My Apologies

It's been a pretty busy week for me, sorry for the lack of posts. I'll be back next week. Luckily the Bulls keep playing terrible so there's little to write about anymore. till next time...

Stat Boy

Little going on in the world of the Chicago Bulls. Even the extremely faint dose of optimism was extinguished over the weekend after two weekend losses to the Kings and Grizzlies. Even when the team is playing relatively well, its hard to expect to beat teams that are actually...how you say.... "good". I wasn't able to actually catch the games this weekend, but like I said last week, the team looks a little better since the return of Tyson Chandler. Thanks to Doug's stat page, looking up stats for the previous 10 games is a snap. This 10-game span started the game before Tyson came back, at the Golden State Warriors. So on with the tables:

Player	G	M/Gm	FG%	3PT%	APG	RPG	PPG
crawford,jamal	10	34.50	0.383	0.288	4.3	4.5	18.3
curry,eddy	10	30.90	0.514	1.000	1.5	6.8	17.9
hinrich,kirk	10	38.10	0.374	0.386	7.9	4.0	13.0
robinson,eddie	10	28.80	0.539	0.500	1.4	2.6	10.5
jefferies,chris	2	12.00	0.429	0.500	0.5	1.5	8.5
fizer,marcus	5	16.40	0.444	1.000	0.4	3.6	8.2
pippen,scottie	3	16.70	0.412	0.500	2.3	3.0	6.3
williams,jerome	10	23.10	0.488	0.000	1.5	6.2	6.0
davis,antonio	10	28.40	0.296	0.000	1.4	7.8	5.0
dupree,ronald	10	10.90	0.279	0.000	0.6	2.1	3.8
chandler,tyson	9	17.60	0.381	0.000	0.6	6.1	3.6
blount,corie	6	12.50	0.333	0.000	0.8	2.8	3.3
brunson,rick	8	11.10	0.450	0.500	1.6	1.4	2.6

 

Those numbers represent the "traditional" stats, sorted by PPG. As much crap as I (and most of the media) puts on Jamal Crawford, he has been averaging 18ppg over the past 10 games. However I think this number should be in the mid 20s considering his responsibility as a main scoring threat. Crawford's inability to make that 'leap' in performance to put him along the great scoring guards is one of several things keeping the team back. Having Tyson Chandler play only 18 minutes a game doesn't help his numbers either. I can only assume the team is simply being cautious with him. below are some more stats, these are the analytical ones derived using John Hollinger's stat methods. He has made better and more inclusive models to evaluate performance, but cut me some slack here :).

Player	PSA	Ast Ratio	TO Ratio
crawford,jamal	0.98	16.91	9.44
curry,eddy	1.09	7.35	12.25
hinrich,kirk	0.99	33.92	9.87
robinson,eddie	1.12	11.53	11.53
jefferies,chris	1.14	5.30	15.89
fizer,marcus	0.99	3.90	15.60
pippen,scottie	1.04	25.62	7.32
williams,jerome	1.12	19.59	10.45
davis,antonio	0.66	13.75	11.78
dupree,ronald	0.75	8.83	16.20
chandler,tyson	0.96	10.57	19.02
blount,corie	0.67	12.50	12.50
brunson,rick	1.03	31.37	19.31

Without knowing what this means those numbers don't mean jack. Here's the cliffs notes,for the actual formulas and such, get Hollinger's book, its pretty neat-o.

• PSA = points per shot attempt. Takes your total points divided by shots. And throws in a little wrinkle for free throws. For reference, last year Eddy Curry lead the league in FG%, and also in PSA, with 1.234. This weighs heavily towards players who are near the basket and 3-point specialists, which makes Eddie Robinson's performance look really impressive, considering that his game is mainly mid-range jumpshots.
• Ast Ratio = Shows the percentage of assists per possessions used. For reference, the highest percentage last season was Brevin Knight at 40.8, and lowest was Etan Thomas with 1.5. This stat shows how much farther Eddy has to go with his passing...and also re-affirming Marcus Fizer's reputation as the 'black hole'.
• TO Ratio = Same as assist ratio, but instead with turnovers. Obviously here a lower score is better. Check out the difference between Kirk Hinrich and Rick Brunson. Pax, get somebody from the NBDL please....anybody to take Brunson's spot.

I was going to do Rebounding Rate...but for some reason the numbers didn't work out at all, so forget it. It is very important to keep in mind with  these stats, traditional and non-traditional, that 10 games (or less for some players here) is an incredibly small sample size of data and its hard to draw any conclusions. But they're fun to look at.

At the end of the season I'll try and do a comprehensive list of Bulls' stats. This was just a little sample, hopefully it didn't bore you too much. The more complex stuff should be easier to calculate at the end of the season, like Usage Rate, Offensive Percentage, and PER.