doclinkin wrote:Eh. Except you blithely skate over the issue of Free Throws.
No, I didn't touch on it because I was addressing a specific issue, the notion that TS% and eFG% don't tell you everything you need to know about the player's scoring efficiency. Gil draws FTAs very well, and you have to sort of iron out the favorable rules change because it's the era in which he plays, but those bulk missed shots are still a significant factor in his game.
You can feel free to quibble and nitpick, but by sticking doggedly to that raw FG% stat you're only betraying your confirmation bias, not an astute grasp of statistical analysis.
I don't stick to it, and never said that I did. All I was doing was responding to the idea that TS% and eFG% are accurate representations of his efficiency, FTAs or not. It doesn't suddenly mean he's stunning INEFFICIENT, it is just a means by which to add to the analysis of his game, so calm down.
That said. If you take a look at Flip's track record with heavy usage point guards, they tend to get more efficient entering his system. Players like Chauncey, Steph, Sam Cassell put up career years in most categories of PG efficiency. And the defensive scheme tends to allow top third defense even squads with heavy doses of Wally Szerbiak and Fred Hoiberg.
And on that account, I'm intrigued by what might happen to Gilbert, especially given the rumblings about him shooting less and passing more.
Remember, I said "FG% is valuable for evaluating people in some ways." I am fully aware that it's not the gospel where efficiency is concerned, and I'm completely aware that Arenas' 3pt shooting and DrawF both iron things out for him in terms of efficiency, but it is ALSO true that those two things mask the basic fact that he misses a lot of shots and isn't a superb 3pt shooter, just a solid one (at least at the volume at which he takes those shots, anyhow).
You need to take my points in context, and not as a direct assault on Arenas' overall credibility. I know that I don't like Arenas' style of play (I hate it, actually), but there is certainly truth to the idea that he can score efficiently and that he help teammates. And ITO FG% vs. shot volume, he's not far far different from, say, the Kobe we saw in 04-05. Kobe rocked a TS% just over 56% that year, too. He averaged a crap-load of FTAs because of the new rules, shot under 44% FG, chucked up 6 3s a game at an unimpressive percentage and boom, there you go, a season nearly identical to what we saw regularly from a healthy Arenas.
Now, in an effort not to be a crusty curmudgeon, I've been trying to accept that guards have it way easier in the post 03-04 era because of the way things are called on the wing, so a direct comparison of Arenas to Kobe that season is meaningful; Arenas now has three seasons where he compares favorably to Kobe that year, in one of Bryant's finest seasons (27/6/6 from Kobe).
And truth be told, if you look at the two of them under the arc over their respective careers, Kobe shoots 48.2% and Arenas 46.2%. Kobe's noticeably better, but the point isn't to denigrate Arenas; rather it's to show that he's relatively close to a top-tier, elite scorer like Kobe.
And truth be told, if you look at those games I cited, the vast majority of them came about primarily because he was chucking threes and missing most or all of them. Arenas has godawful shot selection where the 3pt shot is concerned. If that changes, he has the tools to be one of the best scorers we've ever seen (he's already technically one of the best scorers in the league).
I recognize that, but what you aren't recognizing is that his 3pt chuckery is a problem. His defense, too, but mostly in the sense that he doesn't do anything special to help, not that he's a huge liability or anything, but it remains true that Washington has been 19th, 22nd and 28th on D with Arenas; he doesn't make them significantly better on that end. But I digress.
It's true that the Wizards have ranked well on offense with a healthy Arenas. In fact, 10th, 6th and 3rd, with the latter being the most accurate because it includes Butler and they were mostly healthy. That figures to happen again this season, given a comparatively healthy team. They're good on offense.
BUT, and you seem to think I skipped over this because I didn't say it directly, but the entire point of discussing volume of missed FGA was to point out the damaging nature of putting a shot up for a potential offensive/defensive board. If he's MISSING 14 shots a game, then the Wizards are going to get maybe 6 or 7 of them, and will convert 3 of those or so (IIRC, but possibly more).
That still leaves 7 or 8 shots that they have given back to the other team... frequently as long boards, as you mentioned. In any case, bulk missed FGAs take away from the value of average efficiency. I have not seen a measurement for that impact, but you are absolutely NOT accounting for it by looking strictly at TS% and eFG%. eFG% is a terrible stat, IMO; TS% is a nice conglomeration of shooting efficiency and the added value of a 3 or a FTA, so it's useful, but when you take a guy like Arenas who goes to extremes so frequently, you cannot simply look at average efficiency.
And this is all ignoring turnovers and offensive fouls, right? Arenas isn't an especially turnover-prone player, especially given his usage rate, but that's something else that's technically not being considered here. But moving past that, have a look at 06-07 Arenas.
His average TS% was certainly 56.5%, but does that tell the tale? If you ignore the Charlotte game where he didn't start, then his median is 56.8%, which was above the league average of 54.1% by a noticeable margin. Stratified, it looks like this:
28 games at 60%+
12 games from 56-59.1%
7 games at 50.7 - 54.3%
16 games at 40.9 to 48.8%
10 games at 39.2% or less (3 below 30%)
So all told, that's 32 games below league average (31, if you don't quibble over the 54.0 versus the 54.1) and 41 (or 42) over league average.
You can see, though, that he didn't really tend to fall near the average; he tended to be either stunningly hot or so awful it made you cringe, there really wasn't a lot of middle ground with him, nor did he frequently adapt his game depending on what kind of shooting night he was having (though to be fair, does Kobe?).
Think about that:
28 games at stunning efficiency (23-5 record, 21.6 FGA/g, 8.2 3PA/g, 6.5 APG, 3.2 TPG)
19 games at marginal to well above average efficiency (10-9, 21.4 FGA/g, 8.3 3PA/g, 5.8 APG, 3.1 TPG)
26 games at miserable inefficiency (6-20, 20.6 FGA/g, 7.5 3PA/g, 5.8 APG, 3.4 TPG)
Just to add something else onto that:
28 games with 10.1 FG Missed; 11.4 FTA/g; 4.3 3P missed; 3.9 3PM/g
19 games with 12.6 FG Missed; 10.1 FTA/g; 5.4 3P missed; 2.9 3PM/g
26 games with 14.5 FG Missed; 8 FTA/g; 6.0 3P missed; 1.5 3PM/g
12.3 FG Missed Per Game
5.2 3P Missed Per Game
2.8 3PM Per Game
Yeah, it's nice that basically for every night he was terrible, he was awesome, but that spread is not a positive thing for him. You're basically getting two Gilberts; utterly unguardable, or spectacularly useless... which gets back to what I was saying before, that it's bad for the team, something that the record bears out. And as you see, there isn't a really significant difference in the volume of shooting, either, but a noticeably larger difference in the number of shots he was missing.
He played a 74th game, but as I mentioned, he didn't start, nor did he take a shot, so I didn't bother to include it.
This is a closer look at Arenas; he's found at either end of the extreme, and that's a problem. See the three-point shooting? 8 3s a game is a stupid idea if you're not a catch-and-shoot player and can't hit those shots the way Ray-Ray did back in his day. If Arenas were to work off-ball more, his percentage would almost assuredly rise, even at that volume, but he takes a large volume of really dumb 3s, and that's a bad thing.
To bring that home, it's something that TS% and eFG% don't account for, which was my point in the first place.
Magnumt
