Djoker wrote:You'd probably have to track plays in Excel and watch hundreds of games which is just too much time...
I literally do that, although not with hundreds of games because I am focusing on peaks.
And then there could be sampling bias
My minimum for one player is 30 games and although such sample could be unrepresentative, I think in most cases it works reasonably well for 1-2 seasons. With this many games, I think you can get a decent idea of player's tendencies and limitations.
but even with a perfectly representative samples it's one man's opinion. Someone else might watch it and form a different conclusion. Heck I've seen two analyst see the same play very differently.
Sure thing, that's why analyzing basketball is very hard. I don't think it's any different than offense in this case though - just because we have boxscore stats doesn't mean we can capture offensive impact very well.
I'm happy saying all four of these guys are top tier defensive bigs and leave it at that. They obviously have different strengths and weaknesses that can be discussed but to definitively assess their defense is an impossible task IMO.
I think we need to do that. Otherwise, people stop caring about defense at all, which is literally half of the game.
