Re: Athlon Sports on scoring efficiency

["Thomas Murphy" <tfmiii@worldnet.att.net>]

Alex, you seem to have cut right to the heart of the matter and hopefully I
can clarify my position just as well as you have. In any case, here goes!

I seem to remember there is a saying in legal circles that "bad cases make
bad law," which I've always taken to mean that strange or unusual
circumstances can result in strange judgments and poor precedents. With
regards to your hypothetical example let me say that you must have left the
game before the end of the 2nd half ;?)

During the '2nd half' both Paul and Ray were presented with each other's
situations from the 'first half' - Paul got three dunks and two wide open 3s
whereas the defense clamped down on Ray and he got one open look for 2 pts
but otherwise was presented with four tough possessions which led him to
pass the ball back to Sam Cassell. The final box score looked like this:
Pierce 6-6 6-8 20 pts
Allen 6-6 0-0 14 pts.
Now according to your formula for efficiency Ray Allen is supposedly more
efficient than Paul (2.3 to 2.0) despite having scored 6 less points in
exactly the same number of possessions!

How can this be? Although you suppose that your revision measures points per
possession in reality it fails to take into account MOST possessions - those
possessions when the given player is unable to exploit a viable scoring
opportunity. Instead it effectively devalues one of the most important
aspect of truly efficient scoring - being able to score even under the most
difficult of circumstances, in many cases by getting to the charity stripe.

This flaw is manifest when one considers the difference between a player who
is merely a good shooter and one who is a truly efficient scorer. Players
who know how to draw fouls can indeed 'manufacture' points out of
'nowhere' - that is, in a situation where it would appear they have no
options - in large part because of their ability to get to the foul line.
This makes them more efficient scorers than the best spot-up shooter. Yet
this efficiency is washed out in your measurement because it treats FTs as
if they were merely another shot taken during an obvious shot opportunity
when in reality they are oftentimes the result of superior skill creating an
easy scoring opportunity when none was apparently available.

If one were to follow your measurement to its logical conclusion then we
would have to say that someone like Steve Kerr is actually the most
efficient scorer in NBA history. It just so happens that Steve played in a
game last night too ;?) Despite having exactly the same number and type of
possessions as Paul and Ray he only took two shots since he is strictly a
3-pt specialist. He made two 3 pointers and was unable to exploit the other
shot opportunities because he is slow and doesn't have any hops. As a result
his box score is as follows:
Kerr 2-2 0-0 6 pts
According to your measure Kerr's efficiency rating is 3.0 - the highest
rating of the three players and indeed the highest rating one can obtain
using your measure. And the real Steve Kerr is likely to have one of the
highest ratings in the history of the NBA if we use your measure because he
takes very few shots, a very high % of those shots are 3-ptrs, he converts a
high % of his 3-ptrs, and he takes relatively few 2-pters or foul shots
(both of which would drag his average down).

Now ask yourself, does this really confirm what you intuitively feel should
be the case? Is Steve Kerr really one of the most (if not THE most)
efficient scorers in the history of the league? Or has your attempt to
include some possessions (but far from ALL possessions) actually skewed the
measurement of scoring efficiency in some way? I would contend that the
latter situation is the case. I'll try to explain why I think this may be
so.

In attempting to measure all possessions you include those possessions that
result in foul shots. But including these possessions seems to imply that
the FTs are simply and always a function of taking a shot. In other words,
your inclusion of FTs as possessions for the sake of measuring efficiency
implies that the fouls that result in FTs are distributed randomly
throughout the shooting universe - if you take enough shots you will
eventually be fouled while taking a shot, hence the resulting FTs should
count as a shot. This may be true for some cases and some players but it is
clearly a false assumption generally because some players draw many more
fouls than others despite taking a similar number of shots. So something
else must help determine the distribution of fouls and resulting FTs. The
skill and intelligence that allows some players to draw fouls and get to the
line makes them more efficient scorers because they are able to use those
abilities to score points even when they do NOT have a viable shot. As the
cliche has it, they 'manufacture' points. This is a key part of what
separates Jordan from John Paxson or Craig Hodges - the ability to deliver
points even when circumstances are not ideal. But by treating Jordan's FTs
AS IF they resulted from merely another wide-open spot-up jump shot (that
even John Paxson could have made) you in a sense actually devalue their
worth and skew your measurement of scoring efficiency. As I understand it
Paxson was not as efficient a scorer as Jordan. Although Paxson may have
been a better 3-pt jumpshooter, if presented with the same possessions he
could not have manufactured the scoring opportunities Jordan did (in many
cases by drawing fouls) when no obvious scoring opportunity existed.

This critical aspect of the truly efficient scorer's game seems to be
appropriately represented only when one does not count FTs as shot
attempts - in part because in many cases there literally WAS no shot attempt
and perhaps in part because it in a sense it roughly represents an inner
truth of the situation, that there was no VIABLE shot available. Whatever
the case, calculating PPS (and not counting FTs as shot attempts) seems to
function as a much more realistic measure for efficient scoring and the
'extra' opportunities (and points) efficient scorers generate - probably
because a good deal of their FT opportunities are in reality 'extra'
opportunities that less talented or less intelligent players simply could
not create.

Cheers - TomM

PS: Antoine looked VERY efficient tonight! (Sadly, Pierce did not). Loved
the fast breaks! (but hated the half-court sets).

----- Original Message -----
From: Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>
To: Thomas Murphy <tfmiii@worldnet.att.net>; Celtic list <celtics@igtc.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: Athlon Sports on scoring efficiency


> Tom,
>
> A key point that might be confusing some people is that if you draw a foul
> and miss your shot (which happens most of the time you're fouled), you are
> not credited with a missed field goal attempt! So for instance, let's say
> Paul over the course of five possessions draws four fouls, hitting six FT,
> and hits a FG. His line is 1-1 FG, 6-8 FT. His pts/fga is a marvelous 8.0!
> Over the same five possessions, Ray Allen hits two three pointers and
three
> dunks. His line is 5-5 FG, 0-0 FT, and 2.4 pts/fga. Now the weird thing is
> that Ray scored 12 points and Paul scored 8 in five possessions each, but
> Paul's "efficiency" is three times as high. I think drawing fouls is a
> great thing too but I think that this example shows why pts/fga frequently
> has nothing to do with what most of us would associate with efficiency,
> which is how many points a player tends to get each time he gets the ball.
>
> Now the point you make about the "free" shot attempts that guys like
Miller
> and Pierce get by tossing up a field goal after getting the foul is valid.
> There's a flaw in counting a FTA as half a shot in the case where the ball
> goes in (for a possible three point play) because it should only have been
> one FGA total, but it'll look like a FGA+FTA on the stat sheet. When they
> miss, it works OK because no FGA shows up on the stat sheet. The only way
> to do it accurately is to actually keep track of what actually happened
> each game with shooting fouls. But I think in most cases, the player does
> not convert the field goal, and the error is a FTA attempt for each time
> this happens. In contrast, pts/fga essentially has an error of a FTA every
> time a "regular" FTA is taken, which is huge.
>
> Alex