It’s fair to say that nobody was completely shocked when Charles Barkley went off on the use of NBA analytics and said they are “crap”, but for as passionate as he was, he seemed to be missing the point.
The term analytics is simply used as a word for knowledge and while the science behind some formulas can be debated, the bottom line is that the knowledge these recorded stats provide does give some insight in to why these basketball games are playing out the way that they do. NBA analytics, or Advanced Stats, consist of many different relevant numbers that can help break down the performance of a team or an individual player. There are a few key concepts that even the casual basketball fan can benefit from learning about, so here’s the most important ones:
PER
ESPN analytics guru John Hollinger helped popularize this term that is used to represent a commonly used advanced metric that measures a player’s per-minute productivity. This metric adds up all of the positive contributions a player makes to his team and subtracts all of the negative ones in a statistical point value system that adjusts for both the pace and playing time to make it easy to compare players to one another. While the PER is an excellent metric to measure players, it is also limited by the lack of reliable defensive stats that are used in the formula and that means players with higher offensive upside will usually have higher grades than elite two-way players that excel at both ends of the floor.
The perfect example of that would be the fact that Jamal Crawford and J.R. Smith both had higher PER than Paul George did in 2013, even though almost everybody will admit George was the best of the three. What makes the PER useful is that it’s a good measure of the level that the top offensive players in the game are performing at as well as how they compare to one another. However, unlike the WAR in baseball, this stat is not nearly as definitive of a measure for everything each player brings to the floor.
Win Shares
The Win Shares analytic estimates each player’s contribution to the team’s win total. The offensive win shares are established by calculating a player’s marginal points from his points produced and offensive possessions and then dividing it by the marginal points per win. Then the defensive win shares are credited by computing a player’s marginal defense from his defensive rating and dividing it by the marginal points per win. Then the offensive and defensive win shares are added together in order to arrive at the final number.
Essentially, win shares measure a player’s value based on wins. The good thing about win shares is that they take obvious important numbers like playing time into account rather than just evaluating a player’s importance to the team based on what they do when they are on the floor. No stat is perfect but this metric is an easy and relatively efficient way to measure how important every player is to his own team.
Efficiency
The key to winning any basketball game is efficiency at both ends of the floor, so it’s obvious why a metric was created to measure both the individual and the team efficiency at both ends of the floor in terms of offense and defense. Calculating a team’s efficiency is done by calculating their points scored or points allowed on a per possession basis in order to adjust for the pace of the game. To make the number easier to understand, it is calculated based on what it would look like per 100 possessions. Calculating an individual’s offensive and defensive efficiency can be a little more difficult but the point of it is the same.
The numbers used and values assigned to them will differ from site to site, but once again this metric creates the ability to compare both players and teams within the same system in order to measure how efficient they are at both ends of the floor. Even though none of these advanced analytical stats is perfect, they provide an excellent platform for comparison and can be very useful tools.
