JHTruth wrote:grindtime22 wrote:JHTruth wrote:
Yeah it was pretty much the same last year. Bottom line is Rob is a phenomenal defensive player and underrated offensively. Thats what the stats have said from the beginning.
He is certainly a phenomenal box score defender. Is he a great defender yet? I wouldn't say that yet. Right now, it is a mix. He causes problems for both teams when we are on defense. He is going to get his hands on a lot of balls, he is going to block a lot of shots, alter shots, and he is going to grab boards. He is also going to get lost, be a step out of position, get beat on the pick roll, foul a lot, and chase blocks that he has no chance at leading to his man rebounding and scoring (KAT defense). He has trouble playing more than 5 minute spurts due to fatigue. It isn't all glorious if you are really watching. WS,BPM, VORP are all nonsense on the defensive end.
I'm encouraged right now though. I like the havoc that we can cause with him and our good athletic wing defenders on the floor. Its fun to watch. I'm all for giving him 15-20 minutes a game and more if he earns it. I'm overly excited about anybody else at that position except for the the minutes when we go really small with Grant at the 5.
Completely disagree that advanced stats are "nonsense" for defense. The people you would expect to be good or bad defenders, the advanced stats tell the same story..
Some of those "Advanced Stats" are not advanced at all though. They are an outdated attempt that simply don't work very well on defense. You simply have to look at how they come to those numbers to see that. They are box score stats that then prorate those box score numbers to overall defensive efficiency. It doesn't even separate for when they were on the court and on the bench. It takes the overall defensive efficiency and then prorates based on the only 3 outcomes they can find in the box score. That is steals, blocks, and rebounds. So somebody like Russell Westbrook looks like a defensive god. Why? He was on a good defensive team and filled the box score. He is not a great defender.
I assume we are getting those numbers from basketball reference. Here is what their own site says. Don't take my word, take it from them.
BPM was created to intentionally only use information that is available historically, going back to 1973-74. More recently there has been more information gathered, both in box scores and via play-by-play, but in order to create a stat with historical usefulness, those stats have been ignored for BPM. In other words – it is possible to create a better stat than BPM for measuring players, but difficult to make a better one that can also be used historically.
There are limitations on all box score stats – if the box score doesn't measure a particular contribution, a box-score-based metric can only approximate that contribution. This is not a great hindrance on the offensive side, as nearly everything of importance on offense is captured by the box score (only missing things like screen-setting), but on defense the box score is quite limited. Blocks, steals, and rebounds, along with minutes and what little information offensive numbers yield about defensive performance are all that is available. Such critical components of defense as positioning, communication, and the other factors that make Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan elite on defense can't be captured, unfortunately.
What does this mean? Box Plus/Minus is good at measuring offense and solid overall, but the defensive numbers in particular should not be considered definitive. Look at the defensive values as a guide, but don't hesitate to discount them when a player is well known as a good or bad defender.
VORP, BPM, Win shares, Basketball Reference Defensive rating (not the same as a simple pts per 100 poss when on the floor) all have the same problem. They are dependent on the boxscore for stops and then assume that all players on a team are equally responsible for stops that aren't steals, blocks, rebounds. It doesn't even matter if they were on the floor or not when the stop happened. A guy that plays 36 minutes gets 3/4 credit of everything instead of the 3/4 of the game he actually played. It's the perfect situation to make Robert Williams look great. Our defense has been close to 20 pts per 100 possessions better with Grant on the floor, yet Robert Williams comes out looking like he has twice the defensive impact. When you take garbage time out, our defense was 2 pts worse with RW3 on the floor last year, yet he looks like a defensive monster according to these "advanced" stats.
If you want to go with real plus minus it can be useful. It has plenty of faults, but it is a much better attempt at defense. It takes when you are on the court or off, tries to adjust for other people on court, different lineups, etc. Of course, the formula isn't well known so it is hard to fully know what is going on.
