It's been a weird couple of days. Weird because I spent the entirety of it locked up with a calendar and an old nursery rhyme? Nah, that's par for the course. Weird because these new stat things crop up at the weirdest times. Kevin Durant has been the topic du jour, and I'm having a hard time understanding why. Scratch that. I know why. It just feels a little inexplicable, a little without a sense of time. See, it came up because ESPN's Henry Abbott conducted a series of interviews with (newly) former Mavs stats guy Wayne Winston. Interviews, by nature, are sporadic. You interview a guy when he's free. Vacating the Mavs job meant Winston was more free to speak his mind than he has been. It meant he was able to discuss his opinion of Kevin Durant. In a nutshell,
it's not very high.
The whole furor is caused by adjusted +/-, which shows Durant having a less than positive effect on his team when he's on the court. I'm not going to get into it, not least because I spent a few minutes checking out the adjusted +/- central station for the moment
BasketballValue.com and my head started just a little bit to explode. If you want to bone up on the stuff, hit the major players. Peep the Truehoop post that kicked this into high gear (linked above), or
check out Ziller. Here's the new scoops, though. Responding mostly to the Abbott piece, Durant expressed frustration at the un-veiled criticism. Abbott, it should be noted, made sure to note his uncertain stance on Winston's position. Still, here are Durant's tweeted responses.
- Everybody that is doubtin me as a player and my team as a whole..all i can say is that we all are tryin and workin our hardest!
- What more do u want? let me be the player i am...i come to practice everyday..and push myself to my limit, God has put me n a gr8 position!!
- I love all the REAL basketball fans who appreciate hardwork, passion and love for the game..and not jus "plus and minuses"...wateva dat is!
Here's my thing. "Wateva dat is"? Twitter grammar aside, I find that ending a bit problematic. Sure, it's a stab at humor in the face of new found self doubt. How would you feel if someone whose career it is to know this stuff just told you that you're actually hurting your team? Good for Durant. He's trying to keep it light! Here's what I don't like about that. It gives the idea that Durant has no idea what the +/- stat is. Now, it's fine if he doesn't understand the nuances. It's not like I expect NBA players to...all have Daryl Morey (or their team's equivalent) on speed dial (what up, Battier). But of all the advanced stats out there, it's not the most complicated one. Sure, the adjustment Basketball Value does is a little complex, but +/- is a stat that even shows up in boxscores. At its most basic level, it shows how much your team outscored the other team or got outscored by the other team while you were on the floor.
Abbott
posted a second entry regarding this after Durant's twitters. In it, among other things, he attempts to explain the +/- stat. The post was dubbed a "Memo to a Young Baller." It's not the first correspondence of this type to occur in the last month, as Ron Artest has had some words internet-ly exchanged with a Lakers fan. In the post, Abbott is a bit condescending in explaining +/-. Now, my concern isn't with Abbott's tone, and maybe it's more didactic than condescending, but the tone comes with good reason. Durant ends a twitter message exclaiming ignorance of the stat. Abbott breaks it down in case Durant really is reading the 'memo.' I don't need the break down, I get it, but I know there are people out there who don't. Whenever advanced stats come up, apparently there are legions of protesters. I've never come across them, but that's what I hear. Maybe people are just bored with it. I don't know.
However, people who make a living doing this: writing about basketball or advising general managers, coaches, and owners? Yeah, I'd expect them to care about advanced stats a whole lot. Now, there are several teams out there who are a little ahead of the curve when it comes to advanced stats. The Rockets and Daryl Morey are the flagship of this fleet. Other teams noted for their advanced stats savvy? You guessed it. The Mavs and the Thunder. Here's my question. If the Thunder one of the leaders in understanding advanced stats, what does that mean for the players? It's one thing to know, through advanced stats, that this guy, this guy, and this guy are more effective than these other guys who inexplicably are more highly lauded, or to know which combination of players works best on your team. It's quite another thing to take that knowledge and use it.
We all know, thanks to the Michael Lewis piece, that
Shane Battier takes full advantage of all the info he can get on his opponents to be the best defender he can be. Kobe has a very similar strategy when preparing for opponents, though he's more reliant on watching tape. With the advent of increasingly more nuanced statistics and ways of looking at basketball, you would think that NBA players would be using that information to get ahead. It's kind of like steroids for the mind, except it's all fair game. (Of course, steroids makes this a whole different discussion. Do players feel like their cheating by using info like advanced stats? Really, that just sounds like an excuse.)
The bottom line is, if the Thunder are one of the most stastically knowledgable organizations in the league, or even if Sam Presti is just more knowledgeable, shouldn't that translate to their players being more knowledgeable? In his 'memo,' Abbott takes a look at a bunch of tape to get to the underlying meaning of his first post. He notices one of the things Durant struggles with is effectively using the pick-and-role. Isn't this something Durant should know already? Shouldn't the Thunder stat heads and coaching staff know this stuff and be on top of it? I don't know. I'm just one fan who doesn't know much but reads a lot. I know what +/- is. Does your favorite player? Wouldn't you like him to?
