Chris Paul and the Failure of Analytics

 
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LandsbergerRules
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:46 am    Post subject: Chris Paul and the Failure of Analytics

Good read about how analytics seem to show Chris Paul is up there with Jordan, Kareem, and the other GOAT candidates when it is clear that he is not: https://deadspin.com/the-chris-paul-problem-is-an-analytics-problem-1797409440
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:43 pm    Post subject:

Excellent read.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 1:20 pm    Post subject:

I never understood why people think Chris Paul is a good defender. He gets some steals but that doesn't warrant him being first team all defense so many times
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 1:28 pm    Post subject:

I remember someone else posted this and I mentioned stats are what they are but Chris Paul will never be top 10 not even top 20 to me.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:44 pm    Post subject:

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Basketball analytics say he is even more than that. According to Basketball Reference, Paul has the sixth-highest career Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of any player ever; Win Shares Per 48 Minutes (WS/48) essentially cannot tell the difference between him (.2504) and Michael Jordan (.2505); Box Plus-Minus (BPM) says only Jordan and LeBron James are his superiors. His career 122.69 Offensive Rating (OffRtg) is the highest of all time. The judgment of the sport’s holistic metrics is that he is one of the best basketball players who ever lived.


The article lost me right there. The numbers are mid-career. In the case of Jordan, his numbers include his declining years, including his years as a Wizard. It is likely that Paul's final numbers will be lower. Just using PER as an example, Paul's peak season ('09) was 21st overall. He may rank sixth now, but he'll most likely finish outside the top 10.

Beyond that, those numbers simply show that Paul is a great regular season player in terms of box score production. That is just one criteria when we rate the all-time greats.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:29 pm    Post subject:

Those stats aren't analytics, if you actually think they are, you should simply leave the topic alone as an infant talking about quantum physics makes as much sense.

Secondly stats across eras aren't comparative, shooting efficiencies were much lower in Jordan's era due to rules (hand checking anyone?), level of organisational resources and professionalism, etc. It's just as dumb as comparing the times of Jesse Owens to modern day athletes, creationism level nonsense.

A player with a TS of 60 in 1990 will show the same results in these compound stats (PER etc) as they do in 2017. Being that guy in 1990 puts you miles ahead of everyone else, being that guy in 2017 makes you 1 of 20 guys. Actual analytics will tell you this very thing, it's the job of it to tell you this very thing.

You win titles by being better than the other people of your day, not by being statistically comparable to a guy who won 20 years ago.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:52 pm    Post subject: Re: Chris Paul and the Failure of Analytics

LandsbergerRules wrote:
Good read about how analytics seem to show Chris Paul is up there with Jordan, Kareem, and the other GOAT candidates when it is clear that he is not: https://deadspin.com/the-chris-paul-problem-is-an-analytics-problem-1797409440
dang, they had to do it to my boy cp3.

very good read. and all true.


Quote:
Second, in the playoffs, the ability to switch on defense becomes more important and valuable, and Paul, one of the smallest players in the sport, loses much of his defensive value because most of the players on the floor can shoot right over him:
Paul is one of the best defensive point guards in the NBA, but a point guard’s ability to defend his position becomes less important in the playoffs, since teams often cross-switch bigger wings on them and switch screens more frequently rather than keep players on their original defensive assignments.


I've been saying forever how much I dislike short shooting guards running the point if you don't have a tall Longer SG's to cover their backs on defense. otherwise you will consistently run into defensive issues. think about it. AI as great as he was couldn't stop a any of the games best SG's. who some how in the playoffs he ended up switched on. SG's or sf's. and they would torch little Ai. the reason curry can survive with less athleticism is because curry is a taller guy. westbrook actually runs into this issue too. but he's a bit stronger than cp3 and obviously he has insane athleticism to cover some of his size issues on switches.

damian lillard has this same issue. since CJ aint a defender it makes it even worse. which is why the blazers aint doing much with those two as starters.

This is also the same reason Phil was always looking for that Big guard. "switch everything". The beauty of lonzo. all he has to do is get a little bit better with his man defense. and the 6'6 size will take care of the rest. you can do that cross screening if you want to. and you will end up with the same scenario. a guy your height or taller guarding you.

Quote:
Paul can’t consistently create easy shots against an elite defense, but he’s also too disciplined to take bad shots, which limits his upside against higher levels of competition. Paul has averaged more than 25 points a game in a playoff series only once, and it was in his most recent seven-game battle against the Jazz. [Russell] Westbrook has done it nine times, and [Stephen] Curry has done it eight.


the above quote tells me ....cp3 doesn't have the mamba mentality, and he surely lost it once he left the hornets. the better his team the more he wants those guys to do it. which is understandable. but if you're the man on the squad. its up to you to do it.
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tox
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 10:35 pm    Post subject:

i'm actually glad there was a good treatment to this issue.

The Ringer article was particularly a good one, I thought:
https://theringer.com/chris-paul-nba-inefficiency-week-a43ade69aa3d

I really hope some analytics work goes into quantifying how guys who only make "good decisions" hurt their team in the playoffs. E.G. a more aggressive CP3 might have meant fewer Blake Griffin ISOs which meant better efficiency for the team over all, despite CP3's stats looking worse. You saw this briefly with Pau's playoffs stats which were transformative when he came to play with Kobe.

NBA analytics are definitely in their nascency, despite how they're often promulgated.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 4:43 am    Post subject:

Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Quote:
Basketball analytics say he is even more than that. According to Basketball Reference, Paul has the sixth-highest career Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of any player ever; Win Shares Per 48 Minutes (WS/48) essentially cannot tell the difference between him (.2504) and Michael Jordan (.2505); Box Plus-Minus (BPM) says only Jordan and LeBron James are his superiors. His career 122.69 Offensive Rating (OffRtg) is the highest of all time. The judgment of the sport’s holistic metrics is that he is one of the best basketball players who ever lived.


The article lost me right there. The numbers are mid-career. In the case of Jordan, his numbers include his declining years, including his years as a Wizard. It is likely that Paul's final numbers will be lower. Just using PER as an example, Paul's peak season ('09) was 21st overall. He may rank sixth now, but he'll most likely finish outside the top 10.

Beyond that, those numbers simply show that Paul is a great regular season player in terms of box score production. That is just one criteria when we rate the all-time greats.


That's a good point, but then aren't LeBron's numbers also mid-career and biased in the same way that Paul's are?
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 4:57 am    Post subject:

Don Draper wrote:
Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Quote:
Basketball analytics say he is even more than that. According to Basketball Reference, Paul has the sixth-highest career Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of any player ever; Win Shares Per 48 Minutes (WS/48) essentially cannot tell the difference between him (.2504) and Michael Jordan (.2505); Box Plus-Minus (BPM) says only Jordan and LeBron James are his superiors. His career 122.69 Offensive Rating (OffRtg) is the highest of all time. The judgment of the sport’s holistic metrics is that he is one of the best basketball players who ever lived.


The article lost me right there. The numbers are mid-career. In the case of Jordan, his numbers include his declining years, including his years as a Wizard. It is likely that Paul's final numbers will be lower. Just using PER as an example, Paul's peak season ('09) was 21st overall. He may rank sixth now, but he'll most likely finish outside the top 10.

Beyond that, those numbers simply show that Paul is a great regular season player in terms of box score production. That is just one criteria when we rate the all-time greats.


That's a good point, but then aren't LeBron's numbers also mid-career and biased in the same way that Paul's are?


Yes. However, no one is arguing that Lebron's numbers are out of proportion to his career achievements. Again, using PER as an example, Lebron is second now, and he'll probably finish in the top five. That's about where you would expect to see him in terms of statistical production.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 6:51 am    Post subject:

IF CP3 ever wins a title he will go down as one of the greatest PG's of all-time, like arguable top 5. He will get the same type of huge bump that Dirk got when he won. Once Dirk won folks started talking about him being a top 20 player, arguably better than KG or Barkley, etc. You rarely heard any of that chatter before 2011.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 7:44 am    Post subject:

Chris Paul was really good. It's too bad he had David West and Blake Griffin as his sidekicks.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 8:36 am    Post subject:

Dreamshake wrote:
IF CP3 ever wins a title he will go down as one of the greatest PG's of all-time, like arguable top 5. He will get the same type of huge bump that Dirk got when he won. Once Dirk won folks started talking about him being a top 20 player, arguably better than KG or Barkley, etc. You rarely heard any of that chatter before 2011.


It won't happen, so relax.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:20 pm    Post subject:

Krispy Kreme wrote:
Dreamshake wrote:
IF CP3 ever wins a title he will go down as one of the greatest PG's of all-time, like arguable top 5. He will get the same type of huge bump that Dirk got when he won. Once Dirk won folks started talking about him being a top 20 player, arguably better than KG or Barkley, etc. You rarely heard any of that chatter before 2011.


It won't happen, so relax.



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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:43 pm    Post subject:

tox wrote:
i'm actually glad there was a good treatment to this issue.

The Ringer article was particularly a good one, I thought:
https://theringer.com/chris-paul-nba-inefficiency-week-a43ade69aa3d

I really hope some analytics work goes into quantifying how guys who only make "good decisions" hurt their team in the playoffs. E.G. a more aggressive CP3 might have meant fewer Blake Griffin ISOs which meant better efficiency for the team over all, despite CP3's stats looking worse. You saw this briefly with Pau's playoffs stats which were transformative when he came to play with Kobe.

NBA analytics are definitely in their nascency, despite how they're often promulgated.


analytics are not the devil, thats for sure. but people have to remember. I can only analyze the data thats in front of me. which is the data that has been collected. and/or the data I know how to filter to get to certain answers.


there is still a lot of data that either isnt collected, or isnt filtered and spliced to tell a complete story.

i'll give you an example.

How many bad shots are good shot attempts due to the fact the player ended up drawing a foul?

I use to hate to see guys take bad shots growing up. especially stars. until I realized that aggressive behavior is also what puts teams in foul trouble. which puts them in the bonus. which means they usually can't play the same aggressive defense for the remainder of the qtr.

^^That is an actual tactic.

if you play it to safely. You dont have this as another tool to defeat your opponent.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 1:18 pm    Post subject:

splashmtn wrote:
How many bad shots are good shot attempts due to the fact the player ended up drawing a foul?


None. If you miss the shot but get fouled, you aren't charged with a FGA.
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