Wins Produced, like Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating (PER), is calculated purely on box score numbers. Such an approach does a decent, albeit less than perfect, job of evaluating a player's offense. But trying to assess defense based upon only defensive rebounds, blocks and steals is woefully inadequate. (I have to give Hollinger props for at least acknowledging this fact. In an attempt to remedy it, he watches as much basketball as he can and comes to his own conclusions about outside-of-the-stat-sheet contributions.)
Look, I'm an advocate of advanced statistics. If you look through my posts, you'll see that I often utilize them to lend support to my arguments. But the important point, which sometimes gets lost, is that these statistics are only tools. A few years ago, WoW's system said that Troy Murphy had one of the best seasons in the NBA. Of course, WoW's system hid Murphy's deficiencies, and therefore significantly overrated him. It does the same with Kevin Love, who is not this season's MVP. Does that mean that Wins Produced should be completely disregarded? Of course not. But to assess a player's worth, it should not be used in isolation. Instead, one should use it in conjunction with both other advanced statistical measures and with game viewing. The composite that emerges will lead to a more informed and more sound conclusion.
For example, let's look a little deeper at Love's season. Again, WoW found him to be the best player in the NBA. Hollinger had him at #4, behind LeBron James, Dwight Howard and Dwayne Wade. (Again, Hollinger goes beyond these numbers in making his arguments. While LeBron led the league in PER, Howard was Hollinger's MVP.)
Move on to adjusted plus minus, and Love's seasons begins to look a bit less rosy. The Timberwolves were terrible on defense this year, and they were worse with Love on the floor, when they allowed an absurd 111.12 points per 100 possessions. As a result, while his adjusted plus minus for the year is a solid 5.38, it's nowhere near the top of the list. The upper echelon includes Chris Paul (18.54), Steve Nash (14.41), Dwight Howard (14.09), LaMarcus Aldridge (13.70), and Kevin Garnett (12.85), with LeBron, Pau Gasol, Derrick Rose, Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, and Manu Ginobili soon to follow. Who are the players with ratings similar to Love? Roy Hibbert, Jason Terry, Joe Johnson, Blake Griffin and Emeka Okafor. (Of course, adjusted plus minus has its flaws as well--Nick Collison and Keyon Dooling have top-15 ratings).
And then there's the eye-test. As I wrote about Love in my post on the "No-Defense Team": "He's a poor post defender. He's a poor help defender. He doesn't scare opponents driving to the hoop. In interviews Love sometimes comes across as caring more about his numbers than about the team, and his play often supports such a theory. He often sacrifices defense to ensure that he boxes out and gets a precious, stat-stuffing, rebound."
Put each of these tools together, and you get a fuller evaluation of Kevin Love. He has some very real talents. He also some some very real flaws. He's an exciting young player on a very bad team. He's probably a borderline All-Star. Is he the MVP? Definitely not.
0 comments:
Post a Comment