…Perhaps my favorite example of stats requiring context addresses my biggest pet peeve: comparing Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan.

[Actually, my biggest pet peeve is probably people on the sidewalk who walk swiftly towards the subway station while talking on their cellphones and then suddenly stop at the top of the stairs to keep chatting while I try to avoid knocking them head over heels. The urge to just keep walking right through them got so strong I had to leave NYC.]

You could write a 500-page book entitled How Kobe Bryant isn’t the Heir to the Air, if you used a lot of adjectives, but for now let’s just consider one tiny and enormously significant factor: field goal %. Sure, he scores a lot of points, but Kobe’s lifetime FG% is .453. Michael Jordan’s FG% was .497 which, of course, also includes Jordan‘s decline. Through Jordan‘s age-29 season (Kobe just finished his) his FG% was .516. That is to say, there’s a huge efficiency disparity between Jordan and Bryant. In fact, in Jordan‘s final season, at age 39, he shot .445. And this wasn’t just a bucket here and there. He took over 18 shots a game that year. So as far as shooting efficiency, Kobe is more comparable to Jordan at 39 than Jordan in his prime.

If I were magically granted one wish that I could only use on something ridiculously stupid, I might consider adding a multiple choice question to the SATs:

Kobe Bryant is to Michael Jordan as:

1.) apples to oranges
2.) fish to birds
3.) hammers to nails
4.) Jellybean Joe Bryant to Kobe Bryant

I’m not suggesting that Kobe sired Jordan. Rather, one could make an argument that the gap between Kobe‘s NBA career and Jordan‘s is as wide as that of Kobe‘s with his father’s. Maybe instead of calling Kobe Black Mamba we could call him Kobe “Equidistant” Bryant.

What, you think that’s going absurdly over the top? That comparison is nuts? Moderation very much required? Eh, whatever. It’s my test and I don’t give partial credit.

If the collective sports media can try to brainwash basketball fans by comparing Kobe to Jordan and saying “Kobe is the best player in the world” over and over and over, disregarding numerous arguments to the contrary, I think using my magical wish to try and counter that is a perfectly jazzy thing to do.

He notes that the Celtics had an extraordinary offensive rebounding edge over the Lakers in the Finals and wondered “whether Lakers’ low number of offensive rebounds was just a matter of bad luck.” This comment assumes that getting offensive rebounds is valuable, and an important factor in teams’ success.

Offensive rebounds, he notes, account for about 30% of missed shots in the NBA, and even without fancy schmancy research “simple rebound rates can let us see things about the game for the first time.”

What things? More importantly, what’s the significance of these…things?

Ayres goes on:

OK, so what? Not that it’s relevant to this discussion (it’s not) but Philly and Miami were both crappy teams.

“Almost a 10 percent difference in getting the ball back when you miss can have a huge impact on games.”

Yeah? Prove it.

“2. Rebound rates give you a better sense of who are the best individual rebounders. During the playoffs, Tim Duncan had the most defensive rebounds per game“

This is incorrect. Rebound rates simply show who collected the most rebounds per game/minute, not who is best at rebounding.

“3. Finally, rebound rates show that the art of the offensive rebound is distinctly different than the art of the defensive rebound. Camby and Duncan, for example, rank only 35th and 21st among players in the playoffs in terms of offensive rebound probabilities.”

This is also fallacious. With the exception of freethrow shooting—isolated occurrences with universal conditions for all players—individual player statistics are highly influenced by context and can give you, at best, an indication of players’ talents. These statistics are often misleading without context and are never conclusive.

That the Celtics out-offensive-rebounded the Lakers in the Finals is not an indication that offensive rebounds are particularly valuable, nor that attacking the offensive glass is a strategy for success. Many coaches (like coach…me, and Jeff Van Gundy too, I think) deemphasize offensive rebounds, in order to get their defense set up and avoid giving up easy transition baskets. In fact, if you check out the stats, year after year, it seems pretty evident that there is no correlation between offensive rebounds and success.

For what it’s worth (nothing) on their way to a championship, the Boston Celtics ranked 23rd in offensive boards this season.