Quote: Originally posted by tarheel1991 on 3/15/2008Josh...I'm not really sure what you mean by level the playing field between the stat heads and those with "fan knowledge." I don't think this will make statistics any less useful when putting a team together.

I could be wrong, but I figure the more strategic options there are, the more complicated it makes the game, which in turn makes effects more difficult to isolate and measure.

I'm not talking regular statistics either, I'm talking about guys that use advanced mathematical models to figure out how to optimize their dollar.

It will be harder for advanced models to accurately model the game. Statistical models are much less flexible than intuition and common sense.

When one can model the game relatively accurately, the model will kill intuition, because intuition has a lot of error.

When the model is off, however, it also has error and no flexibility.

Thus, the more complicated and difficult to model the game becomes, the better those who build teams from common sense will do.

that is my theory at least...

I had the same question/worry in mind, hope we'll get an answer on that.

- Malone is a Paint player early in his career, but later alternates between Paint and Midrange.

- Jordan is Midrange his entire career

- Pettit is Midrange his entire career

- Magic is Midrange until the latter part of his career when he becomes Perimeter

- McHale is Paint except for a couple seasons of Midrange

- Bird is Midrange until his final two seasons, where he is Perimeter.

Don't get too caught up in the classifications. We are working under the assumption that every player can shoot the ball from anywhere. This just gives us an idea of where they tend to spend the most of their time on offense.

terrible

Seble,

That's great for the D but how can the offense adjust to that?
If someone drafts a 3pts team he's sure to get the perimeter D in his face all season.
Or same with a paint offense, if you have a Wilt, Duncan offense you'll be facing the same D all season without being able to adjust other than hitting ww...

So doesn't that limit the offense drastically? Like we'll have to draft more or less midrange teams to avoid being at dissadvantage to a paint or perimeter D.

With coaching strategies we can counter up-tempo with press, press by slow-down etc...
But this looks like a one-way street on the D side with no offensive counter possible.

It just means you probably don't want to draft an entirely one-dimensional team. Someone mentioned earlier that it would lead to more balanced teams, which is probably true.

I personally like to draft "balanced" teams, and true enough, i'm currently in a league where the two dominant teams are bombing the opponents away with 3s, but i still believe it's going to limit the whole Whatif idea because it's an option that has no counter.

My point was that drafting a balanced team is a counter.

But also, there is a tradeoff for an extreme setting. You may decrease an opponent's 3pt % by playing a +3 setting, but you're going to give up more offensive rebounds and a higher 2pt shooting percentage.