Best statistical measure to gauge effect on team mates

[tkb]

Hi guys

What statistical measures do you think best gauges the value a player has on his team mates?

I'm not a fan of the phrase "making your team mates better", but that's kind of where I'm going with this.

I once did a study of shooting percentages for a few players team mates when they played with that player compared to without. Obviously that has it's flaws due to age, part of career for the role player etc.

Any suggestions?

[turk3d]

I think o0verall shooting efficiency, a/t (assists are a good indicator that you're getting the ball to your mates in good spots since they're going in). Low turnovers in conjunction with this means you're not causing defensive breakdowns which occur when someone turns the ball over a lot. It's pretty frustrating you're running on offense and then you have to turn around abruptly with the opposing team fast breaking the opposite way. Tends to leave you out of position.

What also would be helpful (but pretty hard to quantify) is when a teammate provide "help defense" when someone allows their man to get by them and on the opposite end doesn't get broken down themselves, with very little need for help themselves.

[tkb]

Those are all good numbers, but what I'm looking for is a decent stat to show impact a player has on the players he plays with. Like, how more efficient does LeBron make his team mates when he's on the floor? It's very difficult to measure precisely since there are so many factors that comes into play.

[Slava]

Team FG% over the time the player stays on the court should be a good indication right? Ofcourse you could also factor in the number of turnovers etc over the same period.

[turk3d]

Those are all good numbers, but what I'm looking for is a decent stat to show impact a player has on the players he plays with. Like, how more efficient does LeBron make his team mates when he's on the floor? It's very difficult to measure precisely since there are so many factors that comes into play.

Well then you can probably look @ team fg% when the player's out there. That might be a pretty good indicator (on offense). You can also do the same on D possibly (looking @ opposition points scored in addition to opponents shooting %). You could even then take the the two numbers and perhaps do a % differential, the higher the difference, the better the players overall impact I suppose.

[drza]

I like looking at the pair-wise +/- numbers from 82games.com. I do it more-so to see trends (i.e. if the same player has the highest pair-wise +/- for all of his teammates he's probably the key person in improving the others) but it's possible you could take it further and quantify "by how much". That's probably not trivial to do, but as long as the player in question has played enough minutes with the teammate in question you might be able to quantify the difference between how teammates play with him vs how they play without him (at least in a +/- sense. It won't tell you their field goal percentage, for instance, but it will tell you how the team does).

[mopper8]

Better than team shooting % IMO is points-per-possession on/off. Never done it myself but it seems like it would be a good barometer.

The main problem with that stuff though is that the 'on court' #s would of course be somewhat inflated (theoretically) by the star player's scoring. Maybe you could junk isolation scoring plays from the points-per-possession "on court" #s...I dunno. It would get complicated.

Something like: (total points - unassisted star player points)/(total possessions - star player ISO possessions)...that's still not perfect, but might be worth looking at. You wouldn't be able to do it from the play-by-play, though, I don't think...how would you know if the star's missed FG attempt or FTs came as the recipient of someone else's play-making (and as such should be included in the supporting cast possession total) or if they came from isolation plays (in which case it should be subtracted from the supporting cast total)?

[Miller4ever]

Now, there is a possibility that a player takes AWAY from his teammates but makes the whole TEAM better. Weird, but look at absolute dominant forces like Wilt or Jordan. All I'm really saying is whatever metric is decided must exclude the player in question.

[mopper8]

Now, there is a possibility that a player takes AWAY from his teammates but makes the whole TEAM better. Weird, but look at absolute dominant forces like Wilt or Jordan. All I'm really saying is whatever metric is decided must exclude the player in question.

Yeah that was what I was getting at...I don't think you can do that without tracking it yourself though. You'd need to eliminate all the isolation plays from the analysis.

Also, we often talk about "making players better" only on the offensive end...but what about making your teammates better defenders? That is, a dominant shot-blocker allows the perimeter defenders to play more aggressively in ball denial and on a live dribble knowing that the drive is a lower-% shot than usual with their shot-blocker behind them...

[Miller4ever]

It's tough, since statisticians are always trying to get to eliminate the notion of "intangibles," but no matter what they will always exist since human emotion is unpredictable and circumstances will affect the sport, and it's impossible to quantify every factor. The problem with taking away isolation plays is that they should arguably be included in the discussion. Many times a start player will abandon the team play and call for an iso.

[rrravenred]

Team FG% over the time the player stays on the court should be a good indication right? Ofcourse you could also factor in the number of turnovers etc over the same period.

No... differetial from individual career FG% when you are on the floor, differences in fouls/minute, turnovers/minute... maybe the differential rebounding rates, too.

It's certainly noisy and crude, but it's really rare to see players playing together their entire careers, so there's usually SOME basis for comparison.