He’s 7th in win shares per 48 amongst Celtics players that played more than 10 games. That’s just a single stat, not a model, but it’s probably where the ranking came from.

That’s my point. Some fallout is required so journalists feel less comfortable pushing piss takes like this under the guise of analytics

You might be right that ESPN takes the absolute opposite lesson and hires the Kendrick Perkins of analysts to be primetime lol

Wby can’t it be that the source that said is really just a dumbass and it’s real? People say crazy shit, especially when they’re off the record (I’m freelance journalist) knowing that they could say some of the most outlandish with no blowback.

Earlier in the week, SAS took a whole segment on national TV to respond to brown comments and posted that video on socials IMMEDIATELY. This is nothing compared to that.

Everyone is attacking Marks credibility when before this he was one of the more respected talking heads at ESPN. It’s usually poor ethics and bad faith to expose a source, unless some really extraordinary circumstances are involved, so Mark got no choice but to take the heat. But I’m for certain, this ain’t made up and if delivered in a different context, that comment would be worthy of discussion without the mud slinging.

it’s WS/48. He was 8th Celtic last season, I guess they removed Bassey who played 5 games so Brown’s 7th.

That’s always been the problem with how analytics are being painted by people who just use it online. Id like to think teams are definitely smarter (though if this source is real then ehhh), but people using it say “X metric says this so it supports my argument”. They take whatever surface level summary of what the metric wants to say, and use it to make barely substantiated evidence with minimal understanding or adequate eye test validation too. It makes something very useful to teams around the league look like dumb nerd shit cause of these stupid online arguments for brownie points

I’m not sure that’s necessarily true.

EPM has him 5th at +1.3 and Hauser and Garza are behind him at +1.2 so it’s not hard to imagine.

Everyone here be just now learning the lessons Wall St has been learning for 30 years. Models are simplifications of reality that when done correctly can give you an edge in certain decisions. However, blindly taking their results as truth is how you run off a cliff. You have to understand the model and where it is weak or not designed to be applicable and then look at its results within that lens.

I know someone told Marks to throw a grenade in the Celtics front office. No team has 7 players better than Brown. This is great engagement for podcast though

Rightfully so - it’s absurd

Which is an anonymous source probably just saying something absurd and arbitrary to lower his trade value

It’s massively idiotic. Statements like that push back understanding of the usefulness of analytics. Nobody on earth who has watched him play would say he is the 7th best player on the Celtics. It’s stupid.

I mean analytics have a place. But yeah there aee things they dont account for 

3 pointers are great until you have a bunch of players on a high intensity road game missing.

If your team is entirely built around 3s it can get really ugly really fast.

Justifiable

Then someone else said that he was in the one of the five worst players in the league in terms of making their team and teammates better. The guys has made like 6 Conference Finals and won a championship. By that logic if the Celtics did nothing else but bench him, they would have been the 1990s Bulls since her second highest usage and minutes guy was actively sabotaging them

I doubt his model actually says that. It’s an anonymous source probably out of context, exaggerating, messing around, or with ulterior motives

Oneguy lol.

Thats like saying every ex NBA players are an idiot and need to shut the fuck up because Kendrick Perkins and Rashad Mccants exists.

People in this sub have been posting weeks and months old comments from players about analytics (Josh Hart, Melo) just to dogpile on them to vent anger stemming from something else

There is no such thing as ‘analytics says’.

That is like saying ‘English says’

Analyses ARE arguments.

I can use analytics to say Jaylen Brown is top 5 or top 10 level last season, it depends on which sets of numbers I pick and how I process the information.

I can also use analytics to say Luka was MVP, Wemby was MVP, Jokic was MVP, Shai deserved his MVP, literally parrot every reddit talking point, using different sets of numbers and processes.

The problem isn’t necessarily analytics but analysts who make really dumb claims based on them, or who don’t realize that a model they’ve made might suck. We’ve lost that aspect of the conversation

Tari Eason taking Lamarcus Aldridge shots would be worse and still in no way aesthetic

players take one step back and its the devil to yall

It’s a lost art because it was always just objectively a pretty bad shot and it’s kind of funny in retrospect that it took thirty years or whatever for people to figure that out.

Like, it’s not rocket science. Three is more than two. Three is exactly 50% more than two. Pretty much no one hits 50% more shots from 20 feet than they do from 24, so it’s almost always a bad idea to take those long twos. You don’t need a lot of advanced models and statistical wizardry to figure that out. Seems like it ought to be pretty basic common sense.

You also had bums like Evan Turner missing 5+ middies a game and shooting 40% while contributing zero 3s

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But you can go cold shooting from the mid range too. Wouldn’t the better idea to be keep attacking the rim, hunt fouls, and take advantage of transition opportunities because the team down 20 is also going to be chucking it?

I feel like I’ve seen a ton of teams get lazy and just start shooting mid rangers when they’re too gassed to attack. Seems like the same problem as setting for threes.

prioritizing the mid range where there is A. less variance

Is there?

If you prioritize the midrange, paint gets more packed, there is less spacing the defence around, so as soon as they adapt (and we’re talking NBA, coaching staff is MOSTLY very smart about this) you’ll start seeing more help on the bal, which in turn means that players on the ball need to start making riskier decisions - worse shots, risky passes out of the double, etc.

The midrange has always been the bread and butter for some of the best scorers in the league. It’s much easier to get to your spot and because it’s physically closer than a three, it’s much easier to be creative in how you can get to your spots and the type of shots you can take (e.g. fadeaways, bank shots, floaters, etc).

And in today’s game where players have a lot more spacing due to the three being more of a threat, players who specialize in the mid range actually have way more room to be effective. Think of all of the greatest scorers who lived in the mid range: Jordan, Kobe, Melo, TMac, Dirk, Duncan, Hakeem, etc. These guys would’ve thrived in today’s game because of how much spacing they are actually afforded in the mid range now.

Nerds are going to use it ironically and ruin it immediately

100% it’s not hard to know this. Don’t need nerds for this one.

Lmfao

You ain’t foolin anyone 😂

GarPax: “Hold up, let him cook”

I think all basketball talent should be evaluated on how good they are in a 1v1 in which case Lavine and derozan are max players

I know it’d be a bit of a shocker, but Brunson for Sabonis would make a ton of sense in my opinion

LOL

Yeah exac- hey wait a minute

lol

They fit the models around our consensus beliefs!!! Like this David West thread starts with him going “analytics hate MJ”, man EVERY time adjusted stat goes right into the trash if it thinks MJ wasn’t 3 max players stapled together

Jaylen Brown is like the one all-star that impact stats DESPISE because he isn’t that efficient, doesn’t get help steals or blocks, and is a bad passer to an extent that is worse than most starting 3s. Every front office knows all this shit!

They use the model to find the 12mpg guys who can lowkey do all these things well at game speed instead of being just scaled down Kyle Kuzma! That’s all

Asimov predicted this:

https://i.redd.it/myx32smq4gjd1.jpeg

So did Quasimodo actually

I’d make a slightly more nuances argument that min/maxxing everything is anti-intellectual in its own way. It’s unsustainable and ignores the inherent value in balance and diversity of thought, kind and incentive.

Right. Every single gm or coach uses some form of analytics to inform their decisionmaking.

What people are actually describing is dubious statistical analysis vs. actual analytical thinking.

What this means is that some guy in a tracksuit who doesn’t like Jaylen Brown is looking at a chart with “advanced statistics” and tilting a narrative around it vs. looking at outcomes.

The playoffs (some 1st rounds ignored) are just a sample of extremely good defenses that are also now trying. The regular season sample misleads you because there are players whose offense isn’t resilient to the defense suddenly being great, i.e. can’t drive a closeout, can’t finish in traffic, can’t pull-up

It’s still better to be a player who generates a lot of wide open 3s if you’re so unbelievably good that you do that in the playoffs (Jokic, prime LeBron, Luka, etc), and ideal if you actually hit those long 2s (KD, Jokic, Kristaps Porzingis if he played basketball games)

Fuck I got my Nets front office people mixed up lmao

Data is necessarily incomplete. The interpretation of the data is necessarily incomplete. Everything changes based on POV. Every model is wrong; some are useful, but they’re all wrong.

Its way more likely that the GM Bobby marks was talking to was just purposefully trying to be a dickhead/insulting to inflame the situation more.

I think people are really underestimating how much money, research, and development goes into a sports analytics department. The conclusion a lot of teams seem to be reaching (if any of this garbage reporting is true to begin with) is “he’s not worth the price” not “he’s a bench player.”

That’s exactly what he’s saying

Unfortunately it just won’t happen. Why would teams disadvantage themselves? There is no Luddite “get analytics out of sports” movement in any serious way. The reason teams, as West laments, keep shooting 3s with a big lead is because the opposition will catch up and close the lead with their own 3s if you stop. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle.

If you want the game to be art then stop keeping score, as long as winning is the goal and incentivized people are going to keep looking for advantages and finding ways to win.
Sports is the once place where this mindset should be celebrated, winning at all costs, finding edges, overcoming constraints.

Stuff like this is just total bullshit every single time it’s parroted. You’re either just making stuff up to hop on the /r/nba redact bandwagon or simply have no idea how to watch basketball. “Muh mid-range game” that you guys pretend to want is greater than it’s ever been because instead of unskilled scrubs taking those shots, only players who are actually good are doing so. Your enjoyment of the game did not plummet because Danny Green level players started taking 37% threes instead of 40% nineteen footers, or because you no longer have the privilege of watching Clint Capela tier guys post up. Give me a break. Enough of this boomer/early millenial horseshit

Mid range is still a thing you just have to be a superstar to shoot it SGA will go down as one of the best mid range players ever.

And then you’re pissed when your team is losing. Why would you disadvantage yourself intentionally?

Imo blame the leagues and not the people who are paid to win at all costs.

I have been beating the drum for a long time that sports leagues ought to consult TCG and live-service video game developers whose jobs depend on constantly balancing metas when they become too dominant. Sports didn’t have to do that until the last 10-20 years and their lack of action/knowledge shows.

You will NEVER get people to agree to be less competitive, you can change the rules of the game to make gameplay more dynamic. The former is fantasy bullshit, the latter is reality.

You can’t tell me the mid 00s are a better basketball product than what we just watched in the playoffs. I’ll take pace & space over a Kendrick Perkins post up any day of the week.

I don’t know, man. Disregarding math because you don’t like the results feels pretty anti-intellectual.

It’s absolutely anti intellectualism considering the score board is an analytic and you got athletes coming out acting like that word is code for quantum physics

Like somebody else pointed out, looking at literally any impact metric would’ve prevented the Luka-AD trade. I trust the numbers any day over the braindead morons in here who tried to justify that swap when Doncic started ‘slow’ last season, or that Cade and Brown were playing better because of defense lmao

The superstar captain of the team that just won the championship has a game largely built around ball movement and the ability to find space for the midrange pull up. I’ll admit that I basically only watch the Knicks but this feels like a 2018 complaint.

It’s slightly more complicated than that.

It took them 30 years to conclude that 35% of 3 is more than 45% of 2, but is less than 65% of 2.

Give them more credit than that, it was more like 0.35 x 3 > .50 x 2

We had stupid ass head coaches before analytics too

And how many teams shot their way of out the getting to the playoffs because they took low percentage 2s?

No team will ever play perfectly. Analytics is just a way to review information to make the most of the team you have. That’s it. It can be simple, like fouling Mitchell Robinson to get him to take a low percentage FT, or complicated, like looking at EPM for roster construction purposes.

Hating analytics is like hating coaching as a concept because sometimes people do it wrong.

we used to hear people say “live and die by the 3” in a bad way. now its the only way to play and we’ve seen many teams shoot themselves out of games with the lead because they have to jack up 3s.

They shot ⁵⁄₂₂ from 2 and people are blaming their 3s lmao

That also means they’re bad at analytics.

He thinks guys to went to college for stats and work at NBA front offices don’t consider variance. His votes counts the same as yours btw.

Thats not how it works.

You cant build an analytically efficient team and then change your roster in the playoffs and all of a sudden a guy whose great at 3 pointers is great at driving or offensive rebounding or whatever analytics tells you will help.

It can certainly impact your strategy but doesn’t mean you have the personnel to effectively use that strategy.

There is also minimal to no data available for that specific match up as analytics uses large sets of past data.

The Bulls apparently have a single person in their analytics departament so we already have proof of concept lmao