bwgood77 wrote:AtheJ415 wrote:bwgood77 wrote:
Well regardless, you are cherry picking stats, and I figured you might resort to win shares, which I don't like as much, but clearly "all the advanced stats" don't favor Warren over Tucker. And again, for the record, right now, I would play Warren as much as possible over Tucker because of the state of our team, but despite people hating Hornacek, he has seemed to get the most out of young players, particularly in season one, but when he first gave Booker and Warren big minutes they did well....when he gives them fewer I imagine he has a good reason.
I don't think the "throwing guys out there because they are young" tactic is a proven tactic, though some will resort to 1 in a million player like LeBron or Kobe or whoever.
I'm not saying throw Warren out there because he's young. I'm saying throw him out there because he's better.
And it's not really cherry picking, instead it's using individual numbers that are rate based as opposed to numbers including teammates and that are impacted by minutes played. VORP is calculated in basketball reference using minutes played, so PJ's is impacted by his higher minutes, and box plus minus is a 5 person stat. In that scenario, VORP is like comparing Knight to Booker on the season despite one getting drastically more minutes. In fact, Knight's VORP of 0.6 is much higher than Booker's -0.2, and yes that's NEGATIVE 0.2. That's why VORP is best used for guys in similar scenarios and who play the same style.
Box plus minus over 45 games with one guy playing off the bench and another as a starter can't give a great value either. That's like using wins and losses outright to compare players on different teams, since it's a 5 person stat that is largely dependent on how balanced your team is. It's a great stat for long-term measuring of players with comparably deep teams or in similar roles, but not here. If you're going to buy into box +/- over 45 games, then you shouldn't have a problem with ORtg-DRtg since that is at least an individual estimate, and that being a negative number means we're more likely to lose every minute PJ is on the court. That is not the case with TJ.
Also, I'd argue that PJ's rebounding whore mentality inflates his numbers quite a bit. He frequently takes easy rebounds away from his own bigs (particularly Len), and those do not in any way help us win.
Honestly, I think you know how these number break out better than I do, but when you say "all the numbers point to ____" I would like to see a little backup, because when I look at them I keep seeing different things. I know there are so many basketball stats these days and they are tough to decipher because of minutes played, who you are playing with, etc, but blanket statements won't leave anyone here (well yes, probably some) convinced.
I think you have very good insight as does Los Soles, but I want to see the support (which I'm guessing you can easily provide)...like Los Soles does.
I did provide backup. TJ's WS/48 has been double PJ's for most of the season (it was up at .122 for a long period of time, until TJ has recently struggled and PJ has done better, but it's still nearly that), and his ORtg DRtg differential is also equally huge. They aren't even remotely close to each other when viewed under that holistic spectrum. The truth is there are not that many advanced numbers you can look at that are appropriate to measure 2 players in different roles on the same team with different minutes. WS/48 is the best one in this scenario though because it eliminates the key weakness of winshare, which is that it inflates guys on good teams since they have more wins to share across their team (like comparing anyone on GS versus anyone on Philly). Here, we have the same number of wins to share, and WS/48 eliminates the minutes played differential.
I could break down every advanced offensive stat and every advanced defensive stat too but they would show nothing everybody doesn't already know, which is that TJ dominates PJ offensively and the reverse happens defensively. So of the holistic numbers that factor in both sides of the ball, there are only 4 that are commonly used. VORP is great for guys playing similar minutes, but not guys playing different minutes, so that has to get tossed. So what we're left with is box plus minus, WS, WS/48, and ORtg and DRtg differential. WS (as a total not /48) gets tossed because it factors in minutes played. WS/48 solves the minutes problems so that stays. You could keep box plus minus, but it makes less intuitive sense here since one is playing with starters while the other backups. ORating and DRating, unlike box plus minus, is an individual estimate. You have to look at differential because individually ORating and DRating don't tell you much since 1 is all offense and the other is all defense. I think differential makes more sense here because we have 2 guys who excel at each area, and the difference in that also favors TJ, and it's not close.
If you want to fall back on Box +/- over such a short period of time, or VORP for guys who play different minutes, then you have to come to grips with Brandon Knight being one of our best players. Because his numbers there are better than many of our other guys due to minutes played and getting to play with better players (particularly Bledsoe, our best player) for much of the year. Take Knight v. Booker on these numbers. You look at WS/48, and Booker is 1/3 higher, and his ORtg DRtg differential is also 3X better. Those show Booker has had the better year. For VORP Knight's is 0.6 while Booker's is -0.2, and for Box +/-, Knight is -0.4, while Booker is -2.8, both of which favor Knight in a big way. So let me ask you, who has been better this year in your mind, Booker or Knight? Because that should clarify which advanced stats are most accurate here.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pcm_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=0&y1=2016&p1=knighbr03&y2=2016&p2=bookede01&p3=&p4=&p5=&p6=
Good research BW.
