Greetings friends, enemies, and whatever the hell Hopper is:
I'm going to start this post with an admission that I've kept secret for, lo, these many years:
I'm not a huge fan of Matt Harpring.
Noooooooooooooooooo!
I know, I know, it's serious.
But I bring this up for a point. When I was in the throes of anti-Harpring rage, my anger manifested itself in sundry ways. I would gnash my teeth and rend my garments. I would clutch the Andrei Kirilenko doll I'd made out of an old Beanie Baby and construction paper and moan softly to myself. And every once in a while, I would spend around 12-15 hours constructing a statistical analysis that would be read by the 17 people that populated Jazzfanz at the time, who would then gently call me a big stupid.
On Wednesday night, however, Moderator Kicky reminded me of one of the few analyses I did that seemed to have any worth, the FGA/A survey. In essence, FGA/A (field goal attempts per assists) seemed a relatively simple way to assess the tendency of a player to shoot or pass the ball: even more briefly, it was a Selfish Meter. A player who tended to shoot more often than not would have a high FGA/A; a player who preferred passing would not.
To give you a sense of how this would break down, a few examples. Take, for example, the Black Mamba, Kobe Bryant.
If you look carefully, you can spot a hidden rapist in this picture.
Though Kobe is known for being a me-first chucker of the first order, he's also always been a surprisingly good passer with good floor vision. He therefore has a fairly middle-of-the-pack (if not low) Career FGA/A for a non-PG of 4.14.
Carmelo Anthony, on the other hand, has a similar propensity for shooting without the same ability/desire for passing. Still, when his career numbers are calculated, he's not terrible with a FGA/A of 6.24.
I can't help it, 'Melo, you suck.
Harpring, despite my loathing, had similar numbers, with a Career FGA/A of 6.65, though towards his latter seasons, it shot as high as 8.61 with a more limited sample.
So, you say, what's the point, little pathetic tatermoog? Is this another one of your trips down memory lane that has no bearing on anything current?
Well...in part, yes.
But a quick run through the numbers for this year's Utah Jazz--Pure Adrenaline Rush--shows an interesting phenomenon developing.
First, there's a batch of players that barely play, so their numbers are based on a very limited selection of stats--and yes, I'm aware that we're only 12 games into the season, so it's all pretty limited, but...shut up!--so I'll toss them out quickly:
Jeremy Evans: 14.0
Gordon Hayward: 8.5
Francisco Elson: 3.8 (!)
Kyrylo Fesenko: 3.57
Ronnie Price: 3.30
Earl Watson: 1.07
OK, with that out of the way, here's the breakdown of the regular players, starting with the lowest:
Deron Williams: 1.58
No surprise here, since point guards should always be the leader in this category. It's actually a pretty good number for a point guard in the league, too, though Rondo's decision to stop shooting the ball has given him something like a FGA/A of .75.
Andrei Kirilenko: 2.82
Again, no surprise. He's been towards the bottom of this list for his whole career, which is impressive for a small forward. But he's at the top of the list in my heart.
Raja Bell: 4.88
This is actually a little below his career average, but I expect he'll march that way in the near future. Wednesday night probably gave him a good reminder of how much he loves shooting and yelling at referees.
Paul Millsap: 5.06
Time for another admission: I was probably wrong on Millsap. I thought he was a typical over-valued Jazz player with a limited skill-set, but he's shown more ability to pass and shoot this season than I ever expected. I still think his defense is suspect, but, yeah.
...dammit.
CJ Miles: 6.89
Please don't post this on his Facebook page. But seriously, I think this is further proof of CJ's ineptitude thus far, 82games.com be damned. (It just hurt my soul a little to say that.) Unlike some other players with similar FGA/As, CJ has the ability to pass the ball, but he frequently chooses not to. Unfortunately, he has inherited Raja Bell's free pass to shoot from Coach Sloan, and I have absolutely no clue why.
But this all builds up to one big reveal. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our FGA/A Leader and all-around Black Hole...
Eeeennnnnnhhhhh....
Al "The Singularity" Jefferson, with an FGA/A of 10.75.
In recent interviews, Al mentioned how he'd always been a black hole in Minnesota. So far, he's not improved. Admittedly, some of this is due to his role on the team, and the amount of tip-ins he attempts. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that, to get an assist, the ball occasionally has to leave your hands in a direction other than towards the basket.
So, gang, when you hear post-game interviews talking about lacking ball movement and the like, I think you should have a pretty clear idea some of the figures involved.
I'm going to start this post with an admission that I've kept secret for, lo, these many years:
I'm not a huge fan of Matt Harpring.
Noooooooooooooooooo!
I know, I know, it's serious.
But I bring this up for a point. When I was in the throes of anti-Harpring rage, my anger manifested itself in sundry ways. I would gnash my teeth and rend my garments. I would clutch the Andrei Kirilenko doll I'd made out of an old Beanie Baby and construction paper and moan softly to myself. And every once in a while, I would spend around 12-15 hours constructing a statistical analysis that would be read by the 17 people that populated Jazzfanz at the time, who would then gently call me a big stupid.
On Wednesday night, however, Moderator Kicky reminded me of one of the few analyses I did that seemed to have any worth, the FGA/A survey. In essence, FGA/A (field goal attempts per assists) seemed a relatively simple way to assess the tendency of a player to shoot or pass the ball: even more briefly, it was a Selfish Meter. A player who tended to shoot more often than not would have a high FGA/A; a player who preferred passing would not.
To give you a sense of how this would break down, a few examples. Take, for example, the Black Mamba, Kobe Bryant.
If you look carefully, you can spot a hidden rapist in this picture.
Though Kobe is known for being a me-first chucker of the first order, he's also always been a surprisingly good passer with good floor vision. He therefore has a fairly middle-of-the-pack (if not low) Career FGA/A for a non-PG of 4.14.
Carmelo Anthony, on the other hand, has a similar propensity for shooting without the same ability/desire for passing. Still, when his career numbers are calculated, he's not terrible with a FGA/A of 6.24.
I can't help it, 'Melo, you suck.
Harpring, despite my loathing, had similar numbers, with a Career FGA/A of 6.65, though towards his latter seasons, it shot as high as 8.61 with a more limited sample.
So, you say, what's the point, little pathetic tatermoog? Is this another one of your trips down memory lane that has no bearing on anything current?
Well...in part, yes.
But a quick run through the numbers for this year's Utah Jazz--Pure Adrenaline Rush--shows an interesting phenomenon developing.
First, there's a batch of players that barely play, so their numbers are based on a very limited selection of stats--and yes, I'm aware that we're only 12 games into the season, so it's all pretty limited, but...shut up!--so I'll toss them out quickly:
Jeremy Evans: 14.0
Gordon Hayward: 8.5
Francisco Elson: 3.8 (!)
Kyrylo Fesenko: 3.57
Ronnie Price: 3.30
Earl Watson: 1.07
OK, with that out of the way, here's the breakdown of the regular players, starting with the lowest:
Deron Williams: 1.58
No surprise here, since point guards should always be the leader in this category. It's actually a pretty good number for a point guard in the league, too, though Rondo's decision to stop shooting the ball has given him something like a FGA/A of .75.
Andrei Kirilenko: 2.82
Again, no surprise. He's been towards the bottom of this list for his whole career, which is impressive for a small forward. But he's at the top of the list in my heart.
Raja Bell: 4.88
This is actually a little below his career average, but I expect he'll march that way in the near future. Wednesday night probably gave him a good reminder of how much he loves shooting and yelling at referees.
Paul Millsap: 5.06
Time for another admission: I was probably wrong on Millsap. I thought he was a typical over-valued Jazz player with a limited skill-set, but he's shown more ability to pass and shoot this season than I ever expected. I still think his defense is suspect, but, yeah.
...dammit.
CJ Miles: 6.89
Please don't post this on his Facebook page. But seriously, I think this is further proof of CJ's ineptitude thus far, 82games.com be damned. (It just hurt my soul a little to say that.) Unlike some other players with similar FGA/As, CJ has the ability to pass the ball, but he frequently chooses not to. Unfortunately, he has inherited Raja Bell's free pass to shoot from Coach Sloan, and I have absolutely no clue why.
But this all builds up to one big reveal. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our FGA/A Leader and all-around Black Hole...
Eeeennnnnnhhhhh....
Al "The Singularity" Jefferson, with an FGA/A of 10.75.
In recent interviews, Al mentioned how he'd always been a black hole in Minnesota. So far, he's not improved. Admittedly, some of this is due to his role on the team, and the amount of tip-ins he attempts. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that, to get an assist, the ball occasionally has to leave your hands in a direction other than towards the basket.
So, gang, when you hear post-game interviews talking about lacking ball movement and the like, I think you should have a pretty clear idea some of the figures involved.
