01-11-2012, 02:39 PM
Another statistic that I find interesting is what I call effectiveness. For each player, it is simply a measure of how much more your team scores than the other team while the player is in the game, normalized to a full 40-minutes. If you play exactly one half and your team gained 3 points on the other team during that time, your effectiveness would be 6.
I think the WNBA once had something similar to this, but it either was dropped or changed. I started looking at this when Nicole was first in the WNBA.
Most BB statistics highlight one particular aspect of play (naturally). But how do you compare the effectiveness of a great shooter versus a great defender. We've all seen players whose contributions don't get well reflected in the statistics. I believe this stat combines everything you do. If you make a pass to a covered player, which leads to a turnover, this picks it up. If your spacing is bad, which makes someone else not able to get the ball to you, the effectiveness picks it up. If you hound their star player so they never get the ball, it shows up.
One thing I like about this is that it is normalized to a full 40 minutes of play. For instance, Nneka would have more points if she played a full 40 minutes in each game. But, if she sits down with 8 points after only 13 minutes in a blowout game, her average points per game is hurt, as compared to someone who plays almost every minute of every game.
The problem with this stat, as with most (except maybe FT%), is that it depends on both the quality of your opponents and the quality of your teammates. When our second stringers are in against their second stringers, our best player in our second stringers would have an effectiveness stat like our best player in our first team against their first team. (That's not really true as the two second-string teams might only score 40 points against each other in a full game, but you get the idea.) The stat would work best if all teams were more closely matched, which is not the case in WBB.
If I select for just the games that were at least somewhat challenging (Texas, Gonzaga, UConn, Xavier, Tenn, the University of South Central, OSU), here are the effectiveness ( = NetPts/40min) numbers for the Stanford players:
I think the WNBA once had something similar to this, but it either was dropped or changed. I started looking at this when Nicole was first in the WNBA.
Most BB statistics highlight one particular aspect of play (naturally). But how do you compare the effectiveness of a great shooter versus a great defender. We've all seen players whose contributions don't get well reflected in the statistics. I believe this stat combines everything you do. If you make a pass to a covered player, which leads to a turnover, this picks it up. If your spacing is bad, which makes someone else not able to get the ball to you, the effectiveness picks it up. If you hound their star player so they never get the ball, it shows up.
One thing I like about this is that it is normalized to a full 40 minutes of play. For instance, Nneka would have more points if she played a full 40 minutes in each game. But, if she sits down with 8 points after only 13 minutes in a blowout game, her average points per game is hurt, as compared to someone who plays almost every minute of every game.
The problem with this stat, as with most (except maybe FT%), is that it depends on both the quality of your opponents and the quality of your teammates. When our second stringers are in against their second stringers, our best player in our second stringers would have an effectiveness stat like our best player in our first team against their first team. (That's not really true as the two second-string teams might only score 40 points against each other in a full game, but you get the idea.) The stat would work best if all teams were more closely matched, which is not the case in WBB.
If I select for just the games that were at least somewhat challenging (Texas, Gonzaga, UConn, Xavier, Tenn, the University of South Central, OSU), here are the effectiveness ( = NetPts/40min) numbers for the Stanford players:
| Player | Â Â Â Â Â Â ÂÂ Min | ÂNetPts | ÂEffectiveness |
| Boothe, Sarah    |  70:32 |  -15 |  -8.51 |
| Camp, Jasmine   |  38:47 |  -12 |  -12.38 |
| Green, Alex      |  2:48 |  -2 |  -28.57 |
| Greenfield, Taylor | Â162:37 |  50 |  12.30 |
| James, Sara     |  22:39 |  -5 |  -8.83 |
| Kokenis, Toni   | Â243:08 |  100 |  16.45 |
| La Rocque, Lindy  | Â200:54 |  39 |   7.77 |
| Mashore, Grace   |  1:09 |  -2 |  -69.57 |
| Ogwumike, Chiney | Â194:35 |  78 |  16.03 |
| Ogwumike, Nnemkadi | Â199:46 | Â 86 | Â 17.22 |
| Orrange, Amber  |  71:39 |   5 |   2.79 |
| Payne, Erica    |  14:31 |  -12 |  -33.07 |
| Ruef, Mikaela    |  11:23 |   7 |  24.60 |
| Samuelson, Bonnie |  45:55 |  15 |  13.07 |
| Tinkle, Joslyn   |  95:52 |  -11 |  -4.59 |