Quick Notes on the Point Guard Rankings

Even though I went through all the trouble of calculating statistics for this, it’s also a clearly a very subjective process…

I'm no statistician, so any advice or criticism on the whole thing is welcome...

So here’s some notes on the changes I’ve to the point guard ranking process made since I last posted.


1) I added three additional players because I realized some of them were logging substantial minutes as point guards: Alana Beard played some point this season for the Mystics while Nikki Blue was injured. Becky Hammon spends quite a bit of time off the ball when Helen Darling plays point guard so I wanted to look at her numbers. And Candice Wiggins is having a great season and might just have a future as a point guard in this league…

I also thought it would be interesting to look at a range of distributors and scorers who play the point to better understand what the statistics are telling us.

2) I did some reading about Win Score and decided to add weights to the numbers to better reflect the value of rebounds (specifically, the fact that offensive rebounds are more valuable than defensive rebounds).

3) I thought about adding a shooting proficiency stat in the mix but stuck with my original instinct of instinct of sticking with efficiency numbers: plus/minus, Win Score, and points per zero point possession.

4) I left out defense because I just don’t think there are many statistics that come anywhere near approximating a player’s defensive contribution that aren’t extremely complex…

5) I adjusted the Pure Point Rating stat for pace. There were no major differences.

6) Candace Parker is in the mix for fun, but she's not really being ranked relative to the others (because she's not really a point guard). I'm just recording where she would be.

An additional comment…

<*soapbox*>

This was a fun process because it’s nice to think about ways to capture the many things a point guard does that are often overshadowed by assist to turnover or assist per game stats. And having more ways to think about the game are always helpful to me…

But one of the great things about being a fan of any sport you really enjoy watching is evaluating players, comparing players, trying to predict what will help your team, and all the other things that make fantasy sports so amazing – dreaming a little.

Statistics are a large part of that…and even young kids can get into that. There was a time when kids spent as much time crunching numbers on the back of a baseball/basketball/football card as they do watching television now.

But it’s amazing how difficult it is to track down anything beyond basic WNBA statistics (though I suppose it’s improving). I know not everybody likes stats, but it seems to help once you really get into a sport.

So kudos to the following sites for actually providing some good stats:

- Minnesota's statistics site
- Storm Defense
- Foxsports.com
- Basketball-reference (not updated for this season, but the only database of WNBA statistics I can find)

And I’ll give the following sites kudos for providing some pretty good WNBA analysis as well:

- X's and O’s of Basketball
- Wages of Wins (just starting to do some Win Score analysis of the WNBA, part of the reason I chose that statistic)

I might be missing some so hopefully people will fill me in...

<*/soapbox*>

The rest of those rankings coming soon…