Z-man:
In my opinion, WP48 overvalues the four factors by exaggerating their correlation with wins. Yes, those factors have a clear and consistent correlation with team wins (did you say 70% or so?)But the other 30% is far from irrelevant.For example, shot-blocking and steals are hard to correlate with wins because players can pad these stats by overcommitting, resulting in lots of blocks and steals, but lots of defensive breakdowns that don’t show up in one’s individual stats. I’m sure lots of these kinds of arguments have been made in rebuttals to Berri’s and Oliver’s work, so I won’t make them again. But it’s not necessarily as simple as “do you trust your eyes or do you have statistical evidence for your conclusions.” At the end of the day, WP48 is still based on box-score stats, which do not encapsulate all that has gone on during a game, either physically, situationally, or psycologically.

Blocks have nothing to do with the four factors unless they result in a turnover.

Shooting (40%)
Turnovers (25%)
Rebounding (20%)
Free Throws (15%)

Those four things will tell you the outcome of most basketball games.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: There’s no doubt that some shot attempts come with very little time left on the clock. That much is certain. But with great offensive rebounders (I’ve argued that despite Chandler and Faried’s “limited” offensive skillset, their style of play is even anecdotally universal: there will always be missed shots, and any player who is tenacious enough to get into position for a high ORB% is going to be tremendously valuable), you don’t have to worry as much about the (I’m guessing, here) 5% difference between Carmelo’s last second 3-pt attempt and the average SF’s. And you sure as hell shouldn’t spend max money to get a slightly higher rate of return on “botched possessions” and “buzzer beaters.” That doesn’t make basketball sense. I mean, the Nuggets had no one like that (“shot creator”) on their team (Gallo was mediocre), and they were fantastic this year. I think they’ll be even better this year so long as they keep Harrington on the bench.

This is reasonable, but I would need more convincing. For example, I’ve argued before that while all baskets count equally in the box score, there are times in games (and in the season and in the playoffs) where scoring is much more difficult or crucial (late shot clock, late in close games, on the road, etc.) If I were to make an analogy with baseball, it would be the ability to hit in big spots vs. top pitchers or closers in critical games vs. piling up 4-for-5′s vs. the #3-#5 starters on most teams. (I think the recent Yankees suffer from this as opposed to the 90′s Yanks.)

The most recent glaring example of this is Steve Novak. You could see that the team was really trying to get him the ball vs. the Heat, and he not only couldn’t make shots, he couldn’t even get shots off and was pretty easily rendered a complete liability.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: There’s no doubt that some shot attempts come with very little time left on the clock. That much is certain. But with great offensive rebounders (I’ve argued that despite Chandler and Faried’s “limited” offensive skillset, their style of play is even anecdotally universal: there will always be missed shots, and any player who is tenacious enough to get into position for a high ORB% is going to be tremendously valuable), you don’t have to worry as much about the (I’m guessing, here) 5% difference between Carmelo’s last second 3-pt attempt and the average SF’s. And you sure as hell shouldn’t spend max money to get a slightly higher rate of return on “botched possessions” and “buzzer beaters.” That doesn’t make basketball sense. I mean, the Nuggets had no one like that (“shot creator”) on their team (Gallo was mediocre), and they were fantastic this year. I think they’ll be even better this year so long as they keep Harrington on the bench.

The Nuggets are a great up-tempo team that should be really efficient moving forward.

But Harrington and Miller are their best half-court players. If they get fewer minutes next year it will be interesting to see which of the WP golden boys suffer efficiency drops from the increased burden.

I can assure you, however, that other players will suffer efficiency drops with them off the floor.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: I blame Al Harrington, as always. .417 TS% on 22.3 usage. Pretty much single-handedly sunk that team. Still, I don’t think they would have made it past the second round.

Gallinari was .450 TS%… Of course you’re not going to mention that.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: I blame Al Harrington, as always. .417 TS% on 22.3 usage. Pretty much single-handedly sunk that team. Still, I don’t think they would have made it past the second round.

I think it’s absolutely fantastic you brought up Harrington.

Harrington and Andre Miller were most often the players trying to create offense in the half-court. That’s why they were most often on the floor late in the game over more passive WP48 friendly players like Gallo and even Lawson.

harrington and Miller, for a variety of reasons, were the guys most often taking the most difficult shots in the half-court.

You’re missing the causation again. Unassisted halfcourt shots are the most difficult in the game, and even on the most balanced offense in the NBA, the Nuggets proved that teams still have to have unassisted individually created attempts when defenses begin to clamp down.

That was evident late in games and in the playoffs where the Nuggets efficiency dropped.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: This is the first time in a long time that I’ll come to Melo’s defense, but the Denver offense was #1 the year he was traded to the Knicks (although they had a better WL with him gone, I believe).They were also #3 in 2009-10.

I would simply argue that it was not BECAUSE of Carmelo, primarily. They had some phenomenally efficient scorers. Nene, Anderson, Lawson, and Billups all had +.600 TS% that season.

it was not because of Melo primarily, perhaps, but it’s no coincidence that guys like Nene and Aflallo suffered from significant efficiency drops post-trade. Both guys often functioned directly off Melo touches.

Lawson and Billups both are quite adept at creating their own offense and don’t necessarily need an inside out prescence to be efficient, though they were also both more efficient with Melo as well, especially in spot-ups often created by tilted defenses.

The Honorable Cock Jowles:
. I don’t think there’s a shortage of plays in which a player like Fields can make a scoring attempt. I think that’s a myth.

Really? he had an assisted basket rate of close to 80 percent his rookie season. That seems to be maximizing his low usage attempts.

From an actual basketball perspective, there are quite a few limits to his ability to take good shots.

Even the most pass-oriented teams are in the 60 percent assisted basket range.