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mystic wrote: Well, we can take Monta Ellis as an example for whom we know that this is not the case. I would have given touches rather to Stephen Curry instead of Ellis. So, why exactly did Ellis get more touches? Maybe Evan can put some light on this, as a fan of the Warriors he seems to be predestinated to give a useful answer.

I don't have to fight that battle anymore!

I agre that spending wisely on defense can probably get you more impact per $mil than on offense. The basic Philly strategy on defense plus Iverson had some merit conceptually. The defense did its part. Iverson, not quite enough, though he tried. They need a stronger #2 (and maybe #3) scorer. They overdid their strategy.

The team shot distribution optimization problem needs a complex model, analysis and refinement not simple arguments. You need to look at the shot clock, team / star defensive strategy and incremental reaction, play sequence, ability to create good looks / degree of contest, skill curves, crunch and clutch performance, etc.

mystic wrote: Actually it was shown that he is better than average, just not as much better as some people believe he is. It is also a fact that the Lakers with Bryant played incredible better than without him. So, Bryant seems to be someone who is deserving the touches.

Where was this shown? TrueHoop has had a post about this basically every other week for a while (http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/search ... h&x=12&y=6), and the only place I can recall him even coming up as average is strictly on game winners, where Kobe is at league average. Every other mention of anything similar to clutch has noted Kobe as being below average. bball-reference's shot finder isn't any more generous either.

xkonk wrote: Where was this shown? TrueHoop has had a post about this basically every other week for a while (http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/search ... h&x=12&y=6), and the only place I can recall him even coming up as average is strictly on game winners, where Kobe is at league average.

Read those articles, it is said in those articles, that Bryant is either above average or slightly above average in his career in such situations in comparison to the league average in the same situation. Yes, that really means he is not below average. Maybe we are talking about different averages?

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_ ... his-season : doesn't mention league average, but says Kobe is only shooting 27% in clutch situations this year, whereas all other Lakers combined are at 55%.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_ ... runch-time : this is the one that says that Kobe is just over league average at potential game-tying or winning shots.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_ ... runch-time : similar to the second one, this says Kobe is just over league average at game-tying or winning shots.

If you use bball-reference's play index, you see that this year Kobe is 70th out of 79 players in their default clutch search (http://bkref.com/tiny/ZcNlM) (I lowered the FGA requirement to 20 since the season isn't over yet). Last year he was 68 out of 131. He was 39 out of 116 in 2009-10, which isn't bad. The seasons before that, he's 48 out of 134, 55 of 108, 84 of 125, 105 of 124, 115 of 128, 54 of 122, 63 of 117, 97 of 124, and 32 of 108. So that's three seasons out of 12 where he's been in the top half of the list, and his average is about the 40th percentile. Maybe if you add in the other players his rank bumps up closer to average? I checked for his best year (2009-10); if you drop the requirement to 10 attempts, Kobe is 79 of 211, which is a drop from 39 of 116. So it's no guarantee he moves up.

So, the first article is giving you a number which is clearly below league average for this season. The other two and your research via b-r.com gives you values above league average. And that's what I said; Bryant is above league average in those situations. The Lakers also are playing better in clutch situations with Bryant on the court since 2002/03 than in other minutes with Bryant on the court. Well, that tells me that Bryant under pressure is helping the Lakers overall. The issue is that Bryant's fans are thinking that he is the very best under those circumstances while in reality he is not, he is just a bit better than league average in terms of making field goals. There are players who are clearly better than Bryant at that, but that doesn't take away the fact that Bryant is better than league average over his career at those plays.

To emphasize a point I made earlier in this thread that changing the marginal value of defensive rebounds will not change much at all here is a trivia question: PF with 0.383 WP48 vs. PF with 0.079 WP48 (fyi: 0.099 is average); who would you take?

mystic wrote:So, the first article is giving you a number which is clearly below league average for this season. The other two and your research via b-r.com gives you values above league average.

Unless being above average 3 out of 12 times means being above average, that's not what I said at all. Kobe is below average.

xkonk wrote: Unless being above average 3 out of 12 times means being above average, that's not what I said at all. Kobe is below average.

Damn, I read your post wrong, I really thought you made a proper analysis, but I failed to see that you didn't. Sorry for that.

Well, let me tell you: Kobe Bryant during clutch situations has a 54.5 TS% for the last 10 years, the league average during that time is 51 TS%. Seriously, Bryant is not as great as his fans are making him out to be, but he is an above league average scorer during clutch minutes.

How he performs in terms of last second shots was something you can read in those articles. Do we have that settled?

Not sure what I did wrong, unless you don't like eFG or the shot cut-off. But if Kobe takes enough free throws to drag him up over average, I'll believe you.

xkonk wrote:Not sure what I did wrong, unless you don't like eFG or the shot cut-off.

You are selecting a couple of players and then decide that the median is the average. If you want to know the league average values, you have to check all shots taken, not just those of the selected players.

xkonk wrote: But if Kobe takes enough free throws to drag him up over average, I'll believe you.

Indeed, Bryant creates a lot of free throws and comes up ahead of the league average in terms of scoring efficiency. Would he create the same amount of free throws with less shots or someone else in order to achieve the same efficiency?

Well, because I'm still blocked at Wow, I have to post that here:

Andres Alvarez on March 28, 2012 at 9:49 pm said:

James,

I love Alex’s site and I like his work. Let’s be clear here. Wins Produced and Dave’s works have appeared in peer reviewed journals for economics. AsPM and exPR have not. I should also stress that neither ezPM or AsPM did as well as Wins Produced at the simple matter of explaining what had happened (in short being a model) and I’ll stress that AsPM adds the point differential back in as one of its steps.

If you’re having car trouble there is a bit of a difference asking another mechanic for a second opinion and asking your friend with no auto training what they think.

One gimmick I found today. Well, I agree that Bryant isn't a MVP candidate, but he is hardly clearly below average at his playing level. But the most amazing thing is the analogy he is bringing up. Sorry Andres, but Berri doesn't become a car mechanic, because he can write papers about the oil industry in low impact journals. I just try to imagine how Berri would solve a car issue, he likely assumes that all parts are working the same way as the whole car without any interaction between the parts, applies a simple linear regression to it and then declares that each small part is equally important and makes a positional adjustment. At the end we have the wheels as seats and the engine disconnected from the fuel. While every sane person will predict that this car will not run, Berri declares a reality check to be meaningless (because of the different weather conditions or something like that) and goes on by saying that because the car worked in the past somehow, his work is valid. Maybe Andres should have asked a real car mechanic in the first place?

Does anyone know the impact factor of journals that other (non-Berri) sports research has been published in? I don't see it pop up in Science too often.

xkonk wrote:Does anyone know the impact factor of journals that other (non-Berri) sports research has been published in? I don't see it pop up in Science too often.

I don't know that, but I also don't see how the Wizards are becoming a better team, only because the Bobcats are worse or the Nets are equally bad.

The whole argumentation reminds me a bit of a debate about Climate Change in which I was involved. When I cited multiple articles from high impact journals, it was sometimes countered with "we have also published our findings in peer review journals". Yeah, they were published, in meaningless journals, with an editorial board consisting of the same people who usually published their articles in those "journals". Great stuff.

I should also stress that neither ezPM or AsPM did as well as Wins Produced at the simple matter of explaining what had happened (in short being a model)

What is Dre referring to here?