NBA - Main

Anything that was made up in the last 5 years and has a name. Like RAPTOR, LEBRON, KOBE or whatever else some nerds come up with that we're supposed to suddenly care is important

All of em.

I'm sure they can be good when used correctly, but people don't know how to use them correctly.

Win Shares are the best we can do for players before 1973-74. But there are better all-in-one stats, for sure. Win Shares is especially suspect when measuring defense, but then most stats are suspect when measuring defense, even the advanced stats.

PER has absolutely no reason to exist except that it came before many other advanced stats and was well publicized by ESPN. But there are many better stats that cover the same time period. PER gives too much credit to inefficient volume shooters. If someone cites PER as their advanced stat of choice, I know they aren't to be taken seriously.

All of the all-in-one stats have flaws. None of them should be taken as gospel without examining what it does and does not measure. But if it produces surprising results, the key is to examine why the results are surprising. Maybe there's a player we've overlooked -- or maybe it's a flaw with the stat.

Even True Shooting Percentage, which is pretty trustworthy, assumes that 0.44 is an estimation of how many possessions one free throw is worth, which is an approximation. Furthermore, a great True Shooting Percentage on wide open uncontested catch-and-shoot shots is different from the same or maybe even a slightly worse True Shooting Percentage off the dribble on heavily contested shots.

So context still matters. Someone who plays with Jokic and benefits from his passes may not be nearly as efficient on a lesser team.

any of the ones like per that are based only on box score stats. going off purely box score stats is already stupid but even if you were doing that i feel like per and stats like it often still do a shit job

Pretty much all of them are fatally flawed for the same reason: they're reliant on the box score or on plus/minus to some degree, and those two things do a pretty terrible job of capturing on-court value, especially on defense. You can't boil basketball down to a single number the way you can with baseball.

I actually don’t think it was consensus that LeBron was the best player that postseason. In the Finals yes for sure, but watching all those games as a Lakers fan I felt like AD was the driving force through much of the first three series.

Anyway, to answer the question: any one of them. I think if you just look at VORP, or WS, or BPM, or PER, you’re gonna get a sort of warped view of things. But what I like is to aggregate all of the advanced stats. If you look at all four of the ones I just mentioned and see what players have led the league in all four of them multiple times, it’s like Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Wilt. So obviously the total picture they paint is accurate, but if you just look at one of them by itself you might walk away thinking Stockton or AD are top 5 players ever

Anthony Davis was by far the better defender though so are you including the other half of basketball?

True Shooting…

It’s a pseudo stat invented used to argue that James Harden is way better than he is.

PER and DBPM are useless. Everything else is at least useful as a starting point to get a general idea of things, but shouldn’t be used by itself.

I also don’t think using most advanced stats over the course of a single playoff run are using them in the way they were intended.

Any defensive stat and any stat that primarily uses Box Score to determine overall impact

Plus/minus is noisy as hell. Defensive WS too