Betta Bulleavit wrote:bearadonisdna wrote:Betta Bulleavit wrote:My eye test tells me that he’s a below average defender. The metrics say that he’s a putrid defender. That’s where the disconnect is for me. And that’s particularly troubling when such metrics allows certain people to ascertain that he’s somehow a net negative player because all of the magical advanced metrics say so.
See, here’s my issue with the advanced stats. There are certain team oriented aspects of the game that are hard to account for when developing these advanced stats. If one asks how can any stat that is team based be linked back to an individual player, the quick answer is “oh, well this stat accounts for that.” If one asks how, we get crickets. I’ve taken a fair amount of statistics coursework and I work in a field (Pricing) that revolves around lots of statistics and algorithms. Whenever I try to find out what these advanced stats are based on and the algorithms associated with them, I find nothing. Its like some secret recipe that we’re told to trust but never see. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.
Also i feel zachs acl recovery will have him playing more tentative in some aspects and I'm sure there's some adv stat that will cook him for this
Zach’s biggest issue defensively is that he is weak in the very area that these defensive metrics hone in on, team defense. He’s actually pretty formidable as a man defender. He generally stays in front of his guy. He contests shots. He’s not losing his man all that often. But in terms of help defense and such, he doesn’t always seem to be cognizant of what’s going on outside of his man to man matchup and these advanced stats make you pay big time for that. I do find it encouraging that he called this out as a focus area for him and given his work ethic, I feel that this is something that will improve going forward. We shall see though.
To me I think improving lateral movement is one of the keys to playing better defense.
