I know it's only Darko, but still, you really should wait until after the play to high five your teammates
Scott Carefoot posted a fantastic new stat over at The Basketball Jones: the Triple-Zero (or as he also called it on Twitter, the "Trip-Zip"). It's pretty simple: 0 points, 0 rebounds, and 0 assists, with the catch being that it must happen in a minimum of 20 minutes of playing time. This feat has occurred only 31 times since 1986, and unsurprisingly, members of the Miami Heat not named LeBron, D-Wade, or Chris Bosh are masters of this. Joel Anthony had two in the month of January alone. I'm impressed, or disgusted. Not sure which.

Worst of the Night in Pictures:

This guy beat the Cadavers. Any more questions about how bawful they are this year?

Any stray passes or loose balls would just bounce harmlessly off Justin Bieber's hair. Unfortunately.

Birdman swoops down and hovers over his prey

Another Portland injury??? Nooooooooooooooo

Hand in the face? Done and done!

Nationally Televised Games:
Heat at Magic, TNT, 8pm: LeBron's still upset with the Magic for questioning his competitiveness after last year's playoffs. I look forward to seeing LeBron put up 38 jump shots tonight in response.

Spurs at Lakers, TNT, 10:30pm: The Rodeo Road Trip rolls on with a visit to the Staples Center. Could be an interesting game...

All The Other Games:
Bucks at Warriors, 10:30pm: Pro tip: When Corey Maggette is your best healthy player, you are not likely to win many games. Milwaukee fans, you would be better off watching this movie instead, whatever it is.


Greatest action movie ever, or greatest anything ever?

Labels: Bawful After Dark, Miami Heat, statistics, triple zero

Hello Basketbawful readers! Due to some circumstances, I will be revealing my end of the season fantasy basketball analysis a bit early. Although my writing style is typically humor and sarcasm with some stats thrown in (okay, more like sarcasm and pessimism), today I’d like to take a more refined look at the stats of fantasy basketball.

The Intro:

So another year of fantasy basketball is winding to a close. Maybe your team got pounded by injuries; maybe your team had Dirk, Nash, and David Lee and cruised to victory (like mine). There are many different methods out there to look at and evaluate player performance, and there are lots of ranking systems. Sure LeBron was obviously #1, but what about down the list? Do you really trust those pre-rankings? Today I’m going to talk about a method of evaluating the numbers, so hopefully during next year’s draft you can use your 90 seconds scrambling for injury and team information while having some confidence in the numbers to expect.

The Method:

We are already quite comfortable with using averages in sports stats. LeBron scored 29.9 points per game. Dwight grabbed 13.6 rebounds per 36 minutes. So instead of jumping to PER or RAPM or some other complex analysis, why not go to just the next step with standard deviation? In fantasy, we have the entire population (all players that have logged minutes in an NBA game), and all we really care about is choosing the guy that is better than what the other teams have. Standard Deviation could fit this need!

Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For example with Yahoo!, you get all the raw number totals and averages, and even their special “O-Rank” and “Rank”. Why expand beyond that? Well the problem is, when you sort by FG%, or TOV, things start looking strange. Is Marc Gasol’s 58.3% going to help your team more than David Lee’s 55.2%? Just how bad is Dwight Howard’s 60.3% FT shooting going to kill that category? Kinda hard to tell by eyeballing it. Even with the raw numbers: just how much will having Steve Nash on my team dominate the assists category?

The Good News:

Enter: Standardize. If you really don't want to do math, then I’ve still got good news for you: this is all done by ESPN’s Fantasy Basketball Player Rater. In fact, if you are quite satisfied using just the ESPN Player Rater, you probably can stop reading the article now. Here you can see all the Standard Scores in each category, and they are added up to make the final column as a composite score (yes, this makes more sense than adding percentages together randomly *coughHOLLINGERcough*).

For example: LeBron has scored 2033 points as of this post. The league average is 472.5 and the standard deviation is 410.25 pts. So (2033 – 472.5) / 410.25 = 3.8. Meaning LeBron is 3.8 standard deviations above the league average. For those not familiar with standard deviations, a score of 1 puts you above ~84.1% of the population, 2 puts you ~97.7% above, and 3 puts you ~99.9% above, and 4+ is outstanding. Isn’t this what you really want to know on draft day? You can find overall contributors with a glance, and see what needs you are lacking and pickup specialists without having to guesstimate the raw numbers.

Another benefit of Standardizing is the use of negative standard deviations, so you can see when a player is really hurting your team!

The Workarounds:

Okay so the bad news here is ESPN only shows the 8 categories. If you’re playing with TOVs, how does that fit in? Also, how do I calculate the FG% and FT% numbers since they aren’t raw numbers?

Well here’s where we start doing things for ourselves. Pickup your favorite script of choice, or start copying and pasting CSV text from basketball-reference/your favorite website. Now then, turnovers are easier: since it works as a negative statistic, I simply found all the Standard Scores then changed the signs.

For FG% and FT%: I personally believe ESPN doesn’t give enough weight to the amount shot. Shouldn’t LeBron shooting 50.0% at 20.2 FGA/g have more impact than Varejao shooting 57.1%, but only 6.4 FGA/g? Well I think so, which is why I normalized first, then weighted by shots taken before dividing by standard deviation. My FGscore is defined as:


And I standardize the FGscore (average is already zero, so really I’m just dividing by standard deviation). So LeBron ends up with 2.37, and Varejao with 2.07, not that anyone would think of drafting the latter over the former. But in any case, now we can properly rank players by their FG%, so all the lacktators with 1.000% FG% filter to the bottom.

Same thing with FT%: Is Nash's 94.1% (2.7 FTA/g) or Carmelo's 83.1% (9.3 FTA/g) helping you win the category more? ESPN puts Nash over ‘Melo, but using my FTscore, Carmelo scores a 2.67 while Nash scores a 2.36. Of course, Durant and Dirk still dominate the category.

The Advanced Bad News:

Okay, I’ve been far too positive towards ESPN. This sounds almost too good to be true. What are the limitations of this method? Like I said, Z-Score happens to work well since we have the entire population of data. However, a simple glance at the data will show you that we are NOT working with normalized data, one of the assumptions in Standard Scores! Going one step further, I looked at the skew and kurtosis of each category, and they are off the charts, with the worst skew on blocks at 2.2 and kurtosis on FT% at 16.81.

In simpler terms, this means some standard deviations at the far ends may be inflated more than they should be. For example, Dwight gets a near 6 score in blocks, which statistically should not happen in only ~450 people. It’s like one in a million. So as with all advanced statistics, use them carefully!

In addition, I did a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the 9 factors. Turns out there’s such a strong negative correlation between Points and Turnovers, and modestly strong correlations between Points and other categories, it’s not even worth bothering looking at the TOV category! Stupid Yahoo!!

The Advanced Customization:

So maybe you hate Turnovers. Maybe you hate my FGscore and FTscore. I think it’s also perfectly valid to try and dominate the 6 raw stat categories! It’s very intuitive, and any wins in FG%, FT%, or TOV is just gravy. In fact, I’ve done just this...

Putting it all together: We can analyze total season numbers, per game numbers, or per (36) minute numbers. I’ve proposed looking at standard scores of the 9 categories like Yahoo!, the 8 categories like ESPN, or the 6 raw stat categories. Well since we’re already working with Standard Scores... why not just add composite scores together? I did this with the completed 2008-09 data. So total season numbers help show how much a player contributed, per game numbers account for some injuries and such, and per minute numbers account for varying playing time. Since they’re all standardized now, I just add them together to get a super-composite score, for a really quick look at who did the best (i.e. which players I should really be comparing during my 90 seconds to draft)!

After doing all this, and comparing it to 9, 8, and 6 category, it turns out there’s lots of correlation among them, but the analysis that made overall sense was... 6 category! Are you serious?! After all that work I did messing with TOV and FG% and FT%, you could essentially ignore them?

Well sorta. Mostly, it’s Steven Hill’s fault. Because he played in only one game with 2 minutes played, his fantasy impact scales to the absurd (remember all that stuff about skew and kurtosis). But looking at only the 6 raw stats, even he can’t escape a more proper ranking!

Another way to avoid this, and possibly help further normalize the data: just take the top 200 player, or top 100, or whatever, and treat that as your total population, because lets be honest: no one’s putting Mario West or JamesOn Curry on their fantasy teams. Hell, to simplify things, take the top 4 players and do a pretend 2 person draft. From there, you can see what categories you’re taking, which you’re giving away, and which analysis to use.

The End:

I hope this gave you some insight into stats and fantasy basketball. Of course, when it comes to injuries and rookies etc., you’re still on your own. This method I presented is highly useful to roto or h2h, and can be expanded or contracted at your liking, despite its limitations. Want to look at the past 3 years combined? The past month only? Go for it. Don’t just trust those pre-built rankings anymore, grab your favorite programming language/spreadsheet/abacus and find those undervalued and steal picks!

Other random notes: Yes, I graphed a ton of stuff while doing this. Tips I picked up:

• With the top picks, don’t over-value 3pt shooting. It is easy to pick that up later in the draft, or with waivers.


• As I implied before, FG% and FT% is pretty even down the board. Use Standard Scores to slightly suggest one guy over the other. e.g. If you pick up Dwight Howard, concentrate on FG% guys cause there’s probably no combination of players you can pick up to make up the FT% column.


• Blocks are sparse, but spread out down the board.


• Of the remaining stats, Steals and Points have the strongest correlation, and Steals is usually a close category (so every little standard score counts!). This is probably why drafting bots tend to eat up all the point guards early.

And finally, in good Basketbawful fashion, how does my ranking compare to ESPN’s for the worst fantasy player of the season so far?

-6.05 Primoz Brezec
-6.05 Jarron Collins
-6.01 Kwame Brown
-5.98 Eddy Curry
-5.97 Lindsey Hunter
For reference, Mario West has a -5.54.

Labels: fantasy sports, guest author, standard deviation, statistics, ugh this sucks I'm just going to use ESPN's Player Rater

The waking nightmare continues...
Knicks / Celtics: Several hours before the tipoff of last night's game, Isiah Thomas expressed his deep and soulful feelings for the Green and White: "I have a great respect for Boston, a very healthy respect. But I don't like them. I don't like the Celtics. Because they were always good. And they're good again. So my hatred is that much more." How very Dark Lord Sauron of him.

Is there a stronger feeling than hate? Because if there is, Isiah must be feeling it today after the Celtics' pitiless butchering of his Knicks. Man, oh man. I haven't seen a beating that savage, that brutal, since the El Mozote Massacre or maybe Bambi versus Godzilla. Shouldn't there be a slaughter rule for games like this, or at least a safeword that teams can use when they've had enough? Now, I likes me a good beatdown as much as the next guy who hates the Knicks and absolutely despises Isiah Thomas. But sitting through that game was like watching the scene in Reservoir Dogs where Mr. Blond tortures that cop and then cuts his ear off. Repulsive, disturbing, and yet too sickly fascinating for me to look away.

What went wrong for the Knicks? Well, for one thing, their starting point guard had only 1 assist and three turnovers. Their "Twin Towers" of Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph combined to score 8 points on 3-21 shooting, and that was their strongest contribution. Quentin Richardson alone out-rebounded them (9 to 6) and little Freddy Jones out-blocked them (2 to zero). As a team, the Knicks shot 30 percent (23-76). Their quarter-by-quarter scoring was as follows: 16, 15, 10, 18. And they needed a 37-foot heave by Nate Robinson at the final buzzer just to reach 59 and thus avoid their lowest point total in the Shot Clock Era (which was 58 on December 15, 2000, against the Utah Jazz).

Never one to blame himself, Isiah was quick to point his wicked Finger of Judgement at his hapless team, complaining that the Knicks' first-half performance was "the most selfish" he had ever seen by a team. "I thought every single player was thinking about himself, as opposed to thinking about the team." After that inspiring halftime speech, the Knicks went out and scored 10 points in the third quarter. That's some coaching genius there, Isiah.

What's happening with the Knicks is just terrible, and I don't even like the Knicks. It's getting to the point that I'd even feel sorry for Kobe Bryant if he was a Knick. Okay, not really, but just the fact that I was able to type those words without vomiting really says something. It's just...just...gaaagh.

And here's the thing: The Celtics didn't really play all that well. I know that sounds crazy, but if you actually watched the game, you know it's true. I mean, Kevin Garnett took five shots. Brian Scalabrine played 22 minutes, and Glen "Big Baby" Davis played a team-high 30. Need I say more? Look, Fay Wray put up more of a fight when King Kong carried her to the top of the Empire State Building. Which begs the question: Have the Knicks quit on Isiah? Seriously, who freaking knows with this dysfunctional band of misfits.

Fun fact: Fred Jones has 5 blocks on the season. Zach Randolph has 1.

Raiders of the Lost Statistics: At the end of the game, Rajon Rondo chose to dribble out 24 of the final 26 seconds, committing a shot clock violation and giving the ball back to the Knicks rather than going for a 50-point win. That's a turnover, right? Well, apparently not, because every box score I checked -- ESPN, Yahoo, even the official NBA box score -- showed Rondo as having zero turnovers on the night. It makes you wonder, do the NBA's official statisticians give out mulligans for mercy plays like that? Does that ever happen when a player attempts a full or half-court heave at the end of a quarter or before halftime? Speaking of which, I've always felt there should be an official stat category for those meaningless, desperation shots so they don't count against a player's normal shooting percentages. Plus, it would be downright interesting to look at Lebron James' season stats and find out he was 3-for-25 on desperation shots. There should also be a special category of statistic that tells you how many games a team gives up at the end of the season. Like, the Spurs might win 61 games but still end the season on a 4-game losing streak because Gregg Popovich was resting Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. I mean, wouldn't you like to know that stuff?

Nuggets / Lakers: This game was proof of how much homecourt advantage means in the NBA. With little more than a half-hearted effort, Denver built a 12-point lead after the first quarter and yet ultimately lost by 28 points. Again, if you watched the game you could tell that the Nuggets just didn't bring it. The Lakers had way more energy; they were grabbing offensive rebounds (they had 17 on the night, six above their average), coming up with loose balls, drawing charges. In short, making all the hustle plays that win games. And Denver? They just gave up. How else do you explain them getting outscored 46-24 in the fourth quarter?

There was at least one Nugget who was fired up, though: Carmelo Anthony. He scored 23 points (11-15) and even had a couple steals before getting ejected with 6:18 remaining for giving Sasha Vujacic a chop block to the throat away from the ball. Anthony claims it wasn't intentional (but it was) and that Vujacic drew attention to the foul by flopping (which he did, laughably so). Said Vujacic: "I think I've got to give him a DVD of European soccer. Then he can really see flops. I think it was frustration on his part. He's one of the best players in the league. But we did an amazing job on defense against him by double-teaming him -- and that's why he tried to choke me. I was surprised that he grabbed me with his hand." Ha, ha, yeah, you go ahead and try to give Carmelo a soccer DVD and you'll probably get choked again. Or at the very least he'll bitchslap you from behind and then run away. Anyway, Kobe Bryant -- who totally travelled on a spectacular up-and-under in the third quarter -- didn't comment on the play, probably because of all the times he wanted to strangle Sasha.

Fun fact: I don't really have much to say about Golden State's over-the-knee spanking of Houston, except that our good buddy Austin Croshere won the Second (to the Knicks) Biggest Loser of the Night Award for posting an ultra-rare two trillion. Third Biggest Loser of the Night goes to Yao Ming, who got shut down by Al Harrington despite a 9-inch, 60-pound physical advantage.

Big Stinky Jerkface of the Night: That's right, I'm talking to you, NFL. Hey, let's put a marquee matchup between two 10-1 teams on the NFL network, which is like telling 99.9 percent of the world "Nyah, nyah, you can't watch this!" Great idea, NFL. Well, the Football Gods took their revenge for your hubris, striking down Brett Favre who -- according to your jersey sales -- is the most popular player in the league. Did you get the message? Or is it going to take a well-aimed lightning bolt to the testicles to teach you the error of your ways? Oh, and Brett's my fantasy QB, so thanks for costing me this week's game and officially eliminating me from playoff contention. [FlohtingPoint reminded me to mention this travesty.]

Labels: Austin Croshere, beatdowns, Boston Celtics, Carmelo Anthony, Denver Nuggets, homecourt advantage, Isiah Thomas, Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, statistics, Yao Ming