2013 RAPM/IPV/etc.

[Rapcity_11]

Right but it does tend to be easier to be more productive per-possession with a lower minutes load, especially with minimal work in isolation. Food for thought when comparing him to players with a different role, just as with ORTG.

You're right, I just think the starting point clearly needs to be at a level playing field and adjustments can be made from there. You know?

[Dipper 13]

Is a +2 defense considered good by this measure?

[Doctor MJ]

I almost forgot how much I hated prior informed RAPM. One look at the rankings and I remember immediately. Landry Fields is in the top 25? How the hell?

Ignoring the "hate" comment, I too find myself scratching my head with Fields. He rated nowhere near this high by Englemann's prior-informed metrics the past couple years, and he's hardly played this year - how could such a jump happen? Arguably the entire reason for using prior-informed data is to PREVENT weird jumps like this.

It makes me question whether the new guy is really doing it the same way as Engelmann. And it's tough, because that doesn't necessarily mean he's doing it "wrong", but we should understandably have less faith in him than someone as established as Engelmann (even if Engelmann seems a bit nutty at times, he's clearly good with the math).

[Doctor MJ]

Minutes per game and starts should be weighted in if they arent already. Not just per-minute production, but a filter based on actual minutes played. Likewise a weight to the value of impact based on starting point.

Amir is a good player and i dont doubt he impacts our crap offense a lot, but the meaning of a huge boost to a crap offense and a moderate boost to a good one is not the same, especially as minutes are factored in. And the fact that he scores on orebs, in transition and the PnR, plus his 8,000-year long set jumper.

I've always wanted a more thorough site that includes a factoring in of minutes toward a relatively undebatable "APM-based Impact" stat in addition to the raw APM. Winston's clearly been doing stuff like this from the beginning, seems like such an obvious thing to do, but no one seems to do it on these sites.

Re: boosting crap offense not as impressive. Very true, and something that has to be factored in, but I'd rather do that in my holistic analysis than put it in the data.

Re: Amir. Dude's been loved by APM basically for forever on both teams he's played with. #3 in the league is obviously not going to hold up over time, but he's one of the clear examples to look at as a guy who is doing something right that's hard to put a finger on.

Nene is another one of those guys but on a bigger stage. APM has basically said that Amir should be seen as a valuable starter level player, but it's said that Nene is an all-star.

[Doctor MJ]

Right but it does tend to be easier to be more productive per-possession with a lower minutes load, especially with minimal work in isolation. Food for thought when comparing him to players with a different role, just as with ORTG.

This is true to an extent but I think people overplay it. We don't really know if a guy can be a star until he does it in big minutes, but if a guy is really doing well in smaller minutes it should be standard operating procedure to give him a try with more minutes unless you have a very specific reason not to.

But, as I said, Amir at #3 is clearly absurd. That won't hold up.

[Doctor MJ]

Tim Duncan as a negative on offense.... Incredible.

I think one'd better wait for the full season's worth of data before you jump all over this stat because the results are hilariously skewed.

I know KG is great but this metric has him as more impactful than '09 Wade or even his own '08 version and it's the highest defensive RAPM ever recorded IIRC, over anything Hakeem or D-Rob managed in the 90s, which is ridiculous because he's clearly not a generational level defender anymore.

Do also keep in mind:

RAPM has NEVER been standardized from year to year. The point values you see one year are simply not equivalent to other years.

The '90s "RAPM" numbers are NOTHING LIKE RAPM. He doesn't have the data to do RAPM in the '90s, so he made some other metric correlated to RAPM using existing box score data and on his website he just kept right on calling it "RAPM". For the life of me, I don't understand how he can be so sloppy.

[Doctor MJ]

Is a +2 defense considered good by this measure?

Stating again that "this measure" is literally just what you see in front of you - there's nothing else to actually compare it to so we're all seeing this for the first time right now -

Clearly positive is meant to be a good thing for both offense and defense (which isn't always the case, sometimes negative will be used as good in measures).

Look at the usual suspects and how they appear here, this is how I would translate it:

0 - average
2 - looking promising, but still a lot of noise
4 - unquestionably very good, possibly elite
6 - unquestionably elite
8 - Kevin Freaking Garnett

And to be fair to the metric, APM data has often looked like this over the years, including Garnett being an outlier.

[Doctor MJ]

I think one'd better wait for the full season's worth of data before you jump all over this stat because the results are hilariously skewed.

While this is true, I believe mystic's talked about the fact that the ridge-regression method that is used to build this model allow it to become useful with relatively small sample sizes, and the 50 odd games up to the break should be more than sufficient.

I know KG is great but this metric has him as more impactful than '09 Wade or even his own '08 version and it's the highest defensive RAPM ever recorded IIRC, over anything Hakeem or D-Rob managed in the 90s, which is ridiculous because he's clearly not a generational level defender anymore.

First thing is that there are no comparable numbers for D-Rob or Hakeem. The figures on J.E.'s site for the 90s are a completely different stat, they're essentially built of a simulation of PbP from the 90s based on the box-score. I wouldn't really take ANYTHING from those numbers, and there's no basis to compare them to these. Also, remember that the listed 2000-2012 numbers are ALSO a different stat (xRAPM) which introduces a box-score prior. The comparison to be made here is with the old numbers from Engelmann's site that were taken down, that DavidStern managed to salvage.

Even with those numbers, the only way to compare across seasons is to standardize them in-year (Doc and mystic both harped on this quite a bit).

Where is Harden

Harden is at 3.1 which is 35th in the league

Remember that the model uses priors. Harden's number is based off his figure from last season, a figure that tried to explain his impact in a completely different role than this season. There's going to be some issues there. Further, given that he's in a new role, I would've expected less than stellar numbers anyway. Give him another season for a stat like this (and something like On/Off as well). There's no reason not to expect a jump next year.

Dirk at 5 is hilarious

Same issue with the priors. Dirk's impact was big-time in 2011 and 2012, and he hasn't piled up as many possessions this season, so that prior's got a relatively larger influence. Still, it's down from last year (he was +8.0 in the latest 2012 update) and he's down to a +6.6 already this year with only 1014 minutes played. In this case, more time might actually help.

Just wanted to give my Thumbs Up to all of this.

Harden in particular is hard to read though for reasons that plague non-+- stat analysis too: What does it mean when a player leaves a team and they get better? All depends on context. For myself, I've yet to hear any narrative that seriously argues that Harden was holding Kevin Durant back. Seems to me that literally the young nucleus just got better because they are a young nucleus and those get better. +/- stats using prior though aren't going to be able to be so forgiving.

[Rapcity_11]

I almost forgot how much I hated prior informed RAPM. One look at the rankings and I remember immediately. Landry Fields is in the top 25? How the hell?

Ignoring the "hate" comment, I too find myself scratching my head with Fields. He rated nowhere near this high by Englemann's prior-informed metrics the past couple years, and he's hardly played this year - how could such a jump happen? Arguably the entire reason for using prior-informed data is to PREVENT weird jumps like this.

Well Fields was #34 in 2012 NPI, so there's that.

In addition he's actually still quite a decent role player. Great cutter and rebounder, above average passer, solid defender. If he can regain any sense of a jump shot he'll be one of the better role players in the league.

[Rapcity_11]

Re: Amir. Dude's been loved by APM basically for forever on both teams he's played with. #3 in the league is obviously not going to hold up over time, but he's one of the clear examples to look at as a guy who is doing something right that's hard to put a finger on.

It's actually not that hard to put a finger on Doc. I don't expect that you've watched much Raptors over the past few years though. He's a great PF who has been unfairly labelled an energy guy, or 3rd big. He's a rare big man who is a high impact player on both sides of the ball. Whatever form of +/- family stuff you want to look at, Amir is a beast.

[Doctor MJ]

I almost forgot how much I hated prior informed RAPM. One look at the rankings and I remember immediately. Landry Fields is in the top 25? How the hell?

Ignoring the "hate" comment, I too find myself scratching my head with Fields. He rated nowhere near this high by Englemann's prior-informed metrics the past couple years, and he's hardly played this year - how could such a jump happen? Arguably the entire reason for using prior-informed data is to PREVENT weird jumps like this.

Well Fields was #34 in 2012 NPI, so there's that.

In addition he's actually still quite a decent role player. Great cutter and rebounder, above average passer, solid defender. If he can regain any sense of a jump shot he'll be one of the better role players in the league.

Sorry, NPI?

[Doctor MJ]

Re: Amir. Dude's been loved by APM basically for forever on both teams he's played with. #3 in the league is obviously not going to hold up over time, but he's one of the clear examples to look at as a guy who is doing something right that's hard to put a finger on.

It's actually not that hard to put a finger on Doc. I don't expect that you've watched much Raptors over the past few years though. He's a great PF who has been unfairly labelled an energy guy, or 3rd big. He's a rare big man who is a high impact player on both sides of the ball. Whatever form of +/- family stuff you want to look at, Amir is a beast.

Maybe it's easy for you to see, but Amir's been putting up impressive +/- for a good while longer than he's been getting rave review. It took him years to get minutes, and I don't even recall a vocal minority shouting "Why the heck doesn't he get more minutes!".

[lorak]

Sorry, NPI?

non prior informed.

Field's on/off is also positive so it's seems like he's much better player that box score suggest or Raptors fans think.

[Doctor MJ]

Sorry, NPI?

non prior informed.

Field's on/off is also positive so it's seems like he's much better player that box score suggest or Raptors fans think.

Thanks. Didn't realize that was an acronym now. Also didn't realize his numbers jumped up so much higher without prior last year. With that in mind, the new stat guy looks less questionable, but I'm still not going to say I'm sold on what Fields has done.

[Rapcity_11]

Maybe it's easy for you to see, but Amir's been putting up impressive +/- for a good while longer than he's been getting rave review. It took him years to get minutes, and I don't even recall a vocal minority shouting "Why the heck doesn't he get more minutes!".

NPI = non-prior informed

Well Amir didn't start putting up great +/- type numbers until '10 when he put up a 16.7 PER. I think it's hard for people to recognize and appreciate really good role players on bad teams. He's never really gotten rave review for that reason. But were he playing on a contender, he would get way, way more pub.

It took him years to get minutes because of foul trouble mostly. (It took until '11 to get under 6 fouls per 36) And mistakenly coming out of high school.

[Dipper 13]

Stating again that "this measure" is literally just what you see in front of you - there's nothing else to actually compare it to so we're all seeing this for the first time right now -

Clearly positive is meant to be a good thing for both offense and defense (which isn't always the case, sometimes negative will be used as good in measures).

Look at the usual suspects and how they appear here, this is how I would translate it:

0 - average
2 - looking promising, but still a lot of noise
4 - unquestionably very good, possibly elite
6 - unquestionably elite
8 - Kevin Freaking Garnett

And to be fair to the metric, APM data has often looked like this over the years, including Garnett being an outlier.

Thanks. I only ask due to the comments you made a few months ago hinting that Hibbert was a more impactful player than Wilt for much of his career, notably the losing stretches. Though I don't know if you were referring to the offense or defense. Based on this, Hibbert ranks #141 in the NBA, with -2.1 on offense and +2.4 on defense for a total rating of +0.3. According to basketball-reference, his on/off defensive impact so far this season is -0.5, though that can be affected by the coach's rotations.

[Doctor MJ]

Thanks. I only ask due to the comments you made a few months ago hinting that Hibbert was a more impactful player than Wilt for much of his career, notably the losing stretches. Though I don't know if you were referring to the offense or defense. Based on this, Hibbert ranks #141 in the NBA, with -2.1 on offense and +2.4 on defense for a total rating of +0.3. According to basketball-reference, his on/off defensive impact so far this season is -0.5, though that can be affected by the coach's rotations.

Interesting. I honestly don't remember my comment, and my immediate thought is that whoever said (apparently I did) may have been overreacting.

Just speaking as my current self (I'll speak to other comments I've made in the past if you give me a quote with context) it would be the defense where the comparison got interesting. Hibbert's an excellent defender. As good as Wilt on top of his game? No. Better than Wilt focused elsewhere? Yup.

[Dipper 13]

My mistake. I didn't initially recall your "spinning his wheels" remark. I guess that is in reference to the defensive end, and I assume you were referring to his 1962-63 season.


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[Dipper 13]

Though I still don't get how the estimates show the '67 team as that much worse defensively than '66 or '68, when every source (video and written) indicates otherwise. I guess there is indeed a margin for error in those figures.

[ardee]

I'm not an advanced stats savant, so pardon this question: but what exactly is the point of prior-informed? If you're talking about 2013 by itself, what does one gain from taking into account previous years? It becomes a multi-year study then (which I've seen of course), so why not call it that.