Top Five Players by position in the NBA

[Clarkmeister]

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capone0, he's not horrible, but then again we aren't talking about whether or not Yao is an average center but whether or not he's one of the top 5. Andre Miller's assist numbers aren't horrible, but they aren't great, and great point guards get a lot of assists in the same way that great centers get a lot of rebounds. His rebounding is much worse than all of the other C's but Amare, and he loses out to amare in turnovers, field goal percentage.

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Dude, you rated Tyson freaking Chandler above him. That's borderline bannable.

[Aloysius]

Snowden - you rated Chandler over Yao? Really?

-Al

[barryc83]

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Yao and Melo not making your lists is insane. Vince Carter continues to be overrated by many people in this thread.

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I'm amazed that people in this thread imply PP is significantly better than VC.

Season numbers

VC:
38.1mpg/25.2ppg/6.0rpg/4.8apg/1.0spg/.37bpg/.454 fg%/.357 3pt%/.802 ft%/2.65to

PP:
37.0mpg/25.0ppg/5.9rpg/4.1apg/1.66spg/.72bpg/.439 fg%/.389 3pt%/.796 ft%/3.23to

And PP is not the defender he once was. I like VC better bc I think he can get to the hoop better (if only he did it more). By the numbers theyre basically the same player.

[snowden719]

Since there's so much opposition to chandler over yao I'll do a quick comparison.

Assumptions:
(1) I never watch either one play and don't think that makes a huge difference, all the yao homers will says he's better than his stats while the Chandler ones will say that chandler is better than i'm making him out to be.
(2) All possessions are worth 1 point, so a rebound is worth one point, steal is worth one point, made shot is worth one point, turnover is negative one. If you want to contest this, you can, but it sounds reasonable to me, so don't object by saying that I'm retarded without explaining why this assumption is wrong.
(3) I'm going to assume for simplicity that they play the same minutes per game although chandler plays 0.6 more.

Points Per Game
Yao- 25
Chandler- 9.5

Yao has a massive edge in points, so Chandler's other stats need to be worth 15.5 points more than Yao.

Lost possessions (missed FG's + Missed FT's/2 + TO) (Missed FT's/2 isn't a perfect representation but is a reasonbly close proxy)

Yao- 24.9
Chandler- 9.5
A huge edge for chandler, as most of his scoring deficit has nothing to do with being a poor shooter but instead not using that many of his team's posessions. Note that the two are now essentially even.

Gained possessions (Rebounds + Steals + Blocks) (note that counting blocks the same as steals is probably wrong, but doesn't make that big a difference as the two are pretty close in this regard.)

Yao- 11.8
Chandler- 14.7

At this point Chandler is ahead by 3 points

Other stats ( assists and fouls per game) I'm not sure how these should be weighted in terms of points, as I don't think an assist is worth a full point, but I'm not sure how much to weight it. similarly, fouls definitely hurt your team, but I'm not sure to what extent.

Yao 3.3 Fouls 2 Assists
Chandler 3.3 fouls 0.9 Apg

So yao has an extra assist that's weighted against Chandler's 3 "points" on yao.

Although i know that the more one shoots the more the person's FG% goes down, I don't think the effect is large enough to say that Chandler isn't better once we add in that Chandler is much more likely to be healthy and play a full season than yao is. If we caveat in perfect health, then I might take yao but think it's pretty close.

I know the position seems crazy on face, but I think that people are just too quick at overlooking high percentage shooting centers that don't turn the ball over and grab a lot of rebounds. Hope this makes sense, even to those who disagree that they can see it's not totally random, and that even if it's wrong, it's not coming from that unreasonable of assumptions.

[kidcolin]

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I like VC better bc I think he can get to the hoop better (if only he did it more).

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lol.. that's the whole point! Vince is a big wuss bag who settles for jumpers wayyyyy too much. Pierce gets to the line much more readily and loves attacking the rack.

[Clarkmeister]

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it's not coming from that unreasonable of assumptions.

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never watch either one play

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This isn't baseball.

[Ralph Wiggum]

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I never watch either one play and don't think that makes a huge difference, all the yao homers will says he's better than his stats while the Chandler ones will say that chandler is better than i'm making him out to be.

[/ QUOTE ]
Dude we're not Yao homers, and it's clear you don't watch basketball. One guy commands the attention of the defense. The other guy is ignored.

Rather than your crude estimate of the value of stats, why don't you just use PER?

Yao's 2007 PER: 26.5
Tyson's 2007 PER: 17.0

That's not even close. Just for reference 15.0 is always the average, so PER is relative. Yao had the 3rd highest PER. If anything Yao is & has always been underrated.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...BA_2007_t.html

[snowden719]

Rather than PER why not use Wins Produced per 48 minutes, the stat that dave berri came up with in wages of wins which gives us .325 for Chandler and .202 for Yao. The reason I don't use PER is that I think it overrates scorers, as it doesn't punish people enough for missing shots. Also a good argument against PER is that it has no ability to explain why ben wallace gets paid 11 million dollars a year. If you look throughout basketball, there is a high correlation betwen scoring and salary, indeed, the worst contracts are almost all given to inefficient but high volume scorers (marbury, francis, etc.). However, Wallace's PER has hovered around 17.5 for the years he was with the pistons. Although some people thought the contract was bad, most of the objction came to the length, not the value per year. The question I have then; is, why does PER tell us ben wallace isn't that good when GM's seem to think he is excellent and he doesn't fit a classic example of someone being overpaid. I think the natural conclusion to draw is that PER isn't that great of a stat, and it highly underrates rebounders who aren't great scorers.

Also for the record, I wasn't saying you were yao homers, just that the value of players comes through in their stat lines. ( except with excellent non post defenders like bowen, marion, artest, old payton, etc.) If there's a reason why yao would be underrated in terms of stat lines where chandler wouldn't, I'd like to see it but I don't think it's true in this case.

finally, I realize that my conclusions about basketball are much different, but I can assure you I'm a huge basketball fan that watches every suns game I can (I'm on the east coast for school) and catches most of the sunday doubleheaders on abc. Although I'm sure there are people who watch more, I watch a decent amount, and what I see in yao when I watch is a big man who gets pushed around to often on defense and turns the ball over too much to be considered a premiere center. Is yao good? Certainly, he'd be 6th on my list, but he's not as good as yall make him out to be.

[hanster]

Assani has the closest ranking to mine and I honestly can't see anyone putting VC anywhere near the list. PG list is spot on to mine. Seriously, I go to UCLA and it's unreal how B-Diddy is top 5 right now when you have Nash/Kidd/Paul/Chauncey in the league. You might argue for a case for #5 but he is in another league when it comes to running a team. It's [censored] unreal Gasol isn't getting love at all.

Your SF is really weird imo. I'd rank Marion higher than that and GW hasn't prove himself worthy yet. I might add KEVIN DURANT on the list. just kidding. Anyone got love for Caron Butler? He averaged double-double last year for God's sake (picked him in a 12-team draft in the 5th round. Gotta love him).

PF is consensual to everyone that knows the tiniest thing about basketball.

I used to think Yao was the best center in the league hands down when Amare didn't have a shot and was crappy at the FT line. However this is the first valid case to have Yao not at #1 C at all. Would you have Duncan over Yao? I don't see that happening at all tbh. Tyson Chandler? haha

[ QUOTE ]
PG
1. Nash
2. Kidd
3. Paul
4. C Billups
5. D Williams


SG
1. Kobe
2. Wade
3. McGrady
4. Arenas
5. Joe Johnson

SF
1. Lebron
2. Paul Pierce
3. Melo
4. Marion
5. Gerald Wallace

I know the Wallace pick will turn some heads. Here are his post all star break numbers this year: 21.7 points on 52.6% shooting, 40.4% 3pt shooting, 8.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 2.2 steals, 1.1 blocks.

PF
1. Duncan
2. KG
3. Dirk
4. Bosh
5. Brand

C
1. Amare
2. Yao
3. Howard
4. Gasol
5. Okafor

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[kidcolin]

Isn't Berri's stat highly debated because it basically has a large fudge factor?