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Official 2018 NBA Offseason Thread: the preseason cometh

PhDeac said:
This is rich coming off a full-throated Lebron > Jordan argument.
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Show me where Jordan is notably better than LeBron in any advanced metric available. I actually looked at that yesterday, ready to make the argument, before realizing that they're pretty much identical in terms of impact on that end of the floor.

LeBron was a dumpster fire on defense most of this year, though.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
If you want to argue that defensive efficiency is too team-dependent or lineup-dependent, great!

Here is basketball-reference's defensive win share rankings: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2018_advanced.html

You'll notice that Jayson Tatum was 8th in the league, ahead of Paul George and Rudy Gobert. Kuzma was a not-terrible 77th, which is cool! But it's one stat, and if you prefer DBPM, he has a pretty bad -1.0, while Tatum has a very good +1.5.
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Also notice Ben Simmons is 2nd. Simmons is much better offensively too.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
Show me where Jordan is notably better than LeBron in any advanced metric available. I actually looked at that yesterday, ready to make the argument, before realizing that they're pretty much identical in terms of impact on that end of the floor.

LeBron was a dumpster fire on defense most of this year, though.
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So you want me to show you Jordan is better using metrics that didn't exist during his time. Gotcha.

Jordan was 1st team All-Defense his last 9 years in Chicago. That should count for something if we're truly counting defense.
 
deac29 said:
Also notice Ben Simmons is 2nd. Simmons is much better offensively too.
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Simmons performs pretty well across the board in defensive metrics. (He's going to be a very good player; I was mostly trolling last night.)
 
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PhDeac said:
So you want me to show you Jordan is better using metrics that didn't exist during his time. Gotcha.

Jordan was 1st team All-Defense his last 9 years in Chicago. That should count for something if we're truly counting defense.
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All-Defense is mostly a popularity/#eyetest contest, but okay. LBJ's been on 6 All-Defense teams.
 
I mean, rsf argues Tatum>Simmons, then posts advanced stats to show Tatum>Kuzma, and those stats shows Simmons>>>Tatum.

Win shares: 9.2 v 7.1
ws/48: .162 v. .139
BPM: 4.6 v. 1.0
VORP: 4.6 v. 1.8

All in favor of Simmons. Just for shits, let add PER: 20.03 v. 15.29
 
deac29 said:
I mean, rsf argues Tatum>Simmons, then posts advanced stats to show Tatum>Kuzma, and those stats shows Simmons>>>Tatum.

Win shares: 9.2 v 7.1
ws/48: .162 v. .139
BPM: 4.6 v. 1.0
VORP: 4.6 v. 1.8

All in favor of Simmons. Just for shits, let add PER: 20.03 v. 15.29
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i w a s t r o l l i n g
 
As far as Jordan/LeBron defense goes, Jordan has a small edge in Defensive Win Shares, LeBron has a small edge in Defensive Box Plus/Minus, and they're identical in career Defensive Efficiency (though LeBron has the only two seasons between them with marks under 100). Detailed shooting data isn't available for most of Jordan's career.

There's not enough of a difference there to even bother arguing.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
To show that I really am not trying to cherry-pick stats here, I looked up the opposing shooting percentages for both Tatum and Kuzma. These are about as individualized defense metrics as you can get at this point (though, again, still not perfect!)

2u30HMm.png


Tatum's better than Kuzma from every distance except for 20-24 ft... I suspect this is a difference in defensive coaching philosophies; there are multiple Lakers in the 33-34% oFG% range from that distance. I dunno. It's interesting data, though. I haven't watched enough Lakers games to know if they switch everything the way the Celts do, and I'm not sure how this data accounts for some of that.
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Have you ever played basketball? The way you use stats it sure doesn't look like it. If you know you can make a mistake on D and be helped, you will play better D. It's that simple.

if you switch the players, the numbers will be very similar. Tatum may well be better, but nothing like you think.

This graphic makes no sense. how do you get those numbers? If you add up all the FGA, it doesn't equal 100% of shots taken. They certainly don't face that number of shots per game. Where do they come from?
 
Stats are not the be all and end all. As you even said, defensive strategies effect things. If you don't think having massively better players around doesn't impact your stats. Then, there's no way to discuss such things.

Where do they get the number of FGA? This is an honest question.
 
The opposing FGA are per 100 possessions, to account for pace.

I'm done wasting my time trying to convince you that any of these numbers matter.
 
I didn't say they didn't matter. I'm saying context is important.
 
Of course context is important. There is nobody here (me, numbers, doofus, etc) who has ever tried to discuss stats with you that would say that context is unimportant.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
And most advanced defensive metrics are available for Jordan's career. Again, they're basically identical numbers to LeBron's.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/j/jordami01.html#all_advanced
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/j/jamesle01.html#all_advanced
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Not sure if you're serious or not. Those advanced stats were calculated using Jordan's stats from back in the day. Those stats were not commonly used back then. As best I can tell, PER was first developed around 2000 or so. Jordan couldn't look at his PER and Win Shares and adjust his game accordingly.
 
PhDeac said:
Not sure if you're serious or not. Those advanced stats were calculated using Jordan's stats from back in the day. Those stats were not commonly used back then. As best I can tell, PER was first developed around 2000 or so. Jordan couldn't look at his PER and Win Shares and adjust his game accordingly.
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Of course I realize that nobody was referencing DBPM in 1996.

I'm not sure why it matters if they were available at the time or not. I don't think anybody is trying to correct their game based on these metrics beyond "hey, I don't want to suck at defense anymore".

They don't have enough detail for anyone to "adjust their games accordingly".

Shooting metrics would, I guess, in theory, but like I said, those weren't available for Jordan's career.
 
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RedSoxFaithful said:
Of course I realize that nobody was referencing DBPM in 1996.

I'm not sure why it matters if they were available at the time or not.
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Because now advanced stats are a cause and effect. Players use advanced stats and play in a way to boost their metrics. Can’t do that with metrics that don’t exist.
 
PhDeac said:
Because now advanced stats are a cause and effect. Players use advanced stats and play in a way to boost their metrics. Can’t do that with metrics that don’t exist.
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See my edit, but: no, they don't. At least, not with the publicly available metrics we're discussing right now.
 
If you want to argue that LeBron has more resources available to understand his defensive strengths/weaknesses, or to understand his opponents' strengths/weaknesses, which gives him some sort of handicap to account for, then fine, I can get on board with that.

But I don't think he's out there trying to fine-tune his defensive win shares or whatever.
 
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