Who's better: Josh Jackson or Andrew Wiggins?

[Killboard]

A 1.60 ORPM that is offset by his hugely negative DRPM.

DRPM weight rebounds a lot, just as any other defensive advanced stat, and the Wolves are bad in defense as a whole.
Is hard to distinguish who the fault is when you have 3 21 YO players beside him at all times and a bench full of scrubbs.
To know exactly where Wiggins is defensively you would put him besides competent defenders. Maybe that could happen as soon as next season. But I know something for sure, he is a lot better defending SG than SF, given his current weight and strenght.

He could not be a positive player on Defense (which I think is becoming as a late) but definetly he isnt the worst NBA defender in his position, as DRPM weights.

Where did you find that DRPM weighs rebounds? RPM doesn't use box score stats. It uses play by play data. It's from the same family of stats as +/-. Maybe you're confusing DRPM with DBPM.

RPM is a propietary stat, so there isnt a published formula, but people that tried to recreate RPM find this:
http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/02/19/freelance-friday-deconstructing-rpm-the-mighty-prior/

Overall a linear combination of RAPM and BPM is quite good at predicting RPM. BPM is actually a better predictor than RAPM. That shows in part how important the prior is.

Actually, I split it into predicting ORPM and DRPM separately and combined the two. The model for DRPM also improved by adding Height as a variable. It is not used in BPM, but is used in Engelmann’s prior.

So basically is some proportion of BPM, RAPM and Height.

[Killboard]

A 1.60 ORPM that is offset by his hugely negative DRPM.

DRPM weight rebounds a lot, just as any other defensive advanced stat, and the Wolves are bad in defense as a whole.
Is hard to distinguish who the fault is when you have 3 21 YO players beside him at all times and a bench full of scrubbs.
To know exactly where Wiggins is defensively you would put him besides competent defenders. Maybe that could happen as soon as next season. But I know something for sure, he is a lot better defending SG than SF, given his current weight and strenght.

He could not be a positive player on Defense (which I think is becoming as a late) but definetly he isnt the worst NBA defender in his position, as DRPM weights.

Bruh, there isn't a single advanced stat that paints Wiggins (especially his defense in a positive light).

Let's look at his camera tracked defensive percentages. Note that these are not 'advanced stats'. There are merely raw stats that we can't used to collect without the aid of cameras and computers.

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203952/defense-dash/

The dude allows his man to shoot 5.2%! more from 2's, over 2.8% more overall.

Let's look at an SF actually good at defense Draymond

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203110/defense-dash/

Let's look at who I think should be DPOY, Gobert.

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203497/defense-dash/

First all I think he isnt a plus defender on consitent basis, let alone a DPOY candidate as Gobert or Draymond. The wolves dont have a better wing defensive player which cause Wiggins to match up with the best offensive threat other team has every game. That include defending SF a lot, which many times have 30 pounds adventage. That isnt on him but on the roster construction.

As a late, at least Rush is a more savy and heavy than Lavine, but for the first 50 games of the season he and Lavine played 28+ MPG together while being the most lightweight wing duo in the whole league, and with no great communicators behind them in Dieng and Towns.

Add to that he had 5 different coaches since high school, and Thibs handle a very complex defensive scheme, which they still picking up. We are gonna see how the future presents but Im very positive he is gonna be a plus defender down the road.

The problem that I have with player tracking stats is that it doesnt take into account the momentum players had previous to the play. I mean, if Wiggins was rotating when the shot happened, and the opposing player had the momentum adventage, there isnt only his fault. Team defense must be considered into that, and the wolves struggled heavily to start the season.

[CptCrunch]

DRPM weight rebounds a lot, just as any other defensive advanced stat, and the Wolves are bad in defense as a whole.
Is hard to distinguish who the fault is when you have 3 21 YO players beside him at all times and a bench full of scrubbs.
To know exactly where Wiggins is defensively you would put him besides competent defenders. Maybe that could happen as soon as next season. But I know something for sure, he is a lot better defending SG than SF, given his current weight and strenght.

He could not be a positive player on Defense (which I think is becoming as a late) but definetly he isnt the worst NBA defender in his position, as DRPM weights.

Bruh, there isn't a single advanced stat that paints Wiggins (especially his defense in a positive light).

Let's look at his camera tracked defensive percentages. Note that these are not 'advanced stats'. There are merely raw stats that we can't used to collect without the aid of cameras and computers.

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203952/defense-dash/

The dude allows his man to shoot 5.2%! more from 2's, over 2.8% more overall.

Let's look at an SF actually good at defense Draymond

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203110/defense-dash/

Let's look at who I think should be DPOY, Gobert.

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203497/defense-dash/

First all I think he isnt a plus defender on consitent basis, let alone a DPOY candidate as Gobert or Draymond. The wolves dont have a better wing defensive player which cause Wiggins to match up with the best offensive threat other team has every game. That include defending SF a lot, which many times have 30 pounds adventage. That isnt on him but on the roster construction.

As a late, at least Rush is a more savy and heavy than Lavine, but for the first 50 games of the season he and Lavine played 28+ MPG together while being the most lightweight wing duo in the whole league, and with no great communicators behind them in Dieng and Towns.

Add to that he had 5 different coaches since high school, and Thibs handle a very complex defensive scheme, which they still picking up. We are gonna see how the future presents but Im very positive he is gonna be a plus defender down the road.

The problem that I have with player tracking stats is that it doesnt take into account the momentum players had previous to the play. I mean, if Wiggins was rotating when the shot happened, and the opposing player had the momentum adventage, there isnt only his fault. Team defense must be considered into that, and the wolves struggled heavily to start the season.

1. The Wiggins having to defend best defender argument is being brought up every single time. But most people fail to understand is that this is RELATIVE to each player's average performance. The quality of the opponent literally doesn't matter for this average weighted stat. The quality of his defensive assignment does not matter.

2. You can blame lack of continuity and coaching, but most NBA prospects have had several coaches. Coaches don't make you a bottom 5-10% percentile defensive player.

3. The Wolves team is too heavy to carry argument is lame. You are literally blaming his team for his lack of defense. Every player in the league has to cover up the mistakes of his teammates. Wiggins is known to be atrocious at switching due to his low defensive basketball IQ. His man defense is fairly good in fact. There is literally no excuse here.

Let it be clear that I'm not calling Wiggins a 'bad defender', I'm calling him a atrocious ones, perhaps historically bad given his physical profile. Second to last among SF in the league in terms of DRPM, with last place rapidly rising over the past month or two. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up as the worst defensive SF in the league based on advanced stats by the end of the season.

[Killboard]

1. The Wiggins having to defend best defender argument is being brought up every single time. But most people fail to understand is that this is RELATIVE to each player's average performance. The quality of the opponent literally doesn't matter for this average weighted stat. The quality of his defensive assignment does not matter.

2. You can blame lack of continuity and coaching, but most NBA prospects have had several coaches. Coaches don't make you a bottom 5-10% percentile defensive player.

3. The Wolves team is too heavy to carry argument is lame. You are literally blaming his team for his lack of defense. Every player in the league has to cover up the mistakes of his teammates. Wiggins is known to be atrocious at switching due to his low defensive basketball IQ. His man defense is fairly good in fact. There is literally no excuse here.

Let it be clear that I'm not calling Wiggins a 'bad defender', I'm calling him a atrocious ones, perhaps historically bad given his physical profile. Second to last among SF in the league in terms of DRPM, with last place rapidly rising over the past month or two. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up as the worst defensive SF in the league based on advanced stats by the end of the season.

1. I was making the point for player track stats. Team defense definetly has impact on a player success on individual plays, as do the quality of the players you are matched up.

2. No, but defensive all in one stats like RPM, DBPM and Winshares are box score stats in their background, like you can see in my previous post where I linked an article from Nylon Calculus. Im not arguing he is a good defender (on consistent basis), but definelty he isnt worst than Shabazz Muhammed, who ranks almost a entire point over him in DRPM.

3. If his man defense is fairly good, then you are making my point easier. How many teams you know who played 21 YO players 37MPG all season? And they are playing 2 of them out of position (KAT isnt a PF and Wiggins is more suited to defend SG given he weights 200 pounds) and with a new coach. Obviously he is developing his court awareness and have ways to go, but I dont think you can judge the whole picture without take into consideration the things I mentioned, as the fact that Wiggins and Towns are proppeling the wolves to be in playoff contention, despite a 6-18 start and the lack of mature productive players (besides Rubio).

But the future will tell which is his celing is in that side of the floor. Not need to keep talking the same thing over and over.

[Just_Bullz]

Josh has skills that will give him a longer career and also make his teammates better.

Floats my boat.

[reload141]

Please fix your FT's JJ.

[Brauer]

If Jackson keeps shooting like this, he could go #2

[reload141]

Yeah if Boston lands at 2 or 3 I really hope we get him.

[CptCrunch]

DRPM weight rebounds a lot, just as any other defensive advanced stat, and the Wolves are bad in defense as a whole.
Is hard to distinguish who the fault is when you have 3 21 YO players beside him at all times and a bench full of scrubbs.
To know exactly where Wiggins is defensively you would put him besides competent defenders. Maybe that could happen as soon as next season. But I know something for sure, he is a lot better defending SG than SF, given his current weight and strenght.

He could not be a positive player on Defense (which I think is becoming as a late) but definetly he isnt the worst NBA defender in his position, as DRPM weights.

Where did you find that DRPM weighs rebounds? RPM doesn't use box score stats. It uses play by play data. It's from the same family of stats as +/-. Maybe you're confusing DRPM with DBPM.

RPM is a propietary stat, so there isnt a published formula, but people that tried to recreate RPM find this:
http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/02/19/freelance-friday-deconstructing-rpm-the-mighty-prior/

Overall a linear combination of RAPM and BPM is quite good at predicting RPM. BPM is actually a better predictor than RAPM. That shows in part how important the prior is.

Actually, I split it into predicting ORPM and DRPM separately and combined the two. The model for DRPM also improved by adding Height as a variable. It is not used in BPM, but is used in Engelmann’s prior.

So basically is some proportion of BPM, RAPM and Height.

I personally RPM's 'prior' is all marketing. RAPM is basically Lasso regularized APM.

RPM is ESPN's flavor of RAPM but they keep on stressing the usage of priors. If these are real priors in the sense of Bayesian regression, then they are no longer using the same framework as RAPM (according to my understanding, they are). So, I am led to believe that ESPN is simply spinning the LASSO regularization as a double exponential/laplace prior. Pretty bull to be honest, until I can find more written articles describing RPM's calculations.

[The-Power]

Does he really not have his own thread (only this one comparing him to Wiggins)?

Anyway, last night was a prime example of what I meant when I wrote that he's going to find ways to contribute to winning. The numbers of times he got his hands on the ball on both ends was incredible even if it wasn't captured in the box score a lot of times.

He played great defense against Swanigan when he was matched up against him (especially in the first half) - denying inside passes by fronting him, deflecting passes, boxing him out. And he was also critical for the help defense Kansas played inside after the poor defensive start to the game. 4 steals and 1 block with 8 defensive rebounds give you an idea of what he's done but it sill undersells what you could see on the floor (he had a couple more deflections, some great box-outs, tipped rebounds and contests around the rim). Most promising might be his Draymond Green-esque interior defense where he bothers bigger opponents as well as quicker players by defending with an outstretched lower body and his hands up. That forces a lot of misses without fouling and offensive players aren't really used to that type of defense. He's going to be one of those players who will force missed shots around the rim and everybody is going to talk about easy shots that were missed when they really aren't easy specifically because of how they are defended (people mostly only see what happens with the extremities and not the body).

Wasn't one of his better offensive games generally speaking but he did save a lot of possessions for Kansas (the one offensive rebound in the second half where he was fouled was just wow) and he found ways to score after a cold start. It's great to have a player who will make plays off the ball on offense regardless of circumstances - it's a very underappreciated and underrated quality. The recently found confidence in his shot is just the cherry on the top and while I don't know how long it lasts I'm not worried about him contributing on offense consistently simply because he can and will do much more than one thing. Must improve his free throw shooting, though.

[EvanZ]

RPM is ESPN's flavor of RAPM but they keep on stressing the usage of priors. If these are real priors in the sense of Bayesian regression, then they are no longer using the same framework as RAPM (according to my understanding, they are). So, I am led to believe that ESPN is simply spinning the LASSO regularization as a double exponential/laplace prior. Pretty bull to be honest, until I can find more written articles describing RPM's calculations.

1) It doesn't use LASSO. Not sure why you would think that either. Do you see many players with a 0.00 rating?
2) RPM uses box score metrics in its prior. Look at this tweet, for example:

Read on Twitter

[CptCrunch]

RPM is ESPN's flavor of RAPM but they keep on stressing the usage of priors. If these are real priors in the sense of Bayesian regression, then they are no longer using the same framework as RAPM (according to my understanding, they are). So, I am led to believe that ESPN is simply spinning the LASSO regularization as a double exponential/laplace prior. Pretty bull to be honest, until I can find more written articles describing RPM's calculations.

1) It doesn't use LASSO. Not sure why you would think that either. Do you see many players with a 0.00 rating?
2) RPM uses box score metrics in its prior. Look at this tweet, for example:

Read on Twitter

The issue is that there is a disconnect. RAPM uses Lasso. RPM doesn't?

ESPN's RPM is supposed to be a modified version of RAPM. By not using regularized regression, the whole framework changes. It is then no longer a modified RPM, but rather a whole another predictive metric.

The point I'm trying to make is that LASSO is equivalent to a Bayesian laplace prior. I was questioning if ESPN's RAPM is simply being spun/marketed as a bayesian model even though it is practically a modified RPM with an elastic net family regularization.

As far as I can tell, there are no detailed technical explanation of ESPN's RPM (publicly available).

[EvanZ]

The original formulation of RAPM used ridge penalty, not LASSO. So I don't know where you are getting that from. Care to elaborate your sources?

Why don't you just contact Jerry Engelmann on Twitter for clarification? He's usually willing to discuss these things to the extent that he can. Short of that, head over to APBR, where you will likely find it much easier to get some answers about the general methods used. Just because the full details of RPM are not public, doesn't mean the framework can't be discussed.

[CptCrunch]

The original formulation of RAPM used ridge penalty, not LASSO. So I don't know where you are getting that from. Care to elaborate your sources?

Why don't you just contact Jerry Engelmann on Twitter for clarification? He's usually willing to discuss these things to the extent that he can. Short of that, head over to APBR, where you will likely find it much easier to get some answers about the general methods used. Just because the full details of RPM are not public, doesn't mean the framework can't be discussed.

Mis-remembered. Lasso/Ridge is all about the same... Just replace the Laplacean prior with Gaussian in my above posts.

Never seen the APBR page. I'll have a look. edit: there are some really good posts on the forums

[Krapinsky]

Wiggins about to become the second youngest player to 5,000 points and people think Jackson is a better prospect. SMH.

For reference, Lebron is the youngest player to reach 5,000 and Kobe is second youngest.

[GimmeDat]

Wiggins about to become the second youngest player to 5,000 points and people think Jackson is a better prospect. SMH.

For reference, Lebron is the youngest player to reach 5,000 and Kobe is second youngest.

Wiggins is an extremely high level scorer, there's no doubting that, and that obviously has its value, but he doesn't do a lot else on the floor at a good level, and that's concerning.

If Jackson can be 2/3rd's the offensive player Wiggins is, he'll easily be the more valuable player.

[Marcus]

Wiggins about to become the second youngest player to 5,000 points and people think Jackson is a better prospect. SMH.

For reference, Lebron is the youngest player to reach 5,000 and Kobe is second youngest.

Homer much?

The thread is and always has been about what they were leaving school. Why wolves fans keep pointing to everything Wiggins is doing right now I don't understand.

[916fan]

Don't think Jackson is a better prospect than Wiggins out of Kansas. I think everyone can agree that Jackson hasn't showed the true ability of being a #1 scorer in the NBA. This is where Wiggins steps in. Wiggins had amazing scoring instincts, and that's something you just can't teach. His length and athleticism made him a very good defensive prospect too. As long as he continued to fill out his frame, he could be a lock-down type of player in the NBA.

Josh Jackson beats Wiggins on facilitating, rebounding, and defending. I don't think either player are similar at all, so comparisons become difficult here.

I personally think Wiggins was the better prospect. Better shooter. Better shot creator. Scoring instincts. The NBA isn't all about offense, but when's the last time you saw the DPOY also win MVP?

[Zeitgeister]

Wiggins about to become the second youngest player to 5,000 points and people think Jackson is a better prospect. SMH.

For reference, Lebron is the youngest player to reach 5,000 and Kobe is second youngest.

That's a completely arbitrary stat. He's not a positive impact player through his first three years, that's what I care about. Wiggins is talented in that he can put up a lot of points when given many opportunities to do so. He's below league average in efficiency though and he's a poor playmaker as well. On a good team, it becomes difficult to justify giving him that many possessions. The problem is he's not good at anything else.

Josh Jackson is the personification of everything Wiggins should be. A guy that plays intelligently and uses his athletic gifts to their fullest to be an absolute defensive stopper and a very good rebounder. It won't take much to be better than Wiggins and I think Jackson's floor is much higher because he's much more versatile and doesn't need to be a superstar in order to be a positive player. Wiggins is essentially a boom or bust type because his scoring needs to explode in both volume and efficiency if he's going to be a positive impact player.

[Duke4life831]

Wiggins about to become the second youngest player to 5,000 points and people think Jackson is a better prospect. SMH.

For reference, Lebron is the youngest player to reach 5,000 and Kobe is second youngest.

Well most 21 year olds dont get to take the 5th most shots in the NBA most seasons either. Wiggins only brings scoring to the table and at the moment hes just a high volume scorer, hes not what you would call an efficient scorer. This year he is 5th in shot attempts and 15th in PPG. His TS% of 53% is nothing to write home about, its about NBA average. His eFG% of 48% is 3% below the NBA average. So the numbers are kind of showing hes an above average scorer that just so happens to play for a really bad team which allows him to take a ton of shots. Basically all of the advanced stats show he has a negative impact on the game, he has a poor WS/48, he has a negative BPM, VORP, DRPM and RPM.

But if we go back to what this thread was really all about which is who was the better prospect coming out of college. Jackson was the far better rebounder, facilitator and defender while at Kansas. Jackson was also the better jump shooter as well with his 38% from 3 compared to Wiggins 34% and Jackson shot 38% from the mid range while Wiggins shot 34%.

Honestly there are only 2 things Wiggins was superior at over Jackson and thats FT shooting and athleticism. I dont think the athleticism is all that big of a difference, especially since Jackson seems to use his athleticism more to his advantage than Wiggins does. The FT shooting is a big concern for Jackson, but when you consider all the other things that Jackson is better at, I still say Jackson is the better prospect.