Interesting thread: NBA players say Collins is extra fierce

[jerrywest]

Interesting 2 yr old thread on Collins: http://sonicscentral.com/apbrmetrics/viewtopic.php?t=1260

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I have heard NBA players say Collins is a little bit, umm, extra fierce. If that's true, and he's someone players fear might injure them, that could have a big effect on shot selection without showing up in any traditional statistics. It would be interesting to see opponents' shot charts when he is in vs. out of the game. Maybe he leads the league in opponent layups never attempted.

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Collins is a vastly underrated defender -- he's an outstanding position defender and draws lots of offensive fouls especially against post players, and probably guards Shaq better than anyone in the league.

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Jason Collins must be a freak of nature..

Or at the very least a freak of statistics.

His stats for this year

23.3 min, 2.4 pts, 4.1 reb, 0.6 ast, FG 37.5%, FT 47.5%, 0.45 blk, 0.97 TO, 3.5 PF

So statistically he is not only below average,

but near the bottom of the league in every single statistic!

(adjusted for his playing time & position)

He can't shoot, score, rebound, pass or block.

He fouls frequently, and has a lot of turnovers compared to possesions.

He has the worst PER for a regular starter in 20 years!

Yet he has started every single game for the Nets except one,

and amazingly has an on/off point differential of +5.5 which is second highest

on his team, higher than (admittedly overrated) Vince Carter.

Some might think this is a fluke but he has had a high on/off +- for nearly

every year in the league. (according to 82games.com)

Okay, so supposedly he is good at some things.

He's known as a good man to man defender, (without getting any steals or blocks)

sets good screens, gets loose balls.. whatever.

But it's not like he's the best defender in the league like Bruce Bowen

Ben Wallace, Ron Artest or even close to that.

And it's not that other guys don't set screens or don't get any loose balls,

it doesn't really require a lot of skill.

So he must be amazingly good at these "things that don't show up on the box score"

to be a plus on the Nets, when his stats are historically low.

It could be that his backup was even worse than him making is on/off +- look good,

but I can't really imagine a guy significantly worse than Jason Collins playing

in the league.

So I guess he is the best NBA player ever at doing "the little things".

Do you guys have another explanation?

------------------------

It looks like Collins has just a ridiculous impact on NJ's defense. This year, he has shaved 9.2 points off of their DRtg while he's on the floor; last year, it was 5.6 points; in 2005, 13.2 (!!) points; in 2004, 6.0 points; and in 2003, 3.7 pts/48 off their defensive scoring average (on/off DRtg not available that year). Looking at the numbers, a typical year for the Ben Wallaces and Ron Artests of the world doesn't even come close to making as much of a defensive impact as a typical Collins season. He also does well throughout his career in Dean's boxscore DRtg. I don't know what he's doing out there, because like you said, he's not stealing or blocking shots that much, but whatever it is, it's making a big difference on the Nets' D.

31 year old Stanford graduate at minimum wage? Can't beat that.

[jerrywest]

another great one:http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1105478/index.htm

If Dean Oliver and his peers are right, then you are wrong. Wrong if you think Michael Redd is a very good player, wrong if you think Jason Collins is a bad one and wrong if you believe Shane Battier is just another Dukie with a so-so NBA career. � Oliver is a Cal Tech grad with an engineering Ph.D. who works as a paid consultant to the Seattle SuperSonics. He is also part of a small but growing movement, comprising both league insiders and outsiders, that sees its sport through a statistical prism similar to that of the young, laptop-toting generation of baseball executives made famous in Moneyball, Michael Lewis’s best-selling book about Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. The teams at the forefront of the movement have hired math whizzes such as Oliver, 36, or former Rhodes scholar candidates such as Sam Presti, 29, the Spurs’ assistant general manager, or Stanford MBAs such as Sam Hinkie, 27, a special assistant to Rockets G.M. Carroll Dawson. Joining forces with a burgeoning cult of independent statheads and academics, these new insiders have the same goals as their more celebrated baseball brethren: to identify, through complex statistical analysis, trends, talent and value that no one else sees. By looking deeper than traditional measures of success like ppg, rpg and FG%, they are challenging conventional NBA wisdom and changing, if at first incrementally, how players are evaluated and teams are scouted.

Take, for example, the case of Collins, the fifth-year center for the Nets. To the casual fan Collins is rather unimpressive. He rarely scores, doesn’t block many shots for a center and has an embarrassing habit of laying in balls that, at 7 feet tall, he should be dunking. He is the type of player who could go his entire career and never make a SportsCenter highlight, an anonymity reinforced by his career stats (5.6 points, 4.9 rebounds, 0.6 blocks). But what if one were to dig deeper and measure other aspects of his game? The number of charges taken. The positioning on rebounds. The efficiency of picks set. The fouls not committed.

Perhaps then one would come to the same conclusion as Oliver’s compatriot Dan Rosenbaum, a 35-year-old UNC Greensboro economics professor, occasional correspondent of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and originator of a respected player-rating system. According to Rosenbaum’s calculations, Collins is not a stiff at all but one of the NBA’s premier defensive centers: the fourth-most effective in the league over the last three seasons, behind only Ben Wallace, Dikembe Mutombo and Theo Ratliff. The methodology is complex (box) but at its core his system measures how New Jersey performs when Collins is on the floor versus when he’s off it. Think of it as basketball’s version of hockey’s plus-minus ratio with a few esoteric twists. The upshot: Over the last three seasons the Nets have been remarkably more effective at the defensive end with Collins in the lineup; they foul less, allow fewer free throws, rebound better and allow fewer points. “He’s very consistent and consistently very good,” says Rosenbaum, “meaning he’s either the luckiest center alive and teams just fall apart when he’s on the court, or he’s doing something.”

On the other hand, Rosenbaum argues that Redd is, statistically, a defensive disaster, his worst-rated two guard in the league by a wide margin. Not even the Bucks guard’s scoring ability (23.0 points per game in 2004-05) can counterbalance his defensive flaws. Over the course of any given 100 possessions, the Bucks are 4.5 points worse on defense with Redd in the game–and only 2.5 points better on offense. As for Battier, by Rosenbaum’s calculations he was the best defensive small forward in the league last season. Memphis was 6.3 points better (per 48 minutes) than its opponent with Battier on the floor and 4.8 points worse with him on the bench.

This approach is far from an exact science, a point that even the statheads emphatically make. For one, unlike baseball, in which individual performance can be easily isolated, the success of a basketball player is influenced by nine others. Still, coaches such as the Rockets’ Jeff Van Gundy and the Spurs’ Gregg Popovich and front office executives such as the Sonics’ Wally Walker are keeping an open mind about their sport’s new math. Says Walker, “In the bigger picture it is helpful. It does allow us to do apples-to-apples comparisons of players and combinations. Data points you can add to the old-fashioned [measures].”

Today franchises–and, for that matter, anyone with a computer–have access to countless complex statistics that are disseminated through the Internet, most notably by the game-charters at 82games.com, a website that provides a staggering amount of data, sliced and diced in hundreds of different ways. This season Roland Beech, a 36-year-old suburban dad who runs the site out of his Northern California home, will have more than 100 volunteers charting games and tracking everything from contested shots to off-the-ball player movement. Not surprisingly, among the most avid visitors to the site are NBA front-office personnel, one of whom asked in a recent e-mail, “Can you add rebound of own shot percent to the rebounding stats?”

The growing appetite NBA front offices have for this outsider-generated data has, in turn, created a market for hiring these statheads on staff. They’re employed largely as advisers, not decision-makers, but it’s not far-fetched to think that they’ll be pulling the strings in the near future. Among the most promising from this group is Celtics senior vice president for operations Daryl Morey, 31, who graduated from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and considers Bill James, the patron saint of quantitative analysis in sports, to be his role model. While Morey by no means ignores points per game, rebounds per game and other statistics popularly held up as benchmarks of success, he also recognizes that those numbers can inflate (or deflate) a player’s value. Instead he is constantly looking for other, more obscure indicators of success such as turnover ratios, eFG% (a weighted field goal percentage that takes into account the added value of three-pointers) and productivity per possession. Yet all of these apparent abstractions have a clear bottom line. “It’s the same principle,” says Morey of the comparisons with Moneyball. “Generate wins for less dollars.”

That has led Morey and the Celtics to such players as Dan Dickau, whom the Celtics acquired in a sign-and-trade this summer from the Hornets for a second-round draft pick. During his first two years in the league, the 6-foot point guard was renowned more for his moppish hair than his skills. After being traded from the Mavericks to the Hornets last season, he was, for the first time in his young career, given a chance to play significant minutes, and he averaged 13.2 points and 5.2 assists. But those statistics told only part of the story. What attracted the Celtics to Dickau were some less-heralded numbers. His ratio of 4.7 assists last season for every bad pass is on par with the 4.8 average of Steve Nash, widely considered to be the game’s premier pure point guard. One can reasonably surmise that playing with better players, Dickau would have had a higher ratio. This is not to suggest that Dickau is a Nash-caliber player, only that, at the price of $7.5 million over three years, Dickau might have been undervalued by the market.

The new math is not just for evaluating individual player value. It’s also a useful tool in scouting team tendencies. During the postseason Oliver–who is best known for his book, Basketball on Paper, which is full of sprawling equations and includes chapters addressing such vexing questions as “The Significance of Derrick Coleman’s Insignificance”–focuses on Seattle’s opponents. Using a program he created called Roboscout, which draws on box scores, shot chart data from 82games.com and play-by-play information, he seeks tendencies that a more traditional scout might not notice.

Last spring, for example, as the Sonics prepared to face the Spurs in the second round of the playoffs, Oliver turned up evidence that while San Antonio was a dominant defensive team, particularly in the paint, it was not bulletproof. “When you go at the midrange, there was a big hole,” he explains. “Compared to the rest of the league, the Spurs are 30-35 percent less vulnerable than the rest of the league from three-point land but 30 percent more vulnerable from midrange.” So, partly on Oliver’s advice, the Sonics pulled up for 15- to 18-foot jumper after jumper. In the end Seattle increased its midrange shooting more than any other Spurs opponent and surprised many people by taking a superior San Antonio team to six games. “If you have a good midrange game against us, you have a better chance,” confirms Spurs assistant Mike Budenholzer. “And with the Sonics, since we wanted to keep them off the three-point line, that left us weaker in the midrange game.”

[jerrywest]

Sund worked with a stat guru like this in Seattle:

"As for the players themselves, most have no idea that they've been reduced to living, dribbling equations. Sonics forward Nick Collison, for example, is unfamiliar with the new math, even though Oliver works for his team. "I've heard about what he does, seen him at practice," says Collison, "but I'm not sure how it works." When he was informed that according to Oliver, he is one of the NBA's more effective reserves (opposing teams shot about 3% worse when the Sonics sub was in the game), Collison brightens up. "Good," he says. "Then he's a genius.""

[jerrywest]

# Ben Says:

September 5th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

I'm a nets fan and support collins still to this day. These stats don't prove anything at all. The rebounding statistics doesn't show how many times he boxes his man out for his other teammates to grab the rebound. Does it show how many screens he gives that are perfectly executed no. And to top it off he doesn't even shoot the ball that much on offense so that's not killing the team either. Last 2 years his +- hasn't been as good because he has been on HORRIBLE TEAMS! The Grizzlies, Twolves give me a break how can his plus minus be good if he is on bad teams. Now he is on a good team i guarentee his plus minus will be better.

Rashidi Says:

September 6th, 2009 at 2:21 pm

I'm inclined to agree with the previous poster. Team philosophy and strength does affect statistics. Collins is a great fit on a team where all five guys are playing defense, but a terrible fit on a team like Memphis where NOBODY is playing defense except reserves Greg Buckner and Quinton Ross (who also uncoincidentally appear on the worst 2009 PER list). The Hawks have a defensive mindset and are much better than the Grizz or Wolves offensively as well. If Collins has another bad year despite playing for a playoff team, it'll be his last in the league.

# Jason J Says:

September 8th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

My overwhelming memory of Collins will always be the horrible beating he was subjected to along with Todd MacCulloch and Aaron Williams, at the elbows of Shaquille in finals. The refs allowed Shaq to completely brutalize those three. Collins didn't back down, but like everybody else, he got bulldozed.

Edited September 9, 2009 by jerrywest

[DrReality]

We have not had anyone like him since Antoine Carr. And that's a long time.

[buckeye242424]

Interesting 2 yr old thread on Collins: http://sonicscentral.com/apbrmetrics/viewtopic.php?t=1260

------------

I have heard NBA players say Collins is a little bit, umm, extra fierce. If that's true, and he's someone players fear might injure them, that could have a big effect on shot selection without showing up in any traditional statistics. It would be interesting to see opponents' shot charts when he is in vs. out of the game. Maybe he leads the league in opponent layups never attempted.

----------------

Collins is a vastly underrated defender -- he's an outstanding position defender and draws lots of offensive fouls especially against post players, and probably guards Shaq better than anyone in the league.

----------------

Jason Collins must be a freak of nature..

Or at the very least a freak of statistics.

His stats for this year

23.3 min, 2.4 pts, 4.1 reb, 0.6 ast, FG 37.5%, FT 47.5%, 0.45 blk, 0.97 TO, 3.5 PF

So statistically he is not only below average,

but near the bottom of the league in every single statistic!

(adjusted for his playing time & position)

He can't shoot, score, rebound, pass or block.

He fouls frequently, and has a lot of turnovers compared to possesions.

He has the worst PER for a regular starter in 20 years!

Yet he has started every single game for the Nets except one,

and amazingly has an on/off point differential of +5.5 which is second highest

on his team, higher than (admittedly overrated) Vince Carter.

Some might think this is a fluke but he has had a high on/off +- for nearly

every year in the league. (according to 82games.com)

Okay, so supposedly he is good at some things.

He's known as a good man to man defender, (without getting any steals or blocks)

sets good screens, gets loose balls.. whatever.

But it's not like he's the best defender in the league like Bruce Bowen

Ben Wallace, Ron Artest or even close to that.

And it's not that other guys don't set screens or don't get any loose balls,

it doesn't really require a lot of skill.

So he must be amazingly good at these "things that don't show up on the box score"

to be a plus on the Nets, when his stats are historically low.

It could be that his backup was even worse than him making is on/off +- look good,

but I can't really imagine a guy significantly worse than Jason Collins playing

in the league.

So I guess he is the best NBA player ever at doing "the little things".

Do you guys have another explanation?

------------------------

It looks like Collins has just a ridiculous impact on NJ's defense. This year, he has shaved 9.2 points off of their DRtg while he's on the floor; last year, it was 5.6 points; in 2005, 13.2 (!!) points; in 2004, 6.0 points; and in 2003, 3.7 pts/48 off their defensive scoring average (on/off DRtg not available that year). Looking at the numbers, a typical year for the Ben Wallaces and Ron Artests of the world doesn't even come close to making as much of a defensive impact as a typical Collins season. He also does well throughout his career in Dean's boxscore DRtg. I don't know what he's doing out there, because like you said, he's not stealing or blocking shots that much, but whatever it is, it's making a big difference on the Nets' D.

31 year old Stanford graduate at minimum wage? Can't beat that.

Yeah, he's 7'0, 260 lbs. with NBA experience and a reputation. Plus, he's smart. Can't complain with that addition to the team...

[Admin]

Well done Jerry that is some very interesting info that you found. I am absolutely ecstatic about the signings of Joe Smith and Jason Collins and I think that everyone who has realistic expectations for them should be as well.

[capstone21]

Well done Jerry that is some very interesting info that you found. I am absolutely ecstatic about the signings of Joe Smith and Jason Collins and I think that everyone who has realistic expectations for them should be as well.

Exactly. These guys were brought in for certain roles. Collins is not going to come in and give big points and rebounds but he will give us extra minutes to give the other big guys rest. The key is that when he comes in the other teams center is not going to go hog wild. With those minutes he knows his role and he does it well. Lean on and beat up the opposing teams center. I am so happy to have an extra guy like Collins now instead of Morris.

[jy23]

Wow, i already liked the signing but I'm starting to think that this may make a bigger difference than i thought it would. Not saying that Collins is going to come in and be a beast for us but I didn't really he'd get alot of minutes this year but knowing how woody likes to play vets and especially with this guy being so good on d i see him having a bigger role on this team than any of us thought he would. If he can come in and give us those garbage minutes and guard those guys that nobody else on the team can then I count this as another great signing by sund. We have alot that we can do with our big men in the lineup now and I'm loving it

[DrReality]

He's the kind of guy that would make a great coach one day and hopefully he will be a mentor/teacher to our young guys. Very nice pick up. Does the lilttle things that don't always show up in the box scores.

[HawkFoLife]

We have not had anyone like him since Antoine Carr. And that's a long time.

I'm shocked and annoyed at the comparison, Antoine Carr was a much superior player athletically and just overall than plenty better players than Jason Collins. This has to be meant as a joke, please tell me. :lol6:

[bonethugz]

interesting read. thanks

[AHF]

That is a very interesting article. It makes the signing of Collins look great at that price for sure. Thanks!

[Vol4ever]

We have not had anyone like him since Antoine Carr. And that's a long time.

Antoine Carr had talent but could not put it all together. I was a big fan of his but he would frustrate you big time.