Okay, first of all you're kindof being an ass for no reason. I wasn't even having a discussion with you, you just jumped in with a half dozen numbers and acted like they proved conclusively that Mike Conley is a "better player" than Rajon Rondo. I could have told you Rondo is a 4-time All-Star with a championship ring and Conley is a 0-time All-Star who's never won a game past the second round but I didn't do that because it proves nothing. Just like your comparison of PER and RPM proves nothing. Now it seems like you want to get into a "my stats are better than yours" argument which I'm not going to do because it's stupid. I use the stats I use because I've learned to trust them over a long period of time (through trial and error). I'm aware of what they
do say and what they
don't say and I'm flexible enough to admit that they can also be misleading when applied incorrectly. So it's not the numbers themselves which are meaningless, it's how you're using them. And because that's an actual discussion that we might learn something from, that's a discussion I'm willing to have.
This is now two posts in a row where you've rattled off a list of metrics absent any context and acted like you've proved a point. I don't doubt that you've convinced yourself, but to me NetRtg, TS%, and PER are so abstract and divorced from actual performance that I'm not going to make a list of players and rank them by these values and then act like I've made a definitive ranking of the best players in the league. I tried to demonstrate (for what I hope is the last time) why I don't accept TS% as the true mark of shooting efficiency. Rondo was better from the floor and better from behind the arc yet Conley has a higher TS%. That's great that Conley gets to the line more and converts at a much better percentage there. It certainly tells you something important about his scoring efficiency but if you're using TS% to tell you that Conley was a more effective shooter on the floor this season you're obviously incorrect because if you go shot by shot, the actual data says the exact opposite. Use it if you want, it's not totally useless, but don't act like it's the only shooting % mark worth using. And don't expect me to agree with you when you place it on a pedestal because that's your choice not mine and it's not as conclusive as you think it is. And no I'm not going to use TS% for the team nor do I think I should. DeMarcus Cousins missing free throws has nothing to do with Rondo's abilities as a playmaker or how effective the offense was at getting him in position to score in the first place.
Also, I mentioned
Defensive BPM and
Defensive WS -- both areas in which Rondo looks better than Conley on paper. You're talking about
overall BPM and
overall WS which subtracts the defensive rating from the offensive rating. I already explained why I don't think this is an accurate way to judge a PG, but more to the point I was arguing that Conley's defense isn't "obviously" better than Rondo's. If it were obviously better, there would be some statistical data to prove it and there's none. Rondo is better in every category. I mentioned steal % and defensive rebound % because they are factors in defensive performance, not because they are the only factors. Just like you said FTs are things that exist (thank you for that by the way, I was clearly misinformed
) so too are defensive rebounds and steals things that exist and directly impact the game.
But really the whole point of all of this -- the only reason I'm responding at all rather than simply ignoring your smug self-satisfaction -- is because I disagree with your entire premise that you can use numbers to prove that one player is better than another. It was never my goal to prove that Rondo is better than Conley, it was my goal to prove that there's no conclusive evidence that Conley is better than Rondo -- on offense or defense. And since this topic is about not wanting Rondo back, I thought that was relevant because I imagine a similar poll asking if we should pursue Mike Conley in free agency would get a lot of enthusiastic yes'es and to me that has everything to do with perception bias and very little to do with measurable performance.
But the dumbest part of this
by far is your continued insistence that having your point guard handle the ball more is hurting the team. Would we have been better off letting McLemore and Gay dribble more? Should we be asking Willie Cauley-Stein to create out of the high post? Should we be running a Princeton style offense with 4 players who are as likely to throw the ball to the other team as to their teammate? Maybe you have some stat to prove that more team ball movement invariably leads to better offense but I've watched enough basketball to tell you that a gifted playmaker transcends whatever statistical gymnastics you think you know. Even going by
your preferred true usage %, here are the players who ranked higher than Rondo this season:
What a bunch of team killers. That's a list of the best players in the game and several highly regarded starting PGs. 7 of these guys were All-Stars last year. 3 more of them are former All-Stars. You had us trading for Jrue Holiday and making him our starting PG
in your off-season plan thread. Doesn't he limit the way the team plays too if we have to put the ball in his hands? Clearly he's dominating the ball even more than Rondo and yet he's not getting as many assists. Curious. Maybe it's because he's shooting the ball more? Well, here's
his shotchart from this season:
Like Conley, he was worse from the field and worse from behind the arc than Rondo. I'm not trying to pick on Holiday. He's a fine player who happened to have a down year shooting the ball this season, but even using your own logic I don't see why you want Holiday to be your starting PG and not Rondo. He handles the ball even more, shoots less efficiently from the floor and behind the arc, and at least based on the defensive measures that I've come to trust-- br.com's defensive rating, defensive BPM, and defensive WS -- Holiday is worse than Rondo in every category. Rondo generates more assists, more rebounds, and more steals whether you prefer per36 or per 100 possessions. Really the only advantage you get with Jrue Holiday is that he scores more, but he does that at a lower fg%. I have no doubt you've got a long list of numbers to prove to me that Holiday is a better player than Rondo but I frankly don't care about any of them unless you can explain to me how they're measured, what the margin of error is, and why I should trust them over the numbers I've been using for the last decade which work pretty well for me in predicting future performance.
The conclusion I've come to from reading everyone else's flawed reasoning is that this urgency to get rid of Rondo and replace him with a newer, younger model is less statistically based than people act like it is. In fact, it's starting to take on the feel of a witch hunt. Refute one argument and there's always a new argument with even less quantitative evidence to back it up. Too old, too expensive, can't shoot, can't defend, he's hurting the team with his ball dominance. And considering how unpopular the idea of bringing him here in the first place was, I can't say I'm at all surprised. There's always going to be something to dislike if you're actively looking for it.
