Comments on: 2/29 Two Quick Links

By: Mulligan

Mulligan — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:26:03 +0000

Also, I’d much rather have Melo over Wade – I hate that guy’s game.

By: Mulligan

Mulligan — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:24:16 +0000

I was about to make the same argument re: Kiki and Dumars. If Martin’s knees hadn’t completely degenerated, he would be valuable to that team.
Also, he’s learning from Thorn right now and that dude is a master.

By: Eli W

Eli W — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:49:22 +0000

When I talked about Wins Produced assuming that rebounds have a value of 1, I was referring to the translation from the player to team level. The value WP assigns to each team rebound is based on a regression measuring how much team stats contribute to wins, but then Berri assumes that the translation from player to team stats is 1-to-1. But it appears that is far from the case for defensive rebounds, where each player DRB contributes a lot less than one DRB to the team total because a large percentage of player DRB would have been rebounded by a teammate anyway.

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:13:42 +0000

I think Kiki is a fine GM — he actually has a plan when putting together a team unlike IT. Denver was nowhere when he came and now they are somewhere. Can’t blame him even a little bit for picking Carmelo — he is a great player and had the least risk and comparable upside at that time to the other players you listed. And missing on Skita – well, even Joe Dumars drafted Darko and no one calls him a bad GM just based on that (although he really could’ve should’ve had Carmelo at least out of that #2 pick if not Bosh or Wade. DET would be seriously scary with one of those guys).

Re: Kenyon Martin – he was a great energy guy and player for the Nets during the championship run and has had a run of injuries that could happen to anyone.

Look, at least Kiki has a brain in his head which is more than I can say for anyone in the Knicks front office. I’d rather have Colangelo but Kiki would be a fine upgrade from IT.

By: Caleb

Caleb — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:03:01 +0000

weird news about Lue – why would he sign here when he can be a backup on a contending team? Sounds totally imginary.

He’s an expiring contract, too — hard to see the point of this move, unless it’s to see what the team looks like with an actual, albeit mediocre, PG. It’s not like Jones or Morris are in our long-term plans, either.

By: DNM

DNM — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:56:53 +0000

Frank Isola is reporting that the Kings are releasing Tyronne Lue and he may sign with the Knicks…and that we may cut Fred Jones or Morris.

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/knicks/2008/02/kings-set-to-release-tyronn-lu.html

I don’t see why we would need Lue right now…we might as well just keep Fred and Morris since they are both expiring contracts.

By: Caleb

Caleb — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:01:16 +0000

Kiki is a terrible GM, if you ask me… just based on the examples above. Martin and Tskitishvilli? Whew. I also note that he took Carmelo Anthony ahead of Bosh, Wade and Josh Howard… all much better, in my book. Vandeweghe looks like a guy who values big names over anything else. Exactly like a certain GM who shall go nameless…

The rebounding article mischaracterizes a couple of things about Berri, I think… for example, calling it his “assumption” that a rebound should be weighted as “1″ in his scheme. Berri’s method is based on straight math — the correlation between certain stats and wins. (Unlike Hollinger, who for better or worse assigned semi-arbitrary values to these stats). It’s hard to argue against Berri’s numbers where they relate to TEAM stats. They’re self-referential, just a statement of fact that the correlation exists.

The problem arises in assuming the correlation can be translated to individual statistics. In practice, the biggest problem is giving credit for rebounds that would be more fairly credited to defense (in the case of defenseive rebounds) or crappy shooting/shot creation (in the case of offensive rebounds).

Here’s another way to explain:
Berri assigns full credit to the individual player, for a rebound that he grabs. It’s partly unfair, because the rebound was only available because the other team missed the shot. Zach Randolph grabbed the board, but maybe Balkman deserves some credit for it, because he forced Paul Pierce into a bad shot.

Berri attempts to correct for this, by including some credit linked to team defense (Michael Finley gets as much credit for Spurs defense as Tim Duncan, but hey — it’s something)… and with a position adjustment, a mathematical trick which tries to account for the reality that big guys get most of the rebounds…

…but it still seems that his rebound weight is off.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:04:38 +0000

My question is why would NJ go through the trouble of having Kiki as an assistant after their prior assisant went to GM Philly and then let him go and to their biggest “rival” of all teams?