Nba Post Up

It's on to Part III. I will try to keep this brief from here on out because

I dont want this to get tedious. If anything you need me to get in detail about

just post up and we can discuss.

Free Throws

We know from the work of others that every free throw uses about .44

possessions. NBA teams this season averaged about 25 free throw attempts this

season. If we multiple 25 by .44 we get about 11 possessions used on the free

throws. We can use .5 (2 attempts = 1 possession) without much change but we'll

stick with .44 as to account for three point plays and technicals.

Allen Iverson averaged 11.16 attempts per 48 minutes this season. If we multiply

11.16 by .44 we get 4.91 possesions used. These 4.91 possessions are worth about

4.91 points. Iverson made 9.03 free throws. Subtracting the average 4.91 from

9.03 gives 5.12 points above average for Iverson. The formula is than value =

ftm - fta*.44. We also account for missed free throws similarly to missed shots

except of course that not all missed free throws can be rebounded. If we say 44%

of missed free thows can be rebounded and assume 30% for the offense we come up

with .133 points gained per missed free thows. In  Iverson's case 11.16 -

9.03  gives 2.13 missed free throws. Multiply by .133 gives .28 additional

points gained for a total gain of 5.40 points for the Nuggets on free throws for

Iverson. final value = ftm + ftx*.133 - fta*.44. I still like to use .15 and .5

for quicker calculations and very little change.

Rebounds

After
breaking down 2 point shooting and attempting to find a minimum
threshold where you wont hurt your team we will go ahead and approach 3
point shots in more or less a totally different way. That makes sense
right? Well, I will start

out things about the same but then I will take a totally different approach.

I'll start it off similarly to 2 pointers with a player who takes 100 3
point shots. If he makes all of them he will produce 300 points or 200
points over average. If he misses them all he will produce 30 points
(30 offensive rebound chances = 30 points) or 70 points below average.
This adds up to either, three pointers made * 3 + (three pointers
missed * .3) - three pointers or three pointers made * 2 - three
pointers missed * .7

If we use this to determine our minimum efficiency threshold (the point
where a player begins to create positive points or credits for his
team) we come up with 26 percent 3 point shooting. It's pretty low but
it was low on 2 point shooting as well and it is consistent with the
model. Well its not what I will use. Our 3 point value is 2.5 points
instead of 3 and I will spend the next several paragraphs trying some
how to explain how we get this number.

If we use the NBA league average of 36.2 % and credit 3 points per made
3, our team gets about 1.28 points per possession (.28 net).

If we take the NBA league average of 48.4 % and credit 2 points per
made 2, our team gets about 1.12 points per possession (.12 net)

If we take the NBA league average of 36.1 % and credit 2.5 points per
made 3 to the shooter as our system does, gets our team about 1.10
points per possession.(.10 net)

TRU ratings is our basic attempt at rating NBA player performance. We wont claim

it to be the formula to define performance. Frankly we are just reinventing the

wheel. The most commonly used value right now is the rather complex PER by John Hollinger and the controversial Wages of Wins (WOW) by Dave Berri.
TRU was developed about eight years ago before I had even heard of
these rating systems. The major criticism of PER revolves around the
fact that scoring seems to be overvalued. The main issue with WOW is
the high value of rebounding and how anything less than 50% shooting
seems to be detrimental. In defense of WOW Berri argues that his
formula correlates strongly with team wins, So he doesn't seem to be
arguing that David Lee is clearly better than Kobe Bryant just that
what Lee does in the court seems to have a stronger affect on winning.
PER argues that it's OK for a player to shoot often because it creates
more offense for teams. There is a boat load of debates about player
usage vs player efficiency on the APBR forums
that discusses the issue. The debate seems to revolve around when does
too much usage (shot attempts primarily) become a detriment in relation
to efficiency (efficient shooting).

This just in! Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul are great NBA players and

I can prove it. My rankings system can look at stats and make that

groundbreaking determination. Of course I want to explain how this miracle works

so I will spend the next few paragraphs explaining our TRU linear weights rating

system.

In the attempt at semi seriousness though I hope that I can offer a little bit

of a different take on the value of basic NBA box score stats and give you

something that gives comparable importance to all stats and not be dominated by

one type of player. Scoring and rebounding both receive their due, but hopefully

in a way that makes some sense to everyone reading this.

Mike James (WAS) Scouting Report

Darius Songaila Scouting Report

Andray Blatche Scouting Report

Nick Young Scouting Report

Caron Butler Scouting Report

Mike James (TOT) Scouting Report

JaVale McGee Scouting Report

Dominic McGuire Scouting Report

Juan Dixon Scouting Report

DeShawn Stevenson Scouting Report

Javaris Crittenton (WAS) Scouting Report

Javaris Crittenton (TOT) Scouting Report

Etan Thomas Scouting Report

Kyle Korver Scouting Report

C.J. Miles Scouting Report

Andrei Kirilenko Scouting Report

Paul Millsap Scouting Report

Ronnie Brewer Scouting Report

Deron Williams Scouting Report

Carlos Boozer Scouting Report

Matt Harpring Scouting Report