19 Responses to “2009-10 APBRmetric Awards”

1. Johnny Twisto Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 7:30 pm

   What am I missing about Jeff Green's candidacy for worst defender of the year? Is that saying the team's defensive rating was so much better when he was off the court than on? I didn't study the website you linked to, but on this one, his DRtg is a respectable 105, same as the team's overall rating, and he is the at the median of all players on the Thunder.

2. Neil Paine Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 7:38 pm

   Yes, it means the Thunder defense was more than 10 points/100 poss. better when he sat on the bench than when he played.

3. dbm Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 7:59 pm

   No All-NBA, All-Rooke or All-defensive teams?
   Otherwise they look accurate.

4. J.J. Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 8:05 pm

   What did you use to calculate the Most Disappointing Rookie? Does it have something to do with Williams' achievement relative to his draft position? I don't know what the word "disappointing" suggests in regards to calculating factors.

5. Johnny Twisto Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 8:14 pm

   But Neil, it's hard to see how that is possible, when the Thunder's overall defensive rating is about the same as Green's (104.5 to 105), and his DRtg is smack in the middle of all the DRtgs on the team. I'm obviously dense about this, can you explain what I am missing?

6. Neil Paine Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 8:16 pm

   That one was a little subjective -- I was going to do "worst rookie", so I looked for the fewest WS by a 1st-year player:

   http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/tiny.cgi?id=oUEol

   Williams and Earl Clark were tied with -0.3, but Clark was the 14th pick and Williams was the 11th, so I decided to go with "most disappointing" since he was picked higher. Jonny Flynn wasn't much better, though (0.1 WS), and he was picked 6th overall... And if you really wanted to get technical, the most disappointing rookie of all was Blake Griffin.

7. Neil Paine Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 8:22 pm

   Individual DRtg, as we calculate it here on BBR, is Dean Oliver's box score-based estimation of how many points per 100 possessions the player allowed. The DRtg you see at BasketballValue, on the other hand, is derived from play-by-play logs and is the team's pts allowed/100 poss. when he's on the floor. So they're measuring two different things -- our DRtg does a better job of picking up on things like blocks, steals, & defensive rebounds, while BBValue's does a good job of catching the many aspects of defense the box score doesn't track.

8. Anon Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 8:55 pm

   Personally, while I think that +/- is certainly useful information to have for these things, it provides some of the most unintuitive results out of any metric out there. Seeing Thabo Sefolosha on a list on worst defenders in the league (according to on-off DRtg) is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, considering that by watching the Thunder games he is probably their best man-to-man defender. I recently read an article from Kevin Pelton here where he thought that Thabo was a 1st-team defender at his position: http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1071

   Maybe they can pick on on some on those things on defense that box-score based metrics can't but if I had to do a smell test on what +/- suggests are the best players on the league on either sides of the ball without taking other things into consideration, I would probably be turned-off by using it for basketball analysis more than anything else out there.

9. Caleb Says:
   April 14th, 2010 at 8:55 pm

   Just a random observation that is only kind of releated - this is surely one of the best drafts for guards ever right? Or perhaps a better way to word it is that its one of the most guard-dominant classes ever.

   Evans, Collison, Curry, Thornton, Beaubois, Lawson, Jennings... all the top guys are guards except for DeJuan Blair. I'm curious to see how the all-rookie teams will turn out.

10. Ray Says:
    April 14th, 2010 at 9:28 pm

    Does Wins above Expected (for Coaches) reflect injuries? Not sure how else McMillan can be so low..

11. Doobie Says:
    April 14th, 2010 at 10:19 pm

    Can't trust any formulas that try to tell me that Thabo Sefolosha or Jeff Green are bad defenders

12. Neil Paine Says:
    April 15th, 2010 at 12:19 am

    It's not really a formula, though -- it's more of a fact... Plain and simple, the Thunder play much better on defense when they aren't in the game. Now, there are circumstances that can influence this, notably the ability of a player's teammates and his backups, but facts are facts, and no team plays better defense when a player is sitting vs. when he plays than the Thunder do when Jeff Green is riding pine.

13. JP Says:
    April 15th, 2010 at 12:55 am

    Got to admit, I like most of what I see here. Only exception I have (and know this wont be popoular with the consensus) is that of Brooks as COY.

    I know Hollingers method is trying to elminate opinion/bias out the equation but to just use previous winning percentage in the way he does as deducing the crucial "expected wins" figure misses out some big factors that coaches have to actually handle.

    Brooks may still be deserving the award (and should definitely be in the conversation)but theres now way Id accept that hes achieved so much more then expected then his peers.

    I mean, not only is he benefitting in this calculation by the 3-27 start he had at the start of last season but he hasnt had the injury problems that Skiles (Michael Redd) and McMilan (Oden, Przybilla etc) have had to deal with.

14. Neil Paine Says:
    April 15th, 2010 at 1:20 am

    Agreed. The "expected wins" formula is very crude, and doesn't factor in injuries, team age, or a million other factors. I basically picked it because it's been around for a while, Hollinger came up with it, and I didn't really have time to create a better one of my own. Not an excuse, but that was the thought process involved... This summer, I'll have to look into developing better methods to evaluate coaches.

15. Jason J Says:
    April 15th, 2010 at 4:30 pm

    More on Anon # 8:

    adjusted +/-, as it regards defense, seems to be way too heavily linked to team performance to be any sort of measure of individual ability / contribution.

    I remember looking at the numbers back when Scott Skiles was coaching the Bulls, and most of their rotation players had terrific defensive +/- numbers - even guys like Gordon who really weren't that special at the defensive end.

    This season a lot of the Bucks look like terrific individual defenders based on +/-.

    Scheme just seems to be too determinate to really measure player by player contribution.

16. AYC Says:
    April 15th, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    Terrence Williams has played extremely well over the last 6 weeks or so; his play was a big reason the Nets won 5 of their last 12

    http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/gamelog?playerId=4019

17. Mike G Says:
    April 16th, 2010 at 1:34 pm

    ".. no team plays better defense when a player is sitting vs. when he plays than the Thunder do when Jeff Green is riding pine."

    But Okl is 8.6 Pts/100 possessions better than Toronto on defense.
    So being 10 pts worse (defensively) than an avg Okl 100 poss
    is equivalent to being 1.4 Pts/100 worse for Tor.
    Is this right?

    If so, any player with on/off worse than -1.4 for Tor would be worse than Jeff Green?
    (Assuming +/- actually measures something).

18. Thezzaruz Says:
    April 23rd, 2010 at 9:42 am

    Great work Neil, very interesting.

    But I have to ask, am I the only one that has quarrels with a 6th man award going to a player that has been a starter for almost a 1/3 of the season? And that has played his best and most important ball mainly in that 1/3?

    I like Manu and think he's been great but really, shouldn't 6th man come with a cut off point on starter minutes (or something)?

19. Neil Paine Says:
    April 23rd, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    The criteria was (GS/G)<50%, which has typically been the cutoff point in the past for the 6th man Award.