Interesting graphic, from Tom Ziller, in light of the continued debate over whether Nick passes...

Interesting graphic, from Tom Ziller, in light of the continued debate over whether Nick passes "enough." Of note - it's just guards, but includes both PGs and SGs.

Neil Payne has a sort of response without the cool graphic here.

over 1 year ago wjb1492 3 comments 0 recs |

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Very interesting

Especially the stats in the Payne response. I was somewhat surprised to see that Nick is actually kind of poor at taking care of the ball (13th worst in %TO). On the plus side, he is surprisingly good at getting to the free throw line (5th best in %Fouled). Instead of comparing Nick to Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, and Rip Hamilton, maybe a better comparison is Kevin Martin.

What do you guys think of Kevin Martin? Daryl Morey is pretty smart, and he traded for K-Mart a year and a half into a five year, $55 million contract. If Nick can become K-Mart-lite with good D, can he be a piece on a championship team?

by yop32 on Feb 16, 2011 12:07 PM EST reply actions

I’m not sure about that TO stat you are quoting (13th worst in %TO)

Because according to Hollinger’s Turn Over Ratio stat – Nick Young is one of the best Guards in the NBA at protecting the ball (7.2% TOr) ….

His rate is 6th best in the League for Guards (PG & SG) – and if you only count players that actually play meaningful minutes (20 minutes a night or more) – He ranks 3rd only behind Jason Richardson (6.3%) of Orlando…and Francisco Garcia (7.0%) of Sacramento… (after all, it’s easy to protect the ball when you’re sitting on the bench….)

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/statistics/_/position/sg/sort/turnoverRatio

He's "delightfully cranky"

I used to have super powers until my psychiatrist took them away.

by Rook6980 on Feb 16, 2011 2:34 PM EST up reply actions

It's a different calculation

Paine broke down total touches into shoot/pass/fouled/TO, which includes passes that are not assists. He just literally means that 5.1% of the time Nick touches the ball it results in a TO – the range is from 3.2-5.9%. John is at 4.9% and Kirk at 4.6%, so it’s hardly like Nick is way out there on the %TO.

(Hollinger’s is, of course, box score possessions, so wouldn’t include all the passes that do end up as an assist.)

What I thought was interesting about Paine’s stats is that you remove part of the issue of passes that don’t result in an assist (either due to a miss or being a “hockey assist”) – Nick could have 0 box score assists on a given night and it not mean he wasn’t sharing the ball. Of course, touches is an estimated stat anyway, so there’s still some element of uncertainty in the equation (compared to actually observing and charting the game.)

by wjb1492 on Feb 16, 2011 2:58 PM EST up reply actions