Comments on: Chris Mullin is the next Michael Jordan

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 04:58:22 +0000

I can’t really engage the logic behind the matrix itself, but I thought it was interesting that Kobe and Lebron came out to be so similar (.012710595) – more like each other than they are like Jordan.

By: Keith Ellis

Keith Ellis — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:46:05 +0000

Mullin is very ‘unlike’ Michael Jordan. Mully shot FTs & hit HRs much more surely. While both were swingmen, their respective rebounding abilities were disparate — Jordan’s consistently better. Michael also consistently passed better, & their defensive comparison is laughable.

Comparing Mullin to Bird because “both are white” is a straw man. Mullin is better compared to the New Age Imports, except he mixed it up more & drew contact (FTAs) in his prime. Rather a Ginobili offensively w/out the defensive prowess (altho their thievery is similar).

By: The microcosmic NBA petri dish « The Arbitrarian

The microcosmic NBA petri dish « The Arbitrarian — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:37:05 +0000

[...] NBA in a petri dish, with all different phyla and genera of player types represented. I used the same methodology I’ve been using (with the per-minute, rather than ratio statistics), but generated the graph [...]

By: NBA similarity networks « The Arbitrarian

NBA similarity networks « The Arbitrarian — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:52:48 +0000

[...] covered my operationalization of statistical similarity, and offered some evidence of its usefulness, I’d like to share what I perceive as the best part of the whole endeavor, the pictures. [...]

By: rapidadverbssuck

rapidadverbssuck — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:17:27 +0000

To Charles:
I have to disagree with your contention that without winning, my analysis is not worth much. Rather, I would suggest that it does a good job at parsing out similarities in playing style, which is what I was going for–winning and losing are only marginally related to playing style. For example, when Kevin Garnett moved from Minnesota (a losing team) to Boston (a winning team), would we expect his playing style to change? I agree that playing with better players in a winning system may have some impact on the nature of a player’s game (i.e. Garnett may have to carry the offensive load less in Boston, and so may shoot less), but it seems to me that this sort of change would be idiosyncratic, and not particularly useful for statistical comparison. Since I was interested, however, I re-ran my analysis, including the wins and losses of the teams for which each player played, and got the following results for Jordan:

32 kobe bryant 0.03164291
10 lebron james 0.03859031
73 dwyane wade 0.04982301
60 tracy mcgrady 0.05485190
90 julius erving 0.05613495
43 clyde drexler 0.05696678
25 dominique wilkins 0.05773910
23 vince carter 0.06392734
89 carmelo anthony 0.06555709
81 chris mullin 0.07069066
78 rolando blackman 0.07268651
6 larry bird 0.07428374
2 karl malone 0.07543253
21 paul pierce 0.07666367
4 latrell sprewell 0.07788166

Note that now Karl Malone is ranked above both Pierce and Sprewell. I refuse to believe that Malone’s playing style is more similar to Jordan’s than is Pierce’s or Sprewell’s. I am not sure if the increased superficial accuracy at the top of the list is worth the loss of accuracy further down.

By: emma13

emma13 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:42:17 +0000

Hey,

Iv’e heard of this guy, he’s really good!

By: Charles

Charles — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:12:18 +0000

Hi,

If you do not factor in winning in your comparisons, then your analysis is not worth much.

Charles