As a follow-up to this afternoon's list of the Top 593 Players of 2012, here's a positional breakdown for the 452 players who played at least 1 game in 2011:

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(Note: File this squarely under "Insane Ideas".)

Watching one of the NFL Network's "Top 100 Players of 2011" shows this weekend, I was inspired to create a similar list for the NBA using APBRmetric stats. But why stop at 100? Instead, I ranked all 593 players who played at least 1 NBA game since 2008-09.

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You'd better read this post from August if you haven't yet.

In it, I looked at the year-to-year correlation coefficients for various offensive rate stats (TS%, AST Rate, TOV Rate, FTA/FGA, & OReb%) when a player changed his role in the offense. Essentially, I concluded that offensive rebounding and assists are relatively immune to changes in a player's possession usage, foul-drawing & turnover avoidance are less immune, and scoring efficiency is the most prone to fluctuate with a role change.

Today I wanted to expand on that post by adding another variable into the mix: changing teams. Other than the new variable, though, this study's format is basically the same as in the first post -- except I used touches per minute rather than possession % to define a player's role, and I added Dean Oliver's Offensive Rating (ORtg) into the mix.

Here's the setup: Once again, I found every player from 1974-2010 who was between 24 and 34 years old and played at least 1,000 minutes in back-to-back seasons. I then sorted those players by the absolute change in their touches/min, and took the top quartile as my sample of players who changed roles. I also isolated players who played for a different team than they had the previous season, forming four groups: players who changed team & role; players who changed role only; players who changed team only; and players who changed neither team nor role. Finally, I ran correlation coefficients on the year-to-year offensive rate stat performances for each group:

The results:

• Shooting/offensive efficiency is actually far more impacted when a player changes teams than when he changes roles. This suggests that a team's system, coaching effects, and teammate interactions play a much bigger role in determining shooting percentages than "skill curve" effects.
• Assists are more dependent on role than team -- for obvious reasons, how much you have the ball in your hands is a major factor when it comes to how often you set up your teammates.
• Turnovers, fouls drawn, and offensive rebounds are all more team-dependent than role-dependent, but the differences are nowhere near as drastic as those observed in shooting efficiency or assists.
• For players with no major contextual changes, assists and offensive rebounds are relatively stable; foul-drawing and turnover avoidance are less consistent; and scoring efficiency is the least consistent of all. This mirrors the findings of the original study.
• Finally, it bears mentioning that even at its least consistent (TS% for players who changed teams), NBA player performance is way more predictable than that of the NFL quarterbacks Jason Lisk looked at in the football study that inspired these posts.

Two weeks ago, I looked at the players who were under- and over-achieving the most so far this season. Today, I want to take the same concept and apply it to teams -- given the projected SPM performance levels of their players and the distribution of minutes to those players, which teams are currently playing better or worse than we would have expected?

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Which players are playing better or worse than we would have expected so far this season? Well, let's look at each player's actual Statistical Plus/Minus (SPM) in 2011 vs. what the simple projection system would have predicted their SPM to be. The overachievers:

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Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Washington Wizards

Coach: Flip Saunders

2010 Summary:
Record: 26-56, Finished 5th in NBA Southeast Division
SRS: -4.72 (26th of 30) ▪ Pace: 91.6 (21st of 30)
Off Rtg: 104.2 (25th of 30) ▪ Def Rtg: 109.4 (18th of 30)
Expected W-L: 28-54 (26th of 30)

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Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Orlando Magic

Coach: Stan Van Gundy

2010 Summary:
Record: 59-23, Finished 1st in NBA Southeast Division
SRS: 7.12 (1st of 30) ▪ Pace: 92.0 (18th of 30)
Off Rtg: 111.4 (4th of 30) ▪ Def Rtg: 103.3 (3rd of 30)
Expected W-L: 61-21 (1st of 30)

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Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Denver Nuggets

Coach: George Karl

2010 Summary:
Record: 53-29, Finished 1st in NBA Northwest Division
SRS: 4.15 (8th of 30) ▪ Pace: 94.8 (5th of 30)
Off Rtg: 111.8 (3rd of 30) ▪ Def Rtg: 107.5 (16th of 30)
Expected W-L: 52-30 (8th of 30)

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Golden State Warriors

Coach: Keith Smart

2010 Summary:
Record: 26-56, Finished 4th in NBA Pacific Division
SRS: -3.27 (22nd of 30) ▪ Pace: 100.4 (1st of 30)
Off Rtg: 108.1 (14th of 30) ▪ Def Rtg: 111.7 (29th of 30)
Expected W-L: 32-50 (22nd of 30)

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Cleveland Cavaliers

Coach: Byron Scott

2010 Summary:
Record: 61-21, Finished 1st in NBA Central Division
SRS: 6.17 (2nd of 30) ▪ Pace: 91.4 (25th of 30)
Off Rtg: 111.2 (6th of 30) ▪ Def Rtg: 104.1 (7th of 30)
Expected W-L: 59-23 (2nd of 30)

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