Factors Determining Production in Basketball

[martinezjose]

Hi kjb,

I think you did not understand correctly the rationale of FDP. This is explained in the paper and also in some of my prior posts.

After going through this paper, it strikes me as an odd rating system. Players are penalized for missing shots, but not rewarded for making them. Basically, this system comes down to rebounds + blocks - FGA (especially 3FGA).

No. Blocks do not pertain to FDP.

I have repeated several times that FDP is not a measure to obtain the best basketball players. FDP related non-scoring stats with point differential. You have to consider FDP, points and blocks together, in order to valuate players. In addition, you may use other metrics and qualitative evaluations.

Players with negative FDP hurt their teams, but many of them compensate their negative FDP with their points made. The idea is very simple. It is normal that many of the best scorers have negative FDP, because the missed many shots and they focus their performance on points and not on other functions (rebounds, etc).

Sorry, but I believe the absurd thing is your interpretation of FDP.

[Crow]

I think you have more folks understanding what you are doing if you had prominently tacked on "non-scoring" to "factors determining production" in the title and throughout the article and perhaps substituted "impact" for "production". The English version of this work is not as easy to follow as most of your other translations.

[martinezjose]

Thanks Crow. You are right.

[kjb]

Maybe something is getting lost in translation for me. I'll take another look when I have time.

[motherwell]

Question: Are you advocating that these three factors - points, blocks and FDR - NOT be combined in a single metric? I think that is the purpose of FDR, to find players who add things other than points, and to provide not a single metric, but three so decision makers can weigh up competing interests.

If so, I would assume that the idea here is NOT to answer the question "do Reggie Evans non-scoring stats overcome his lack of scoring", but to provide decisions makers with a metric that says if a player is productive with his non-scoring stats.

I wonder though, how would you see this metric being used? Is it a a way to find complimentary pieces, or specific types of role players, or to evaluate every player more effectively? It does seem to have an interesting side affect in terms of potentially separating players from a single, homogeneous group into different classes (scorers and role players), but I'm not sure what specific insights this metric can provide to building a team, or creating a winner, e.g. do you need X amount of scoring, and then need to maximise FDR, or is it a balance of the two.

Can you talk about that a little for me please, how you see this metric being used?

[martinezjose]

Hi Motherwell,

I am not sure how to aggregate FDP, blocks and points in a single metric. The theoretical basis of FDP says that these three variables pertain to 3 different levels. Maybe it would be interesting to think how to convert these variables in a single one, but at this moment I do not know how to do it.

I think that decision makers may use this metric to sign players. For example, this metric may help to decide if it would be better to sign Rajon Rondo or D-Will, depending of the profile of the other teammates.

You have pointed out very interestig questions regarding the use of FDP. Thank you so much because you have arised some ideas to continue with this stream of research. By the moment, among other uses, FDP purposes a different perspective of considering the value of a deffensive rebound, an offensive rebound, an assits, etc. , i.e, the basic non-scoring stats.