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Game Score: Using Numbers To Find Out Who Had The Best Game In NBA History

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by Rocket River, Dec 2, 2019.

  1. daywalker02

    daywalker02 Member

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    So no Wilt Chamberlain.

    Darn Burton and Barros.......
     
  2. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    To add, the formula is intended as a simplistic back-of-the-envelope calculation -- with weights that are roughly intended to follow the weights given in the PER formula -- to assess how strong a game a player had. Just as there is a theoretic basis for the design of PER, which Hollinger detailed in his Basketball Forecast books way back, one can explain the weights that show up in Game Score formula.

    Example: Note that blocks have a 0.7 weight and defensive rebounds have a 0.3 weight. That's not random or arbitrary. Again, with the rough estimate of a defensive possession being worth 1 point, if a defender blocks a field goal attempt and the ball is recovered by another defender, 70% credit for the stop goes to the shot blocker and 30% goes to the guy who collected the loose ball (i.e. the defensive rebound). Anytime there are paired events that combine to create a stop or score, where one event is deemed more instrumental in the result, he uses the 0.7:0.3 ratio to apportion credit. You see this with FGM vs AST and BLK vs DRB. When paired events evenly cancel each other out, they get inverse weights. So a missed field goal is -0.7 while a blocked shot is 0.7. And so on ... there is a logical explanation for all the weights.
     
  3. Zboy

    Zboy Contributing Member

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    Nah.

    Does not take context into account.

    1) Pressure game? Season on the line? Elimination games? Game 7? etc etc?
    2) Does not take into account the competition it was done against.
    3) does not take account team defense this was done against
    4) Does not take into account the quality of individual defenders it was done against.

    Those are just a few I thought of right off the bat.

    Cant say so and so had best game in NBA history and not even take into account all those.

    Try again.
     
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  4. don grahamleone

    don grahamleone Contributing Member

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    A turnover is like an assist to the other team. So yeah, they should probably cancel out in a performance rating.

    You could have a 30 assist, 10 turnover game and that gets you 11 points. You could have 11 points scored and a couple of rebounds to make up for your missed FG part of the equation and end up with 11 points. This equation F-ing sucks man. It's full of flaws that weigh the "best game" towards the things Jordan did during his career.

    Did you pray to John Hollinger last night?
     
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  5. Handles

    Handles Member

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    Lol which game is better?

    A. 11 PTS, 5/8 FG, 3 OREB, 5 DREB
    B. 6 PTS, 3/8 FG, 30 AST, 10 TO, 4 Fouls

    Trick question - they're the same game score! I know Player B created a net minimum* 28 points for his team, but they're equal performances I promise!

    More seriously, if game score weighting is really based on PER, it's already a bad foundation.

    *Assumes every assist was a 2 pointer, every turnover resulted in 3 points for opposition, and every foul led to 2 made FTs for opposition. Extremely unlikely assumptions.
     
    #25 Handles, Dec 4, 2019
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2019
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  6. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    Disagree. The value of an assist is actually very system and play dependent, so it's weird that you think there has to be some equivalence between the two.

    So you're imagining a scenario in which a player has 30 assists and 10 turnovers, and literally does nothing else. Can you imagine what a player would be doing on the court to have such a bizarro stat line as that? No one said Game Score was intended to be super accurate for weird outlier games. It's not a precise tool, and wasn't intended to be. It's a tool for quickly assessing how good a game a player had in a back of the envelope manner.

    Maybe you can propose alternate weights, and we can see what the best games end up being with that.
     
  7. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    I'd argue the box score is a bad (or, maybe, flawed) foundation to understanding how good a game a player had. Stats like PER and Game Score aren't pretending to overcome the limitations present in the box score. It's trying to make due with the limitation information present in the box score.

    Again, I'd love it if someone could come up with a better formula of comparable complexity. It would be fun to compare the results of the two.
     
  8. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    So player B had 10 turnovers and 4 fouls, and didn't grab a single rebound or steal or block while on the floor? Did he do anything on defense?

    How did you determine that player B created 28 points at a minimum for his team? Who's to say an assist created anything? You can't know that without actually seeing what the play was and what the various actions were that resulted in the made field goal.
     
  9. Handles

    Handles Member

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    Doesn't this prove that game score is useless? Context matters. Game score definitely not a good defensive metric btw. I don't think a complete defensive metric exists, to be fair.

    An assist is tallied whenever player 1 passes to player 2 and player 2 scores. So it created points. Same way Morey talks about Harden and his historic points created per possession - assists count in that calculation.

    (6 points scored) + (30 assists * 2 points) - (10 turnovers * 3 points) + (4 fouls * 2 FTM) = +28

    And its extremely unlikely that all the assists were on 2 pointers, all turnovers resulted in 3s made, and all fouls resulted in 2FTM. These are conservative assumptions.
     
  10. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    No, but it does prove that it's not a way to definitively answer the question of who had the greatest game ever, or if Player A or Player B had a better game. At a glance, it certainly gives one a better impression of who played well in a game compared to, say, looking at PTS + AST + REB, which was traditionally what people used to use.

    Yes, but you'd agree that even if we ignore 3s, not all assists have equal value? First, an assist is a subjective metric. Scorekeepers aren't consistent in how they award them. Second, sometimes an assist isn't even an integral part of what "created" a made shot. When Harden draws a double team and assists a made basket, we are using the assist as a proxy for all the work he put in that play to contribute to the score. Since the offense almost totally runs through him, that's often quite a lot. So, yeah, for Harden you could argue that he should get ample credit for the assists he gets. The problem is that there is no recording for a "missed assist", like there is for a missed field goal. You see all the times he passed and it resulted in a successful score. You don't see the missed passing opportunities. You don't see the bad passes to a player who is forced to take a bad shot. So, one should be careful about giving too much credit for an assist when the "missed assist" can't be accounted for.
     
  11. don grahamleone

    don grahamleone Contributing Member

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    You've missed the point here, you missed the point before, you missed the bus. I can't argue with your type any more. Thanks for wasting my time. Keep praying to your Hollinger. He's a real 'winner'.
     
  12. don grahamleone

    don grahamleone Contributing Member

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    Thank you for not being dense. Thank you for hitting the nail right on top of the head. I wish @durvasa was a nail in this thread.

    (One of these days he'll understand 'if' scenarios and how they're useful for proving a function is flawed)
     
  13. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    I've responded to your "points", if that's what you want to call them. I've explained the rationale behind the weights. I've explained the purpose of the formula. I've explained how the formula is necessarily limited, and why using it to make a definitive claim about who had the greatest game would be unwise.

    Meanwhile, you are hung up on assists not being weighted the same as turnovers for some reason you are unwilling to explain. "a turnover is essentially an assist to the other team" and "this just makes Michael Jordan look too good" are not explanations that should convince anyone. You don't want to propose alternate weights that can be put to any sort of test.

    I'm done with this, and I hope you are too.
     
  14. Caesar

    Caesar Member

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    Of course the Jordan hater hates this stat once he sees Jordan at the top of it. Ever notice every record being broken or tied seems to nearly ALWAYS mention MJ? Do your favorite stats account for the arcade pick up game style of basketball that's played today? It's the 70s ABA.
     
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  15. Caesar

    Caesar Member

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    Ha. Just look how boring most of the recent top Game Score games have been. Pfft. I'd rather watch MJ mid air acrobatics with 4 "garbage men" draped all over him than todays players shooting tons of 3's, have wide open lay ups and shoot fts. I'd rather even watch 2k ISO because for as bad as the efficiency was, it gave us electric nights where Kobe, or TMac or AI etc would just catch fire from everywhere with hands up in their faces, not just blooop..free layup, uncontested deep 3...blooop free layup. Touch foul. Fts. Here's another assist to a wide open lay up or 3. Yay! Triple Double!

    Put HOF bigs camping in the paint and then we got something fun to watch with the 3 pt launching while making it harder at the basket or at minimum putting someone down there to contest a ****ing layup. As long as you can beat your man, you're good. MJ would drop 50 every night without any 3s.
     
  16. don grahamleone

    don grahamleone Contributing Member

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    You haven't explained one single thing that made sense. You seem to think your opinion is somehow "rational" to everyone else. News flash: Your rational works only for you. The formula absolutely sucks in my opinion and your turd responses that further prove you love MJ and Hollinger, further convince me that I'm talking to a fanboy.

    The formula is flawed as a mother****er. Stop responding. I don't care about your opinion of how much this formula works for you. You're one of the few (percentage wise) who would use this stupid stat to rate the quality of a game. I trust someone else's eye test more than your formula.

    Do you want to know why I didn't propose an alternative? Because it's F-ing stupid to think a formula could answer such a complex question that should include more variables than there is data. This ain't a question for simpletons. Best game ever will never be answered. Period.
     
  17. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    I don’t disagree with this. I said the same thing. Hollinger is not the one who came up with this list of greatest games of all time. Someone took a formula he devised a long time ago intended to quickly sum up how good a game a player had based on a simple calculation from the box score, and is using it to rank historical games. That doesn’t mean the formula is stupid. It means — don’t use it as a definitive argument for comparing the relative greatness of games, because that’s not what it is intended for.

    You’re getting all bent out of shape for nothing. It’s totally fine if in your opinion the ranking of historical games based on this formula is off. But to draw the conclusion that he came up with the formula specifically to make Jordan’s best games look even better is just a ridiculous stretch, lol.
     
  18. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    For anyone who is curious, here is the explanation for Game Scores formula from Hollinger's Pro Basketball Prospectus book from years back. I got it from this preview:



    I had a copy of this book back then, so this is where I first heard about it. He does point out that it is "less accurate" than PER, for which in the preceding section he discusses the limitations. So, it is really an approximation of an approximation, and anyone expecting it to be more that is mistaken:

    [​IMG]
     

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