Links To The Present: March 11, 2010
2010-03-11
“He drew a swashbuckler and wrote an essay — about how the name “represents a group of daring, fearless men, whose life’s pact was never surrender, no matter what the odds” — and submitted them.” [Bill Lubinger on the creative mind behind “Cavaliers”]
“The question will be whether the team elects to keeps an extra big man or a spare guard.” [Mary Schmitt Boyer]
“LeBron set to play tomorrow in Philly. Antawn Jamison likely to sit with sore knee.” [Brian Windhorst Twitter]
Anyone else wonder what Delonte West’s fancy table manners are like? I just hope D Green remembered the doe-nutz.
“I’ve never mentioned a single player’s name, publicly or privately,” says Knicks president Donnie Walsh, who faces daily the most virulent strain of Get-Us-LeBron-or-Else fever. “I want to have financial flexibility because that’s the only way you can build the foundation of a title-contending team.” [Ric Bucher – ESPN]
Using the Four Factors, Neil Paine creates lists of past teams that relate to all the current teams. The Cavs are similar in the Four Factors to the 2006 Miami Heat. (Shaq+DWade + Shooters, sound familiar?) From this list, the Orlando Magic have the most similarity to title winning teams.
Commenter BradleyH with an in-depth statistical look at the idea of being a ‘pure’ scorer: “Maybe because giving LeBron everything is a little anti-climatic, or maybe because he seems like more of an athlete than a scorer, LeBron gets knocked out of this running of purity.”
I’m surprised the LeBron PER watch isn’t getting any publicity. Seems we get a “Kobe = clutch” almost every day but LeBron has a VERY good chance of posting the single greatest regular season in the modern era. If the season ended today he’d be at 31.97 which would be the best.
The Big Care Bear with a tweet for all of us: “Be happy. I love u 4 being you”
haha yes, I was the first person to comment on that article. I see it had 300 some subsequent comments posted after. That has to be a record at bball-ref.
@ Tom Pestak
regarding defensive stats there was a nice post comparing offensive-defensive ratings for Jordan, Kobe, Lebron and a bunch of others
The end results was basically the same as with PER: Lebron, MJ and Wilt quite clearly on top, Kobe good but not even that close to Barkley, Magic
http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=838
I have no idea why, but that little story about the kids from the BCH having dinner with some Cavs guys is really cool! Actually, I do know why. For any of you that know that area, I currently live about 3 buildings down the street from the Berea Children’s Home. I’ve actually been there! Why this matters, I really don’t know beyond that. Anyways, good story. It’s nice to see these guys helping out those less fortunate(especially Delonte, he’s my favorite Cav and I’m glad to see that he’s got enough of a grip on his own problems to… Read more »
Nathan – no bonus point for me I thought it was Mo last year.
I grew up playing and analyzing baseball a bit too much. A sport with history and numbers enough to justify a course or degree in college. I for one love the advent of numbers into this game. Something empirical, the more such numbers that mean something that can be had, the better view we can get as to what is really happening out there. Numbers don’t lie, the trick is to understand the question that they answer. And, as was pointed out in the article, the sad fact is that when taking this approach the answer to most riddles comes… Read more »
Tom Pestak says:
March 11, 2010 at 2:32 pm
@Colin, i would say that few educated fans (esp fans of this blog) believe that stats are the “be all, end all”. Especially Cavs fans. I have said many times that Anderson Varejao is the second most important player on the Cavs. I believe that was true last year as well. He isn’t according to PER.
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Bonus points if you knew that Z was second on the Cavs by PER last season :)
More than just his assists, his turnovers have been decreasing each month. Remember when turnovers were a HUGE problem for the Cavs? I think learning to play with Shaq contributed to that, and LeBron was getting a lot of turnovers on entry passes to Shaq that were getting stolen. His turnovers have been steadily declining to last year’s levels.
He’s still got room to grow in FT% and 3P%.
Scary thing about the PER… over the last 25 games LeBron is averaging just under 10 assists per game. What’s his PER gonna look like Next year…?
@Issac – Melo had similar numbers to LeBron in their rookie campaigns and ultimately, while Melo is a perennial all-star, he’s just not LeBron. I don’t think LeBron translates well to other players because his mental approach the game is ALWAYS overlooked by his incredible physical gifts. Even now, he is seen as this freight train that can’t be stopped when us Cavs fans know that most of the game he picks apart defenses with passes. Lots of people have said LeBron is one knee injury away from becomming Vince Carter and I wholeheartedly disagree. He has Magic Johnson’s size… Read more »
On one of the plain dealer article theres a comparison of Lebron’s rookie season and tyreke evans current season. The stats are practically identical except that tyreke has a fg % of about 46, while lebron had one of about 40, 41. But I don’t see tyreke becoming nearly so dominant.. trying to think why, and I think partly its that lebron couldnt shoot when he entered the league, but he was always going to get better, whereas tyreke might progress a load on his 3fg %, but not so much as too increase his fg % by as much… Read more »
That game was cursed. Rodney Stuckey collapsed, and the Cavs were down 21 in the Q. As an extremely left-brained person, I find most of the advanced metrics a decent start in terms of really analyzing the game, but they don’t tell the whole story. However, you’re -never- going to be able to boil the whole story down to metrics. To use one of my favorite lines from this blog, you can’t assign a number to opposing teams trying repeatedly to abuse Wally defensively and and asking “Hey, aren’t you Wally Szczerbiak?” when he ends up providing resistance. You’d need… Read more »
“It’s usually the people who don’t like what the statistics are telling them that hate them the most. There have to be some players out there, for instance, who are not very happy about advanced stats and what they are revealing about them.”
+1.
I’ll also +1 pretty much everything Tom said.
Btw, anyone heard the most recent Disciples of Clyde podcast? BradleyH got a call out. They also denigrated (jokingly) Cavs fans for wearing Snuggies and being “corny.” I have to say I hope someone else breaks the wearing a fleece blanket record so I can pretend that never happened.
Tom, Great points. I especially like this: Stats don’t have feelings. If LeBron shoots 30% the rest of the year, PER isn’t going to “adjust” itself because “well LeBron has that killer instinct…” it’s going to reflect that he’s not playing as well as he was. Stats don’t forget the game winners players missed. They don’t give you more than 2 points for tomahawk dunks. They are objective, and for that reason, they offer the most unbiased evidence in a sport where everyone is a fan. It’s usually the people who don’t like what the statistics are telling them that… Read more »
@Tom Pestak: Damn straight bro. Couldnt have put it better. Hollinger’s created a tool, why not use it? And if you don’t like PER for whatever reason, Im yet to find a stat that does not put Lebron at the top of the top.
@Colin, i would say that few educated fans (esp fans of this blog) believe that stats are the “be all, end all”. Especially Cavs fans. I have said many times that Anderson Varejao is the second most important player on the Cavs. I believe that was true last year as well. He isn’t according to PER. I find it more valid to argue something I believe subjectively with objective evidence than to rely on conventional wisdom, testimonials, etc. For the case of LeBron, pretty much EVERY statistical measure of offensive value has him at the top of the list, in… Read more »
From a PER standpoint, yes, LeBron is having the greatest season ever.
The number of people who continue to think these stats are the be all, end all astounds me.
I posted this on Real Cavs Fans as well, but people give Hollinger a lot of crap for his formulas mainly because they just don’t understand them. Hollinger is not saying, “the Cavs are #1 in my power rankings, therefore they are the best team in the league.” He is simply giving you a mathematical look at the game of basketball.
@Jonathon, PER takes box score stats and adjusts them for pace and usage. It allows to take extend the traditional comparisons of “who scores more per game” and put them on equal planes. It allows us to compare the production of players from different teams, and different eras. It’s not a “lazy” stat it’s a composite stat. I’m not saying it’s the be-all-end-all measure of a player’s worth, far from it. But you can turn on the TV almost any given night and see a comparison of players PPG as a measure of worth. It’s much lazier to do that… Read more »
Please, please continue referencing Lebron’s PER. Hollinger’s “pet formula” has incredible respect in basketball circles, and it’s a useful tool to try to compare players both within and across seasons. Tom isn’t trying to assert definitively that Lebron has had the best regular season, but pointing out that one indicator suggests that might be so. There’s nothing “lazy” about using PER in this context. PER is a tool, not the bible, and I see no evidence that Tom has used it an irresponsible or lazy manner.
No, jonathan, it’s lazy to dismiss PER. It measures the major statistical categories, adjusts them for pace and minutes, and thus evens those stat values across the board. If that’s the lazy way to call him MVP, what is the working man’s way? Please tell me you aren’t going to say 30 ppg and 8.5 apg, and then point to the best record. You would call those same stats meaningless if VC were putting them up on the Suns, and they would mean far less because of the system. PER isn’t perfect at all, but I’m reasonably sure it is… Read more »
Please, please stop telling me that Lebron is having the greatest season ever because some writer’s pet formula spits out a specific number. He might be having that season, but PER does not mean it to be true!! And if you wonder why no one is talking about it, it’s because most people outside Hollinger and the Lebron brigade recognize that fact. You can make the argument without using PER. It’s just lazy.
Ferry has remained financially flexible the last 3 years. He’s done this by acquiring big pieces that became huge trade assets. I would argue that building a team through FA is in many ways the opposite of having financial flexibility.
““I want to have financial flexibility because that’s the only way you can build the foundation of a title-contending team.””
Or, you know, you could stop giving away lottery picks or drafting stiffs like Gallinari, Hill, and Michael Sweetney among others.
But watching you mortgage the next decade on 1 or 2 guys is much more fun to watch. Godspeed to you sir.