I love how particular people are in when ppg does and does not matter.

For example, Donovan Mitchell was 7th in ppg last year, and everyone here thinks he’s massively overpaid, Jamal Murray was 12th and people act like he’s washed.

But when Brown in 4th suddenly he has to be a star and it’s impossible that teams might have a reason not to take it too seroiusly. Also, Paolo Banchero is 19th, nobody claims he’s a top 20 player.

Obviously being a great scorer makes you a better player than not scoring, but it’s far from the only thing that matters.

(Also, this sub absolutely loves Rodman, and he didn’t score, but when it’s Dean Wade suddenly it’s a problem)

Yeah it’s hard for a standalone metric to quantify that (I assume, at least). Like if you’re playing in lineups beneficial to your game and you’re not carrying a large or outsized burden in whatever role, a lot of metrics could show you as a “winning” / “impactful” player. Gordon and White are obviously better players than a Dean Wade, and I’d imagine most metrics would have that as the case, but then you get into guys that are on worse teams or carrying a larger burden to perform and that’s where it gets muddy.

Not that long ago Aaron Gordon was seen as a solid to good player on middling Magic teams. Next to a couple of lead dogs he’s one of the best 3rd options in the league.

Lol

I would love to be able to bet money on a basketball game between 5 Dean Wades and 5 Jaylen Browns. The Jaylen team should be getting points too because it grades out worse on advanced metrics right?

He’s just really really good defensively. Because as a 3 he’s a great rim protector, as a 4 he’s merely very good. He can defend 1-4.5 either as the primary or on switches. He rebounds. He’s generally had a positive impact on turnovers too.

He’s just a really versatile player who positively impacts basically every lineup he’s in defensively, which translates out to him being a very good defender overall.

It really is crazy to me. I don’t know how people jump to the advance stats being wrong whenever there’s a discrepancy between advance stats and their eye test / PPG.

The whole point of advance stats is that it’s supposed to tell us more than basic box score stats and our biased eyes can. But then whenever there are surprising results with some of these metrics the initial reaction by so many is “oh this advance metric must be wrong”. And it’s especially silly when many advance stats agree with each other and also factor in rotations and whatnot, but then they get hand waved away.

I’ve seen so many YouTube videos and Reddit posts trying to explain why the advance stats are wrong on guys like Jaylen Brown, when Occam’s Razor tells us that our eye test is wrong. Those videos often even try to claim “oh these stats don’t take into account rotations or filter out garbage time” when they literally do exactly that

It’s not always the takeaway at all.

But the thing is that all metrics like this are created by human design. They can have flaws and biases within them. They only count the specific things that they were designed to count.

I really like the D.Wade add, but he’s not gonna play 35 minutes a game. So while he might be in more efficient lineups that doesn’t mean it’s the lineup you can run most often.

I wouldn’t be shocked if a lineup with Bona-Maxey-VJ-Brown-Lebron had an even higher net then Embiid because of how fast that lineup could be. But you’re not gonna play Bona 35 minutes a night on his 26th foul.

Metrics are useful but they are never perfect. We can’t just blindly rely on them for every point of analysis.

Advanced stats favorites have great percentages because they only shoot under ideal circumstances; meanwhile the guy taking all of the difficult shots on medium efficiency is completely undervalued.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of advanced stats. Ex: Advanced stats loved prime Westbrook’s despite him being a chucker

Bro it’s a giant misconception assuming efficiency is the end all-be all of advanced stats, that is NOWHERE near the case

Anthony Edwards is a consensus top 10 player, is damn near hyper-efficient, yet some of the more heralded metrics are down on him because despite his incredible shooting and scoring, he’s untalented at creatjng for others and an underratedly poor off-ball defender

Conversely, Tatum in his championship season had a non-special year in the efficiency department yet was loved by the same stats. Why, because he’s one of the best help defenders in the NBA, a top 3 rebounder at his position, and consistently makes the right play with the ball in his hands

Same story with Cade Cunningham, who played the same role as Brown last season and without checking, I believe was even less efficient, yet impact metrics are remarkably more favorable towards him. Because he’s turned himself into a quality off-ball defender and one of the best passers in the NBA

Lamelo, Derrick White, Franz Wagner etc., have the same story, you don’t need to be Shai to positively impact a team

Complete misunderstanding of advanced analytics and basketball in general lol

Derrick White just shot like shit and analytics still loved him, because he’s doing 100 little things every game that have an impact on winning and over a large sample size analytics pick up on that and that’s why they love him

You are talking about TS, not advance stats, sorry.

Yeah is that not an insanely valuable trait on this sixers team? If Brown is taking inefficient shots and taking the ball away from Maxey who might be having a good shooting night, then why wouldn’t you want Wade out there instead? Players who know their role are very valuable.

Also this isn’t to trash on Brown, he’s just an easy target here. If he can learn to defer a little more and play off ball then he’s also very valuable

Of course that shit has a bunch of upvotes too. The guy has carved out a legit nba role player career after going undrafted and likely one of the least athletic guys in the league. You don’t get 20 minutes a game year after year for a team with real playoff aspirations for no reason. And people want to say the only reason he looks valuable is because he doesn’t shoot, unreal lmao.

the G-league is full of those type of players who think they’re superstars

Yes this is exactly correct. The metrics are commenting on the value of the role not the quality of the player.

Teams virtually never field lineups with more than one or two of these types of players at a time but often have lineups with zero. So the value of the role comes through but we never get the data on what happens if you put too many of them together.

Dean Wade and Max Strus felt like the only guys trying at points

What if the matchup dictates Wade over LeBron or JB?

Reddit has always been like that…a certain narrative gets started and people just repeat it till it’s accepted as a fact. Then everyone will wisely nod “yeah Lebron is a bad defender these days an absolute liability”

Reddit has always been like that…a certain narrative gets started and people just repeat it till it’s accepted as a fact. Then everyone will wisely nod “yeah Lebron is a bad defender these days an absolute liability”

Lebron will look bad in clips where he’s not giving full effort, but he is always calling out opposing team’s plays, he clearly boosts the overall defense still.

I don’t know about the other stats you mentioned, but EPM/actual had Lebron’s defense at exactly 0.0

He was really bad to start the year, and picked it up in the second half.

Updated in the edit

Single moments that massively impact a possession (as opposed to just positional defense over 24 seconds).

So steals, deflections, blocks and charges drawn.

Well the 4-man combination of White, PG, Tatum, and Queta is generally excellent no matter whom you place in the 5th spot (Hauser, Walsh, Hugo etc.).

I think Joe just likes to have that microwave scorer off the bench so I think Pritchard will still come off the bench, but play starter minutes.

Starters - White/Baylor/PG/JT/Queta - +17.1 Net; 120.7 ORating, 103.6 DRating

Closers - PP/White/PG/JT/Queta - +17.9 Net; 123.2 ORating, 105.3 DRating

I don’t think the Celtics want or need PG to play 30 minutes a game. The Celtics don’t want PG to fill Browns role next to Tatum, they are eliminating the 2nd high usage wing role.

Wing is our deepest position, we have 4 other developing wings that all contributed in one way or another last year that the team is incredibly high on, not even counting hauser. I’d bet the Celtics are even counting on PG needing to be load managed to get everyone the touches they want - how Joe was going to manage to get everyone playing time was a pretty big question and this trade kind of solves that. Brad explicitly called out Brown and Tatums high usage in his press conference, they don’t want another high usage player who needs the ball in his hands next to Tatum. PG can rest on back to backs and against lesser teams and we have a slew of hungry plus defenders who all give a different look to slot in his place.