Free Ballin’

John Hollinger is wrong and it irks me. He and Bill Simmons are my favorite basketball writers and probably the only two analysts I regularly read whose opinions I respect.  So when Hollinger makes absurdly obviously wrong statements (which he does more than he ought to) I find it very annoying.

I don’t feel like going off on a whole diatribe against Hollinger’s PER statistic, because I don’t have the exact formula (I can’t find it in entirety on the web; I think I’m going to have to buy one of his old stats annuals) but among the statistics it counts are blocks and steals. Neither blocks nor steals are an indication of quality defense. In fact, Hollinger regularly writes in his scouting reports on steals leaders “This guy was ranked high in steals, but that’s just because he gambles; he’s actually a really bad defender.” So why should steals contribute, positively, to a player’s PER?  That doesn’t make sense.  He says high steals rates doesn’t make you good but high steals rates contributes to high PER and high PER makes you good?  Nope.

The same can be said about blocks, except that guys who block a lot of shots tend to be decent or better defenders.  But sometimes that isn’t the case; at least most of them aren’t really very good one-on-one defenders.  Again, the block itself isn’t a strong indicator of good defending.

Another stat of Hollinger’s with which I take umbrage is Usage Rating. UR essentially counts how many offensive possessions are “used” by a particular player, where “used” means he took a shot, made a pass that became an assist, or turned the ball over. This is a halfway decent stat I guess, just to describe what’s going on in a team’s offense, but again, it’s not a strong indicator of player effectiveness.  Theoretically, a team runs plays through a guy doesn’t mean that guy is good. Yes, it’s likely he’s one of the best players on the team, because he’s the guy they want getting touches, but the stat doesn’t indicate how well he did with that responsibility.  It could also just mean he’s a ball-hog who doesn’t play within a team concept, like Jerry Stackhouse.

Stackhouse is currently 9th among active players in UR, right behind Tim Duncan, and ahead of (in order): Richard Hamilton, Michael Redd, Dirk Nowitski, Jermaine O’Neal, Grant Hill, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Corey Maggette, Jason Richardson, Elton Brand, Pau Gasol, Baron Davis, and Tony Parker.  It’s pretty hard to make an argument that he contributes more, offensively, than any of those guys except, perhaps, Corey Maggette and Jason Richardson (and O’Neal, since his body fell apart, a few years ago.)  Stackhouse is a low-percentage scorer, but is a huge ball-hog, so he has a very high UR.  Does that makes him an excellent offensive player?  Hardly.  Yes, most of the best offensive players in the league  have high URs, but plenty of mediocre players have pretty high URs, especially when they’re on a crappy team and have to handle more offensive responsibility than they would on a good team.

[It's not even a great stat to show how much a player is "used" because so often the pass before the assist is the one that really made the play. Duncan gets the ball in the post, they double him, he passes to the top of the key, that player swings it to a guy spotting up in the corner, that guy hits a three, and it was Duncan's potency as a scorer that made it happen, not that guy at the top of the key who made the second pass. But that's the guy who's usage rating is increased by that assist.]

I’m writing about this because Hollinger predicts a decline this season for Allen Iverson, the most gracefully aging little man in NBA history. Of AI Hollinger states:

“I know it’s uncouth to question “The Answer,” but Iverson is a small speed demon with a shaky stroke, making him a strong candidate for decline at age 33. His past two seasons weren’t nearly on the level of his 2004-05 and 2005-06 campaigns, so the descent appears to be already in progress. With Iverson battling knee and ankle problems, expect less rather than more.”

Actually, it’s the opposite. Three years ago he was excellent; two years ago he was excellent; last year he was sensational, probably the best year of his career. And yet his PER went from 26 to 19.6 two years ago, to 21 last year. Why? Well for fuck’s sake, he was traded to Denver and plays next to Carmelo Anthony, one of the best scorers (and shot-happiest players) in the league.  Iverson’s shooting accuracy increased each of those years in Denver, next to Anthony, last season being just .03 off his career peak, while his 3-pt shooting marks of the past two years are the best of his career.  However, to accomadate Anthony’s need for scoring opportunities, AI takes 6 shots less per game than he did in Philly (25 in Philly, 19 in Denver.) Does that mean he’s declining? Hardly, he’s adapted to a new team with a new gameplan, and has learned to be more efficient with less opportunity.  I don’t know if Iverson has slowed down at all; I can’t tell, but you sure can’t see it in his statistics.

And Hollinger should be too smart miss something so blatantly obvious.