Comments on: Feature Watch: Player Splits

By: Mike G

Mike G — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:32:10 +0000

The scorekeeper is the employee of the team, just as the GM and the coach are. The GM feels he's doing his job to say publicly something like, "Antoine is the perfect complement to our offense", and the coach may play Antoine with him as the offensive focus, because he "has confidence in his ability". This may all be contrived to drive up Antoine's market value. The lowly scorekeeper would be undermining the efforts of his superiors, if he doesn't take the not-so-subtle hint to make sure Antoine gets credit for rebounds, assists, whatevers, to boost his marketability. There may well be nothing in his job description specifically "to record the events on the court as faithfully as possible." It's a team effort. If you are the GM who takes Antoine off the payroll of his previous team, can you allege 'fraud' regarding the statements and statistics that accompanied him? Or should you have been a better researcher? Consider The House that Ruth Built. Babe Ruth was left-handed and drove most balls to right field. Yankee Stadium was built for him (and lefty Lou Gehrig), with a short right field and a ridiculously long left field wall. Are their homerun records 'fraudulent'? I think not. Can a 'home field bias' be estimated to standardize their homerun records? I should think so. Almost every NBA team wins more games at home than away, yet there's no fraud involved. Refs call more fouls on the visitors, yet they aren't normally investigated for it. In general, more people are more happy this way. We can make adjustments to statistics, based on homecourt bias. They may never become 'official' stats, but they certainly may improve our judgments of players. If these 'adjusted' stats receive enough attention, then scorekeeping 'liberties' might get more scrutiny.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:26:02 +0000

I don't want to belabor the point, either, but "fraud" is defined as: "deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage." They either knowingly recorded assists and blocks that did not happen or deliberately assigned them to the wrong player, in order to increase that player's profile and in the process create more publicity & make more money for the team. They breached the confidence that ostensibly the league (and certainly the fans) placed in them to record the events on the court as faithfully as possible. If that isn't fraud, I don't know what is. Just because it happened regarding something as silly in the long run as an assist or a block here or there doesn't mean we shouldn't call a spade a spade.

By: Mike G

Mike G — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:12:08 +0000

OK, I do not wish to detract from the attention we should be giving to the Player Splits pages. That is, after all, where this all started, after I reported some of these home/away anomalies. But the APBRMetrics poster known as "IrishHand", who kept stats for the Grizzlies in their first 3 seasons, wasn't 'defrauding' anyone, in the traditional sense. Giving a player extra assists, or blocks, or a cute nickname, doesn't overtly take anything from anyone else. I'll admit to using terms such as 'bogus' to describe extra assists and blocks, which in some cases have probably been sufficient to give league Ast/G and Blk/G 'titles' to the wrong guys. And so, perhaps a case could be made that New Orleans' scorekeepers have 'defrauded' Steve Nash of another couple of Assist titles. However, these are just arguable possibilities, not allegations of outright fraud. We just try to interpret the numbers. There's no real chance of proof, only of probability.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:18:14 +0000

There, the link has been changed to this post. The guy basically asserts that scorekeeping fraud is routine, at best condoned, and at worst outright encouraged. I don't think that's being overly sensational -- in essence, he claims that deliberate book-cooking is a way of life for scorekeepers.

By: Mike G

Mike G — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:12:29 +0000

"...the research potential of these splits has come into play with the recent allegations of scorekeeper fraud in the awarding of blocks and assists.." The linked discussion at this point in the post does not allege any "scorekeeper fraud". Is there some perceived need for 'sensationalism' up in here?

By: JayOh

JayOh — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:40:48 +0000

I love using player splits for looking at up and coming players who maybe only started for a third or half of the season. Ramon sessions is a good example. As Jason said, checking out month by month averages is useful as well. As a Knicks fan, looking at Duhon's splits clearly showed how he broke down the last 2 months of the season due to playing too many minutes.

By: Jason J

Jason J — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:07:31 +0000

Another nice thing about player splits is to see what months a player excelled in and when he took it slow or if the team circumstances changed in some way. For instance if you look at Jordan's 1989 campaign, you can see pretty clearly the period where Doug Collins swung him to the PG position.