Credit where credit is due

Last night’s game was awesome–I admit a pro-Celtics bias on account of a pro-Kevin Garnett bias, but also and anti-Kobe Bryant bias. When claiming objectivity, it’s always a good thing to clear potential biases up front, to let the reader know who they’re dealing with… That said, Garnett had a pretty good game last night, and Bryant had a pretty bad game… Garnett would have been even better without that cold streak–the only player who missed more shots was Kobe, who missed 17! Using the results of a huge, awesome linear regression the results of which have not yet been made public (although it’s very similar to the coefficients seen here), I derive the following from last nights box scores:

Player	min	pts	MEV	PVC	PtC	Credit
Kevin Garnett	40.65	24	22.33	0.250	25.94	0.279
Paul Pierce	31.07	22	18.49	0.207	21.48	0.231
Pau Gasol	41.47	15	19.39	0.246	20.52	0.221
Derek Fisher	40.82	15	18.98	0.241	20.09	0.216
Ray Allen	43.95	19	16.85	0.189	19.57	0.210
Rajon Rondo	35.03	15	14.92	0.167	17.34	0.186
Lamar Odom	39.02	14	12.90	0.163	13.65	0.147
Kobe Bryant	41.87	24	11.06	0.140	11.71	0.126
Vladimir Radmanovic	17.05	5	9.86	0.125	10.43	0.112
Leon Powe	9.32	4	6.85	0.077	7.96	0.086
Sam Cassell	12.97	8	5.40	0.061	6.28	0.067
P.J. Brown	21.20	2	5.08	0.057	5.90	0.063
Sasha Vujacic	26.52	8	4.17	0.053	4.41	0.047
Ronny Turiaf	12.38	5	1.74	0.022	1.84	0.020
Jordan Farmar	7.18	2	0.86	0.011	0.91	0.010
Kendrick Perkins	23.02	1	0.63	0.007	0.73	0.008
Luke Walton	13.70	0	-0.05	-0.001	-0.06	-0.001
James Posey	22.80	3	-1.39	-0.016	-1.61	-0.017
Totals	480	186	168.05	2.000	187.08	2.012

MEV is the term for model-estimated value or point difference created, using only the regression weights. PVC is percent of valuable contributions, which is each player’s part of total team MEV. PtC is points created, which scales MEV values according to actual team and opponent scoring, to roughly account for those factors unmeasured by the box score, and Credit is, essentially, the amount of a win each player should be credited for. MEV and PtC are intended to account for both offensive and defensive contributions, that is, the player’s contribution to his own team’s scoring, and his defense preventing his opponent’s scoring. Boston’s total team Credit was 1.114, and LA’s was 0.898, based on the number of points each scored. It appears as though Boston was able to do to Kobe what they did in the regular season. Note that Posey, despite a timely three, actually hurt his team some: his two turnovers and three personal fouls effectively cancelled out his two steals, while his two defensive rebounds and three points could not compensate sufficiently for four missed shots. However, this is only based on box scores… he may have had tremendous unmeasured defense which I cannot capture, since his plus/minus was +3. It’s interesting to compare my metrics with plus/minus figures: Kobe was -13 for the game…