anyway, outside of the statistical question, my opinion is that you can ignore SB for guards, and that the value of SB varies for bigs by set. in the press, its low on the importance scale for bigs as well. in the zone defense, SB seems pretty important - it probably is not the most important stat, but it very well could be second to defense *for defense only*, which makes it you know, maybe the 4th-5th most important stat? (after ath, reb, def, and possibly lp).
there is a reality to the situation though. strong shot blocking players tend to be better players. but better players also tend to be better shot blockers. so thats why so many coaches can ignore sb (i ignored it 100%, like durability, until after i won like 8 titles) and think its useless, when its not, and other coaches can think its really important, when it may not be.
specifically (and this is the answer to my question to dahs) - the correlation of sb to height is extremely tight. and so is rebounding. go find me a 90 sb who sucks at rebounding. now, potential throws a small wrench in the works. but there is STILL a HUGE correlation between sb and rebounding.
going back to my earlier statement... and also dah's regression idea... there is actually a very significant possibility that the most important defensive stat for bigs in general is.... drumroll.... REBOUNDING! why? well, missed rebounds result in a huge amount of field goals, because those off rebounds often are such high % shots. so, its going to drive up opponent fg% and also field goal attempts (which are both very important - thats why trying to draw a conclusion about importance from a study of just fg% is a total quagmire. for example, what does speed do so well in the press? create steals. that has 0 positive benefit if you look at fg% alone.)
so dahs, i think you made 2 mistakes, if your posting reflects your actual work. and if not, i think posting that incomplete tidbit is a bit misleading. looking at fg% alone, and not fga, is a major mistake. and not including REBOUNDING is a huge mistake! even for guards, rebounding is really important. look at any high rebounding guard you can find. guess what else he has? high sb (for a guard, of course). so yeah, it may look like SB matters to guards when you just crunch the numbers. but its not that simple. in statistical terms, you failed to account for the dependence of shot blocking and rebounding in your study, which is exactly why nobody should draw conclusions this study. *especially not anyone who doesn't really understand statistics*. ive seen, time and time again, stats posted on this board. its a good thing to play around with, if you know what you are doing, and you can glean a lot of stuff from it if you are careful. but it can REALLY be misleading to the average user. the average user should take all statistics of this sort with a grain of salt, because really, 95-100% of the time ive seen them, the conclusions (implied or otherwise) are simply wrong, or minimally, misleading. and again, im not saying dahs came out and said SB matters most - but the average user reading that who doesn't have a damn clue what that formula he posted meant (and even i am confused why you rose to a power instead of using a simple coefficient, i still haven't decided how that affects things, but my gut tells me it does) - they probably read it as, SB is the most important, and its not, its not even close in most cases (including all positions).
and to be honest - that is just the tip of the ice burg of the possible pitfalls in doing a regression like this. really, all i am going for here is to make sure coaches aren't mislead. so coaches who aren't strong in statistics, you never want to take more than an idea of something you want to look into further away from these kind of statistical postings. never take away a conclusion, because it will usually bite you in the *** :)
7/22/2012 2:48 PM (edited)