DCZards wrote:NatP4 wrote:CobraCommander wrote:
Do you think Sato is starting caliber? ...
Yes? Easily. How many players post >.600 TS%, positive BPM and VORP, and rank top 30 in RPM at their position each and every season in the league? I would imagine even the list of players that average 11-5-4 per36 on .600 TS% is relatively low.
People don’t have to take Sato compliments as a slight to Wall. Satoransky is one of the better guards in the NBA. ....
I’m typically skeptical of stats because #s can be deceiving as it relates to actual oncourt performance and value. Take TS% for example.
Yes, Sato has a > .600 TS% as a guard, which ranks him ahead of Beal, Irving, Simmons, Lillard, Oladipo, Thompson, Lowry, DeRozan and Jrue Holiday. Sato also has a higher TS% than Paul George, KAT, Porter, Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, and Embiid. I don’t think Sato is better than any of these players. Do you?
This is not to knock Sato in anyway and it may be unfair of me to suggest that Sato is not a starter quality PG. But I personally wouldn't rank him in the top 30 guards in the NBA.
There is no such thing as a "starting caliber" player. Among your players at a particular position whoever puts up the best numbers is the guy who should start.
If you don't do that, then you get less good numbers. & only numbers win games. Period. So you win fewer games.
Doesn't mean one shouldn't be "skeptical" of stats -- one should be skeptical of absolutely everything!
And, if you start a guy because of the reason I list above, & then he no longer puts up better numbers than someone else, you have a good reason to change your starter -- but that doesn't change anything. You're changing for the same reason you started him in the first place -- his numbers.
The point isn't that Sato's TS% makes him "better" than anyone who has a lower TS% than his. No one would claim that. But, if he got the same number of rebounds (offensive & defensive) as Joel Embid, etc. etc. through the other numbers (steals, turnovers, assists, etc.), & he also posted a higher TS% than Embid on the same or higher usage, well... in that case he'd be "better" than Embid! Which is kind of obvious. Also kind of impossible for a guard.
The way to understand what his numbers mean is to compare him to a) the average of the numbers put up by NBA PGs & b) one or another individual player you're interested in as a comparison to Sato.
So lets compare him this year to an average PG -- Sato gets more offensive boards & fewer defensive boards. Overall, he's about average at that. His steals & blocks are also just about average. His fouls are a little higher than average, & his assists are below average -- but, his turnovers are so low that it more than makes up for these deficiencies. Hence, on the combination of all box office stats outside of storing he winds up a little above average.
In the case of scoring, he's way way above average in TS%, but the fact that his usage is significantly below average makes that mean less than it would if he shot more. But, the overall result still shows Tomas Satoransky as quite clearly a well above average NBA point guard this year. As he was last year too.
This year, I'd say he ranks somewhere @ 20th best among NBA PGs (leaving out guys who've played so few minutes that their sample sizes are too small for their numbers to mean anything real). He's not playing as well as he did last year, but he's still playing well.
The individual player people will inevitably want to compare Sato to is John Wall. He is having a much better year than John was having before he was shut down.
That doesn't mean he is doing everything better than John! Far from it. In fact, he's doing a lot of things worse. John had fewer fouls, way more blocks, more steals, way more assists, & more defensive boards. & of course he scored way more points.
But, because he scored those extra points at a TS% of .460, & because he turned the ball over so very very much more often than Sato does, he wasn't having nearly as good a year as Satoransky. In fact John Wall was having his worst season since 2011-12.
That's as far as it goes. That's all you can know, all there is to know. & all there is that matters. There's no way Satoransky is "good" beyond what you see in his numbers. There's also no way John Wall is "good" beyond what you see in his numbers. Of course, his bad numbers this year may very well be a function of his being injured. But, all the same, he won't be helping his team win games until those numbers are back where they were in 2016-17 (or at least close).
There is also no way the Washington Wizards are "good" beyond what you see in their numbers. We're 16-24, because we are down almost 4 points a game to our opponents. We're down almost 4 points a game, because of the numbers our players put up.
at Beal
