Posted by fishmike:

So many of those #s are misleading. You can keep a team to a low FG% but it doesnt matter if you send them to the line 40 times.

Defensive efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions) is really the final word on how good a team is at stopping the other team from scoring. Things like eFG% allowed are more to shed light on the specific components of a team defense that are relatively strong or weak.

As for sending teams to the line, Knicks are currently 25th, allowing .284 FTM/FGA. So that's an area of our D that could stand to see some improvement.

You can "collect" a lot of rebounds when there are a ton of misses, etc.

Using oreb% and dreb% (instead of per game totals) already accounts for that.

I really wanted to bang my head against the wall last night when they showed the graphic saying the Knicks lead the league in rebounds per game and Breen chimed in that that could be misleading because the Knicks have missed lots of shots (and have played good D too, I might add), thus giving them more opportunities to get boards in the first place. That is an absolutely correct observation, but it's very easy to get around that by using oreb% and dreb%. So why do TV broadcasts still use these flawed stats when there are obviously better ones out there? It's not even like o/dreb% is hard to calculate.

[Edited by - tomverve on 11-14-2005 08:22 AM]