Originally Posted by
42
If you don't mind, kind sir, I'd love to just agree with you here.
Speaking as someone who's run a number or two in his day, I can say that there are two kinds of data, and they need not be mutually exclusive. One kind describes what happens. The other kind give some sort of information about something else, past, present or future.
Game stats tell you a good deal, but not everything, about what happened in a game. Not all of them, however, give an indication of what will happen. All the stuff about being the man, being the other option, using too many possessions and letting the other team's coach see a simpler game to throw defense and rotations at, etc.
But, just like with bad teams, you have to be careful with players from good teams. Was James Posey everything he was supposed to be? His record before the trade is now exactly what it was then, yet we see some data as more meaningful . . . it was right there all along . . . whereas maybe we saw other data that made some think he was the missing piece before things really went south.
Marcus Thornton killing it offensively in terms of points scored means nothing if his usage is 23% and he's scored 230 points on 207 shot attempts, or 1.11 points per shot. Ariza, for instance, has a usage of 18% and has scored 107 points on 98 shot attempts, or 1.09 points per shot. If anyone things that's a huge difference, Jack has scored 266 points on 228 shot attempts, or 1.17 points per shot with a usage of 23%.
No one is getting superstar treatment, none of them is the only option. Both of them have a backcourt mate and at least one decent big. It's a question of picking out the story and then deciding what is going to `transfer' into some other situation to some extent.
With bad teams, there's too much badness and not enough goodness, so the untrained eye can see what it will, often assuming all the goodness is in the player of interest and all the badness elsewhere.
With good teams, there's not enough badness to see because there are better options, so the untrained eye doesn't realize what it's not seeing, what's being masked.
Yes, Marcus and Trevor and doing about the same thing for their teams on offense, but Trevor is hurting less (under 1.2 points per shot is not so hot) with his lower usage rate. Yes, those figures are normalized for playing time, so the lower usage is not due to missed games.