POETRY, and Science, IN MOTION

IN PHILIPPINE sports, basketball is king. And the Philippine press has gamely reflected the Filipino’s love affair with this sport, brought here by the Americans, by devoting much of their space and air time to it. And yet Philippine press coverage of the sport lags behind its US counter-part in terms of sophistication, whether in coverage or analysis.
One of the major develop-ments in the analysis of basket-ball that is gaining ground in the United States is the use of the Association of Professional Basketball Research metrics (APBRmetrics), which provides a more objective analysis of basketball games by thoroughly examining game statistics.
Although using box score data to provide better insight into games is a common practice in the Philippines, APBRmetrics improves on this by applying statistical tools on the same data to establish other possible parameters for examining the real value of a player’s contribution to his team.
Using this system, one can determine everything about a basketball team, from its offen-sive and defensive efficiency to identifying which between two teammates playing similar positions can contribute more to the team.
As the method relies solely on data produced by a team, it can also settle some of the more subjective issues that arise in sports such as which team or player is the greatest of all time.
In June for example, John Hollinger, an APBRmetric proponent and a basketball analyst for sports network giant ESPN,came up with a ranking that shows which among the 60 teams that competed in the NBA Finals in the last 30 years can be considered the best.
1. 1996 Chicago Bulls        2. 1987 LA Lakers        3. 1986 Boston Celtics    4. 1991 Chicago Bulls        5. 1997 Chicago Bulls
6. 1985 LA Lakers
7. 1992 Chicago Bulls
8. 1999 San Antonio Spurs
9. 1983 Philadelphia Sixers
10. 1989 Detroit Pistons        Here was how he came up with the rankings:
“Here’s the nuts and bolts. For both the regular season and playoffs, I looked at two factors: win-loss record, and average scoring margin. Every regular-season win was worth two points, with the 1999 participants having their wins prorated to an 82-game season. (That year teams played only 50 games each instead of the usual 82 because the NBA and the Player Union failed to reach an agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement before the season started.) Similarly, every playoff win was worth four points, but each playoff loss docked a team four points — this helped differentiate between champions who went 15-2 (like the 1991 Bulls) and those who went 15-9 (like the 1988 Lakers).
“For scoring margin, I took the team’s season scoring margin and divided by 15 — basically, a one point per game increase was worth 5.47 points in this formula. For playoff scoring margin, I did the same thing but multiplied by four — since most teams played about four times as many regular-season games as playoff games, this made the two virtually equal.
“Finally, I added 15 points to the score of each team that won a championship. Why 15? (A) Because that amount meant that every champion rated ahead of the runner-up from the same season; and (B) Because the valuation seemed about right — the same as 7.5 regular-season wins.
“From there, only one other tweak was necessary — adjusting for those teams in the earlier years who didn’t have as many early-round playoff games in which to rack up points. Teams who didn’t play a first-round series got 12 extra points; teams that played a best-of-three got six points; teams that played a best-of-five got three points. That’s an approximation, obviously, but it mirrored what other teams in their situation actually did.”
APBRmetrics is based on two main concepts. The first states that the best way to evaluate a team’s performance is to see how effectively it handles its possessions. In a single game, both teams have approximately the same num-ber of possessions, because they alternate possession. But since teams play at different paces, (offensive-minded teams play at a faster pace to create more possessions while defense oriented teams slow down their pace to limit the number of possessions) there would be discrepancies in the number of possessions they have.  To make up for the discre-pancy, APBRmetrics analysts rate the teams efficiency in the points scored per 100 posses-sions (Offensive Rating) and points allowed per 100 possessions (Defensive Rating) to interpret the tendencies of teams.
The second concept is that per-minute statistics are more useful for evaluating players than per-game statistics, which is the most commonly used measurement of player performance.
Hollinger said that evaluating a player based on his production on a per-minute basis is more important because this is affected more by the quality of play rather than by the playing time.
For example, a starting center averages 7.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and, 1.3 blocks per game. On the other hand, his reliever posts 4.3 ppg, 3.2 rpg, and 0.8 bpg. Center 1 plays for 33 minutes per game, while Center 2 only averages 15 minutes a game. But looking at their production using APBRmetrics tools, Center 2 may post better numbers in a 48 minute span (the length of regular basketball game). n

– Don Gil K. Carreon and Jose Bimbo F. Santos

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