I Hate Stats

[Hendrix]

I agree with the OP. You need to watch a player play. Stats don't tell you if player A's rebounding beside 2 of the best rebounders in the league, and player B's rebounding beside 2 of the worst rebounders in the league. Watching and seeing if the guy really goes after it, and ifghts for rebounds is better imo.

Or judging if one player is a good playmaker by assits. Maybe he handles the ball way more then others with the same skill set because of the team he's on or just swings the ball for easy jumpshots. Is he actually creating plays? Does the offense the team runs allow them to rack up assits? Triangle offense vs. Lebron James offense for example.

Then some things are just more valuable imo that can't be attributed with stats like being a true center and playing down low. Chris Bosh for example has a higher PER then Dwight Howard. I'de much rather have Howard on my team though. I also don't think LBJ is 5 PER points better then Kobe.

Stats have their place, but they don't really prove **** imo.

[durka]

I agree with the OP. You need to watch a player play. Stats don't tell you if player A's rebounding beside 2 of the best rebounders in the league, and player B's rebounding beside 2 of the worst rebounders in the league. Watching and seeing if the guy really goes after it, and ifghts for rebounds is better imo.

Or judging if one player is a good playmaker by assits. Maybe he handles the ball way more then others with the same skill set because of the team he's on or just swings the ball for easy jumpshots. Is he actually creating plays? Does the offense the team runs allow them to rack up assits? Triangle offense vs. Lebron James offense for example.

Then some things are just more valuable imo that can't be attributed with stats like being a true center and playing down low. Chris Bosh for example has a higher PER then Dwight Howard. I'de much rather have Howard on my team though. I also don't think LBJ is 5 PER points better then Kobe.

Stats have their place, but they don't really prove **** imo.

THANK YOU

Just look at Nash in his Dallas days. He wasn't averaging 11 assists or whatever gaudy numbers he's puttin up in these past few years. Stats don't tell you the system and the surrounding players. KG, PP, and Ray all would have averaged over 20 points this season most likley, but they didn't because of the surrounding players. Does that make them worse scorers?

[LakerFanMan]

Any stat that is weighted is most likely garbage. Like PER. Weights are arbitrary and at the full discretion of the maker of the stat. Weights are only useful if they used in some type of historical significance. Some people take stats too far like Hollinger, who tried to say Kevin Love is a better prospect than OJ Mayo because of their collegiate stats (he obviously ignores lost of other factors, but I digress)

Also individual defensive rating are very flawed.

The only stats I trust are team offensive and defensive ratings, individual offensive rating, usage, and pace. Percentages of rebounding, assists, and steals seem to make sense too.

You should read Dean Oliver's book "Basketball on Paper".

But it's so much better than not weighing though... otherwise you end up with garbage like EFF and Assist to TO ratio.

You're sort of proving the OP's point with this post.

[andyhop]

I agree with the OP. You need to watch a player play. Stats don't tell you if player A's rebounding beside 2 of the best rebounders in the league, and player B's rebounding beside 2 of the worst rebounders in the league. Watching and seeing if the guy really goes after it, and ifghts for rebounds is better imo.

Or judging if one player is a good playmaker by assits. Maybe he handles the ball way more then others with the same skill set because of the team he's on or just swings the ball for easy jumpshots. Is he actually creating plays? Does the offense the team runs allow them to rack up assits? Triangle offense vs. Lebron James offense for example.

Then some things are just more valuable imo that can't be attributed with stats like being a true center and playing down low. Chris Bosh for example has a higher PER then Dwight Howard. I'de much rather have Howard on my team though. I also don't think LBJ is 5 PER points better then Kobe.

Stats have their place, but they don't really prove **** imo.

Most of the things you are saying stats don't show they actually do.

Rebounding stats clearly show who plays besides other good rebounders like to give it a draft focus Lopez or if he is basically the only guy on the team who can rebound like Beasley.Then observation tells you if each of these factors was because Lopez can't board well so his teammates had to or if Beasley was so good his team left him to it.

Playmaking shows up in a whole load of stats besides a raw assist count, like on/off offensive rating and on/off shooting percentages.

Usage % shows who handles the ball more to distinguish between high and low use players.

Dwight Howard drops on PER for the same reason he drops in a fantasy draft because of his FT% and turnovers,but other stats will show if having him doubled in the post is valuable like increases in teammates shooting percentages.

Stats combined with observation give the truest view of players.

[Tim Lehrbach]

This post is off base. Not because statistics really are the "holy grail" but because people who turn to stats aren't saying what you think they are. People who study statistics also watch basketball; they wouldn't bother studying basketball stats if they didn't. I am reasonably sure John Hollinger watches more basketball than most people who say they don't need stats because they "watch the game".

But we've seen this topic a million times already and will continue seeing it forever.

There's just no reason to feel threatened by stats. There are some jackarses who throw numbers around without valid arguments, but the problem lies in the invalidity of the arguments being presented, not in the numbers being misappropriated. Call the people out who are unable to make salient points using numbers, not the people who work very hard to offer up new methods for evaluating numbers fully aware that the usefulness of their products remains an open question.

[Reks]

I think the opposite. People like to use stats to make their favorite players look good and disregard things like hustle and intangibles and the little things that make players that much more valuble. If stats told us how good players were, Zach Randolph would be one of the best bigs in the leauge for the past few years.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

[andyhop]

I think the opposite. People like to use stats to make their favorite players look good and disregard things like hustle and intangibles and the little things that make players that much more valuble. If stats told us how good players were, Zach Randolph would be one of the best bigs in the leauge for the past few years.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

If you used box score stats maybe,if you used advanced stats they would tell you exactly why he isn't as good as he appears from the ppg and rpg numbers.

If hustle,intangibles and the little things that make players much more valuable don't show up in the stats you are looking at then you are looking at the wrong stats.

[Frosty]

The OP should go out and read the first few chapters of Moneyball. It's baseball related and not basketball but it shows how even paid scouts are often blinded by personal beliefs and prejudices and often stats can cut through the human factor.

Of course there is also a factor that stats just don't like some players. So if you are a fan of them you will always hate stats.

Also, I rarely see anyone use just stats to make an argument. It's just obvious to anyone that an argument would go nowhere based solely on subjective opinions.

Poster a: "Player x is a much better rebounder then Player y"

Poster b: "No player y is better"

Poster a: "you don't watch player x enough"

Poster b: "you don't watch player y enough"

rinse and repeat