The crucial takeaway is that none of the evaluation methods is sufficient on its own. Plus-minus statistics are often unreliable, individual statistics are incomplete and we can be fooled by what we see (or don’t see). We’ve long moved past the outdated notion that scouting and statistics are opposed to each other. Instead, at their best, they work together to help us form more robust evaluations that are more likely to prove correct.

In 75 words, Kevin Pelton tells you everything you need to know about advanced defensive stats. He may have been referring to player evaluation in general, but this idea also applies to how we think about defense. Video analysis and advanced stats work together: keeping track of numbers on defense sheds a light to certain aspects of the game that had previously gone unnoticed. This is what I suspected when I started charting Olympiakos’ Euroleague games, a process which forced me to pay closer attention to each possession. But how does one know what is worth measuring?

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You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.

Steve Jobs, yelling at a copywriter about an iPad commercial.

By now, we all agree that numbers don’t tell us enough about how basketball players defend. Keeping track of blocked shots, steals and defensive rebounds provides us with only a fraction of the information we need in order to evaluate a player’s defensive performance. How many fouls does a player commit going for these blocks? How many lay ups does he give up going for a steal? And how many of those rebounds come at the expense of proper defensive rotations? The same is true for team defense. Different strategies and game plans are not taken into account by ‘mainstream’ or even ‘advanced’ statistical categories. And of course, statistical information about that gray area between defense and offense is sketchy at best. For example, points off turnovers would be a more useful tool if we knew more about what exactly led to each turnover.

You might say that the answers to these questions are simple if one who actually watches any given game. That’s partly true. After all, keeping track of advanced defensive stats requires video analysis. But I don’t see any contradiction between video and statistical breakdown. Numbers provide added incentive to watch the game closely and learn more about it every time. Isn’t that what makes basketball great?  However, if we want to learn more, he have to know what we are looking for. Each statistical category must incorporate a wide range of plays with certain common features, without being so abstract that it fails to exhibit meaningful individual and team tendencies. This is not as simple as it sounds. Luke Winn and Rob Mahoney initiated this debate with a detailed case study and a proposal for ‘new’ statistical categories respectively. Here’s my idea of how defense should be measured, based on their work, my defensive chart of the Olympiakos – Bilbao game and a rant from the coach of the team I support.

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