Comments on: 2010 NBA Draft: Peak Performances by Pick

By: Bill Reynolds

Bill Reynolds — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:15:18 +0000

Neil -- Thanks a lot for the spreadsheet. Much appreciated.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:39:12 +0000

Hey guys - you can download an SPM spreadsheet here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?oqulydhmzwh

It uses the latest formula (http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?page_id=4122).

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:39:40 +0000

I believe part of the delay is that Justin wants to fine-tune the regression himself (he did teach statistics at Ohio State once upon a time, after all)... He hasn't had any time to do it, though, because he's working on the College Football Reference site this summer (that's right -- college football reference!!!).

By: Jason J

Jason J — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:23:22 +0000

Can we get a poll / petition going to convince Mr. Kubatko to add SPM? Come on, you guys give us hours of entertainment and reference materials for free. He owes us.

By: Anon x 2

Anon x 2 — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:20:14 +0000

interesting about after pick 10. Would love to see something if certain teams are better than others with later round picks.

82games.com touched on this last year (but curiously never finished), but also used more traditional stats analysis for it.

Or just something like "which teams beat the average, which don't" taking into account all draft positions for a team.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:31:31 +0000

That's not necessarily true, I think Win Shares have value and they have their place. It would be more accurate to say that I clearly view SPM as a far better metric than PER, since they're both per-minute and SPM has the advantage that a) its weights were derived empirically, not from guesswork; and b) it at least tries to take defense into account. Btw, that wasn't meant as a slam to Mr. Hollinger, whose work I admire very much and who was actually responsible in part for my interest in advanced basketball stats.

By: Bill Reynolds

Bill Reynolds — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:17:25 +0000

Neil -- I understand it's not your decision, but it's frustrating as a fan of the site and your blog not to have access to SPM, which you clearly view as a far better metric than WS.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:06:35 +0000

I try to alternate SPM with other stats like Win Shares, it just so happens that Justin already did a draft analysis using WS. Would I like to see SPM on the site? Sure. That's up to Justin, though. It's ultimately his call, I'm just an employee.

By: Bill Reynolds

Bill Reynolds — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:57:34 +0000

This blog is more and more relying on SPM data, which Neil seems to have going back to 1960 or earlier, yet which for some reason is not available anywhere on the site. It is starting to make reading the blog very annoying, because we (the readers, the public) don't have access to any of the data being used to support the analysis in the blog.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:28:28 +0000

That was the value that I found I needed to regress to in the formula that best predicted the following season's SPM. You regress everyone's SPM to the mean by adding 222 minutes of -2.57 SPM to their actual stats, then average the previous 3 seasons' regressed SPMs according to the weights I listed, and make an age adjustment to get a projection for year Y. Then, if you want to know their "true skill" for year Y-1, you just subtract out the age adjustment. Peak "true skill" is what I used here, which is why guys who had no stats simply got regressed to -2.57 with no other data included in their true skill calculation.