Great article on how scouting/stats should work.

Post #1 » by **revprodeji** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:37 pm

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magaz ... wanted=all

(*here is the canis article on it
http://www.canishoopus.com/2009/2/14/759367/must-read)

Basically a new way to look at what players do to contribute to a game. Great article, long but please read. We could have some nice talks from it.

(*update
-a sactown blog writer got ahold of the article above and did some nice work showing the value of JT--ironically doing the same thing with Love is crazy

http://www.canishoopus.com/2009/2/15/760312/more-morey)

A lot of reading, but wow. read them all and lets talk.

shrink · Post #2 » by **shrink** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:00 pm

Nice article. I read it Saturday and tossed it up on the HOU board, but nobody wanted to talk about the stats.

Thanks for pointing out the canishoopus article too. Also a good read, and I hadn't read all their links either. Sounds like CH is begging for a job though, which wouldn't be a bad thing.

deeney0 · Post #3 » by **deeney0** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:12 pm

One of my favorite quotes from the article is “the foul is the worst result of a defensive play.” - it amazing how often you can watch an NBA game and players seem immune to understanding of this. See: McCants, Rashad.

horaceworthy · Post #4 » by **horaceworthy** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:24 pm

There's a chance McCants gets that, since, judging by his reactions, McCants has never committed a foul in his life.

Post #5 » by **revprodeji** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:00 pm

I like the talk about efficiency and how defense could be able getting the other player into his rough spots. Makes me excited at Love/Al.

dunkonu21 · Post #6 » by **dunkonu21** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:24 pm

I think another player who encompasses this article was Jaric. Despite his horrible contract, many of the more knowledgeable wolves fans could not hate him.

Post #7 » by **revprodeji** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:34 pm

He was hated for his contract and what we gave up in the trade. I wonder if we would have let him play the point-fwd he wanted to play how he could have been. I think Mike Miller is better than him at every aspect of the game, but i think Jaric could have a similar playmaker role.

Krapinsky · Post #8 » by **Krapinsky** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:00 am

No. Jaric was a much better defender.

Post #9 » by **revprodeji** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:44 am

**but did not penetrate or finish similar to Miller
**had no threat of the outside shot
**and made mental mistakes often.

Krapinsky · Post #10 » by **Krapinsky** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:48 am

revprodeji wrote:**but did not penetrate or finish similar to Miller
**had no threat of the outside shot
**and made mental mistakes often.

No argument there.

Biff Cooper · Post #11 » by **Biff Cooper** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:49 am

That was a lot of work reading all those!

I've always thought of Gomes and Battier as similar players. However, don't think we'd try to put Gomes on the other teams star player every game. They probably have similar athleticism, so Gomes could probably learn something from this article and learning to apply himself towards doing the little things.

Krapinsky · Post #12 » by **Krapinsky** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:53 am

Biff Cooper wrote:That was a lot of work reading all those!

I've always thought of Gomes and Battier as similar players. However, don't think we'd try to put Gomes on the other teams star player every game. They probably have similar athleticism, so Gomes could probably learn something from this article and learning to apply himself towards doing the little things.

Except Gomes cannot guard the perimeter and Battier is one of the best perimeter defenders in the game.

Biff Cooper · Post #13 » by **Biff Cooper** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:31 am

Dr.Krapinsky wrote:
Biff Cooper wrote:That was a lot of work reading all those!

I've always thought of Gomes and Battier as similar players. However, don't think we'd try to put Gomes on the other teams star player every game. They probably have similar athleticism, so Gomes could probably learn something from this article and learning to apply himself towards doing the little things.

Except Gomes cannot guard the perimeter and Battier is one of the best perimeter defenders in the game.

I took out of the article that Battier uses tendencies and percentages to turn his marginal athletic ability into something that makes the people he guards operate at a less than their usual effectiveness. Perhaps he has some quickness that Gomes does not have that gives him a better shot at guarding perimeter, but that doesn't mean Gomes couldn't learn from studying more?

Krapinsky · Post #14 » by **Krapinsky** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:33 am

All that is very true, but Battier is probably one of the most intelligent players in the NBA. Gomes has his work cut out for him.

Biff Cooper · Post #15 » by **Biff Cooper** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:31 pm

Dr.Krapinsky wrote:All that is very true, but Battier is probably one of the most intelligent players in the NBA. Gomes has his work cut out for him.

Agreed on Battier. He is one of the only Dukies that I like. He plays the right way.

I didn't mean to just single out Gomes either. I did so because he reminds me of Battier. For us to become a real contender, we need to maximize the abilities of everyone on the team. We don't want to overload the guys with overly complicated schemes that we saw they couldn't handle with Wittman. But I'm more talking about learning the guys' games that you will be guarding inside and out so you can force them into lower percentage positions. For the most part, I think we have a real good group of guys - heck 90% of them spent the summer in Minneapolis to practice with each other on their free will. This is something Jefferson can do while he is out the rest of the year also. We need him to become a better & smarter defender, because we need his offense on the court as much as possible.