sorry, couldn’t resist.

I guess we must be watching different players, because while I do see a moderately good defensive player, I just don’t see that extraordinary defensive player he’s alleged to be. Look… saying he’s a better man and overall defensive player than Nash or Iverson, really doesn’t set the bar high, at all. But don’t tell me he doesn’t gamble on defense, because he does. and often. just not as much as Iverson.

let’s be fair, here. CP3, as you point out, does do a good job of staying in front of his man, but when you’re that short (and he is short) opposing players can just shoot over you, so that’s only a partially effective way to play. And, I should point out, he doesn’t take very many charges.

Furthermore, contrary to your claim, Chris didn’t shut down or even disrupting players like Parker, Nash, Deron Williams, Billups, Joe Johnson, or any of the other good point guards in the league, for any extended period of time during a game. All of those guys had multiple good games against him, during the season. And the reason is that you can’t actually stop an elite pg without playing off your teammates. You need to play team defense to make an elite player less efficient, or contain him.

People correctly criticize Nash for the fact that he allowed many opposing point guards to have great games against him, this season, but Chris Paul allowed players like John Salmons and Randy Foye to also have career games. Of course, there is the fact that opposing pgs go out of their way to attack Nash, and don’t go after Chris Paul in nearly the same way.

As for pgs helping off their man, I’d point out that team defense isn’t simply about help defense. It’s also about making rotations into position, and guiding/funneling players into zones on the floor where that opponent is then restricted and can receive soft and full double coverage from your teammates.

You say that Chris Paul is as good a defensive PG as there is in the game, but really are there any good defensive pgs playing now ?? The answer, btw, is no. hell no. There is no pg in the league, right now, playing defense at a level good enough to even carry Gary Payton’s jock, let alone playing at his level. And that’s the standard by which we should judge defensive point play.

actually, I agree with you in that a 7 or 8 board game isn’t a terrible game, but it isn’t great, either.

7 or 8 rebounds in 24 minutes is outstanding. You simply cannot talk about Chris Andersen’s numbers without considering his minutes played. It’s ridiculous to say that 7 or 8 “isn’t terrible” when a player is doing that in 24 minutes. 5 rebs in 24 minutes actually isn’t terrible but it isn’t great either. But, generally, a line of 8 pts, 5 rebs, 2 blocks, 1 steal, 1 ast, 1 TO in 24 minutes is an outstanding line.

I have no idea why you continue to talk about his numbers as though he were playing starter minutes. It makes no sense. Remember, we’re supposed to be talking about being “overrated,” right? So why are we looking at Andersen’s gross statistics and complaining that they are mediocre for a starter when, in fact, he’s a bench player who plays bench player minutes?

Statistically, given the small sample size (6 games), and to account for those outliers (on both ends, good & bad numbers), what you really want to do here is use the geometric mean (nth root of the product of n positive values) to measure his average contribution.

Okay, two things:

1) We’re not dealing with a small sample set. We have 97 games to look at, in which his numbers have been more or less the same. The only reason we have a small sample set is because you arbitrarily chose to evaluate Andersen’s whole season on a single 6 game set, which is ridiculous because what is at issue is whether Andersen is overrated not whether his production against the Lakers in the playoffs was overrated. I was simply pointing out that your point wasn’t true even in your arbitrary set that has minimal bearing to his production as whole this season.

2) We might care about geometric mean if we were trying to predict Andersen’s future typical performance against the Lakers in a playoff series. But we’re not. What we’re trying to do is determine if:

a) If he “showed up” in the Lakers series
b) If he was “completely ineffective” in 3 of the six games.

So we can just look at all six games and see if those claims are true because they are retrospective and concern his total performance in that series:

So let’s look at each claim (reverse order):

b) How many games was he “completely ineffective” in?

Game 1: 24 minutes, 8 pts, 5 rebounds, 2 blocks, 1 steal, 1 ast. 1 TO.
Verdict: Effective.

Game 2: 20 minutes, 2 pts, 4 rebs, 1 block, 1 TO
Verdict: Ineffective

Game 3: 24 minutes, 15 pts, 7 rebs, 3 blocks, 0 TOs, plus a bonus 6 of 9 shooting.
Verdict: Effective

Game 4: 24 minutes, 6 pts, 14 rebs, 2 blocks, 0 TOs
Verdict: Effective

Game 5: 24 minutes, 2 pts, 8 rebs, 4 blocks, 1 TO, 1-4 shooting
Verdict: Effective (even if somewhat less effective, surely not “completely ineffective”)

Game 6: 21 minutes, 2 pts, 2 rebs, 3 blocks, 1 steal, 1 TO, 1-1 shooting
Verdict: Ineffective (though I find it questionable to call any game in which a player accumulates 3 blocks and 1 steal in 21 minutes “completely ineffective” but, sure, for argument’s sake I’ll give it to you).

So, as a tally, we’ve got 4, not 3, games out of 6 in which Andersen was effective (and certainly not “completely ineffective.”) So we know, as a matter of fact, that claim b is wrong, and we don’t need geometric mean to understand that.

Claim A:

If a player was effective in 4 of 6 games and marginally effective in the other two, you can argue that he wasn’t MVP of the series. What you can’t argue, however, is that he “didn’t show up,” because at minimum he obviously “showed up” for 4 of 6 games.

As I just tried to point out (as did Charlie), it’s clear that Anderson has individual great (and poor) games, which inflate his stats, surrounded by a bunch of mediocre ones.

Two things:

1) Charley Rosen said nothing of the sort in the article. He said Andersen was juvenile, can’t shoot, and can’t defend. He said nothing about inconsistent production or the playoffs.

2) No, in fact, in the arbitrary set you picked what Andersen had was two outstanding games, two good games, and two mediocre games. You can talk about statistical inflation all you’d like but:

a) His two “inflated” games have no bearing on the fact that he had two other good games in the series and
b) We can look back at the 92 games before this and see that this is indicative of his performance generally.
c) You’re also not talking about the fact that he only plays 22 mpg, which will create more fluctuations in his production than if he played starter minutes. Playing limited minutes tends to make production inconsistent.

for a purported rebounding specialist

The only thing Andersen is purported to be is good. Part of the reason he is good is because he is a great rebounder, but he isn’t a specialist i.e. he isn’t Reggie Evans. He blocks shots better than anyone in the league, finishes superbly, and plays great man defense.

As for extrapolating Andersen’s numbers to 36 mins/game, you might be right, given that he is playing 22 mins/game right now, and is probably not doing the impact bench player thing of playing low minutes with high energy, at a rate that wouldn’t be sustainable for a starter. Then again, production/minute does tend to decrease the more minutes a player gets.

You don’t even have to extend them to 36. Pick a number. Any number. The point is you keep on looking at Andersen’s statistics in gross and then criticizing his production without taking his minutes into consideration, which is facially irrational. The point is, per minute, the guy is very productive. Saying that “7 or 8 rebounds actually isn’t a terrible game” without noting that he only played 24 minutes in those games is a specious argument and does nothing to make your point (which, of course, is incorrect to begin with).

Also, do you have any evidence that per minute production tends to go down when a player increases from 22 mpg to 36 mpg? I agree that looking at per minute production when a guy plays like 5 mpg is usually misleading, but 22 mpg is a significant sample and I’m wondering what evidence you have of decreased per minute production for players when they increase minutes from that or near that number. I’m open to this claim, but not without evidence.

As to my point about shooting percentages, of course it’s better to shoot 2/4 vs 1/4. But on 4 attempts/game, if you were to increase his shooting percentage from 55% to 60%, he’d get an increase of less than 1/2 pt/game, which is noise.

You’re looking at the difference between 1 of 4 and 2 of 4 all wrong. The difference is a possession you cost your team. Now, of course, 56% shooting is more impressive with more shots, but my point was to rebut your claim that “it really doesn’t matter if you shoot 55%, if you only take more than 4 shots/game, once in the series.” Because it does, by definition, matter.

Still, the evidence suggests that Andersen’s shooting percentage doesn’t drop significantly with volume, which means that the Nuggets would do well by giving him more shots/game.

Yes, exactly. One more reason why he is not overrated and why Rosen’s article was ridiculous.

but the game you’re likely to get out of him, on any given day in the playoffs, isn’t so good, and is one of the reasons the Nuggets lost miserably vs the Lakers, despite their massive homecourt advantage of playing at altitude.

The game you are likely to get out of him i.e. in 4 of 6 games in the Lakers series, is an effective game, which I doubt had anything to do with the Lakers loss. Generally, a player playing well doesn’t lead to losses, especially when he played well in 3 out of the 4 games the Nuggets lost.

The Nuggets also did not lose miserably. It was a six game series, and the primary reason they lost (which more or less makes any claims of Andersen’s inconsistent performance irrelevant) is that the Lakers have far better players.

Point 1: It is improper to use adjusted +/- statistics.

Point 2: Personal anecdotal evidence is persuasive, however.

Awesome. We’re going to get a lot done this way.