I don’t mean on a specific game but over the course of the season. Obviously you’ll be within +/- 1 for a particular game, but it’s quite possible that one team will regularly play games with an average of fewer possessions and another will play with more and that will artificially affect numbers.
In general, a team that is very pass oriented will have more possessions than a team that runs because more passing means more clock stopages from incompletes and sideline catches. Often you may see the passing teams put up more yards and more points, but because they also tend to have more possessions it inflates the numbers making their offense look better than it is and their opponents defense looking worse. Similarly, a team that runs more could put up roughly the same number of yards per possession but because they have fewer possessions their offense looks worse and their opponent’s defenses look better.
But when you really think about it, is a team that gets 450 yards and gives up 300 on 15 possessions really any better than one that gets 360 yards and gives up 240 on 12 possessions? Just looking at the raw yardage one looks like a more offensive team and the other a defensive team, but they’d have the same yards per possession so when they ought to win at the same rate and, when they play eachother, ought to be evenly matched on both sides of the ball.
I think he’s saying that passing teams end up with longer games because of the clock stoppages, that then end up having more plays. So over a season a passing team will have more possessions.
Of course there’s hardly any running teams anymore anyway. So running teams rarely face each other, so they probably all average about the same number of possessions per season. Got no idea though, never seen the stats.
Maybe I should have been more clear. Most of these guys who can score a bunch of points are great players. But, using that stat as the prime measurement by which we grade superstars is foolish. This is the type of thinking that makes people think Wilt Chamberlain was better than Bill Russell. For example, compare Kobe Bryant’s 05-06 season where he averaged 35.4 pts/game vs his 08-09 season where he averaged 26.8.
During the 05-06 season, the Lakers finished with a record of 45-37, and 99.4 ppg. They also lost in the first round of the playoffs. Kobe had 35.4 ppg, 31.1 points/36 min., and a 45% fg%.
In the 08-09 season, the Lakers won the championship, had a record of 65-17, and scored 106.9 ppg. Kobe finished with 26.8 ppg, 26.8 points/36 min., and a 46.7% fg%. Most of his other stats (rebounds, blocks, steals, etc.) were similar during both seasons.
My point is that his higher point output was mostly a function of his increased minutes and shots per game; not some talent difference. As a result of shooting more, his fg% suffered, and the Lakers were a far worse, more predictable team. Just looking at the number of points he scored would give one a false impression of how successful the season was, and how well he was playing. It means people undervalue players like Shane Battier, Tyson Chandler, and others because they don’t put up huge points, or great stats. It also means we overrate players like Paul Pierce (25th all-time highest ppg) or Vince Carter (29th all-time). Stepping back, people can see Carter is hardly one of the best players to ever play the game, yet people still assume all points are created equal, and that scoring a bunch is the sole criteria for greatness.
Also, the spread between the team with the most FG attempts and the least is 10.6, and for points it’s 19.6. Even the worst team puts up 86 points a night. The best guy on any team is gonna score around 20 ppg, and if they let that guy shoot more, he can go even higher. The best scorer (Andrea Bargnani) on the lowest scoring team (The Raptors) averages 23.5 ppg, .3 less than Carmelo, and the same as Derrick Rose. Again, if you are moderately good player who has the greenlight to shoot, you can rack up a bunch of points. Put it this way, if you told a person averaging 25ppg that he wouldn’t get paid unless he averaged 30ppg, do you really think he couldn’t do it?
They are uncommon because teams want to WIN. If you paid superstars by the amount of 50-point games, you would see them go up dramatically. Strategy is the damper on high scoring, not a lack of ability. When David Robinson wanted to win the scoring title with one game to go, he scored 71 points. How did he do that? Well, they fed him the ball with that specific purpose. Guess when the previous 70-plus point game was? When David Thompson scored “73 on the final day of the 1977-78 season in an unsuccessful bid to pass Gervin for the title”. Again, people act like Robinson’s 71 or Kobe’s 81 are such rare feats, when they are mostly a function of a great player on a good night, with nobody telling them to put the brakes on.
Notice what Robinson said after that game:
Notice he said “opportunities”. There is nothing in there about being in the zone, or anything like that. Given the opportunity, a lot of these guys can go off. Even mid-level players like the Joe Johnsons, Gilbert Arenases and Elton Brands of the world that have put 25/night without really being THAT great of players. Again, a team is gonna shoot X amount of times a night, so if you are allowed to shoot whenever you want, and you are an above average player, you can get lots of points.
Sorry for so many posts in a row, but I forgot to add one thing. My post was mostly because of this last Kobe “scoring explosion” where he strung together a few 40-point games, and ESPN and other media outlets acted as if this were some impossible feat rather than him just shooting and playing more often.
The difference was in the talent around him, which doesn’t mean his points-per-game weren’t valuable. It means the team around him sucked, which is why he was playing, shooting and scoring so much.
What people are you talking about? Carter has been known for ages as a guy who scores a bunch of points and doesn’t do anything else. So has Bargnani, and so was Tracy McGrady in his prime. Nobody is comparing these guys by scoring ability alone.
I agree. So why are points per game not valuable again? Because guys can score more points but don’t? Because players can score crazy amounts if their teams make that their only goal, which practically never happens?
Brand has never averaged 25 points a game, and only in one season did he even come get near it (24.7, which is close). At the peak of his career he gave you 20 points and 10 rebounds a night every night, which is very valuable. Johnson is being overpaid (and he’s also only scored 25 a game in one season), but earlier in his career he was a good complementary wing player. He’s been going downhill for a couple of years and the Hawks are a very mediocre team with him as their best player. They’d just suck worse without him.
They’re exceptionally rare! You’ve shifted the goalposts (basket supports) in an totally ridiculous way here. Earlier you were talking about 50 point games - which are uncommon but happen several times a season. You are now talking about three of the 10 highest scoring games in the history of the league. Other than Kobe, Robinson, and Thompson, it’s been about 50 years since anyone scored 70 points in a regular season game. 60- and 70-point games are very rare. The list of 60-point games looks like this: Wilt Chamberlain over and over again when nobody except Bill Russell could defend him, and a couple of freak games by the bets scorers ever.
Most of the very high-scoring games are the result of scoring opportunities being manipulated, like the way Robinson’s Spurs gave him the ball every time or Chamberlain’s Warriors kept fouling the Knicks so he could get to 100 points. Kobe’s best games are actually an exception, and I think his 81 against Toronto (or 62 in three quarters against Dallas) are probably more impressive than Chamberlain scoring 100.
Who gives a crap? “Opportunities” and “in the zone” are both cliches, and everybody knew what happened in that game: the Spurs wanted Robinson to win the scoring title, so he got the ball and shot on more or less every play. No question that a team that tried to do this every game would lose.
Curling shot percentage (in curling, of course). It rates how often you make the shot you were trying to make, with no reference to how difficult and/or useful the shot actually was.
How about fielding percentage in baseball? It doesn’t take into account range or arm strength.
Or how about interceptions in football? Obvsiouly, the best DBs might not have a lot of interceptions because QBs don’t throw their way very often. On the other hand, so-so DBs might get a few picks, but might also allow a lot of big plays because they get picked on.
Which is besides the point. Yes, his team was better. In large part because he stopped shooting so much. Obviously points are valuable. My point was that the stat was overrated. If you talk to the average fan, they look at points scored as if that is the most important factor. I don’t think it is.
There was a while there where both Carter and McGrady were getting Jordan comparisons. To say people always saw them as chuckers is clearly false. They got those comparisons not because they won anything, or made their teammates better, but because they were explosive, and scored a bunch of points. That the comparison was even made is why I think people are often too blinded by a star on a shitty team shooting enough every night to score 30+ points.
You are saying “not valuable”, not me. Yes, you need points to win. However, the points one individual gets are not that closely correlated with their skills as a basketball player, or their value to their team. More importantly, the stat really breaks down when you start comparing good players to great players. Yes, the highest scorers often the better players. However, the lowest person on that list could easily top the list if they were given the opportunity. Tell me about another sport where one player can increase their output by similar percentages if they were allowed to.
But it can on any given day, and does over a season’s time because someone has to shoot the ball. On a certain level, it’s plug and play. Every team will have a guy who can score in the absence of other players being allowed free reign. Even the fact that you could manipulate the stat on a whim makes it far less valuable to me.
I think you missed my point. The number of points is indeed rare. I suppose I should have been more clear here, but I think that it’s self-evident to any casual fan. My point was that the ability to do something like that is fairly common. Robinson was hardly a prolific scorer, yet, when they decided he should score enough to win the scoring title, he did. If the Yankees decided Robinson Cano should hit 2 homeruns that day, is there much he could do to nearly guarantee that result? Could the Texans conspire to get Foster 250 yards rushing? Probably not. But in the NBA, you can. And you don’t need an all-time great like Kobe Bryant, you can do it with lots of stars.
You are too easily impressed. That again, highlights my point. It’s certainly a nice stat, but it doesn’t mean much. Do you honestly think that Kevin Durant, if given the greenlight, couldn’t put up similar numbers? Or Lebron, or Carmelo, or a good number of other people. They might not get 81, but they could certainly beat their averages by a great deal if they had the desire to.
Of course. But again, the point I was making that there stat is artificially limited, and thus, tells us little beyond the fact that the player is good. Yet, people use it to argue for why one guy is better than another.
That’s just ass-backward. He shot less because the team around him was much better. The '05-'06 team had Bryant (a younger and less wise player, granted), Lamar Odom, a rookie Andrew Bynum, and some real crap. Smush Parker was their starting point guard and their third-leading scorer. Chris Mihm started most of the games at center, and I think their other starting forward was Brian Grant, who was out of the league after that season. And the Lakers may be heading back in this direction even though they still have Pau Gasol and an improved Bynum.
In terms of their scoring and Carter’s dunking, sure. In terms of being complete players, the comparisons didn’t last.
I didn’t say “always.” I said it’s been clear for a long time, which it has. When was the last time anyone thought Carter was one of the best players in the league, or anything but a volume scorer and a whiner?
They’re not closely correlated with abilities other than scoring, and it’s true they’re dependent on the system the players are in and who is around them. Your team’s going to score more points if Steve Nash is on it, for instance. But nobody’s ever argued that points should be judged by themselves. The idea that points per game is overrated because lots of guys could score more (but don’t) or that it’s possible to manipulate a ppg average with a lot of effort (which is rare) doesn’t work.
He was. I think you’re focusing on the later part of his career when he focused more on defense and deferred to Tim Duncan on offense. Scoring was greater in the era we’re talking about, but here’s what his averages looked like his first seven years: 24.3 ppg, 25.6, 23.2, 23.4, 29.8, 27.6, 25. That’s plenty prolific. If you take out the Spurs’ machinations in the last game of the '94-95 season and pretend he scored 20 or 30 points in that game, he still comes out with a season average of around 29 ppg. He scored almost as much the next season.
You realize that was only possible because he was second in the league over the full season up to that point, right?
Yeah, you can also do it with an all-time great like David Robinson or Wilt Chamberlain, or a one-dimensional but great scorer like David Thompson or Tracy McGrady.
I think they have the ability, yes. That’s why a single-game achievement isn’t a full measure of a player’s greatness in any sport. Doing something over a full season is another story. Anyway, you’ve still moved from 50 points to 70 or 80. I’m sure Durant will have some 50 point games before he’s done, but to get to 70 in a game is very difficult - to the point where your team has to stop running its offense and give you the ball almost every time down the court if they want you to do it, and even 60 points in a game has rarely happened since Wilt Chamberlain retired. I don’t think Durant or anybody in the modern NBA could sustain that over a full season even if they didn’t care about winning, but since they do, it isn’t going to happen. On a great night and with some good breaks some of these guys could probably score 60 to 80 points in one game - which adds all of 1 ppg to their season average - but that doesn’t mean the stat is so easily manipulable that it doesn’t mean anything.
There’s nothing artificial about the limits on individual scoring that are part of the flow of the game. If they ran on every down in the NFL, running backs would have much larger rushing and touchdown totals. If they passed on every down, the QBs would throw for more yards. If you threw to one receiver on almost every play, he could probably break records. But those are not very good strategies, so they don’t happen. It’s the same thing with a guy scoring 40 or 50 points per game in the NBA. If you try to do that over a full season in the current game, it won’t work. The fact that it’s theoretically possible doesn’t mean the stat lacks meaning.
I always thought the special teams percentages in hockey was miscalculated, because if you kill a 5 minute power play and a 10 second power play, they are both counted equally as one penalty kill. I haven’t thought to hard about an alternative, but I am sure there is one out there.
First downs and punting average are tied for most useless on my list.
Maybe the nod should go to punting average, since the best punts
may actually be average in distance because they are higher and
less likely to be returned.
They didn’t last long because they started to suck. The fact that they were made at all is an indication that people place too much emphasis on it in the first place.
And to casual fans, that’s all that matters. High ppg= great player. I contend that is not really true.
And you are focusing on the years you chose to. His career average is 21.1ppg. That is good, but not elite in terms of scoring.
Don’t be condescending. Of course, I know that seeing as I brought it up, and linked to an article about it. Regardless, the fact that such a scheme actually worked makes my point. Just by changing their strategy, they got him 42 more points than his average.
I dont think it is. I am not arguing someone can average 50 ppg. I am saying a guy who puts up 20-25 a night, if given free reign one game a week can easily get 40-60 points that game. Which would raise their averages considerably.
I am not arguing anyone could or would try to average 50-60 ppg. Just that they can easily do it in one game, and that their scoring average (currently 25-35ppg) is limited by strategy rather than talent. Thus, when people are famous, get huge contracts, or are well regarded for their scoring ability, I think it’s a very myopic view.
Again, look at the title of this thread. Where did I or anyone say these stats “don’t mean anything”? You keep saying that. My point was that when you look in the paper, of the few states they print, ppg is the main one they focus on. As if that gives you a ranking of basketball greatness. They don’t even bother to differentiate between a guy like Allen Iverson who shot 42.5% from the field from a guys who are far more efficient with the ball. That’s my point. That’s why the stat is overrated.
But the feasibility of letting a guy shoot 25 times per game is different from trying to throw nearly every down in the NFL. Again, I am saying that ppg is overvalued, not that it’s worthless. It’s overvalued because it doesn’t tell you nearly as much as many people think it does. It’s kinda how for a while Broncos running backs all seemed like stars because their line was great. Just as I would value this season’s NFL passing yards less than I otherwise would given that the rules changes and pass-heavy offenses, I think the current NBA has plenty of marginal players that put up more points than the should given their talent, and plenty of phenomenal players who put up far fewer points than the could given their talent. Do you honestly think guys like Danny Granger and Monta Ellis are comparable to Dwayne Wade or Dirk Nowitzki? Just to bolster my point, I will quote this article on Ellis being an overrated player:
That’s patently untrue for team sports. A huge part of the game is figuring out individual performances in a given game and analyzing those trends. Sports stats should be about finding what individual stats tend to lead to team wins, so you can identify valuable players, even on losing teams.
If you say so. I think you’re essentially strawmanning here: you’re attributing a very simplistic position to people and then disagreeing with it.
I agree.
Well, yes. He scored fewer points when he got older because he was older and focused more on defense. But he scored almost 27 points a game for his first seven seasons. He wasn’t Jordan or McGray or Shaq, but I think you underrated his scoring ability. He won the scoring title in '93-'94 (or finished second if you want to pretend the Spurs didn’t manipulate things), finished third the next year, and fifth the next year.
It doesn’t make any point, though. His scoring total was close enough to Shaq’s that they were able to put him over the top with the scheme. No questions about that, but it doesn’t devalue scoring. They got him an extra 0.5 points per game, give or take, by giving him the ball over and over again in the last game, and that put his season average of Shaq’s. It’s something other player could probably do in that situation, but it’s not something that happens often. The fact that it could in theory doesn’t show that scoring average isn’t valuable.
A guy who scores 20 or 25 a night is probably going to score 40 at some point - that’s not unexpected. Getting in the range of 60 is harder, and if you’re talking about someone who scores 25 a game, scoring 60 would add all of 0.4 points per game to his average. What’s that prove again? Say that 0.4 ppg gives that player the fifth-highest average for the season instead of the seventh. Does that make him better than the two guys he passed? No. I think we can agree that that’s obvious. I just don’t think a lot of people are actually making that argument in the first place.
And of course we’re assuming those points don’t help his team win. If they do…
I always saw field goal percentages printed in the newspaper. PPG is the easiest stat to understand and it does have value, but nobody said it’s the be-all and end-all of statistics.
Other than Kobe in '05-'06, nobody has scored 35 per game for a season since Jordan did it in '87-'88. That’s very high. Scoring champions tend to average more like 28 to 32 ppg.
You said in your first post that “The game today is diluted enough that on most nights, a good superstar can put up 50 points if they shoot enough.” That’s been true for decades. I’ve been trying not to comment on “a good superstar,” as if lots of good and bad ones are just floating around.
No. And you’re welcome to tell me that lots of people think they’re equal based on their scoring rates, but I don’t think a lot of people actually believe that. It’s not a secret that Ellis doesn’t play defense. He’s on the Warriors, for crying out loud.
I think that’s a pretty common belief in the same vein as good baseball players hitting lots of homeruns and/or having a good batting average.
It doesn’t happen because people don’t have the opportunity to do it, not because they can’t. People don’t hit .400 in baseball because they generally can’t, not because the don’t have the opportunity. Answer me this, do you think, if the Warriors were so inclined, Ellis could lead the league in scoring? If so, then how valuable is such a stat?
But many people DO think that. That is the point. If you disagree with that, fine. We can just agree to disagree. That said, I find it surprising that your newspaper printed fg%s unless they were sorted by ppg, and just happened to include other stats.
What hasn’t been true is the number of teams in the NBA, the prevalence of foreign leagues, and the dwindling influence of the NCAA in training prospective NBA players. But yes, this has been true for a decent length of time now.
Again, I don’t think it matters what could happen if teams stopped trying to win and just tried to pump up a guy’s stats. Why does that matter? Do you know how many 50-point games there were in the NBA last year? Two. I think there were 1,312 games, and a guy went for 50 points in 0.15 percent of those games. (LeBron scored 51 and Carmelo scored 50.) Other guys came close, and not all of them are great all-around players, but all of them were good scorers. There are players who could score 50 on any given night in the right circumstances, but it doesn’t happen that often. The ppg stats aren’t telling you how many points anybody could score, it tells you how much they’re scoring. You need to score points to win. How is that overrated? Do you think all per-game stats are overrated? Dwight Howard might lead the league in rebounds if everybody else on his team stopped trying to grab rebounds, but the team would suck worse.
It’s true that basketball is different from baseball and football in that it’s easier to pad your own stats while harming the team. I don’t think anyone disputes that. Some guys are ballhogs or chuckers and you might not want them on your team even if they score a lot. Then again, you do need some good scorers to win and the guys who lead the league are generally among the best players. The guys who lead the majors in home runs aren’t necessarily the best players either because they might not get on base enough or play shitty defense - but they’re still good at something that has value and helps you win. The stat doesn’t tell you if that value overcomes their deficiencies, although there are other stats that can give you a better idea. It’s the same in basketball.
RBIs aren’t a very good stat because they’re largely dependent on stuff that the hitter doesn’t control. Batting average isn’t that good because it arbitrarily excludes some valuable things and arbitrarily includes others that don’t mean much. Scoring does tell you something the player is doing. I’m starting to see more usage stats and pace stats and weighted field-goal numbers and things like that, which is great. But I don’t think points per game is nearly as incomplete as those statistics or errors or fielding percentage (or Gold Gloves Awarded).
The NBA has had the same number of teams since 1995, and I think that’s more than long enough for the greater numbers of international players to make up for any dilution from earlier expansions. There was a lot of complaining about selfish play and isolations in the late '90s and how it was making the game boring, but the best teams are really playing team-oriented offense and defense these days.
