Is PDSS a good way to analyze the Raptors defense?

[andreafan]

Did you not understand my point about averages? If you remove the biggest number from a list, then the average must decrease. Remove the smallest, average has to go up. Similarly, if Jose is the worst defender and by far the worst defender, then I'd better see lineups w/o him doing pretty well...

And what happens when you see the team with Jose in civilian clothes? *gasp* They get a lot better...

Indeed, this is true. And your PDSS system ranked Andrea Bargnani as an above average defender relative to the team. In fact, he and Bosh were tied for the 5th best defense on the team, after Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Evans, Banks, and Amir. His individual Drtg is was 110, and the team Drtg 113.2.

Yet as supersub15 showed, when Bargnani is on the bench or otherwise not playing, the Raptors defense is substantially better.

Why is the defense improving dramatically when one of the team's best defenders (as ranked by PDSS) is off the floor?

-I agree the pdss system is superior to the dtrg. +-+++++++++

[disoblige]

Again, if Calderon is such a terrible defender, why our OTHER bigs are capable of covering for him. And don't give me the starter/bench argument. Calderon has played against both, with and without Bargnani.

Calderon IS a terrible defender. Bargnani is horrible rotating which makes him a bad defender.

In this video every time a PG drives on Jose, we always send help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15ZR_f5Z4ys

[BorisDK1]

Boris in the other thread you said you didn't track 3 pointers correctly. Was that just in terms of not having a column to track 3 point versus 2 point FGs? Or was it also in how you assigned points allowed? Also in terms of your stop % did you track 3 pointers as 2 pointers? This could result in why your Drtg /= 113.

In terms of the individual points allowed, I didn't specify whether FGA were 2s or 3s. That doesn't really effect the individual defensive ratings, but it does accurately prevent me from doing some of the Net Points stuff I'd have liked to do, in retrospect. I will do that next year. It doesn't affect the individual defensive rating at all.

[Truthrising]

And what happens when you see the team with Jose in civilian clothes? *gasp* They get a lot better...

Indeed, this is true. And your PDSS system ranked Andrea Bargnani as an above average defender relative to the team. In fact, he and Bosh were tied for the 5th best defense on the team, after Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Evans, Banks, and Amir. His individual Drtg is was 110, and the team Drtg 113.2.

Yet as supersub15 showed, when Bargnani is on the bench or otherwise not playing, the Raptors defense is substantially better.

Why is the defense improving dramatically when one of the team's best defenders (as ranked by PDSS) is off the floor?

-I agree the pdss system is superior to the dtrg. +-+++++++++

I agree as well, BorisDK1 is it ok if you do the game analysis and also the SoTD from now on?

[BorisDK1]

Here is my problem with these stats ... how can you apply them specifically? My problem with a stat like DRTG has always been that it done by taking 100 possessions. The problem is that, no team (maybe GSW?) plays at over that pace and no player plays for 48 minutes. The normal starter playing 36 minutes and whose teams play at an average 93 possession a game would see 70 possessions a game. If a DRTG difference is about 4 points, then the actually game difference is about 70% of that which is 2.8 points. When people put DRTG numbers up, they put them at 100 paces yet thats not a true reflection of whats happening in the game.

What happens is, we measure per single possession and then multiply by 100 to make it look neater. 110.5 points allowed / 100 possessions = 1.105 points per possession. You could multiply by 93, 95, 82, 46.8 - doesn't matter. 100 is a nice, even number that bumps over decimal points well but it doesn't affect anything.

In the other thread, SS posted the DRTG of Bargs/Jack and no Bargs/Jack. The difference was 4 points but when you accounted the Jack minutes (using him as the limited reagent) the maximum in game difference was just one basket and that would have been if Jack didn't play Bargs at all. If you were a coach, and your start guy told you that the difference between games of playing this guy without this guy, would leave to a one shot improvement in your defense ... well hes going to laugh at you. Its no wonder Triano said they don't use DRTG because these stats don't have applications. They can give you a general idea of how a team is defensivey, but you can't conclude anything specific to it.

I don't specifically recall Triano saying anything about DRtg (and frankly, he doesn't have access to these stats - unless he lurks at raptorspace.com and downloaded my stuff without my knowledge), but I this is a tool the coaching staff of the team I'm coaching use and it really helps us clarify our thinking about the players we use, adn when, and how and what problems we have.

Lastly, the problem with defensive statistic is that there all based on one flaw that makes it total unrealiable ... even PDSS. The idea behind all the defensive statistics we have is that if we measure what the offense is doing against a certain defense, then we can know how that defense is doing. We AREN'T measuring defense directly ... we are trying to measure it indirectly by measuring a teams offense. Which makes sense except when you realize that most defenses have become dynamic and require a team in sync with each other from top to bottom.

I think it's common sense that you can't really isolate a player's performance defensively from team performance. At some point you have to marry the two.

What defensive statistic needs is a evolution and a better thought process. The only time I think its okay to measure what an opponent is doing against a defense to give you an idea of the defense is in isolation situations, which basically comes down to 1 on 1 play. Most defenses need something more advance because saying what the offense does against a certain defense, doesn't tell us what that defense is doing. Defense statistics need to be altered and become focused on whats happening on defense. They shouldn't be based on ppg or assists or w/e, because those are offensive statistics. Things like, which guards are the best at fighting through screens, and which get caught up on picks along with the frequency that the guard gets caught up is a defensive statistics. Whats the avg shots that a big man challenges in the paint is a defensive statistics. You could even get more complex (if you had the time to watch every PnR) to figure out which big man are the strongest hedges on PnR, by calculated the time that the big is in hedge motion and the frequency ...

The problem is, defenses defend screens differently at times (in the Raptors' case, they had an entirely different set of rules for everybody else than for one player: Jose Calderon). Measuring who gets hung up when and how often doesn't tell you anything if 1) players are contact-switching, in which case they're absolutely supposed to get "hung up", they're to run right into the numbers of the player they're switching onto, 2) having any sort of other coverage which doesn't make getting hung up even an issue.

I think tracking by outcome is the way to go.

[Scott Carefoot]

You could also say why is the Raptors defense better when their leading shot blocker isn't playing. He lead the team by a ton over Bosh/Amir.

Amir is a superior shot-blocker to Bargnani. He averages 2.4 blocks per 36 minutes over his career while Bargnani averages 1.2 blocks per 36 over his career. It remains to be seen if Amir can reduce his foul rate while still being a good shot-blocker.

[BorisDK1]

Indeed, this is true. And your PDSS system ranked Andrea Bargnani as an above average defender relative to the team. In fact, he and Bosh were tied for the 5th best defense on the team, after Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Evans, Banks, and Amir. His individual Drtg is was 110, and the team Drtg 113.2.

That's right. There are some things that Andrea does quite well on the defensive end, other things that he does quite poorly. He's quite the study in contrasts.

Just because you think Andrea might be poor defender and some of your preferred stats might indicate that he is, doesn't mean he is 1) as globally bad as you think he might be, 2) every metric has to show what you want it to show. It might just be that what you think needs modification. I know: perish the thought, right? But at this point, you're still acting like a statboy who hasn't even begun to interact with basketball reality. You're forcing the stats (or, at least, the stats you like) to be the be-all-and-end-all of all inquiry. Stats can never do that. They should provoke questions of what's happening on the basketball floor, not substituting for it.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for APM or for on/off court analysis, but those do not just speak for themselves. At some point you need to say, "Why?" instead of "So there!"

Yet as supersub15 showed, when Bargnani is on the bench or otherwise not playing, the Raptors defense is substantially better.

And that may or may not be from anything Andrea is specifically doing, or to what extent it is you don't know. Supersub doesn't know. 82games.com doesn't know, and Microsoft Excel doesn't know.

Why is the defense improving dramatically when one of the team's best defenders (as ranked by PDSS) is off the floor?

Maybe because he's largely on the floor with other guys who, en masse violate the John Wooden Rule: the team with a speed and quickness disadvantage at three positions or more is likely to lose? Maybe because en masse they have a massive cultural problem of disinterest in the defensive end of the floor and really poor ability to anticipate, communicate and trust each other and Andrea's the one getting stuck out there against the superior opponents' offensive players who punish those mistakes more than others?

[Fenris-77]

Boris in the other thread you said you didn't track 3 pointers correctly. Was that just in terms of not having a column to track 3 point versus 2 point FGs? Or was it also in how you assigned points allowed? Also in terms of your stop % did you track 3 pointers as 2 pointers? This could result in why your Drtg /= 113.

No, it's not so much that they were tracked 'incorrectly', just that they weren't seperated from other FGs when FGA was tracked (if I recall correctly).

I have some real trouble believing that people have decided to attack the basic notion that pace adjusted metrics (i.e. one's based on 100 possessions) are somehow a bad idea. It doesn't matter in the least that most teams don't play that many possessions. Or, perhaps morer accurately, it's not in any way a negative that that's the case. The point of using pace adjusted metrics is that they allow you compare two players who play in different paced offenese on a equal footing. If you somehow find it confusing that teams don't actually play 100 possessions I submit that that is most decidedly not a problem with the metric, In the case of the Raps PDSS data that Boris has tracked, there wouldn't be a lot of point in defining it any way except per 100 pace adjusted since that's the 'industry standard'.

Like I siad in my long post, defensive stats we have now aren't applicable to defense because they measure what an OPP offense is doing and not actually what the defense is doing.

This is a complete non-starter. I could just as easily say something facile like, "well, isn't the best measure of the quality of what the defense is doing taken by looking at how effectively that defense prevents the other team from implemeting their offense?". The bare fact of the matter is that at some point you need to look at how much a defense prevents the other team from scoring if you want to measure it's effectiveness. Obviously you also need to look at the mechanics of team's/player's defense - close outs, screen coverage, ect ect - and while the skill with which a player executes those defensive actions isn't directly measurable by the available metics, the results of those actions are, provided you're willing to admit that, at the end of the day, defense is about stopping the other guy from putting the ball in the hoop.

As far as how PDSS rates Bargnani, I think a lot of people do indeed have their panties in a twist because the PDSS results don't match up with the very public stance those people have taken on Bargnani and his relative strengths and weaknesses. The fact that Bargs looks better using PDSS isn't really a huge deal, and it certainly doesn't absolve Bargs of some of his glaring defensive issues either. what PDSS does do is take a much more granular look at some individual defesive occurances (forced misses ect) that aren't accounted for in the basic DRat, or in any other defensive metric for that matter. Bargnani's man defense is actually decent, so it should surprise no-one that a system like PDSS will rate him higher as a defender. All that should really do is allow for a more nuanced look at Bargnani's defense.

When comparing Bargs to Jose it also shouldn't surprise anyone that PDSS takes a warm dump on Jose, who is a spectacularly bad man defender (as well as a spectacularly bad team defender).

Nothing about the PDSS data means that Bargnani doesn't need to substantially improve his rebounding and team defense. He quite obviously needs huge improvement in both areas. That said, I think there is a strong indication that people could profitably be a lot more nuanced when it comes to talking about his defense, rather than going with the sweeping generalizations that seem so popular.

[BorisDK1]

You're using the wrong analogy here. I'm not making assumptions based on seeing the rooster crow. For 4 full years and thousands of minutes, I've measured the distance from rooster to the sun (lol), chronicled the time of day that the rooster crows, chronicled the time of day that the sun comes up, then established scientific correlation.

Again, if Calderon is such a terrible defender, why our OTHER bigs are capable of covering for him. And don't give me the starter/bench argument. Calderon has played against both, with and without Bargnani.

What you are trying to do has a number of problems, which I've raised:

1. You are trying to use metrics which indicate what the team does with and without the player on the floor as only an indicator of that player's calibre of defensive (or offensive) play. It might only indicate that the team doesn't do well, for reason(s) not directly reflected in the quality of that player's play. For example, knowing Bargnani's weaknesses rebounding the basketball and obvious athletic disadvantage many nights, it's suicide to put out Turkoglu and Bargnani together in the starting lineup;
2. You don't account for change of talent faced in your metrics;
3. In general, at the end of the day you're trying to do too much with the information you have. You can't take indirect data and apply it directly (without the slightest bit of basketball analysis along the way) and pretend that's particularly authoritative.

[bassmastert]

I have a problem with these statistics. While I appreciate the effort taken into creating the statistical evidence and understand the painstaking yet worthful experience, IMO there is just too much subjectable matter that can't be calculated that will skew the numbers of any certain player, or a team as a whole. I also believe this subject matter can't be corrected through a larger sample size to give an accurate representation of the player's abilities. I'll give a few examples of why I believe some of the numbers can be misleading.

Player A (offensive player) breaks down Player B, gets to the rim uncontested and blows a dunk or lay up. This can happen many times during the year. Should player B be credited with a stop?

Player A is trapped in the corner by Player B and Player C with nowhere to go at the end of a shot clock. Player A heaves up a prayer and it goes in. Should that really be construed as bad defense or a failed assignment?

Our team switches defensive assignments frequently. Who gets the benefit of the result, the defensive player assigned to the offensive player or the one currently defending that player? Also couldn't the coaching decisions in this case factor in the overall team defense by having a bad game plan that doesn't accentuate the player's abilities? Could it be then that a coaching philosophy can either improve or degress the Team DRtg, which could also in turn affect the individual player's DRtg? Would a player traded to another team that increases his DRtg from say, 110 to 105 be considered a better defensive player?

I have other examples but as of now this site is giving me bouncy-messaging syndrome which is affecting my ability to type and read my posts (and it's hard on the eyes).

[OvertimeNO]

Boris in the other thread you said you didn't track 3 pointers correctly. Was that just in terms of not having a column to track 3 point versus 2 point FGs? Or was it also in how you assigned points allowed? Also in terms of your stop % did you track 3 pointers as 2 pointers? This could result in why your Drtg /= 113.

No, it's not so much that they were tracked 'incorrectly', just that they weren't seperated from other FGs when FGA was tracked (if I recall correctly).

I have some real trouble believing that people have decided to attack the basic notion that pace adjusted metrics (i.e. one's based on 100 possessions) are somehow a bad idea. It doesn't matter in the least that most teams don't play that many possessions. Or, perhaps morer accurately, it's not in any way a negative that that's the case. The point of using pace adjusted metrics is that they allow you compare two players who play in different paced offenese on a equal footing. If you somehow find it confusing that teams don't actually play 100 possessions I submit that that is most decidedly not a problem with the metric, In the case of the Raps PDSS data that Boris has tracked, there wouldn't be a lot of point in defining it any way except per 100 pace adjusted since that's the 'industry standard'.

Like I siad in my long post, defensive stats we have now aren't applicable to defense because they measure what an OPP offense is doing and not actually what the defense is doing.

This is a complete non-starter. I could just as easily say something facile like, "well, isn't the best measure of the quality of what the defense is doing taken by looking at how effectively that defense prevents the other team from implemeting their offense?". The bare fact of the matter is that at some point you need to look at how much a defense prevents the other team from scoring if you want to measure it's effectiveness. Obviously you also need to look at the mechanics of team's/player's defense - close outs, screen coverage, ect ect - and while the skill with which a player executes those defensive actions isn't directly measurable by the available metics, the results of those actions are, provided you're willing to admit that, at the end of the day, defense is about stopping the other guy from putting the ball in the hoop.

As far as how PDSS rates Bargnani, I think a lot of people do indeed have their panties in a twist because the PDSS results don't match up with the very public stance those people have taken on Bargnani and his relative strengths and weaknesses. The fact that Bargs looks better using PDSS isn't really a huge deal, and it certainly doesn't absolve Bargs of some of his glaring defensive issues either. what PDSS does do is take a much more granular look at some individual defesive occurances (forced misses ect) that aren't accounted for in the basic DRat, or in any other defensive metric for that matter. Bargnani's man defense is actually decent, so it should surprise no-one that a system like PDSS will rate him higher as a defender. All that should really do is allow for a more nuanced look at Bargnani's defense.

When comparing Bargs to Jose it also shouldn't surprise anyone that PDSS takes a warm dump on Jose, who is a spectacularly bad man defender (as well as a spectacularly bad team defender).

Nothing about the PDSS data means that Bargnani doesn't need to substantially improve his rebounding and team defense. He quite obviously needs huge improvement in both areas. That said, I think there is a strong indication that people could profitably be a lot more nuanced when it comes to talking about his defense, rather than going with the sweeping generalizations that seem so popular.

+muchly

Too bad absolutes are so much easier (and more fun!) to argue about on the interwebz.

[BorisDK1]

It take it that the "Not necessarily" is in reference to my second question, right? If so, you are saying that my team defense will not necessarily improve if I remove the worst defenders (as ranked by PDSS Drtg)? I'm not trying to mis-attribute stuff to you, just trying to understand what you are saying.

No, I'm saying you can't just look at the whole team and say, "oh, well, the team's DRat was 113, so every player on that team's DRat should be 113."

If you replace the worst defenders with better defenders, the results should be that the team will produce more stops vs. allow scores and the DRat should improve ceteris parabis. (Radical concept, I know.)

[BorisDK1]

I have a problem with these statistics. While I appreciate the effort taken into creating the statistical evidence and understand the painstaking yet worthful experience, IMO there is just too much subjectable matter that can't be calculated that will skew the numbers of any certain player, or a team as a whole. I also believe this subject matter can't be corrected through a larger sample size to give an accurate representation of the player's abilities. I'll give a few examples of why I believe some of the numbers can be misleading.

Player A (offensive player) breaks down Player B, gets to the rim uncontested and blows a dunk or lay up. This can happen many times during the year. Should player B be credited with a stop?

Player A is trapped in the corner by Player B and Player C with nowhere to go at the end of a shot clock. Player A heaves up a prayer and it goes in. Should that really be construed as bad defense or a failed assignment?

Our team switches defensive assignments frequently. Who gets the benefit of the result, the defensive player assigned to the offensive player or the one currently defending that player? Also couldn't the coaching decisions in this case factor in the overall team defense by having a bad game plan that doesn't accentuate the player's abilities? Could it be then that a coaching philosophy can either improve or degress the Team DRtg, which could also in turn affect the individual player's DRtg? Would a player traded to another team that increases his DRtg from say, 110 to 105 be considered a better defensive player?

I have other examples but as of now this site is giving me bouncy-messaging syndrome which is affecting my ability to type and read my posts (and it's hard on the eyes).

Case 1: it depends if he continues to contest the drive or just stops and allows it to continue. In the former case, yes that's a Forced Miss; in the latter case, no, that would be attributed to "team".

Case 2: if he was being defended by a player and the shot is taken and it goes in, that's a FGA. No style points or degree of difficulty is added. If a player's a good defensive player, he's going to make guys he's guarding take tougher shots or make tougher plays which are going to be lower-percentage and will, at the end of the day, reflect his scores. (It should also be noted that one improbable made or missed shot in hundreds of possessions faced isn't going to affect anything.) Would you not credit a guy with a basket because he heaved it from behind halfcourt with the clock expiring? Of course not. It is what it is: same applies to PDSS.

Poor coaching decisions certainly affect everybody's numbers. If a team insists on throwing out numerous slow players on the floor together, the team is going to be awfully bad. But team defense also consists of individual play as well.

In the case of switches, or rotations, what is tracked are the guys defending the players at the time the outcome takes place. If a player rotates to cover a player, he has to get a stop. That's common basketball application: you can't just say, "oh, well, that wasn't my original guy so I'm not going to work too hard stopping this".

[BorisDK1]

I agree as well, BorisDK1 is it ok if you do the game analysis and also the SoTD from now on?

I don't know about that...I'll certainly make the results for every game available here, if people want that.

[OvertimeNO]

I agree as well, BorisDK1 is it ok if you do the game analysis and also the SoTD from now on?

I don't know about that...I'll certainly make the results for every game available here, if people want that.

I for one would greatly appreciate this. At least, it'll give people something objective-ish to lean on. The heat of the game tends to forge and solidify a lot of the impressions we have about certain players that may not necessarily be supported by a wide array of data.

[bassmastert]

I have a problem with these statistics. While I appreciate the effort taken into creating the statistical evidence and understand the painstaking yet worthful experience, IMO there is just too much subjectable matter that can't be calculated that will skew the numbers of any certain player, or a team as a whole. I also believe this subject matter can't be corrected through a larger sample size to give an accurate representation of the player's abilities. I'll give a few examples of why I believe some of the numbers can be misleading.

Player A (offensive player) breaks down Player B, gets to the rim uncontested and blows a dunk or lay up. This can happen many times during the year. Should player B be credited with a stop?

Player A is trapped in the corner by Player B and Player C with nowhere to go at the end of a shot clock. Player A heaves up a prayer and it goes in. Should that really be construed as bad defense or a failed assignment?

Our team switches defensive assignments frequently. Who gets the benefit of the result, the defensive player assigned to the offensive player or the one currently defending that player? Also couldn't the coaching decisions in this case factor in the overall team defense by having a bad game plan that doesn't accentuate the player's abilities? Could it be then that a coaching philosophy can either improve or degress the Team DRtg, which could also in turn affect the individual player's DRtg? Would a player traded to another team that increases his DRtg from say, 110 to 105 be considered a better defensive player?

I have other examples but as of now this site is giving me bouncy-messaging syndrome which is affecting my ability to type and read my posts (and it's hard on the eyes).

Case 1: it depends if he continues to contest the drive or just stops and allows it to continue. In the former case, yes that's a Forced Miss; in the latter case, no, that would be attributed to "team".

Case 2: if he was being defended by a player and the shot is taken and it goes in, that's a FGA. No style points or degree of difficulty is added. If a player's a good defensive player, he's going to make guys he's guarding take tougher shots or make tougher plays which are going to be lower-percentage and will, at the end of the day, reflect his scores. (It should also be noted that one improbable made or missed shot in hundreds of possessions faced isn't going to affect anything.) Would you not credit a guy with a basket because he heaved it from behind halfcourt with the clock expiring? Of course not. It is what it is: same applies to PDSS.

Poor coaching decisions certainly affect everybody's numbers. If a team insists on throwing out numerous slow players on the floor together, the team is going to be awfully bad. But team defense also consists of individual play as well.

In the case of switches, or rotations, what is tracked are the guys defending the players at the time the outcome takes place. If a player rotates to cover a player, he has to get a stop. That's common basketball application: you can't just say, "oh, well, that wasn't my original guy so I'm not going to work too hard stopping this".

I guess my problem with following some of the defensive statistics is that I'd want to see more of the intangible stuff measured statistically, which is probably impossible. It is much easier to interpret offensive statistical evidence in basketball IMO. It also seems to me in the NBA a good action defensively doesn't frequently equal a desired result, even more so when you factor in the rule changes in the last 15 or so years.

[supersub15]

What you are trying to do has a number of problems, which I've raised:

1. You are trying to use metrics which indicate what the team does with and without the player on the floor as only an indicator of that player's calibre of defensive (or offensive) play. It might only indicate that the team doesn't do well, for reason(s) not directly reflected in the quality of that player's play. For example, knowing Bargnani's weaknesses rebounding the basketball and obvious athletic disadvantage many nights, it's suicide to put out Turkoglu and Bargnani together in the starting lineup;
2. You don't account for change of talent faced in your metrics;
3. In general, at the end of the day you're trying to do too much with the information you have. You can't take indirect data and apply it directly (without the slightest bit of basketball analysis along the way) and pretend that's particularly authoritative.

1. Absolutely. I've already admitted such. But the fact remains that the team numbers go counter to your PDSS numbers. If Calderon were such a terrible defender (and he is getting beat at the point of attack, I haven't disputed that), 4000+ minutes without Bargnani should correspond to your PDSS. But they don't, which is making me question PDSS.

2. I've already answered that. There are 9000+ minutes in my sampling. Those 9000+ minutes include Bargnani starting/bench and Calderon starting/bench. Any noise that you keep mentioning is smoothed to insignificant levels. Yet, you refuse to accept the fact that 9000+ minutes is a bigger sample than the 1800 minutes or so that Calderon played last year.

3. I am coming to logical conclusions supported by 4 years of data. I know that you are trying to dismiss it because it goes counter to your PDSS conclusions.

I have shown you that the team plays better (by 8 points per 100 possessions) with ALL AND ANY 5-player combinations, yet you refuse to acknowledge that.

As Fenris-77 has said, I agree that Bargnani isn't entirely useless defensively. He's above-average on post-ups and when isolated one-on-one, but those are a finite number of plays over a season. For instance, Synergy counts 281 post-up plays against Bargnani out of 9869. That's 3% of the total amount of plays, and he only stopped only 130 of those. That's 1.625 stops per game over his entire season.

[andreafan]

You could also say why is the Raptors defense better when their leading shot blocker isn't playing. He lead the team by a ton over Bosh/Amir.

Amir is a superior shot-blocker to Bargnani. He averages 2.4 blocks per 36 minutes over his career while Bargnani averages 1.2 blocks per 36 over his career. It remains to be seen if Amir can reduce his foul rate while still being a good shot-blocker.

Scott you mean amir is a better weak side shot blocker please clarify thank you. Or to clarify a football analogy, you could say help side shotblocker. From a man to man straight up defender, andrea"s lenght and bulk make him much better shot blocker. Unfortunately amir is much too weak as
he can get out muscled when matched against centers or power forwards who outweigh him by 50lbs min. I hate when people use stats to generalize a particular individual.

[ranger001]

Boris how do you account for offensive rebounds given up? Lets say a PF/C gives up an oreb which leads to a kickout and then a fg or 3 by a guard. Is that reflected in PDSS?

[cookieman]

‎"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Albert Einstein

That said, thanks for doing this Boris.