This next graph may be of questionable value, so I'll explain (excuse?) how it came to be. Even though I'm glad to have sorted out and debugged my 2008-09 Hawks spreadsheet, it's still built on the old spreadsheet I created when writing primarily about college basketball several years ago. Working under the influence of John Gasaway, I measured the individual stats in terms of possessions. It's a necessary thing to do in college basketball because of the wild disparities in pace of play from team-to-team.No one calculates NBA box score stats at a per possession rate. The disparity between the fastest and slowest NBA teams isn't significant enough that any added accuracy* gained by normalizing points, assists, or turnovers (to use the examples from the graph below) to 100 team possessions rather than 36 minutes** isn't worth the extra effort.
*And since I'm estimating possessions, there's probably not any added accuracy anyway.
**If you care, the league average pace (as of today) is 91.8. Pts/68.85 team possessions would be equivalent to Pts/36 Minutes.
But per 100 team possessions was the framework of the spreadsheet I've built upon and it's all I've got right now. I understand that it makes comparisons with other players in the league difficult. These graphs are a first step toward providing useful information (or, information usefully presented), not the last.
As always, please add any questions, suggestions, or additional compliments in the comments.
2 comments:
Strangely enough, I did care---
I just heard from Ryan Cameron. He says "Those graphs are O-FENsive."
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