Xmas in Charity Tournament

The Rumpf Foundation (named after a kid who died at 21 from Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy) held their annual charity basketball tournament. Dionte Christmas played in it and was the tournament MVP (his team won the tourney championship too). Big deal, you say? Well, Memphis Grizz Wayne Ellington and his Grizz teammate, Maurice Speights played in the tourney too, so there was some legit talent.

I'm liking this kid more and more. Not just his game, but I believe this is NOT the first charity tournament he has played in post-summer league. After reading the posts in the Chris Anderson thread, this guy really does look like Christmas.

http://redsarmy.com/2012/08/18/christmas-show-ya-love-win-rumph-classic/

bob


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Here's an article from WEEI, dated 8/21, about Dionte Christmas in this same Danny Rumpf Tournament. Did you know that Courtney Lee was college teammates with Rumpf and will wear his #11 this year in his honor? Lee also played in this tournament.

http://greenstreet.weei.com/sports/boston/basketball/celtics/2012/08/21/irish-coffee-projecting-dionte-christmas-on-celtics/

There is a video clip of the tournament that's 22 minutes long of Xmas highlights. 22 minutes!!!! Granted this tournament lasted a week or so, but that's still a lot of highlights for one player. He scores just about every way he could. He switched numbers a lot. That confused me at first. Why are they writing about Xmas but are showing a clip of guys wearing #1, #7, #14 etc? Then I noticed they all have the same jumpshot. He doesn't look like he jumps very high on his shot, almost like a Paul Pierce move where he keeps his man off him by threatening to drive past him and then elevates just enough to shoot but doesn't try to max his jump. He also looks like he really bends his front elbow a lot on his shot (nothing wrong with that, in fact sticking it out there gives the defender a chance to hit it for a +1, I'm just pointing out how I figured out it's the same guy).

This article also had some analysis that compares players with experience playing in Europe. They show their W-L record in Europe to their W-L record in the NBA. To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this chart. I'd be interested in hearing Sam's (or anybody else's) opinion of it. It does make Xmas look pretty good. It projects him to do better than Nicolas Batum and Rudy Fernandez and MUCH better than Thabo Sefolosha. I would definitely take that!

I was impressed with 3 players in Summer League: Xmas, Joseph and Sully. Of these three I was particularly liberal with my praise and appreciation of Xmas and Joseph (I liked Sully too, I noted how his rebounding and muscle would fill a big need for us, but he struggled against height down low). The more I see Xmas, the more I like him. He has NBA range, drives well, handles the ball well. This video clip doesn't show him passing much, but he did a real good job running point in summer league.

bob


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Bob

Apparently he never missed a shot

beat

beat wrote:Bob

Apparently he never missed a shot

beat

beat,

Yeah. Like the article says he scored between 30 and 30,000 points in this tournament.

Ok, so there were no boxscores, but still he hoisted, and hit, a lot of shots.

bob


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BobH,

Well, I looked at the formulas and rationale involved in the stats. Frankly, there seem to be important gaps in the explanation of the methodology, and the best I could do was to guess at how they handled certain things that were not spelled out.

As I under stand the procedure, it's not W/L record but an estimate of the proportion of a team's "wins produced" by a given player that seems to be the goal of the math. In the cited example involving the Bulls, Rose's figure was dwarfed by those of Noah and Ron Brewer (and it wasn't because Rose played fewer games; the stats were compiled on a "per minute played" basis).

On one hand, credit must be given to the statisticians for trying to incorporate virtually every basketball stat known to mankind in calculating these estimates. Even rebounds "lost" to one's own teammates are included. And there are deductions for points lost by a given player's turnovers. Adjustments are even made by the position of a given player.

The statisticians seem to correlate each statistic with the effect it has on a win, which provides a weighting to give that stat in the overall formula. This is also an advance over just throwing a bunch of stats together and tacitly assuming they all should be weighted equally.

The sheer number of stats that are incorporated lends some credence to the ability of the formulas to rank various players in terms of "share of winning." As even more statistics become available as part of the plethora of stats currently being introduced, the formula will very likely gain more credence.

What bothers me is that, when they correlate each stat with its influence on wins, they do it only one stat at a time. If multiple stats were considered simultaneously, the relationship of some stats to other stats would undoubtedly yield different weights for given stats than are derived by considering each stat individually. But, more than that, there are still more offensively oriented than defensively oriented stats, and I have to believe there's a skewness toward offense in the overall ratings. Moreover, I didn't notice any factors in the formula pertaining to the quality of combinations with whom a given player operated.

My overall assessment would be that this kind of formula, calculated as (partially) explained, would be more useful in evaluating the relative values of each of several players (because any lacks in the methodology would apply to all of them) than in evaluating the true "worth" of any single player.[i] So, although I would not necessarily endorse the details of the formula, the fact that so many stats were considered make me happy that Christmas ranked highly.

As more refined statistics become available and are incorporated into the formula, the results will continue to inch upward in their value. But, if I thought basketball would ever reach the point where statistics could outweigh informed judgment in player evaluation, my interest in the game would wane considerably.

Sam

sam,

So the good news is that there are lots of factors assessed and the bad news is that they single thread their analysis of them? Well, that's why stats can't tell the whole story, right? Trying to weight different stats would require data mining much deeper than fracking. What's worse, a turnover that results in a fg by the opponent in the 1st period when you're up by 10 or a giving up a 4th quarter technical ftm in a tight game?

Your conclusion about using this as a means for evaluating the relative values of players is crystal clear. Comparing Dionte Christmas, who is a natural SG that could play some PG and perhaps some SF, to Rudy Fernandez and Thabo Sefolosa (also natural SGs) makes for a more believable conclusion than if we compare him to Tony Parker (a natural PG) or Nicolas Batum (a natural SF). Comparing him to Dirk Nowitzki on the basis of stats not correlated to position/role is just flat ridiculous . Even comparing him to Rudy and Thabo has to be taken with a grain of salt since it doesn't take into account the role their teams expect them to play based upon the strengths/weaknesses of their respective rosters.

To end on a happy note, though, it is pleasing to see just how badly Xmas clobbers both Rudy and Thabo, even if they are only stats.

bob


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Bob,

You precisely nailed it—both the good and the bad. During some seasons, I've been accused of being overly optimistic about the Celtics and their chances. This year, I just seem to be doing what comes naturally.

Sam