Quote:
Originally Posted by Diophantos
No, this isn't what he does. He does often take a bunch of statistics and blends them together into one number, but it's only to make things easier on us, as humans, to process the information. The way the stats are synthesized DO have reasoning behind them, quite a bit. PER for example, is a far superior "overall stat" to something like NBA efficiency (which just adds everything up) because it makes an attempt to logically reason out which stats should be added together in what way, which ones are more important for others, adjusts for minutes, pace, and league strength, considers value of possession, etc. It's not perfect, and it's certainly no substitute for an in-depth analysis of a player's game with all the numbers and game footage, but it's a good way of putting together a bunch of information in a meaningful way for comparison.
|
Yeah, but see that's still what you either are not acknowledging or have never noticed. The weight of each of the factors he chucks in there is still totally subjective. Anybody else could find all of the factors that he uses and balance them according to their own opinion regarding importance, and then conceive this one manufactured number to measure a very broad thing. Who's to say the value a rebound holds, or a steal, or a 3-pointer? Basketball is way too complex to just say "OK, this is the exact value in relation to win/loss or being good/bad". That's why I can't respect these number regurgitations.
There's no way to accurately boil HUGE aspects of basketball (like how good a team is) down to one single number. There's no way. Same with player skill or whatever he's trying to measure. It's still all subjective somewhere along the lines and I just find it far less helpful as far as analysis is concerned. Me just seeing some insanely complicated number assigned to a team or a player does absolutely nothing for me. The importance of each stat in comparison to how good a team/player is will always be subjective. Subjectivity in statistics is actually about the worst thing you could ever have if you want to make a mathematically reliable system.
So, like I said before, actual basketball and player analysis is a hundred times more valuable to me than any number. If somebody shows me a play, a concept, a strategy, a player's weakness or strength, I enjoy basketball and understand it much better than just looking at a list of numbers. Apparently, nobody is into that anymore. And then again, people wonder why fundamentals of the game and old school basketball is going out the window... the media is constantly numbers, numbers, numbers.
Anyway.. I think I've made my point.