nehemiah wrote:foosballnick, so if Lin makes roughly twice that of Felton, he should "have to perform twice as well as Felton"? In what planet does that logic exist? Does Peyton Manning complete twice the percentage of his passes and throw half the interceptions of those that make half his salary? Does Melo average twice the output of a 10M/yr player? The fact is that players that may average 18 ppg may make twice the salary of a 14 ppg player, and that relatively small difference is what gets rewarded.

Sorry - took a bit of creative license to make a point. But yes, player salaries are based on performance (at least to some degree), service time and perceived market value. The point was that Felton is a better value at $4 plus million than Lin is at $8 plus million given their stats to date. Further, in your examples of Peyton Manning and Melo....top players getting top salaries are not only expected to produce statistically, but also win. So yes....in terms of production combined with winning ....Melo is lambasted based on his salary which drives expectations. That's why many here refer to him as Mr. 470 winning percentage. Contrast that to a guy making $10 Million (think our friend Gallinari).....who is applauded for having OK stats and not expected to carry a team through the playoffs. Peyton is played highly as he is considered not only a stat machine (when healthy) but also a QB who leads his team consistently fairly deep into the playoffs.

Regarding the Moneyball reference by another poster.....it does work to an extent in baseball. Since there is no Cap in MLB...the Athletics as a small market team with a low payroll can be successful, but only go so far when outgunned by superstar rosters that comprise the upper teams in baseball. In the NBA...with a cap....the principles of moneyball would certainly also be effective in building a team with complimentary players and managing the cap.

mrKnickShot wrote:

CashMoney wrote:

nehemiah wrote:foosballnick, so if Lin makes roughly twice that of Felton, he should "have to perform twice as well as Felton"? In what planet does that logic exist? Does Peyton Manning complete twice the percentage of his passes and throw half the interceptions of those that make half his salary? Does Melo average twice the output of a 10M/yr player? The fact is that players that may average 18 ppg may make twice the salary of a 14 ppg player, and that relatively small difference is what gets rewarded.

mrKnickShot, if you do the same analysis of Melo's stats against good teams will show that he declines a huge amount as well. With infrequent exceptions, this will be the rule no matter who the player. It's because it really is a team game. If the team plays well and wins, many players on that team will have good stats for that game, and the opposite will be true in games that the team loses. It's because it is a TEAM game, and trying to determine how a player will play against good teams by isolating that player's stats (when his stats obviously depend on other teammates to make shots, to give assists, to play well enough to draw defenses to them, etc.) -- it's poor analysis. There are better ways to determine a player's worth -- it takes much more care to see which stats REALLY determine that player's value (read Moneyball, not just watch the movie).

Moneyball doesn't work.

What?

Isn't it working for Beane, Bonn, and Morey?

The A's went to the palyoffs 4 years in a row not so much becuase of money ball but because of Mulder, Zito and Hudson. Plus the had a lot of young talent from the minors like Chavez and Giambi. Makes for a good read and a decent movie but the reality is moneyball= no championship. It will work to put together a competitive team but not a championship team and Morey will soon discover.

mrKnickShot wrote:

Solace wrote:This nonsensical theory that all stats under MDA must be discounted is well.. nonsense. Do stats get inflated a bit under MDA? Sure. That doesn't mean they count for nothing. As for the "I didn't include Felton's stats under MDA", that's misleading because Felton didn't play for MDA last season and all of Lin's stats that were shown were last season. Anyway, Felton is not the same player he was two years ago. I liked Felton as a backup instead of Kidd. As a starter over Lin, I think you have to be joking if you prefer him.

The better barometer was/is how he played against the better teams - pretty bad.

He was totally shut down against Miami. In some of the Woodson games, he wasn't featured properly in the offense. If you want a factor, I could argue that one - that Woodson wouldn't use him properly. That is a factor of having an inferior coach (Woodson) instead of a quality coach. You listed I think 7 games; way too small a sample size to assume anything, just like assuming Lin is a star over 7 games was too small. Bonn is right - Lin's per 36 numbers are very good which is encouraging as far as Lin being a quality player. In any case, if you're comparing to Felton, barring Felton hitting the fountain of youth and his GPS stopping to take him to McDonalds, Lin is far superior.

mrKnickShot wrote:

CashMoney wrote:

nehemiah wrote:foosballnick, so if Lin makes roughly twice that of Felton, he should "have to perform twice as well as Felton"? In what planet does that logic exist? Does Peyton Manning complete twice the percentage of his passes and throw half the interceptions of those that make half his salary? Does Melo average twice the output of a 10M/yr player? The fact is that players that may average 18 ppg may make twice the salary of a 14 ppg player, and that relatively small difference is what gets rewarded.

mrKnickShot, if you do the same analysis of Melo's stats against good teams will show that he declines a huge amount as well. With infrequent exceptions, this will be the rule no matter who the player. It's because it really is a team game. If the team plays well and wins, many players on that team will have good stats for that game, and the opposite will be true in games that the team loses. It's because it is a TEAM game, and trying to determine how a player will play against good teams by isolating that player's stats (when his stats obviously depend on other teammates to make shots, to give assists, to play well enough to draw defenses to them, etc.) -- it's poor analysis. There are better ways to determine a player's worth -- it takes much more care to see which stats REALLY determine that player's value (read Moneyball, not just watch the movie).

Moneyball doesn't work.

What?

Isn't it working for Beane, Bonn, and Morey?

mrKnickShot wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:You have a convenient obsession with Houston. Virtually every NBA team is hiring sabermetricians now.

Morey is the champion of this (line of thinking) in bball from what I have read (google)

Which team has a good sabermetrician? And, how has it been successful for him/them?

So I am guessing that the knicks don't have one - how come this is not on the top of the list for their reported problems?

Bonn1997 wrote:

mrKnickShot wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:You have a convenient obsession with Houston. Virtually every NBA team is hiring sabermetricians now.

Morey is the champion of this (line of thinking) in bball from what I have read (google)

Which team has a good sabermetrician? And, how has it been successful for him/them?

So I am guessing that the knicks don't have one - how come this is not on the top of the list for their reported problems?

Morey's just one of many sabermetricians. Nothing special. I'm not sure how many the Knicks have but hiring more won't do any good if Dolan is still the owner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APBRmetrics

Read the APBRmetrics wiki. What I found interesting was this (WHERE IS DAVID BERRI??????):

Notable quantitative basketball analysts

The growing field of quantitative analysts includes but is not limited to the following:

Dr. Ben Alamar is an Assistant Professor of Management at Menlo College and the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. He is currently a consultant for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Roland Beech is the proprietor of 82games.com and has contributed his analysis to ESPN.com and SI.com. He is a consultant for the Dallas Mavericks.

Bob Bellotti was one of the first APBRmetricians, having invented "Points Created", a player rating system that attempted to boil all of a player's contributions into one number (similar to Bill James' Runs created). Bellotti wrote several books in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and contributed to the NBA's official encyclopedia, Total Basketball.

Bob Chaikin is currently a basketball analyst for the Miami Heat, since the 2008–09 season. He worked previously (2003-04 to 2007-08) for the Portland Trail Blazers, and consulted earlier with the New Jersey Nets (early 1990s) and Miami Heat (mid-1990s). He is developer of the B-BALL NBA simulation software program used in the statistical analysis of NBA teams and players. He is also developer of the historical sports statistics databases for pro baseball, basketball, football, and hockey located at www.bballsports.com.

John Ezekowitz is an undergraduate who writes for the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, and his research has been cited by ESPN The Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and the Wall Street Journal. He is currently a consultant for the Phoenix Suns as a statistician.[2]

John Hollinger authored four books in the Pro Basketball Forecast/Prospectus series and is a regular columnist for ESPN Insider. His Player Evaluation Rating (PER) was a better linear metric system than most of what preceded it[says who?] but it is greatly influenced by a player's offensive usage; in the minds of some,[who?] too much so. It also lacks any assessment of shot defense and that distorts the view of who is good and not. Hollinger's work is read by many mainstream fans who are not familiar with APBRmetrics in general, making him instrumental in introducing the system to regular NBA fans. Hollinger posts on twoplustwo forums under the handle "JumanjiBoard".[citation needed]

Justin Kubatko developed and administers Basketball-Reference.com, a site that provides much relied upon and easy access to regular and many of the advanced basketball statistics, much of the data not available anywhere else on the net for before the most recent seasons. He also adapted Bill James' Win Shares to basketball to estimate a player's contribution to a team's wins, based on individual offensive performance and mostly team defense. Because individual player shot defense is not estimated or used, this choice can distort the player ratings, significantly in some cases.[citation needed] ESPN.com has called the site "[T]he world's best hoops history site."

Dr. Dean Oliver is a former Division 3 player and assistant coach at Cal Tech (which almost never won a game) and a scout, who has consulted with the Seattle SuperSonics and also served in the front office of the Denver Nuggets. It is unclear how much either team improved because of his analysis because they started out good and had limited playoff success in those years. He currently works for ESPN. His old website, Journal of Basketball Studies, and subsequent 2003 book, Basketball on Paper, brought him some recognition as a principal leader in the field. His research dealt with the importance of pace and possessions, how teamwork affects individual statistics, initial crude defensive statistics, and the highly debated topic of the importance of a player's ability to create their own shot. His efforts to bring focus on the "Four Factors of Basketball Success" (field-goal shooting, offensive rebounds, turnovers and getting to the free-throw line) also help provide a simple framework for evaluation of players and teams.

Kevin Pelton is a sportswriter who writes for BasketballProspectus.com and has written for 82games.com, Hoopsworld.com and SI.com. Pelton also covers the Seattle Storm for the team's Web site, stormbasketball.com, and formerly covered the Seattle SuperSonics. However, after the SuperSonics' departure from Seattle, he has "adopted" the Portland Trail Blazers in his coverage.[3] He has worked to acquaint mainstream basketball fans with statistical analysis. He moderated the APBRmetrics forum for many years before abandoning it without direct explanation. He is also a consultant for the Indiana Pacers. His Schoene player rating system though is a crudely constructed similarity tool that has consistently done poorly in making predictions.[citation needed]

Dan Rosenbaum is a consultant for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Rosenbaum's work has focused on adjusted plus-minus ratings, which takes into account the quality of the players playing with and against a player and adjusts his plus-minus accordingly. Cleveland has a decidedly mixed record on player decisions, which calls into question how much and how well adjusted plus-minus has been used there.[citation needed]

Jeff Sagarin and Wayne Winston pioneered adjusted plus-minus statistics with their WINVAL system, which has been used extensively by the Dallas Mavericks. Wayne Winston also produces impact rating that gives heightened attention to player performance in the clutch. The impact rating of Jason Kidd was very high and if it was used in Dallas' decision to acquire him, as seems apparent from what Mark Cuban has said, it paid off. The Mavs were one of the most clutch teams in 2010-11.[citation needed]

Solace wrote:

mrKnickShot wrote:

Solace wrote:This nonsensical theory that all stats under MDA must be discounted is well.. nonsense. Do stats get inflated a bit under MDA? Sure. That doesn't mean they count for nothing. As for the "I didn't include Felton's stats under MDA", that's misleading because Felton didn't play for MDA last season and all of Lin's stats that were shown were last season. Anyway, Felton is not the same player he was two years ago. I liked Felton as a backup instead of Kidd. As a starter over Lin, I think you have to be joking if you prefer him.

The better barometer was/is how he played against the better teams - pretty bad.

He was totally shut down against Miami. In some of the Woodson games, he wasn't featured properly in the offense. If you want a factor, I could argue that one - that Woodson wouldn't use him properly. That is a factor of having an inferior coach (Woodson) instead of a quality coach. You listed I think 7 games; way too small a sample size to assume anything, just like assuming Lin is a star over 7 games was too small. Bonn is right - Lin's per 36 numbers are very good which is encouraging as far as Lin being a quality player. In any case, if you're comparing to Felton, barring Felton hitting the fountain of youth and his GPS stopping to take him to McDonalds, Lin is far superior.

That's the point! Melo and STAT are the featured players in the offense. Lin is most effective when he's featured on offense. That's exactly why he struggled under Woodson! His shots per game went from 15 under MDA to 9 under Woody. Woody is the coach and to bring back a player with a payday of $14.8 million to get 12-14 points and 5-8 assists when you can get the same production for half the cost doesn't make sense.

CashMoney wrote:

Solace wrote:This nonsensical theory that all stats under MDA must be discounted is well.. nonsense. Do stats get inflated a bit under MDA? Sure. That doesn't mean they count for nothing. As for the "I didn't include Felton's stats under MDA", that's misleading because Felton didn't play for MDA last season and all of Lin's stats that were shown were last season. Anyway, Felton is not the same player he was two years ago. I liked Felton as a backup instead of Kidd. As a starter over Lin, I think you have to be joking if you prefer him.

I never said that Lin's numbers don't count for anything under MDA. What I did say that since Woodson is now the coach basing Lin's value on the numbers he put up under MDA doesn't make sense. Felton put up career highs under MDA and even with an off year last year, his numbers were pretty close to his career averages.

Felton is the better PG right now and I do prefer the best PG to run the show.

I don't see how you discount MDA's numbers. If the Lakers switch coaches mid-season, do you discount Kobe's numbers? Nope. You don't. It's nonsense. Take his numbers for the season; selectively removing most of the games where he played well isn't exactly unbiased.

Anyway, Felton is the better PG right now is ridiculous. You are in a vast minority of people with that point of view, for good reason. Every analysis I've seen online has shown that Lin was A LOT better than Felton last season. Felton wasn't even a top 20 PG last season.

mrKnickShot wrote:

Solace wrote:

CashMoney wrote:

Solace wrote:This nonsensical theory that all stats under MDA must be discounted is well.. nonsense. Do stats get inflated a bit under MDA? Sure. That doesn't mean they count for nothing. As for the "I didn't include Felton's stats under MDA", that's misleading because Felton didn't play for MDA last season and all of Lin's stats that were shown were last season. Anyway, Felton is not the same player he was two years ago. I liked Felton as a backup instead of Kidd. As a starter over Lin, I think you have to be joking if you prefer him.

I never said that Lin's numbers don't count for anything under MDA. What I did say that since Woodson is now the coach basing Lin's value on the numbers he put up under MDA doesn't make sense. Felton put up career highs under MDA and even with an off year last year, his numbers were pretty close to his career averages.

Felton is the better PG right now and I do prefer the best PG to run the show.

I don't see how you discount MDA's numbers. If the Lakers switch coaches mid-season, do you discount Kobe's numbers? Nope. You don't. It's nonsense. Take his numbers for the season; selectively removing most of the games where he played well isn't exactly unbiased.

Anyway, Felton is the better PG right now is ridiculous. You are in a vast minority of people with that point of view, for good reason. Every analysis I've seen online has shown that Lin was A LOT better than Felton last season. Felton wasn't even a top 20 PG last season.

Judging Felton from just last season is not biased?

What is biased about it? It's a full season vs. a full season. Not selecting random games for one player and not the other. Anyway, Felton was overweight all season and had a very poor season. If he comes into camp in shape, he can be better than he was last year. I've already stated this before. But I'm not counting on it.