Adjusted +/- Rating for All-Star Selection

Wayne Winston (Kelley School of Business) wrote an article for Huffington Post in which he explains his idea that All-Stars should be selected by Adjusted +/- Rating. This is how it works:

Basically for every minute of the season we look at who is on the court and how the score of the game changes. After adjusting for who you play with and against, we come up with an Adjusted +/- Rating for a player. For example, currently we rate LeBron James as a +21 Points Rating, +19 Offense Rating, and -2 Defense Rating. This means that if LeBron replaced an average NBA player for 48 minutes we estimate that his team would perform 21 points better. If LeBron replaced an average offensive player his team would score 19 points more per game, and if LeBron replaced an average NBA defender his team would give up 2 fewer points per game.

When you apply this method, you realize that Marc Gasol is better than his elder brother Pau. You also find out the following:

Carmelo Anthony is overrated and Nene is underrated. Being a top scorer does not make you an all star. Denver has played great in Melo’s absence. Nene’s +10 Points rating shows that Nene is a major contributor to the Nugget’s success.

You may disagree with this approach, but it is certainly better than approach which selects Allen Iverson as a starter and T-Mac as a serious candidate for the All-Star game.

Triangle Offense

An interesting article was published in the New York Times on December 13th, 2009, written by JONATHAN ABRAMS. It talks about triangle offense. We all know that Phil Jackson used this offense with Michael Jordan, then with Kobe Bryant (also with Shaq while in LA) to win some championships. The article talks about Kurt Rambis (reference, picture ) who’s trying to implement this offense with the Timberwolves. Read more ->

Basketball IQ

Here’s an article from the Oklahoman, written by Darnell Mayberry, which talks about one of the most elusive concepts in the game: basketball IQ. The author quotes Scott Brooks (Oklahoma coach), Rick Adelman (Houston coach), Shaun Livingston (Oklahoma guard) and Stan Van Gundy (Orlando coach).

The best definition of the player with high basketball IQ comes from Van Gundy:

It’s a guy who has an innate understanding, the game comes easily to him… They see things once and it all makes sense to them. Basketball just makes sense to them and they make smart plays. They’re ahead of the play defensively. They can pick up plays you put in easily.

Read more ->

Pick and Roll in Today’s Game

Synergy Sports Technology is a very cool company which tags videos of every basketball game in the world. This makes it possible for the company to know exactly what every player did during every minute he played. From this, the company derives the gold mine of data pertaining to individual players, offensive and defensive team tendencies, and they can also roll up the stats for the whole league.

In the New York Times article from November 19th, the author Jonathan Abrams analyzes some data from Synergy and extrapolates interesting facts about the usage and value of the old-school “pick and roll” offensive strategy.

Read more ->

John Wooden on Teaching

Here’s John Wooden, at his best, talking about teaching. His life principles supported his basketball coaching views. In today’s world it is so often the other way around.