The Value of Shots
After last year’s NBA playoffs I got really into the NBA. I attribute it to two big things: First, the busier I am at work the more I want to just go home and veg out and the NBA makes it easy with things to watch every night and second, this season (and last year’s playoffs) is just good basketball.
Anyway, there’s a movement in the NBA (and every sports league at this point) about “advanced metrics”. It’s each league’s attempt to apply Moneyball principles to their sport. In basketball a big part of the point of these type of metrics is to answer the question of how much points are really worth. This is because the public gives an outsized amount of attention to guys that score a lot and not to how they actually get their scoring done (in other words, is someone who scores 30 points on 10 of 15 shooting better than someone who scores 40 points on 15 of 35 shooting). (If you’re bored of this now you can drop off, I won’t be offended.)
A site I enjoyed called The NBA Geek put together a nice primer on this question (and the point of advanced metrics generally). The point he makes is that each missed shot has a price and we need to take that into account in the same way we count the made ones. Regardless of the method of counting you use, you’ve got to be able to accept that basic idea. He sums it up like this:
But one thing is clear, to me at least: just because a player has great talent and is clearly capable of creating easy scoring opportunities, this does not make their bad shots “valuable”. The simple fact is, Carmelo Anthony would be a more productive player if he simply stopped taking shit shots; so would Russell Westbrook. The idea that the bad shots that these players take create value for their team has no basis in evidence at all (nor is there any evidence that these players are reluctant shooters who are shooting so much because “someone has to take the shots”). You can choose to disagree with me on that, but it’s rather like disagreeing with me about evolution and creationism — as far as I’m concerned, prove it or move it.