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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Magic Efficiency Ratings

A statistic that I really like to use is one that I heard of some time ago but don't see it used too often... the efficiency rating (ER) of a player. The ER is a good indicator of a player's all-around effectiveness in a game. The formula is relatively simple... add a player's points, assists, rebounds, steals, and blocked shots. Take that number and subtract missed FGs, missed FTs, and TOs. Take that number and divide by minutes played to arrive at the ER. This formula does not measure any intangibles, but measures a player's efficiency pretty good.

As an example, let's use DHoward's stats for the recent Magic game against POR to see what his ER was for that game. 20 pts + 16 rebs + 2 asts + 2 blocks + 1 steal = 41 - 4 missed FGs - 0 missed FTs - 4 TOs = 33 divided by 36 minutes played = 91.7 ER. What do the ratings numbers mean? 80 + outstanding; 60-79 very good; 45-59 good; 35-44 average; 30-34 below average; 10-29 poor; under 10 horrible. So Dwight's 91.7 ER against POR was outstanding. It is possible to have an ER of higher than 100 or lower than 0 for a game.

I did the math for every Magic player that has played at least 10 games so far this season to come up with ERs for the whole season. I took the average per game of each player's stats divided by the average number of minutes played per game for each player to come up with the season ERs.

1) Dwight Howard 64.0
2) Grant Hill 47.9
3) Trevor Ariza 45.2
4) Darko Milicic 42.0
5) Jameer Nelson 41.6
6) Carlos Arroyo 41.4
7) Bo Outlaw 41.2
8) Tony Batie 35.8
9) Hedo Turkoglu 34.1
10) J.J. Redick 33.7
11) Keith Bogans 30.9
12) Travis Diener 30.3
13) Keyon Dooling 27.3
14) Pat Garrity 24.4

Any surprise that Howard is first and Garrity is last? Dwight will always be among the best in the league in ER because of his solid rebounding, ppg, FG pct., and blocks. Overall, we have 3 players who are in the very good/good category, 5 players who are in the average category, 4 players in the below average category, and two players in the poor category.

One could always check a player's stats to see which stats that player needs to improve on that would make his ER higher.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 4:35 AM  

10 Comments:

  • At 8:10 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    Nice work, Mike. Theoretically, when different categories are combined in one assessment rate, they are more accurate when each category is given an appropriate weight. Then some argue that giving weights brings subjectivity into the assessment, thus the preference to live with the inaccuracy rather than allowing potential subjectivity. I, personally, prefer the weights given.

     

  • At 11:04 AM, Blogger Showtime said…

    I agree Matt. When assessing anything, you have to weigh the worth of a certain attribute in relation to the rest. But in short this formula gives a good perspective of player contribution.

     

  • At 11:14 AM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    Great job mike,this does shed some light.Obviously with keyon being so low,you would think that intro has been right all season about the amount of minutes he plays,i can see keyon being moved.And pat garrity for dale davis?

     

  • At 11:18 AM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    After looking at hedo numbers he too is very low for the amount of minutes he plays.

     

  • At 11:30 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    The factor that I mentioned has skewed the numbers. I think both Keith and Keyon (particularly Keith) should rate higher. Also Grant could not be rated that far below Dwight. Mike, you have spent the time and have done an excellent job. Now, if I were you and had the time, I would have experimented with some arbitrary weight system until the results are closer to what a common sense approach would tell me.

     

  • At 3:16 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    very useful analysis, mike. i think these figures, while not sacrosanct, are instructive: howard is as good and dooling as as bad as thought, whereas arroyo's assists make him slightly more of a contributor than expected.

     

  • At 3:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    also nice to see that bo, per minutes played, is a solid contributor. not that i'm suggesting he play more-- but i think these figures confirm his (limited, but relevant) value for the team.

     

  • At 4:33 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    Thanks for the complementary words, guys. I agree that this formula isn't a perfect formula... as was mentioned, there is no weight given to any specific category... they are all given an equal amount of weight. Also, this formula doesn't measure any intangibles that a certain player may provide on the court just by his presence.

    However, the formula does give a quick indicator of a player's overall contribution to a team relative to minutes played.

    Matt thought that KBogans and KDooling should have rated higher in their ER. Their low ratings can be explained by that some games both players have gotten extended minutes, and just have not produced enough in the stat category for those minutes. However, any intangibles the two may bring to a certain game are not measured (that is... defending well and operating within the offense while not necessarily putting up the numbers). With Dooling, though, I can understand his low ER because in many games he's played this season, his FG pct. has been poor, and his contributions in other statistical areas were very low also, relative to his minutes played. A few games, he did do well statistically, but when you average out the numbers over the entire season, the lower numbers are more prevalent.

    I wouldn't even know how much weight to put on any one category, because all the statistical categories within a game are important, and how does one determine which stat is more important than another stat? That's why I gave each statistic equal weight in figuring the ER.

    I was happy I had spare time late on Saturday night to figure all that out. (It's not that I'm such a math genius, I've always enjoyed playing around with numbers... wish the Magic had a job for me in that area :-)

    I'm going to enjoy the All-Star game tonight and hope that Dwight does well.

     

  • At 5:40 PM, Blogger Matt said…

    Mike, you have done as good as a job as any statistician could do. In my view, you deserve the honorary title of "Official Statistician" of this blog. On a last note, if you ever decide to experiment with a weighted analysis, it is all up to you to determine the weights, which I suggest may bring into account the characteristics of each player, as well and that is why I called it arbitrary. You may also add a category where you assign arbitrary numbers to players based on their defensive efficiencies, and weight it too. I hope I didn't make it too complicated, which I often have a tendency to do.

     

  • At 1:43 AM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    Thanks, Matt!

     

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