Stats of the Day, Dean Oliver Edition
You might remember a few posts I wrote a while back where I played around with some offbeat statistics and named them after recent Iowa players. Today's post will cover more numbers you don't see every day, but the Dean Oliver in the title isn't the former Hawkeye. Rather, he's the author of Basketball on Paper, a very impressive book about basketball performance analysis that I read during my trip to Oregon.

Oliver stressed the importance of understanding possessions in analyzing team efficiency. As you might recall, he calculated team possessions as

FGA - OReb + TO + (0.4 x FTA)

A team's offensive or defensive efficiency was simply the points it scored or allowed per possession.

*** Related Info ************************************************
The four components of the possessions formula comprise Oliver's Four Factors (click the "articles" link, it should be at the top), or the four most important factors for winning basketball games. Shooting percentage, as you might have guessed, is the most important element of winning. The team that makes more shots than its opponent is more likely to win. Taking care of the basketball by limiting turnovers is next most important. Keeping possessions alive through offensive rebounds helps teams win, as does getting to the free throw line often. For a more detailed look at this, you should really check out Oliver's Four Factors page.
*** End of Tangent *********************************************

Oliver's years of studying basketball eventually led to what I view as the most intelligent player rating system I've seen. He repeatedly mentions in his book that there is no one "holy grail of statistics," or one number that represents the total value of a single player, but he does come up with a few numbers that, when viewed together, give you a good idea of a player's style and efficiency.

The numbers from the book that I'm going to use are floor percentage and offensive rating.

Both numbers use individual possessions in their calcualtion. Individual possessions occur when a player has a scoring possession (see below), misses a field goal or free throw that the defense rebounds, or commits a turnover.

Floor percentage measures the percent of a player's or team's possessions that end in a scoring possession. A team scoring possession is a possession in which the team scores at least one point; individuals have scoring possessions when they contribute to a team scoring possession, by making a field goal, assisting on it, getting the offensive rebound that leads to it, or by making free throws.

Offensive rating is a ratio of a player's points produced to his individual possessions. Points produced is a number Oliver created that gives players credit for contributing to the offense through assists, field goals, free throws, and offensive rebounds.

I hope that's understandable, because I don't plan on writing out the formulas. They're too lengthy and complex to lay out here. I assume that if you were actually interested in them, you'd already have a copy of Oliver's book (or will soon), and if you don't care about the computations, there's obviously no point in writing them here.

I'll provide numbers for a few of the better players of varying styles (titles taken from Athlon Sports's basketball annual) to let you see what numbers are "good" for different types of players. I'm also including another Oliver idea, the percent of a team's possessions that a player uses while he is in the game, as opposed to percent of a team's total possessions. (Numbers current through Monday, 1/10/04).

Floor Leaders

Name	School	Floor%	O Rating	%Poss
Chris Paul	Wake Forest	.550	137	22.1
Nate Robinson	Washington	.574	140	22.0
Jarrett Jack	Georgia Tech	.510	129	21.3
Raymond Felton	North Carolina	.493	123	21.1
John Lucas	Oklahoma State	.562	146	21.8
Jeff Horner	Iowa	.508	131	20.2

Shooters

Name	School	Floor%	O Rating	%Poss
J.J. Redick	Duke	.521	140	24.9
Travis Diener	Marquette	.579	159	29.9
Ben Jacobson	Northern Iowa	.528	131	24.4
Gerry McNamara	Syracuse	.478	129	23.8
Adam Haluska	Iowa	.545	138	17.7

Slashers

Name	School	Floor%	O Rating	%Poss
Julius Hodge	North Carolina State	.597	128	30.1
Francisco Garcia	Louisville	.519	130	24.6
Rashad McCants	North Carolina	.524	132	23.3
Keith Langford	Kansas	.524	119	24.4
Pierre Pierce	Iowa	.464	103	31.3

Inside-Out

Name	School	Floor%	O Rating	%Poss
Hakim Warrick	Syracuse	.571	122	25.7
Ike Diogu	Arizona State	.618	137	27.8
Joey Graham	Oklahoma State	.558	125	28.0
Paul Davis	Michigan State	.576	123	25.3
Taylor Coppenrath	Vermont	.621	133	32.4

Post Men

Name	School	Floor%	O Rating	%Poss
Shelden Williams	Duke	.559	115	22.0
Eric Williams	Wake Forest	.607	125	23.9
Sean May	North Carolina	.610	128	28.2
Luke Schenscher	Georgia Tech	.555	117	19.7
Ronny Turiaf	Gonzaga	.575	123	27.1

Note I. One thing that's nice about these ratings is that they're rate stats, based on possessions, so they're not biased by a team's tempo or an individual's playing time.

Note II. Before you get too excited about Haluska's high offensive rating, realize that for each player there is an inverse relationship between offensive efficiency and amount of possessions used. I'll talk more about that soon. For now, just know that players become less efficient as they take on bigger roles in the offense.

Note III. As always, be aware that differing levels of competition can affect each player's performance.

That's about enough for today. I plan to talk a little more about what the numbers mean (or at least what I think they mean) later in the week. For now, I hope you can get a feel for how different players do in each category (e.g., post players tend to have high floor %, good shooters who do little else tend to have high offensive ratings, etc). If you find this type of analysis interesting and want to learn more, I again recommend Oliver's book, Basketball on Paper.

I've pored over the numbers of all the Big Ten players the past couple days, so sometime soon I'll be looking at the leaders and how Iowa fits in. If there are any individual players you would like to see ratings for (on any D-I team), just leave a comment or send me an email.

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