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Nice surprise for anyone interested in NBA video games but dont have Xbox 360 / PS3. Me being one. With no NBA Live for PC this year I was a shade bummed. Even though Live kinda sucks.
I used to play 2k5 and was impressed at its realistic approach to basketball. Played more like a true sim than an arcade game so I will definitely check this new version out.

2K Sports Announces NBA 2K9 for Windows PC

Sign up from here by May 15th and we will also give you a free copy of our Jump Shot Basketball game complete with updated end of season 07-08 NBA rosters


Here's basic info on the start up from Reuters:


http://www.reuters.com/article/pressReleasesMolt/idUSN2543203820070926

Here's the link to sign up:


https://www.revolutionmoneyexchange.com/ReferAFriend/ReferAFriend_landing.aspx?referreremail=info@shotsports.com

The Arbitrarian has started an innovative project that gives NBA fans a chance to "weigh in" with the values that you think each box score statistic is worth. There are many other linear weights NBA player ranking systems, but we will probably never have a consensus about the values of these statistics. The Peoples' Statistic Project is looking to work toward a common ground.
It's all pretty interesting with Magic Johnson dueling for the top spot of modern greats. Lebron James leads Chris Paul on the list of current players. Go here to check out the full list and take the survey.

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)

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.

We've added useful basketball sites to the front page. These sites are great tools and resources that delve into some ridiculously complex analysis of NBA player performance. I live for this junk. Have something similar? Than post up here and if it fits it'll get added.

• APBRmetrics Message Board
  discussion of APBRmetrics
• 82games.com
  player and team plus/minus data and analysis
• AlleyOop.com
  Hollinger's original Web site
• APBRmetrics Central
  list of resources
• BasketballProspectus.com
  basketball analysis site
• Basketball-Reference.com
  historical stats
• BasketballValue.com raw plus-minus and lineup data
• BBALLsports.com
  Bob Chaikin's historical basketball database
• CountTheBasket.com
  Advanced Stats for Basketball

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).

We've added our computer generated written scouting reports to all the
NBA player pages. These scouting reports
were created by just using the common player stats available for any game. They
cover all the scoring, shooting, rebounding and ball handling categories. They
also attempt to rate defensive categories that aren't so obvious. They include
denial defense, perimeter defense, post defense and transition defense. Of
course just using stats like steals, blocks, defensive rebounds and personal
fouls don't tell you just how good a defender a player is. They are a pretty
good starting point though and we use other things like free throw attempts and
funky ratios to guesstimate if a player has the strength or quickness to be a
good post or perimeter defender. Along those. lines you will see strength and
quickness used in the scouting reports. We'll post up later with the actual
formulas. We'll continue to tweak them so with the help of feedback we can get
more accuracy. It will probably never be perfect.
Bruce Bowen is going to be crappy no matter what system anyone uses or how
hard we try.  We'll keep it up anyway. We'll look forward to some of your
formulas too. I want to make these pages just a starting point anyway. What we
want to see is a database of scouting reports for each player so if you want to
comment on a player report or better yet post up your own, this could be the
site to do this.  For now some of the player reports I think are pretty
spot on. Stats don't tell all the story but they have something to say. They

I've posted up our NBA player True Rankings. The list contains every player who played at least 500 minutes as of March 31st. The list is based on Net Wins added to an average NBA team and assumes the player plays all 82 games. Not many surprises on this list. NBA Player True Wins

The NBA player pages have been updated with report cards for all stat categories. All players are graded from A+ to F in each statistic. Keep in mind that the players are graded versus players at the same position. I used a normal distribution to grade the players on a curve. The distribution uses per 40 minute stats so expect some quirky grades.
Check out the under rated Monta Ellis. He just needs some improved range for a chance at big time stardom.

I just added basic player pages for NBA players. Currently the pages are very basic but they will be expanded. Right now you can view raw stat totals, per game averages, per 40 minute averages and ratios.
The ratios are a percentage of league averages by position. For example Lebron James averages 7.3 assists per 40 minutes. The league average at his position is a shade over 3.2 assists per 40 minutes. Lebron James is well over twice the league average at 227.4 percent above normal. Anything 100 and up puts players at above the norm for the category.
I'll be adding category ratings soon along with written scouting reports. The pages also feature the simple form of our True Ratings that analyze the stats to come up with a player value rating. I'll be explaining this in detail in an upcoming post up. Its a linear based method similar to ESPN's John Hollinger PER rating or WAGES of WINS, that I devised back in 2000. In the mean time I wanna see some post ups with your comments and reports on the players. No account is needed so I'm looking forward to the feedback and analysis from the experts.

North Carolina is the overall No. 1 seed in the 2008 NCAA tournament.

The No. 1 seeds are the North Carolina Tarheels (East), Memphis Tigers (South), UCLA Bruins (West) and the Kansas Jayhawks (Midwest).
The East winner will face the Midwest winner and the South winner will take on the West winner.

Bubble Burst

Virginia Tech
Ohio State
Arizona State
Mississippi
Massachusetts
Dayton
Illinois State
Virginia Commonwealth
New Mexico
UAB
Syracuse

Post Up your Final Four

Sign up for a blog and post up your own NBA Player Scouting Reports. If you consider yourself a scout or just a fan but have some knowledge of a player no matter how obscure than we want your take. Your scouting reports will be become part of NBA Post Up.
We want as many scouting reports as possible so we can get a consensus about NBA players that work with and beyond all the numbers.
Not ready to join? For a limited time while we get started on the database you can just click here to get started. Report card grading for quick and easy scouting.
Looking forward to reading these.

A scout's-eye view of fab freshmen - There's
a whole bunch of fab freshmen who'll likely be pros next year. Randy
Hill went to an NBA scout to find out how they'll fit in. [Fox Sports]

Who’s More Tradeable: Eddy or Zach? - I’m
watching PTI and in Toss-Up this question comes up: “Who’s More
Tradeable: Eddy or Zach?” It’s an interesting question. I’m sure some
people are going to answer the question by popularity, in other words
choose the guy they’d rather see gone. But I’m more interested in
defining “more tradeable” as: “which one is more [...] [Knickerblogger.net]

James wins second All-Star MVP in 3 yrs. (AP) - The
huge lead was gone, and another MVP award also was slipping away. Then,
with one powerful play, LeBron James snatched both back. James threw
down a mighty dunk for the go-ahead basket with 55 seconds left,
punctuating an MVP performance and helping the Eastern Conference beat
the West 134-128 on Sunday night in the All-Star game. [Yahoo NBA]

As of the All Star Break an amazing 9 teams are separated by 4.5 games. With so many teams in contention I'm picking San Antonio to win out. They are aging but the experience, and intangibles remain. They are also still the best defensive team in the conference. However any of the nine teams wouldn't be so shocking. The sleeper choice is Houston.

Post Up Here.
NBA and global pro basketball scouting report user database.
I'll be bringing you my take on players with scouting reports and ratings but it will be up to the community to post up.