What are ways you evaluate players that don't rely on analytics?

[penbeast0]

Stuff like how much a player 'inspired' ppl or grew the game etc is irrelevant to their ability to impact winning on the court.

Other factors of relevance beyond an eye test can include award voting. It doesn't tell you how good each guy was, but it does tell you roughly how each guy was perceived at the time. The conceptual model for a guy to succeed is important too. You look at guys like Dr J and you can see how he'd succeed today, then you look at what made Mikan or Moses successful and you get the opposite feeling. If a player doesn't have an archetype to succeed, or if that archetype is an extreme outlier like Charles Barkley, then the chances are high the player won't translate.

Moses and Barkley, sure. But Mikan was a strong defensive anchor and post scorer with good passing skills with above average range for a center of his era. That seems like it would translate. The real problem is the competition for him, not really the skill set.

[Harry Palmer]

How other teams account for them at either end.

[One_and_Done]

Stuff like how much a player 'inspired' ppl or grew the game etc is irrelevant to their ability to impact winning on the court.

Other factors of relevance beyond an eye test can include award voting. It doesn't tell you how good each guy was, but it does tell you roughly how each guy was perceived at the time. The conceptual model for a guy to succeed is important too. You look at guys like Dr J and you can see how he'd succeed today, then you look at what made Mikan or Moses successful and you get the opposite feeling. If a player doesn't have an archetype to succeed, or if that archetype is an extreme outlier like Charles Barkley, then the chances are high the player won't translate.

Moses and Barkley, sure. But Mikan was a strong defensive anchor and post scorer with good passing skills with above average range for a center of his era. That seems like it would translate. The real problem is the competition for him, not really the skill set.

Mikan's skillset waa the rules at the time letting him dominate. That's the conceptual problem, before we get to his sucky league.

[oaktownwarriors87]

Winning

[70sFan]

There is nothing in the 1950s NBA rules that made Mikan a good passer, ball-handler or FT shooter.

[parsnips33]

Who do I have fun watching?

[MyUniBroDavis]

I swear y’all better not branch out to a conversation about George mikan lol

[LA Bird]

Technically, almost everything is analytics in some form or another. Number of rings, All Star selections, hustle, shot selection, the scoreboard and shot clock itself are all quantifiable stats. Even intangibles like whether a player is a good or bad teammate is reflected in team performance which can be measured. Many who think they are superior to the spreadsheet nerds still use numbers, just without realizing it themselves.

When people talk about using the eye test, they are misunderstanding what it means IMO. A 'test' suggests a certain level of scientific rigor. If you watch a game of basketball for entertainment, that's not an eye test. It's like saying every random guy going to watch a movie for fun is performing an eye test on shot composition and cinematography techniques. Unless:
a) You watch multiple games every night, have photographic memory, a perfect understanding of the game, and multiple sets of eyeballs to track all ten players moving on the court at once OR
b) You are sitting down with a notebook, pausing and rewinding every game multiple times, and meticulously recording every little detail you see
There is really no such thing as an eye test. I would argue that most complaints about the shortcoming of statistics is because fans prioritize other things that are irrelevant to player evaluation (flashy skills and entertainment factor), rather than that the numbers by large fail to capture what they intend to.

[penbeast0]

When I say eye test, I am talking usually about watching man defense, switching, and effort out there. Offense can be measured to some degree by easily available box score statistics, defensive box score statistics so not do a good job measuring defensive impact. Now, true impact stats and tracking data may be a lot better than my casual watching of 50 games a year, but I don't have access to them so I use the best data that I have which includes looking at effort and demeanor on the court, ie. eye test.

[parsnips33]

How other teams account for them at either end.

This one's underrated.

Just as an example, you're missing something if this isn't part of your analysis of Klay last season

[Warspite]

What are some ways you evaluate players where you don't really rely on analytics, or things you think analytics can't measure?

I think there are some things like cultural impact that I will use to evaluate a player.

At the end of the day the NBA is also a business, and there is the aspect of basketball that evokes emotions and made me fall in love with the game in the first place, so I think it's reasonable for that to be considered in player evaluation, especially in a tiebreaker situation.

For example, I think Iverson has a higher place in NBA history than say a John Havlicek or Bob Cousy for what he meant to the game. He inspired a whole generation of basketball players across the world, including many that became NBA players.

A guy like Yao I also give a lot of credit too because of how much he grew the game.

Cousy is a curious choice as a counterpoint to an icon "because of what he meant to the game". I'm on the skeptical side on Cousy but for some time he was (otoh) hovering on around 10th on old fashioned "pre-analytics" rankings and whether explicit or not I think flash and narrative significance (perhaps not backed by significant driving force contribution to probably the primary narrative factor - titles) was driving a very high ranking (perhaps "normal" size [and whiteness??] helped in terms of generating hype around him at the time too?).


Whilst I have long pointed to Davies or Haynes, in the public eye Cousy was regarded as the original innovative ball-handler (and the prototype point guard too).


I would tend to think of "evaluating players" in terms of player goodness, though "evaluate" doesn't have to connote that. Fwiw there probably are analytics that would be a (crude) proxy for generating interest such as jersey sales, television ratings though that might significantly be influenced by availability and I guess perhaps you were more thinking of "APBRmetric", player goodness/production/impact measurement type analytics. Don't think it's wrong to evaluate/rank on generating emotion or aesthetics though that list is probably more a personal one and should I think be separate from a pure player goodness discussion.

I would quibble with the use of the phrase "has a higher place in history" as used - granting it is preceded by "I think" but that phrasing still seems off, makes it seem objective and general rather than incredibly fuzzy/vague and thus more personal. And the players in question were on a lot of title teams.

I have never understood the "Whiteness" of Bob Cousy. This guy wasn't allowed to buy a house, eat in a white only dinner or drink from the white fountain in not only in the south but in the North as well. I'm sure Cousy was called as many racial slurs as anyone else. He just had 6 million of his people murdered legally with fanfare from every part of society just a few years earlier.

[One_and_Done]

I look at how they impacted their teams too. So for example how the Pistons and Pacers were nothing special when Reggie or Isiah's role was biggest, and only when they were one cog in a ensemble team dripping with talent did the teams become contenders.

[Owly]

What are some ways you evaluate players where you don't really rely on analytics, or things you think analytics can't measure?

I think there are some things like cultural impact that I will use to evaluate a player.

At the end of the day the NBA is also a business, and there is the aspect of basketball that evokes emotions and made me fall in love with the game in the first place, so I think it's reasonable for that to be considered in player evaluation, especially in a tiebreaker situation.

For example, I think Iverson has a higher place in NBA history than say a John Havlicek or Bob Cousy for what he meant to the game. He inspired a whole generation of basketball players across the world, including many that became NBA players.

A guy like Yao I also give a lot of credit too because of how much he grew the game.

Cousy is a curious choice as a counterpoint to an icon "because of what he meant to the game". I'm on the skeptical side on Cousy but for some time he was (otoh) hovering on around 10th on old fashioned "pre-analytics" rankings and whether explicit or not I think flash and narrative significance (perhaps not backed by significant driving force contribution to probably the primary narrative factor - titles) was driving a very high ranking (perhaps "normal" size [and whiteness??] helped in terms of generating hype around him at the time too?).


Whilst I have long pointed to Davies or Haynes, in the public eye Cousy was regarded as the original innovative ball-handler (and the prototype point guard too).


I would tend to think of "evaluating players" in terms of player goodness, though "evaluate" doesn't have to connote that. Fwiw there probably are analytics that would be a (crude) proxy for generating interest such as jersey sales, television ratings though that might significantly be influenced by availability and I guess perhaps you were more thinking of "APBRmetric", player goodness/production/impact measurement type analytics. Don't think it's wrong to evaluate/rank on generating emotion or aesthetics though that list is probably more a personal one and should I think be separate from a pure player goodness discussion.

I would quibble with the use of the phrase "has a higher place in history" as used - granting it is preceded by "I think" but that phrasing still seems off, makes it seem objective and general rather than incredibly fuzzy/vague and thus more personal. And the players in question were on a lot of title teams.

I have never understood the "Whiteness" of Bob Cousy. This guy wasn't allowed to buy a house, eat in a white only dinner or drink from the white fountain in not only in the south but in the North as well. I'm sure Cousy was called as many racial slurs as anyone else. He just had 6 million of his people murdered legally with fanfare from every part of society just a few years earlier.

Responding here since quoted ... the reason I referred to him as white is he appears to be white and I don't recall it being mentioned in anything I've seen or read he is of any other ethnicity. And, fwiw, have seen stories of him being appalled at the treatment of blacks in a manner that seemed to imply he himself wasn't subject to it ... just glancing at wikipedia

Cousy insisted on travelling with Cooper on an uncomfortable overnight train. He described their visit to a segregated men's toilet—Cooper was prohibited from using the clean "for whites" bathroom and had to use the shabby "for colored" facility—as one of the most shameful experiences of his life.[61]
link from 61: https://www.celtic-nation.com/interviews/bob_cousy/bob_cousy_page6.htm which itself says
We were standing on the train-station platform when we decided to hit the bathroom before we left. Then we were confronted by two signs. One said, "colored" and the other said "white." It was a traumatic moment for me. I didn't know what to say to Chuck, because there were no words that could make racism go away. Tears came to my eyes. I was ashamed to be white.

I don't the intricacies of Cousy's ethnicity or of US-antisemitism. He apparently referred to himself as white, I don't recall seeing him called other than that.

Fwiw, I'm not sure of the immediate pertinence of the Holocaust, but would be surprised to learn that it was "legal". But as I say this seems far outside the premise of the discussion that was had.