The Non-Jazz NBA Thread in the Jazz Section
- Thread starter Handlogten's Heros
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James Harden still being an elite engine at 36 is crazy.
Jesus, this is one of the more brutal/mature breakdowns of all time.
underdog
Well-Known Member
I was talking about the importance of ball movement (assists) in winning. The correlation between AST% and ORTG isn’t a good stat for this. It doesn’t account for defense or other factors that affect winning. And even if we just look at the relationship between AST% and ORTG, it’s not useful without considering other factors (turnovers, offensive rebounding, pace, etc.) that affect total points scored.
If you just do raw assists it’s more or less saying who has more FG’s. Assist% is the percentage of baskets of FG’s that are assisted. Getting an assist doesn’t mean you moved around the ball a lot in the first place, but if you’re using assists than AST% is a better way to look at it because it’s not skewed by simply having more FG’s.
I know there are other factors to winning. If having more baskets assisted did help you win, it should have a correlation. What you’re saying is nothing can be useful if something else matters, which doesn’t make much sense at all.
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underdog
Well-Known Member
Klay blew his top pretty good there at the end. He heaved up a shot from well behind the 3-point line, missing it with plenty of time on the clock.
I agree that there is no way they for example get to playins, but they have no incentive to lose (and others do), and if they do get healthier, they'll win way more than then have.
underdog
Well-Known Member
Well, “moving the ball” usually means more team assists, “raw” or AST%, doesn’t matter here. And I said that the correlation between AST% and ORTG isn’t a good way to measure how moving the ball and assists contribute to winning. With correlations, you need to consider other factors because they can be misleading on their own. You have a toothache for three weeks and your team wins all their games in that same period. There’s a strong correlation there.
You are aware that you are the one who brought up total team assists right? I chose to use AST% because it is closer to "moving the ball" than simply looking at which teams had more assists, which again, is something you brought up not me!
I'm aware that correlation does not cause causation. But in this instance, causation would imply a correlation. In other words, if moving the ball had a positive effect on offense, you would expect the teams who moved the ball more would be better on offense.