allen, Tony 81.34616132

Top 20 Offensive:

Billups, Chauncey 100
Paul, Chris 99.62608183
Ginobili, Manu 96.22086151
James, LeBron 96.02369923
Nowitzki, Dirk 95.40247189
Allen, Ray 93.47818962
Pierce, Paul 93.29926699
Roy, Brandon 91.02368713
Nash, Steve 90.90798338
Carter, Vince 89.86876302
Dunleavy, Mike 89.71528954
Bryant, Kobe 89.50335323
Terry, Jason 88.58844665
Calderon, Jose 88.41025188
Iverson, Allen 88.29652504
Harris, Devin 87.58894776
Williams, Deron 87.02437888
Garnett, Kevin 86.7077008
Lewis, Rashard 86.22885187
Butler, Caron 86.20265515

C's (overall scores):

Garnett, Kevin 99.08494731
Pierce, Paul 94.30637762
Allen, Ray 85.32618203
Rondo, Rajon 71.30389077
Perkins, Kendrick 70.35216275
House, Eddie 67.53693406
Posey, James 60.7707669
Powe, Leon 54.24942806
Allen, Tony 53.6236922
Davis, Glen 48.07521824
Brown, PJ 28.66317509
Scalabrine, Brian 28.47939508
Pollard, Scot 22.57786998
Pruitt, Gabe 18.15857097

Quick note: Big Baby moves up to 52.15 if he is listed as a C rather than a PF. Powe moves down slightly if considered a C (Powe scored poorly defensively, defense is weighted more heavily for centers). PJ Brown doesn't really matter due to the sample size

[Rocky5000]

interesting stuff. Do you have a blog where you post this? Where did you get your data?

[threrf23]

interesting stuff. Do you have a blog where you post this? Where did you get your data?

I took data from basketball-reference.com (main player/team data), basketballvalue.com (+ / - data), 82games.com (only PER and counterpart PER), a file posted to the apbrmetrics board (advanced data, derived from data from dougstats.com), and I think that covers all sources. Last year I was influenced by what Jon Nichols' posted to 82games.com and used some of the same data he used.

I have no blog but could upload the Excel workbook I used if people were interested. Also, Cassell scored just under 66, listed as a Clipper. So he would rank favorably as well among bench players

[GWVan]

Only one player in the top 10 for both offense and defense, the soon to be finals MVP, Paul Pierce

[Rocky5000]

So does your statistic show Tony Allen as being a horrible offensive player? It's surprising that he scored in the top 20 on defense with an 80+ but then he total score was in the 50s. Ray on the other hand had a 93 on offense, and dropped to 85 for his total score. You must not rate defense anywhere near as heavily as offense for shooting guards. Could you break down the scores for the Celtics into offensive and defensive? It seems that for certain players, like Perkins and Tony we don't really care all that much about his offensive production.

[lojowo]

Good Stuff.

Got anyone that was underutilized that Boston can pick up on the cheap in free agency?

[threrf23]

So does your statistic show Tony Allen as being a horrible offensive player? It's surprising that he scored in the top 20 on defense with an 80+ but then he total score was in the 50s. Ray on the other hand had a 93 on offense, and dropped to 85 for his total score. You must not rate defense anywhere near as heavily as offense for shooting guards. Could you break down the scores for the Celtics into offensive and defensive? It seems that for certain players, like Perkins and Tony we don't really care all that much about his offensive production.

His offensive score was 39 and change, ranking him 247th among 412 players in the spreadsheet (including low minute players many others would have left out, I just left them in and punished them for their low minute totals).

Parts of the reason for his relatively low overall score: PER (league rank) accounts for 20% of every player's overall score, and he scored poorly there. Does it make sense to count PER for 20% of each player's score? I don't know, but it tends to make the results look more accurate without overrating guys like Zach Randolph and Amare Stoudemire.

Also, for the SG position, I have offensive scores weighted 48% versus only 32% for defensive scores. It is considered that defense is most important from the C position, offense most important from the PG position. In between scores are on a scale although its considered that offense means slightly mire than defense because its easier to teach defense than offense, or something to that extent. Overall scores were also slightly subjected to a new minute adjustment meant to reward players averaging more than 36 mpg, this is what allowed Lebron to overtake KG, but it wouldn't have had a big effect on Tony Allen.

Now, if Tony is listed as an SF instead, he scores a little higher. Really, his scores this season look similar to what Bruce Bowen's scores were last season. If you were to devise a plan to take defensive scores as a percentage of overall scores or something, Tony would be high on the list as a defensive role player. This season, Bowen didn't score extremely high on the defensive end, above average but not really good. This would either indicate my formula is imperfect, I made a mistake, or Bruce Bowen is simply getting older and is starting to fall off a little. That would help explain why the Lakers were able to beat the Spurs.

[threrf23]

Good Stuff.

Got anyone that was underutilized that Boston can pick up on the cheap in free agency?

I don't know. Just looking over the underutilized list briefly, Stephen Graham and Nick Fazekas make the list but played so few minutes I don't know if they are worth looking at. CJ Miles is interesting. Somebody here started a thread on his subject maybe a month or two ago. I initially dismissed that as not enough of a bargain for us. But not only is he on the list, I now realize that people lose sight of the fact that he's only 21 years old to start next season. For someone who was supposed to be almost like a young Ray Allen, he has arguably been very unimpressive from long range early in his career. Yet, looking over data, many NBA players tend to have trouble shooting well from long range before they hit the age of 21, particularly if their physique is not NBA ready. CJ Miles did improve his FT% big time this season relative to the season before, and his 3 pt % increased to 39% even if in low quantity or in an unimpressive role. He can definitely IMO be expected to break out in some capacity from long range next season (last month I spent time putting together a submission for the Houston Rockets, who were holding an internship contest looking for people to put together a model to presict players' three point shooting percentage on a year by year basis, this forced me to take an in depth look at three point shooting across the league).

And, as much as I would have assumed the Jazz won't let him walk away for all that cheap, they do have both Ronnie Brewer and Kyle Korver - a quality player and a sharpshooter - at SG next season and its unclear whether they'd be willing to give CJ a chance at back-up PG. So his price might be reasonable.

[threrf23]

I'll add for reference, Posey scored very slightly better offensively than defensively, and that old friend Ryan Gomes scored pretty well this season. Gomes scored particularly well on the offensive end, and his defensive score wasn't good persay but didn't make him out to be a liability.

[Pogue Mahone]

I was hoping you were going to do these again this year, thref. Thanks.

I will copy and paste the lists into a .txt file and review it. The new layout to the site is a friggin eye-sore of ginormous proportions.

Here is how my system rated the Celtics for the season:

Code: Select all


Player         TEN+   Fair$      

Superstar Level         
Kevin Garnett      180   $22.091M   
Paul Pierce      157    17.506      

All-Star Level         
Rajon Rondo      148   $13.024M   

Starter Level         
Ray Allen      111   $ 7.238M   
Leon Powe      110     5.861      
Kendrick Perkins   107     5.222      

Rotation Level         
James Posey       99   $ 4.243M   
Eddie House       98     4.837      

Deep Bench Level            
Sam Cassell       74   $ 2.875M   
Tony Allen       72   $ 2.639      
Glen Davis       66     1.707      
Brian Scalabrine    65     1.684      
Gabe Pruitt       64     1.672      

Spot Minutes            
Scot Pollard       55   $  .945M   
PJ Brown       53   $  .783      



In my system, offense accounts for about 2/3 of a player's overall value. The other 1/3 is defense and intangibles. It an not an exact .667/.333 split (over the last three years it has averaged out to be approximately .685/.315) but it generally holds true. The reason for this is that the 'X' factor (defense, intangibles, etc) is arrived at via regression.

That is why a player like Eddie House, for instance, has a higher fair salary despite having a lower TEN+ rating than James Posey.

An easy way to think of it is that TEN+ is an approximation of overall impact. Fair Salary is just what it says. So, in the case of House, his contributions are worth X amount but the majority of his impact is via offensive touches. To be honest, he does impact the game via defense a lot more than he is given credit for doing but, as compared to Posey, House's defensive impact is much less. Posey's offensive contributions are behind those of House, though not by terribly much. It is the defense and intangibles which allows Posey to leapfrog ahead of House in overall impact (as measured by TEN+.)

Adding up the Fair Salary gives a total that far exceeds the actual payroll. Contending teams are able to maintain payroll and roster flexibility by having rookie contracts, veteran minimums and just undervalued player's in general. Teams that try to keep everybody, even the better contributors, end up like the Mavericks of a few years ago.

Detroit was able lock up it's best players at below market levels for a good bit of time. Recognizing that, it is not very surprising with the run they had. Especially so because they haven't been bitten by the injury bug.

Right now, Perkins, Scalabrine (when he was playing), Garnett and Pierce are fair market, so to speak. Rajon, Baby, Powe, House and Posey are below market deals. At least during the regular season, Ray was our only player, by my system, who's under-performance was significant (in relation to his actuall salary.)

I will take a look at your lists now. BTW, off the top of my head, Amir Johnson and CJ Miles are two very underutilized players. It doesn't surprise me to see them on your list. In fact, it would have surprised me if they WERE NOT on your list.