Howard to Bulls?

[jmayer1]

Rose is arguably (and its a strong argument) the best PG in a league that is full of really good PGs, and Howard is absolutely the best center in the league... probably the best since Shaq (if you don't count Duncan as a C). They are the premeire players at their positions.  Melo and Amar'e are not. And they play at very complimentary positions, unlike Amar'e and Melo (neither do Wade and LeBron). 

Oh, I definitely agree on that.

[jmayer1]

Care to back those statements up?

Wins produced is a nice measure, but as with a lot of other individual basketball statistics (+/-, efficiency ratings) it is limited and needs to be used in context with other statistics and your own eyes. Some supporters of wins produced (not saying you necessarily--I don't know your stance) take it as gospel and don't admit that it has flaws (as do other basketball stats). In my opinion, basketball isn't particularly conducive to advanced individual statistics, although I still enjoy looking at them, as there are just too many things that happen on a basketball court that aren't very easy to measure, unlike baseball where pretty much every event that occurs can be quantified. However, I think basketball is much more conducive to measurement by team.

To specifically point out the flaws of wins produced, I think any sane basketball observer would agree that Landry Fields isn't the 8th best player in the NBA, Jason Kidd the 12th, Kris Humphries the 17th, or Ronnie Brewer the 31st while Dirk Nowitzki is only the 66th, Carmelo is 100, Amare is 187, Brook Lopez  is 373rd, and Demarco Cousins the 451st (2nd to last).

Now, every good measure--statistical, opinion, or otherwise, is going to have outliers (KenPom and UW earlier in the year for instance). I was just simply stating that taking wins produced as a set in stone measure to determine the exact value of a basketball player isn't a good idea. Perhaps I should have stated it has some flaws, rather than saying it is highly flawed, since I think it is a pretty reasonable measure.

[Henry Sugar]

To specifically point out the flaws of wins produced, I think any sane basketball observer would agree that Landry Fields isn't the 8th best player in the NBA, Jason Kidd the 12th, Kris Humphries the 17th, or Ronnie Brewer the 31st while Dirk Nowitzki is only the 66th, Carmelo is 100, Amare is 187, Brook Lopez  is 373rd, and Demarco Cousins the 451st (2nd to last).

The list I have from last year is slightly off from yours, but what makes you so certain that those rankings are wrong?  Dirk may have had a good postseason, but he's 34 and on the downslide of his career.  One of the basic premises of the authors/creators of Wins Produced is that people overvalue scorers.

There are many reasonable critiques of Wins Produced.  In particular, it probably overvalues the impact of rebounds.  However, I like it for two reasons:

#1 - it's based on work done by an economist and submitted through the peer-review / journal process
#2 - the wins produced per player maps really closely to the final per-team results of wins.  Really close

If anyone is interested, I recommend the Wages of Wins FAQ.
http://wagesofwins.com/faq/

Now, every good measure--statistical, opinion, or otherwise, is going to have outliers (KenPom and UW earlier in the year for instance). I was just simply stating that taking wins produced as a set in stone measure to determine the exact value of a basketball player isn't a good idea. Perhaps I should have stated it has some flaws, rather than saying it is highly flawed, since I think it is a pretty reasonable measure.

I agree with this 100%.  

One the topic of Melo and Amare, if there are a set of stats that say "hey these guys aren't very good"... it makes me reconsider how valuable they are rather than going off my impressions of how good they are.

[jmayer1]

The list I have from last year is slightly off from yours, but what makes you so certain that those rankings are wrong?  Dirk may have had a good postseason, but he's 34 and on the downslide of his career.  One of the basic premises of the authors/creators of Wins Produced is that people overvalue scorers.

There are many reasonable critiques of Wins Produced.  In particular, it probably overvalues the impact of rebounds.  However, I like it for two reasons:

#1 - it's based on work done by an economist and submitted through the peer-review / journal process
#2 - the wins produced per player maps really closely to the final per-team results of wins.  Really close

If anyone is interested, I recommend the Wages of Wins FAQ.
http://wagesofwins.com/faq/

I can't be certain of anything, of course, and Dirk might be a bad example to use, since he wasn't actually that low. But, I really don't see that Landry Fields is an impact player and could ever be a superstar, which you would think he is at #8. I think the "over-rankings" tend to be more apparent than the "under-rankings", however an argument could be made that those guys aren't too "over-ranked" just underrated. Or they are anomalies, as there always seems to be certain guys the computers love and other guys the computers seem to hate.

Definitely agree, people very often (especially those not familiar with advanced stats) highly overrate points. However, sometime I feel like so many people in the statistical community devalue points that now they've almost become underrated among that group. Some guys are loved by advanced stats when they have low usages because they are so efficient, but ultimately the ball has to get in the basket to win and almost invariably efficiciency will taper off with more usage.

That's a great FAQ, thanks for posting.

I agree with this 100%.  

One the topic of Melo and Amare, if there are a set of stats that say "hey these guys aren't very good"... it makes me reconsider how valuable they are rather than going off my impressions of how good they are.

Good to hear that.

Agreed. Those two are solid players, but neither is a superstar (unlike Rose and Howard), just a couple of high-usage players that are overrated by most casual basketball fans. I'm sure they are fine with that though, as a couple more points at the sake of efficiency and defense means more $$$ for them.

[TallTitan34]

[wadesworld]

Haha that's great