posted by matt
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ashman "At every position, the analysis showed that assists mean more to victory than field goals. This comes as validation to the philosophy of Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan. Last season the Jazz led the league with 24 assists per game and reached the Western Conference finals."
Between players actually making the shot, and the arbitrary nature of recording an assist I find it hard to believe it has as much value as putting the ball in the basket.
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RedsArmy Y'know.... I was ready to buy into this.. but I just can't buy Luke Walton and Josh Childress as examples to support this study.
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Patrick The study creates some interesting talking points at the very least. I'd have to agree with others regarding the causality issues with the conclusions. Assists are created from field goals, defensive rebounds from missed shots.
Also, the data came entirely from the 1996-97 season, and although there over 1,000 box scores, I can't help but wonder if the sample size was small enough so that individual players could influence the results. Olajuwon, for example, had a lot of steals that year. And hey, the Rockets were pretty good. I'd like to see how much the results would change if from year to year.
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la287 At the very least, it's a more unique way at considering players statistics. While this study may not be the best example, I think it could have some sort of value with more data and tinkering. -
RedsArmy It's interesting... sure. But I think the overall conclusion of this study is a bit obvious: Get players to do something other players at their position don't do. Centers don't get steals... point guards don't hit the offensive boards... small forwards don't rack up assists. So when they do, it's an anomoly.. and it wouldn't surprise anyone if it leads to a win.
You can apply that to all sports. If your second baseman hits 3 home runs.... if your quarterback rushes for 100 yards... If your goalie gets 2 assists... I'd bet more often than not, those things all happen in wins.
Tuesday Bullets
ESPN.com - TrueHoop —
... An older, but interesting study about the importance of rebounding by guards, and how important small forwards are. ...
BYU did a study about basketball statistics
The Postmen // A Sports Blog // Chicago, IL. —
Here I thought all along BYU was just a college where Mormons went, but it looks like they do studies or something out there as well. (Wait, the two can co-exist? Man, I totally don’t understand what people do at colleges.)
And this particular study is about basketball statistics, so I’m going to blog about it here because I can.
In the current issue of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis of Sports, Brigham Young University statisticians compare the value of 13 box score statistics across ...
