Anyway, would the same not be true for a top-5 positional list for all of the catch-all stats, including PER?

2. You are giving us the “exception cases”.

Just like Wins Produced detractors cherry-pick outliers to show that it doesn’t pass the “smell test.”

PG:

Westbrook
Lillard
Curry
Lowry
Paul

SG:

Harden
Lillard (dumb positional)
Oladipo
DeRozan
Evans (who is having a monster year)

SF:

Butler
Anderson
Oladipo
DeRozan
Ingles

PF:

Giannis (again, dumb positional adjustments and apparently automated segmentation)
Davis
LeFuckYou
Durant
Gibson

C:

Drummond
Towns
Jordan
Adams
Capela

You could pick a player at random from any of those positions and the team would be the best team in the East, hands down. Shall we throw out the whole stat for calling Joe “.620 TS%” Ingles a productive player?

People may not like WP, it’s not worth litigating for the thousandth time, but the Wages of Wins was a pretty timely book. It pushed our understanding of sports forward on a number of fronts and you rarely hear complaints about most of the stuff in there. A lot of it has seeped into conventional wisdom. It’s true some of it didn’t age that well but who cares, that’s how it is with almost any book of its nature. It got people thinking, that’s for sure.

This is all true, and makes it exponentially more frustrating that Berri and co. haven’t made any adjustments. The Fangraphs guys are constantly making adjustments to WAR, for example, as new information (pitch framing, etc.) comes out. The WP crew came up with something great for the time period but seem content with it not having any staying power

People may not like WP, it’s not worth litigating for the thousandth time, but the Wages of Wins was a pretty timely book. It pushed our understanding of sports forward on a number of fronts and you rarely hear complaints about most of the stuff in there. A lot of it has seeped into conventional wisdom. It’s true some of it didn’t age that well but who cares, that’s how it is with almost any book of its nature. It got people thinking, that’s for sure.

Also, he was completely right about Carmelo Anthony and for that I will ride with Dave for eva.

Back in his heyday Chandler averaged about 4 fewer FGAs per 40 minutes than an average center. So we’re talking about like 3-6 shots a night for the offense. I don’t see how that forces other players into taking terrible shots that hamper their efficiency.

Whatever the efficiency is on those 3-6 shots they should be charged against Chandler. The impact would be different depending on whether he was playing with Curry, Durant, and Thompson or KP, Lee and Hardaway, but he’s getting away without having his fair share of the tough shots hit his personal bottom line and those 3-6 would tend to be the tougher than any random set.

right now… kp is soft… plain and simple….

Chandler was given a chance every possesion, as the Knicks tried to run a P&R between Felton and him at the start of every possesion, and still only averaged 10 shots a game. At some point you have to stop using FG as a measure of scoring chances, and start measuring it some other way.

Exactly.

Chandler had fewer chances because it’s really hard to create the very limited kinds of shots he could excel at. Teams are focused on not giving up too many lobs. They want you shooting long 2s. If Chandler was shooting long 2s against a defender, he’d hit 25% of them. So on the possessions that the defense was successful at stopping the P&R, “sometimes” someone else got stuck taking a mid range at 40%. It’s no one’s fault the defense won the possession, but the shooter at 40% has his rating go down and Chandler who is never “that guy” does not get punished at all.

Here’s another way to explain it.

Let’s say I put a gun to peak Melo’s head and told him, either you keep your TS% at or above 60% or I will kill you and your entire family.

Could he do it?

100% yes.

He’d never shoot unless he had a layup, break away dunk, got fouled etc..

The problem is the team would be worse because to keep his TS% at 60% he’d start passing the ball to Chandler from 16 feet and that would be an even worse shot than some of the trash Melo put up on his own. Then WP would say Melo was good on low usage and it was all Chandler fault.

This not a defense of Melo, but he was more valuable than WP said.

1) WP almost certainly overrated rebounding, but rebounding is a critical part of basketball success and it still only rewards players relative to their peers. If there were a great number of players who could rebound like Drummond and Jordan, we wouldn’t see so many bigs at the top of the list. Same goes for low-volume, high-efficiency shooters.

2) Remind me how Capela’s low volume has adversely affected Harden’s and Paul’s efficiency. Also remind me how Carmelo is having the worst shooting season of his career playing next to two gravity-creating “superstars” and a monster paint-clogger down low.

1. It’s rewarding players relative to their peers, but since it overrates rebounds relative to other skills, the rebounders are too high on the list relative to players whose value is derived from other areas.

2. You are giving us the “exception cases”.

When you have a 3 terrific scorers, you don’t need a 4th or 5th. What you need is someone that brings something to the table that the scorers do not bring.

A guy like Andre Roberson doesn’t bring a lot, but he’s an elite defender. On a team with Melo, George, and Westbrook he’s more valuable than on a team with KP, Lee, Frank etc… His lack of scoring would become a drag on the Knicks that could be larger than his value on defense. But on OKC, Westbrook & George have no trouble creating decent shots so his defense is VERY valuable.

On a team like Houston, Capela brings what they need. Harden is elite, Paul can score 25-30 points almost any night he wants no matter who is guarding him, and they have floor spacers and other shot creators. His lack of usage is again mitigated by the construction of a great team.

The same would be true of Golden State.

But on the typical team without elite scorers, they are often struggling to get good efficient shots. If 1 or 2 players is a drag, it will have a bigger impact.