What basketball statistics could possibly relate to player's future potential? - mcdowell31's Blog

mcdowell31's Blog

What basketball statistics could possibly relate to player's future potential?

Posted on February 11, 2023 at 06:33 PM.

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And, ChatGPT says:

There are several basketball statistics that could potentially relate to a player's future potential, including:

Points per game (PPG): This measures a player's ability to score points and is often used as a key metric for evaluating offensive performance.

Rebounds per game (RPG): This measures a player's ability to grab rebounds and secure possession of the ball for their team, which is an important part of both offensive and defensive play.

Assists per game (APG): This measures a player's ability to set up their teammates for successful shots and is often used as an indicator of a player's overall offensive skills and court vision.

Steals per game (SPG) and blocks per game (BPG): These measure a player's defensive abilities, including their ability to disrupt opposing teams' offensive plays and protect their own team's basket.

Player Efficiency Rating (PER): This statistic is a comprehensive measure of a player's overall performance, taking into account factors such as points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, and turnovers.

It's important to note, however, that statistics alone cannot always accurately predict a player's future potential, as there are many other factors that can impact a player's success, including their work ethic, mindset, and ability to work within a team.
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I was not surprised as I have generally leaned toward PER. Years ago I was making a roster that included David Robinson. I cannot remember exactly what I was attempting to translate from statistic to attribute, but as I was researching I noticed that on a per-minute basis, Robinson was the same player as a freshman at Navy as he was in the prime of his career. The difference, Robinson only played ten minutes per game as a freshman.

I also noticed that players do not drastically change during their careers, generally speaking. Whatever they do on a qualitative basis is kind of what they do throughout their careers. I used this reasoning once as I was trying to define Kevin McHale's Block rating when he was at the University of Minnesota. I started looking at McHale's professional career and the pattern was obvious, so I used his rookie Block rating for his college years as well. Looking into the future, professional general managers attempt the opposite when translating a prospect's high school and college careers; they are hoping that the player will at least return to that form as a professional. Most of the time they are wrong. Sports prognostication is hard.

You can see these patterns, sometimes, almost like player DNA. Of course, there are spikes based on playing time or change of role like what James harden is doing now. However, we have seen Harden as a facilitator before so his assists are not really surprising.

For players like Harden, I have mentally toyed with the idea of historical attributes and tendencies. Working backward from a given season I would pick the high point to represent the potential for the attribute or tendency. I heard retired NFL wide receiver Cris Carter say something like: If I see you do it once, I know that it is in there. Carter used the example of seeing a young receiver running a 4.3 40-yard dash, which was extraordinary in the 1990s, and reasoned that the player was capable of learning to do it regularly.

In game attribute terms, I have thought it could represent a player's knowledge of a skill similar to how role-playing games do it. Of course, in sports athletes do not forget skills ingrained as muscle memory, but it is athletic skills that degrade and seemingly cause other skills to decline. Right now, I have Moses Malone's career on my current spreadsheet to experiment with this idea. There is a good write-up for this in the 2K Basketball sliders forum under a posting by Barncore or Barnsey about career attribute sliders.

The last time I ran a season doing this was with a tabletop game I had in high school called "Real Life Basketball". The game results were a little All-star gamelike for the 1980s, but it did seem to put the right people on the court. That game still exists; look it up. I still have my copy.

"Game... Blouses" is still rolling with five straight wins since my last entry here. I should post the logo; I think you guys would get a kick out of it.

UPDATE 4:19 PM 02/25/2023: Went offline and was able to finish the game and bypass the VC screen. Now, I will play online to see if the problem persists.