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So much trolling and I didn't even post one comment.
Tis a good day.

Taking the pure number of points prevented is rubbish.

If one defender "A" made his opponent miss 10 shots and the other "B" made his opponent miss only 4 which is better?

The answer is you can't say because you have to look at the overall made %. If A's opponent was 20/30 and B's was 0/4 you would change your initial impression answer fast.

0-8 vs 1-17 is what I would call a statistically insignificant difference. You need to look at the quality of the offensive players and the strategy used and that will tell you more than this. You would also need to look at who actually defended each of those shots.What if the one made basket was defended by someone different on a fast break? What if 4 of the 8 missed baskets were defended by someone else?

What about their other offensive stats? What if mr 0-8 also had 9 assists and 5 offensive rebounds, wouldn't that impact more on your opinion of his defender that a difference of 1 made basket?

Finally what about the other defensive stats of the defending players? Rebounds, blocks, steals, good vs bad fouls etc. I think unless every other thing is looked at the 0-8 vs 1-17 is trivial. Both are spectaular defensive performances, but I would look first at WHO they were put up against.

I remember once we made it to the top 8 in the Reebok 3-3 competition and we were matched up against a team of all NBL/CVIBL imports. They had somthering defence and were going to smash us no matter what we did. My buddy Geoff Wong went about 2-7 in that game while I went 1-1. No way did his defender did a better job than mine, I couldn't get a shot off over this 6'11" gigantic black man with huge rippling muscles whose arms were thicker than my legs and just scored once on an offensive rebound after he helped out on Geoff on a high pick and roll. It is just so hard to figure out this stuff on one number alone.

Last edited by yodabig at 5/13/2011 10:03:49 PM

Well, therein lies the rub, it actually is a maths equation. We're not dealing with real people, where the variables are so massive that it's too difficult to predict exactly. We're dealing with statistics and probability etc.

However, as I said before, neither argument is right or wrong unless given a context.

Scoring is what you want to minimise, correct. You do this by playing defense. Player 18 defended FAR better than player 8. You can't deny him a great performance cause he allowed 1 basket. He was under more pressure cause the player(s) he was defending took far more shots, so his defensive work load was far higher, and to allow only 1 basket from 17 attempts is amazing. 0-8 is great too, but it says that the defender had less work to do, although he did his work brilliantly as well.

How did Player 18 defend far better than Player 8? Player 8 defended perfectly because no shots were made. Player 18 defended almost perfectly because 1 shot was made out of 17. I am not denying that 1-17 is a fantastic performace, I'm just saying that the scoreline at the end of the game doesn't take into account prevented shots, it only takes in to account shots that were failed to be prevented. If player A kept his opponent to 0-20, and Player B kept his opponent to 4-50, then whilst player B was very impressive in his defence, he still allowed the opponent to increase their score, where as Player A was able to succesfully prevent every attempt and thus prevented any scoring.

Yes, there are only a limited number of possession in a game, 48 minutes worth to be exact. Around 80-90 possessions per team in the game, so yes, there's limited possessions. By jacking up more shots that don't hit, you're effectively reducing the number of scoring possessions your team has.

I agree that the time is limited, but I disagree that there is a limited number of possessions in the game (at least no identifiable number). If you think there are (hypothetically) 100 possessions per team each game, then I agree with you that the 1-17 is better because they are wasting an additional 9 possessions, however, I do not believe this to be the case. I do not think there is a set number of possessions per team per game, and thus wasted possessions are irrelevant, and only the result of scoring or not scoring from such possessions ought to be considered.

I don't think we're talking about Smeltz anymore..

Just about defense and what constitutes a better defensive performance...

But yes, Smeltz is great.

Agreed :P

That argument cannot be settled because both sides are being considered in different contexts. Each is right in their own context and each is wrong in the other's context.

That is like saying "Murder is right" and "Murder is wrong" cannot be settled because both sides are being considered in different contexts and each is right in their own context and each is wrong in the other's context.

on this whole extrapolation rubbish, it is a game of basketball. right. so how can we assume that because a player missed his first 8 shots he wont hit say 2-8 of his next 8 shots. you cant give someone the benefit of the doubt and say because he stopped the first 8 he will consequently not be scored on in the second 8 shots. we can only go off what has happened and the 1-17 player has stopped far more shots that the 0-8 player. you know what happens when we 'assume' you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.

Wrong. this is not a game of basketball, it is a computer simulated representation of basketball based on mathematical formulas. So extrapolation is quite relevant. To demonstrate extrapolation more clearly let me ask you the following question:
If Player A has kept his opponent to the following: 0-100. Would you bet that the opponent makes the next shot? I doubt it.
Then it can be extrapolated that the opponent will be kept to 0-200.
In another scenario, if a Player has missed 0-100 free throws, it can be extrapolated that he will miss the next 100 as well.
And as this is a game based on mathematics, and not reality, extrapolation is a key aspect of any analysis.

the 1-17 imo is not as good as the 0-16/15/14/13. but about the 0-12 mark i start to sway towards the 1-17 because he has defended 5 more shots. if those shots are taken by 0-12's opponent there could be a possibility of 2 f those 5 being hit.

So why have you arbitrarily drawn the line at 0-12? You have essentially agreed with my point, without realising it, because you have accepted that 0-13 is better than 1-17, and I am simply saying that 0-8 is better than 1-17.

its a game of basketball not a maths equation

Wrong, as illustrated above.

Last edited by Naker Virus at 5/13/2011 10:48:20 PM

I agree that the time is limited, but I disagree that there is a limited number of possessions in the game (at least no identifiable number). If you think there are (hypothetically) 100 possessions per team each game, then I agree with you that the 1-17 is better because they are wasting an additional 9 possessions, however, I do not believe this to be the case. I do not think there is a set number of possessions per team per game, and thus wasted possessions are irrelevant, and only the result of scoring or not scoring from such possessions ought to be considered.

How can there be limited time, yet not a limited number of possessions per game?

I can't even believe I'm getting myself in to this.

0-8 vs 1-17 is what I would call a statistically insignificant difference. You need to look at the quality of the offensive players and the strategy used and that will tell you more than this.

Both players were defending equally crap players with equally crap gameshape, it won't tell you anything.
And it is not statisticall insignificant. 0-8 can be extrapolated to 0-16 which is better than 1-17.

What about their other offensive stats? What if mr 0-8 also had 9 assists and 5 offensive rebounds, wouldn't that impact more on your opinion of his defender that a difference of 1 made basket?

We are assuming that all other facets are the same. I.e. number of assists, rebounds etc are identical. We are simply talking about this one point isolated from external factors.

It's not very realistic to say that just because the player missed his first 8 shots, he will definitely miss his next 8, 9, 10 etc.

Firstly, there is technically an unlimited amount of time (due to potential overtimes), but we shall ignore that aspect for now.
The reason there can be a limited time yet unlimited number of possessions is simple.
A possession can occur after the smallest increment of time, and thus there can be an infinite number of increments and an infinite number of possessions.

That could be hard to follow so try the following:
Let's imagine a number scale from 0 to 10.
The amount of numbers within this set is infinite. You can have the straight forward 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc
But you can also have 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 etc
But you can also have 0.25, 0.75, 1.25 etc.
Between any 2 numbers there is an infinite amount of numbers.
In the same way, between the finite time in the game, there is an infinite number of potential possessions.