Player's best defensive seasons ranked by winshare: some surprising results in there

[Derivative]

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s178/toyotamotors/dwinshare_zps45af3400.jpg


Hey at least Kobe is a better defender than Nash.

[1987_Lakers]

Some of these advance statistics are pretty useless. This isn't baseball.

[Derivative]

Some of these advance statistics are pretty useless. This isn't baseball.

always is when kobe is exposed

[cotdt]

it's well known that some players don't turn things on until the playoffs. even lebron fans will note that lebron's defense is improving year by year, yet the "stats" show the exact opposite.

[Droid101]

Insidehoops logic:

If an advanced statistic shows LeBron James is better than Kobe Bryant at any Advanced Stat, it is legitimate and the best statistic at measuring a player's greatness.

If an advanced statistic shows Kobe Bryant is better than LeBron James at any Advanced Stat, it is totally contrived and the most intellectually irrelevant stat ever thought of.

Got it?

[RoundMoundOfReb]

it's well known that some players don't turn things on until the playoffs. even lebron fans will note that lebron's defense is improving year by year, yet the "stats" show the exact opposite.
That is because DWS (and win shares) are proportional to the amount of wins your team has. Lebron has the most DWS in 08-09 because his team won the most games that year.

I agree some of these stats are overrated though. But it is curious that every other top 10 ATG looks good in advanced stats but Kobe doesn't. Worth noting i guess.

[RoundMoundOfReb]

Insidehoops logic:

If an advanced statistic shows LeBron James is better than Kobe Bryant at any Advanced Stat, it is legitimate and the best statistic at measuring a player's greatness.

If an advanced statistic shows Kobe Bryant is better than LeBron James at any Advanced Stat, it is totally contrived and the most intellectually irrelevant stat ever thought of.

Got it?
There is literally no advanced stat that makes Kobe look better than James. Except USG% but that is usually considered a negative.

[cotdt]

That is because DWS (and win shares) are proportional to the amount of wins your team has. Lebron has the most DWS in 08-09 because his team won the most games that year.

I agree some of these stats are overrated though. But it is curious that every other top 10 ATG looks good in advanced stats but Kobe doesn't. Worth noting i guess.

This is simply because Kobe doesn't have the best stats. What Kobe does have, is the skill to take over a game and just win it, impact the game during critical stretches. Contrast that to a player that may have better stats, but disappears during important parts of the game.

[Artillery]

The OP made a good point by pointing out how overrated Kobe is on the all-time defensive rankings. BUT, his biggest mistake was using defensive win shares to prove his point. Defensive RAPM would have been much better. Kobe's numbers in that category are hilariously bad.

[ILLsmak]

People need to figure out stats mean shit when it comes to defense.

-Smak

[Big League]

I am not sure what is supposed to be surprising about the players and stats shown in the first post.

[willds09]

Im shocked at tha Steve Nash one:eek:

[Real Men Wear Green]

Some of us think this is useful analysis. (http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html)
Calculate the Defensive Rating for each player. James's Defensive Rating in 2008-09 was 99.1.
Calculate marginal defense for each player. Marginal defense is equal to (player minutes played / team minutes played) * (team defensive possessions) * (1.08 * (league points per possession) - ((Defensive Rating) / 100)). For James this is (3054 / 19780) * 7341 * ((1.08 * 1.083) - (99.1 / 100)) = 202.5. Note that this formula may produce a negative result for some players.
Calculate marginal points per win. Marginal points per win reduces to 0.32 * (league points per game) * ((team pace) / (league pace)). For the 2008-09 Cavaliers this is 0.32 * 100.0 * (88.7 / 91.7) = 30.95.
Credit Defensive Win Shares to the players. Defensive Win Shares are credited using the following formula: (marginal defense) / (marginal points per win). James gets credit for 202.5 / 30.95 = 6.54 Defensive Win Shares.
I hate PER and the offensive "advanced" statistics more because a player's PER is actually less informative than reading his stat line. The mathematical mashing up of team stats, minutes, league stats and a few numbers picked out by the creator of this colossal yawn has given us something that has a little value for evaluating a player's D but not much. Because it ends up working out like this:

Play a lot of minutes on a good defensive team and you're a good defender. Play a lot of minutes for a bad defensive team and you must suck. See how close Bryant and Gasol are in 09-10? There's a reason for that.

A big-minute guy on a good defensive team is more likely to be a better defender than his counterpart on a bad defensive team. But the quality of a team's defense almost always has more to do with his teammates and coach than the individual being analyzed (the exceptions being great defensive bigs like Olajuwon, around whom constructing a bad d is almost impossible). If you took Pippen and Rodman off the Bulls MJ's defensive rating would suffer, in turn hurting his DWS. But did he actually become a worse defender? Of course not. The stats used to measure DWS are too team-oriented for us to apply them to individuals fairly. This season Boozer is at 3.6 while Gasol is at 1.3. Does that have more to do with their individual defensive abilities or playing for Tom Thibodeau vs. Mike D'Antoni?

[Leviathon1121]

Insidehoops logic:

If an advanced statistic shows LeBron James is better than Kobe Bryant at any Advanced Stat, it is legitimate and the best statistic at measuring a player's greatness.

If an advanced statistic shows Kobe Bryant is better than LeBron James at any Advanced Stat, it is totally contrived and the most intellectually irrelevant stat ever thought of.

Got it?

Pretty sure you have that completely reversed.

[Big#50]

Insidehoops logic:

If an advanced statistic shows LeBron James is better than Kobe Bryant at any Advanced Stat, it is legitimate and the best statistic at measuring a player's greatness.

If an advanced statistic shows Kobe Bryant is better than LeBron James at any Advanced Stat, it is totally contrived and the most intellectually irrelevant stat ever thought of.

Got it?
I remember when trolling was an art. Awww those were the days. I miss 02.

[chips93]

A big-minute guy on a good defensive team is more likely to be a better defender than his counterpart on a bad defensive team. But the quality of a team's defense almost always has more to do with his teammates and coach than the individual being analyzed (the exceptions being great defensive bigs like Olajuwon, around whom constructing a bad d is almost impossible). If you took Pippen and Rodman off the Bulls MJ's defensive rating would suffer, in turn hurting his DWS. But did he actually become a worse defender? Of course not. The stats used to measure DWS are too team-oriented for us to apply them to individuals fairly. This season Boozer is at 3.6 while Gasol is at 1.3. Does that have more to do with their individual defensive abilities or playing for Tom Thibodeau vs. Mike D'Antoni?

this

im pretty confident, that anybody who actually understands how some of these stats work, wouldnt base an argument around them.

these defensive advanced stats are pretty useless, from what ive seen. its just too difficult to quantify, with the raw stats that we have right now.

zach randolph is 12th in the league. you'd have to be blind to think hes an elite defender. but he plays on a great defensive team (and they are great because of his teammates, not because of z-bo) so his defensive win shares are great.

[LamarOdom]

Kevin Durant is second in DWS this year, Paul Geroge first

[waseem780]

Hakeem !!!!!!! So damn underrated.. 8.7 tops everyone by far and doubles kobe's..

[LamarOdom]

last year Carlos Boozer was fourth in DWS, Josh Smith was first and LeBron second.

[RRR3]

last year Carlos Boozer was fourth in DWS, Josh Smith was first and LeBron second.
Don't hate on The Booze Cruise's lock down defense

http://nobulljive.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/game-19-carlos-boozer-kris-humphries.jpg?w=660

[BGriffin's Dad]

dat Paul George defense (http://bkref.com/tiny/LLZlD)

[Derivative]

kobes weak defense exposed

[STATUTORY]

Some of us think this is useful analysis. (http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html)I hate PER and the offensive "advanced" statistics more because a player's PER is actually less informative than reading his stat line. The mathematical mashing up of team stats, minutes, league stats and a few numbers picked out by the creator of this colossal yawn has given us something that has a little value for evaluating a player's D but not much. Because it ends up working out like this:

Play a lot of minutes on a good defensive team and you're a good defender. Play a lot of minutes for a bad defensive team and you must suck. See how close Bryant and Gasol are in 09-10? There's a reason for that.

A big-minute guy on a good defensive team is more likely to be a better defender than his counterpart on a bad defensive team. But the quality of a team's defense almost always has more to do with his teammates and coach than the individual being analyzed (the exceptions being great defensive bigs like Olajuwon, around whom constructing a bad d is almost impossible). If you took Pippen and Rodman off the Bulls MJ's defensive rating would suffer, in turn hurting his DWS. But did he actually become a worse defender? Of course not. The stats used to measure DWS are too team-oriented for us to apply them to individuals fairly. This season Boozer is at 3.6 while Gasol is at 1.3. Does that have more to do with their individual defensive abilities or playing for Tom Thibodeau vs. Mike D'Antoni?

strong and cogent reply.

People who don't really understand statistics and sabermetrics sees its success in baseball and want to wantonly apply it to basketball without understanding the difference between the two. Baseball, at least in offense and pitching where Sabermetrics has been most prominently featured, is more or less an individual sport where each at bat is trial/experiment onto itself. This lends naturally to a statistical analysis because these situations are interchangeable, the only variables are the batters and the pitchers. So comparing batter performances involves only controlling for the type of pitchers they are facing and vice versa.

In basketball, it's fundamentally different. Because the framework is team based, almost all the players touch the ball on any given possession and the success or failure is based on accumlation of what each player does. What we truly want to measure is a player's individual contribution to wins/scoring/points apart from the contribution of his team. It involves identifying individual impact separate from teammates impact and the interaction between the two.

This could be done easily if players were somehow randomly assigned to four teammates and rotated until they have had equal playing time with every player in this league. But rotations are not randomly set and attempts to recover individual impact is difficult.

[cos88]

lebron's 6th best defensive season would be kobe's best :roll:

[Real Men Wear Green]

kobes weak defense exposed
Really? Because all I see here is a useless bump. There is a case to be made that Bryant's d is overrated but "DWS" doesn't do it.

[LosScandalous]

Wow way to go by posting one guard who plays defense and one guard who is a historic matador defender.

:facepalm good reference there..... :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm

I don't know much about this stat, but I know it's shit when peak Steve Nash's DWS is higher than Avery Bradley's has ever been.

[LAZERUSS]

Some of us think this is useful analysis. (http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html)I hate PER and the offensive "advanced" statistics more because a player's PER is actually less informative than reading his stat line. The mathematical mashing up of team stats, minutes, league stats and a few numbers picked out by the creator of this colossal yawn has given us something that has a little value for evaluating a player's D but not much. Because it ends up working out like this:

Play a lot of minutes on a good defensive team and you're a good defender. Play a lot of minutes for a bad defensive team and you must suck. See how close Bryant and Gasol are in 09-10? There's a reason for that.

A big-minute guy on a good defensive team is more likely to be a better defender than his counterpart on a bad defensive team. But the quality of a team's defense almost always has more to do with his teammates and coach than the individual being analyzed (the exceptions being great defensive bigs like Olajuwon, around whom constructing a bad d is almost impossible). If you took Pippen and Rodman off the Bulls MJ's defensive rating would suffer, in turn hurting his DWS. But did he actually become a worse defender? Of course not. The stats used to measure DWS are too team-oriented for us to apply them to individuals fairly. This season Boozer is at 3.6 while Gasol is at 1.3. Does that have more to do with their individual defensive abilities or playing for Tom Thibodeau vs. Mike D'Antoni?

I agree with much of this.

And I don't understand how a 62-63 Wilt's PER wouln't be miles ahead of Lebrons 12-13 PER of 31.6. Lebron did not lead the league in any major statistical category, while Chamberlain led the NBA in FIFTEEN of their's (and if blocked shots, offensive-defensive rebounds, TRB%'s, etc had been tracked, he would have probaby led in several more), including some by huge margins (he won the scoring title by +10.8 ppg.)

[Derivative]

bump

[Trollsmasher]

DWS is a pretty bad stat

[fpliii]

Win shares, WS/48, DWS, OWS, individual ORtg, individual DRtg and PER are all shit.

[Yankstar]

Remember when Kobe had more all first defensive teams then Hakeem? yeah it happened b***h :rockon: