NBA and Advanced Statistics

[Benjamin Burch]

Sabermetrics have all but taken over baseball analysis. As with any other statistic, they don't tell the whole story and can be misused and manipulated. However, they do cut through a lot of the fat and are - on the whole - more useful than more traditional statistical categories.

The NBA advanced statistics movement seems to have had far less of an impact. Especially when it comes to voting for things like All-Defensive team and DPOY.

For instance, although Dwight Howard is an absolutely amazing defender and possibly the best in the league, does he always perform better than every other player? LeBron James and Dwyane Wade came in 2nd and 3rd respectively in first place votes for DPOY last year, but Kobe Bryant got the nod for NBA All-Defensive First Team over Wade (who got 2nd Team). Why?

I think it's because Blocks, Steals, and Rebounds are what get looked at by the folks who do the voting for DPOY while the coaches have a much larger vote and say in the First-Team selections and they realize that blocks, stats, and rebounds don't tell the whole story. They view Kobe as being a better lock-down defender than Wade. This doesn't translate into DPOY...

My question is, should it?

Also, even the opinion that Kobe is a better lock-down defender can be brought into question by more advanced statistical categories. For one, Wade is obviously the better shot-blocker, stealer, and rebounder. However, is he also better on locking down his man?

Stats would argue that he and James might be the single two best in all of Basketball - yes ahead of Kobe...

http://www.prosportsdaily.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15455820&postcount=1

My question is, will stats like this ever matter? Or will the media and general impression always rule the day?

[Steven Martinez]

Well, the problem is one could look at stats and make multiple interpretations. Lets just focus on Wade and Kobe since they play the same position. Overall their defensive stats are similar with one major exception. Kobe faced a significant larger number of possessions then Wade. It was such a large disparity that it is difficult to say what the effects would do to Wade's stats if he had to defend 150 more possessions. Also, Kobe is more versatile then Wade do to his size so there are times where Kobe guards bigger players as well as point guards. Looking at Wade's post up defense, he looked pretty mediocre and obviously a small forward would have him for lunch while Kobe has taken on the likes of LeBron and Durrant. What is also key is that they play in different conference and it is fact that the better conference overall is in the West. For example, last year on average, the West scored nearly three more points a game then the East. Also 6 of the top 10 in team FG% are in the West while 8 of the 10 worst team FG% are in the East. So playing 2/3s of your games verses bad shooting teams will make your defensive stats look better then what they truly may be. I think Wade is a good defender and I think Kobe is a good defender. Kobe gets more rebounds, Wade gets more steals. They play the game differently because they have different builds. But what I do know is that Kobe, if needed can guard the SFs like Durrant, LeBron, Pierce and Carmelo. I am not sure Wade could do that.

[Ryan Scott]

I heard a podcast about this at one point with Daryl Morey of the Rockets. He said they're paying smart guys lots of money to come up with better metrics, but they want to keep them private as long as possible to get a leg up on the other teams (who are also paying guys lots of money for the same thing).

I don't know. I just want to see the metric that shows us why, despite his awesome defensive abilities, the Magic always seem to play better with Martin Gortat in the middle.