Posted by roblackman:
One thing your study never considered is the players guarding Toine and Sweets--how many double teams did Toine command and did the other team put their best defender on him? That's just one example of how stats don't tell the whole story.
That's true, it's difficult to quantify team defense and defense in general is hard to study statistically on an individual level.
However, we can look at the various possiblities you come up and still find Walker lacking.
case 1: Walker was not double teamed significantly more often than Sweetney.
In this case, Sweetney comes out looking better pretty straightforwardly.
case 2: Walker was double teamed significantly more than Sweetney.
In this case, straight comparisons between Sweets and Walker are muddier. It's worth mentioning, though, that even if Sweets did not draw a ton of double teams last season, it was because he often had the opposing team's center guarding him. Walker (to his credit) will never get checked by a center because he's too quick and has too much of a handle for the big guys. But if Sweets can put up such a great inside eFG% while being so thoroughly mismatched, he comes out looking pretty nice anyway.
Abandoning the comparisons to Sweets for the moment, Walker still comes up looking bad compared to other teams' high volume, go-to post up guys (see the list of inside eFG%s in the original post). It's a safe assumption that all of those guys-- Brand, Gasol, etc.-- get double teamed at least as much as, if not more than, Walker. And yet their inside eFG%s are much better. By comparison, Walker is a very poor efficiency player for a go-to guy in the post, even if he does get doubled.
Another stat you need is how each player played during critical moments of games--did the points come in garbage time or did they come at crucial moments?
Fair point. Here are Walker's and Sweetney's scoring efficiencies in clutch play-- defined as "4th quarter or overtime, less than 5 minutes left, neither team ahead by more than 5 points" by 82games.com.
Walker in the clutch (23 games w/ Hawks):
inside eFG%: .364 (26% of attempted FGs)
jumper eFG%: .333 (77% of attempted FGs)
Walker in the clutch (14 games w/ Celts):
inside eFG%: .647 (40% of attempted FGs)
jumper eFG%: .212 (60% of attempted FGs)
Sweetney in the clutch (19 games w/ Knicks):
inside eFG%: .667 (86% of attempted FGs)
jumper eFG%: 1.000 (29% of attempted FGs)
These stats need to be taken with a grain of salt, because the sample sizes are likely relatively small in all cases. (82games.com unfortunately doesn't include minutes per game the player logged in clutch situations.) Also, it's common for eFG% numbers to take big dips in clutch situations where the defense tightens up, so that needs to be taken into account.
Still, it's not looking very good for Walker. In the clutch, he attempted the vast majority of his shots on jumpers, on which he shot truly poor eFG%s. (.333 actually isn't that bad for clutch jump shooting, relatively speaking, but .212 is unacceptable.) His inside eFG% with the Celts is the lone bright spot. However, Sweetney's inside eFG% in the clutch is even better, and more importantly, he took a whopping 86% of his shots in the clutch close to the rim. So Sweets knows to take the high percentage shots where Walker apparently doesn't.
Another stat you need is the health of the player during the game--were they playing hurt with an injury, were they sick?
This objection doesn't really seem pertinent. Walker and Sweetney both enjoyed healthy 04/05 seasons; both played 77 out of 82 games. If there were minor bruises and aches here and there, such factors are probably of low impact and probably get averaged away over the course of 77 games anyway.
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7/20/2005 4:01 PM
. Even worse you can just get a blank stare. 
) he has been consistent since day one. I can appreciate that because it takes a certain maturity level to remain consistent (although I fully agree with Monks position on his flip flop 
)