I was watching the Mets tank another one last night (yes, cut me I bleed blue and orange though I don’t readily admit it any more) on ESPN and Rick Sutcliffe, whom I am not a big fan of, made a great comment. As David “MVP” Wright came to bat, Sutcliffe commented that even though Wright has 123 RBIs, he has hit under .250 with runners in scoring position. What that means is that Wright must have a huge number of opportunities to hit in that situation. You have to think about the “quality” of his RBIs. By batting under .250, the number of runs he leaves on base may have turned the pennant race into a laugher.<\/p>\n
That comment started me thinking. After I read the book “Moneyball” (highly recommended) I look at statistics very differently. I started applying Sutcliffe’s comment to basketball. Think about some of the statistics we use as benchmarks. A big man has a lot of “blocked shots.” Does that make him a great defender or are your perimeter players allowing too much penetration? You have a player who has a lot of steals. Does that make him a great defender or does he take too many chances?<\/p>\n
For statistics to be relevant, you have to link\u00a0them to the game in\u00a0some manner. If a player makes 4 steals in a game (a lot) but gives up 4 layups on steal attempts that weren’t successful. Was that really good defense? Shooting over 50% does not necessarily mean great shooting, it might mean a lot of layups (not bad but not good shooting)<\/p>\n
My favorite example was a meeting we had after we lost a game in double overtime. We looked at the stat sheet which said we had 51 offensive rebounds <\/a>(that’s right – 51 offensive rebounds). Since it was an emphasis for our season, the other coaches were ecstatic about the stat. I, as usual being the sideways thinker, thought we should try to become better shooters<\/a> (if the ball goes in more, there are less offensive rebounds. If the ball went in 1 more time, we win!).<\/p>\n Just something to think about.<\/p>\n Related Pages & Helpful Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n Breatkhrough Stats App – Track Stats on Your iPad<\/a> I was watching the Mets tank another one last night (yes, cut me I bleed blue and orange though I don’t readily admit it any more) on ESPN and Rick Sutcliffe, whom I am not a big fan of, made a great comment. As David “MVP” Wright came to bat, Sutcliffe commented that even though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1303,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/1303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBasketball Statistics – Using Stats<\/a>
\nTracking Your Defensive Statistics And Performance<\/a><\/p>\n