Arturo from Wages of Wins released his season predictions - Raps looking good

[Craiger]

I believe Brandon's comment was more than likely made in a very sarcastic tone.

Your second paragraph highlights a fatal flaw with Wages of Wins when applied to the player level. A player is not in full control of whether to shoot and from where, far from it. WoW seriously overvalue players who can't shoot nor drive, even more so if they are good offensive rebounders.

About the change of possession formula. HoopsData uses 0.44 instead of 0.47. I've also seen discussions that uses other values. I am not a proponent of such measures and thus I decided to use concepts which are typical for risk-adjusted morbidity and mortality models when I started doing research on my own last year. It gives me something to do while planning for my retirement.

Nice pick up. WP uses 0.45. I'll admit to only quickly checkign that number. But its perhaps the least signifcant number that could be wrong in that entire equation

And I agree in part.

Average fg% is 46%, and to be a net positive when a player shoots they need to shoot 50% under WP. That would indicate shooting % is valued to highly. But whats the magnitude of that? Just how much is it overvalued? Enough to make the statistic to 'wrong' to have meaning?

We can take that further, how much of a negative impact does 'not shooting' have on a team? Why is a player not shooting? Why is another player shooting more? Is a player shooting less than average not having a negative impact on the team?


So while arguing WP 'overvalues' shooting may not be wrong, its also not necessarily right. There in lies the rub.

I just get the impression that the most common reason why someone doesn't like stats (or a stat) is pure confirmation bias. "This # doesn't match up with what I see or what I think I see". But that doesn't mean its wrong or come to any understanding of how wrong.

[Puffer]

It is amazing to me how many posts ago I stopped being able to understand this thread. There are some talented people posting on this board. Of course, being talented doesn't stop them from saying some really stupid shit sometimes.

[Kuh]

An amusing note: in the first three games this season:
- Andrea shot 10/32
- Amir+Ed+AGray shot 18/35 in twice the minutes

Of course, this is a really small data set. And it makes the point of the WoW guys very well: sitting Andrea for the 'guys who can't shoot' would on these three days have given us roughly the same number of baskets and points (getting to the line is also a wash: AB had 7 made free throws, AJ+ED+AG had 12 in twice the minutes). The 'can't create their own shot' brigade would have done this from 17 rather than 32 field goal attempts ...

... in this tiny sample, it looks like the biggest complaint against Amir and Ed is not that they don't score enough points: they match Andrea. The biggest complaint is that they don't miss enough shots.