A Real Statistical Comparison for Jonny Flynn
by KMils on Mar 20, 2010 4:15 PM CDT
Email
PrintA few weeks back, after the game with the Mavericks, I wrote a quick Fanpost noting the statistical similarities between Jonny Flynn's rookie year and Jason Terry's rookie year. However, I wanted to do a bit more analysis before anointing Flynn the next Jason Terry.
Finding a Flynn Comparison
Using Basketball-Reference's season finder, I grabbed every player 6'2" or shorter in their rookie season having played more than 615 minutes played (15mp/g over at least 41 games) since the three point line was put in (1979-1980). I then divided their statistics (MP/G, PER, TS%, eFG%, AST%, STL%, TOV%, USG%, ORtg and DRtg) by Flynn's statistics, giving a percentage result that was, essentially, "closeness to Flynn". I then squared those results and averaged the squares in order to find a comparison to Flynn.
Why Squared?
Pretend that there are only two statistics that matter: TS% and 3P%. Pretend that Flynn has a 50% TS% and 35% 3P%. Player A, has 55% TS% and 31.5% 3P%. Player B, on the other hand, has an 82% TS% and a 12.25% 3P% (impossible, but bear with me). If you do the math, Player A is 10% better at TS%, 10% worse at 3P%. Player B is 65% better and worse at the same statistics. Average them out, and you get 1.00; both are equal in comparison to Flynn. But Player A is obviously the closer comparison. By squaring the results (110% and 90% versus 165% and 35%) and averaging them out, Player A is now a 1.01 in comparison to Flynn's 1.00, while Player B is 1.42. Outliers are made much more significant when squaring.
Weaknesses of This Analysis
First of all, a player with two extreme outliers, even due to squaring, will statistically be closer to Flynn despite the outliers. The raw average (which, BTW, has Mario Chalmers as the closest comparison) is not to be taken at Face value. Chalmers, for instance, was far better at collecting steals, far worse at using possessions and within .2 on just about everything else. Averaging them out mitigates the outliers.
Some statistics are probably more important than others. I'd personally rather have a guy who never steals the ball but shoots 65% from the field. Giving equal weight to everything doesn't make sense in the real world, nor does it make sense statistically. It also makes much more sense to use actual statistical software. When I get a minute, I'll pop in my old SPSS and see if I can't work some more magic.
The biggest problem of all is, strangely, with Flynn. He uses so many possessions, it's astounding. There are SIX short rookies since 1979-1980 who used the ball as much as Flynn - Allen Iverson, Isiah Thomas, Brandon Jennings, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Chucky Atkins and Kelvin Ransey. Jennings is probably the best comparison, and it's not a good one; plus, we don't know what will happen to Jennings in the future.
After the Jump - The Comparisons
Keep in mind, the comparisons are probably optimistic, because rarely do players get minutes like Flynn does without being either pretty good players or projected to be pretty good players.
| Player | Ht | Age | G | MP | MP/G | PER | AST% | TOV% | STL% | USG% | ORtg | DRtg | TS% | eFG% | FG% | 3P% | FT% |
| Jonny Flynn | 5'11" | 20 | 69 | 1996 | 28.9 | 13.0 | 24.7 | 17.5 | 1.8 | 24.3 | 97 | 113 | 0.502 | 0.450 | 0.412 | 0.346 | 0.823 |
| Jameer Nelson | 5'11" | 22 | 79 | 1612 | 20.4 | 14.5 | 24.8 | 14.8 | 2.5 | 21.4 | 103 | 108 | 0.510 | 0.490 | 0.455 | 0.312 | 0.682 |
| Raymond Felton | 6'1" | 21 | 80 | 2406 | 30.1 | 14.2 | 30.9 | 15.7 | 2.2 | 21.4 | 100 | 109 | 0.483 | 0.446 | 0.391 | 0.358 | 0.725 |
| Bobby Jackson | 6'1" | 24 | 68 | 2042 | 30.0 | 13.6 | 29.5 | 17.4 | 2.8 | 23.5 | 92 | 111 | 0.453 | 0.405 | 0.392 | 0.259 | 0.814 |
| Nick Van Exel | 6'1" | 22 | 81 | 2700 | 33.3 | 13.6 | 25.4 | 11.3 | 1.6 | 19.9 | 106 | 113 | 0.485 | 0.452 | 0.394 | 0.338 | 0.781 |
| Travis Mays | 6'2" | 22 | 64 | 2145 | 33.5 | 12.3 | 18.3 | 15.5 | 1.9 | 21.0 | 102 | 112 | 0.526 | 0.456 | 0.406 | 0.365 | 0.770 |
| Tony Parker | 6'2" | 19 | 77 | 2267 | 29.4 | 11.7 | 23.9 | 17.5 | 2.1 | 17.7 | 99 | 103 | 0.497 | 0.467 | 0.419 | 0.323 | 0.675 |
| Jonny Flynn | 5'11" | 20 | 69 | 1996 | 28.9 | 13.0 | 24.7 | 17.5 | 1.8 | 24.3 | 97 | 113 | 0.502 | 0.450 | 0.412 | 0.346 | 0.823 |
Analysis
Out of all the guys up there, Jameer Nelson is probably the worst comparison. Didn't play as many minutes, shot better from 2P, way worse from the FT Line and was pretty different overall. His AST% is dead on though and he definitely improved from his rookie year to now. He's up and down, but if Flynn is Nelson, I approve.
Raymond Felton is also not a superb comparison. He did shoot worse than Flynn is currently shooting, but he was (and still is) a much better facilitator. Not that great of a player though. His shooting stroke has not improved that much and it remains to be seen whether he's an NBA starter.
Bobby Jackson is probably the only player on the list who might have had a worse rookie year than Flynn. Awful shooting, just awful. He improved dramatically during his career though (but has primarily been a 6th man). And he passes better too. He's also a great rebounder, which I left out of this analysis, but certainly makes him more valuable.
Nick Van Exel is a pretty solid comparison - wasn't a big passer, shot similarly, played a lot of minutes, wasn't great on defense. Turned the ball over less, but pretty similar all around. He turned into a real PG though, with 5 years in the top 10 for assists/game. Certainly promising.
Travis Mays is probably the worst case scenario out of all the players up there. He played for a year, ruptured both Achilles Tendons in his second season and only played one more year. Played in Europe for quite a few years though. Not very useful as a comparison, but he had a pretty similar first year.
And the best case scenario: Tony Parker. Parker as a rookie was not good. Didn't shoot well, didn't score much, turned the ball over too much, etc... He was 19 though, and adjusting to his first year in America. Plus, he was pretty good on defense (though he did have Tim Duncan and David Robinson behind him). He's improved tremendously and might be one of the top five point guards in the league right now. Flynn looks pretty similar to him, and it's not out of the question that he turns it around like Parker did.
For the record, I left off Jason Terry because of my earlier analysis. He's actually still a good comparison; very similar shooting and similarly offensively and defensively. Terry is a better distributor though. Which is pretty sad.
Conclusion
Patience is a virtue. While Flynn looks like a lost cause sometimes, there are plenty of other point guards who turned it around. Van Exel and Parker became excellent starters, Nelson is solid, Jackson was great as a 6th man, Felton is about average, and could be good in a PG rotation and Mays, while unsuccessful, probably wasn't in control of his tendons tearing. These point guards did start to show their true colors with more experience; virtually all of them who did take a step forward did it pretty early. We could have something good on our hands. Lets relax and see it through to next season.
18 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Nice post
I like doing things similar to this when trying to find trends in player progression for certain types of playstyles and builds.
I think the best comparison for a career trajectory is likely Nelson or Parker, even though they differed in how they went about their rookie seasons. They both like to drive and are scoring points with decent playmaking skills.
I most fear that he’ll turn out like Felton, where he stagnates and never develops. Yes, those two are different in playmaking skills, but the Minnesota offense isn’t PG stat friendly, so I don’t know if the disparity is all that huge – though their defensive abilities are.
Felton is probably the most realistic worst case scenario
Mays got hurt; if Jonny gets hurt, all bets are off.
Flynn
seems like one of these players that will rarely get hurt. He is built so well and is very compact. I don’t think he has missed a college or pro game yet due to injury.
by Rascal Flatts on Mar 20, 2010 7:23 PM CDT up reply actions
I certainly hope you're right
but those muscle imbalances are a b!+ch. Hopefully he hasn’t neglected any important muscles that keep your joints in place because he certainly isn’t invincible. Though I do agree he does seem like a pretty “healthy” player.
thanks
Awesome post, thanks for the info. Fun data, and a real thinker. I voted Nelson, and if Flynn ends up like Nelson I think we all should be real happy with that.
by scottysnowski on Mar 20, 2010 9:32 PM CDT up reply actions
Another problem
I don’t compare number statistics. Guys may shoot a similar %, but are not at all similar when it comes to the amount of shots taken from a specific range. Van Exel, for one, shot way more from the outside from Flynn.
Partly a problem with our data
One could probably cull threes from the overall shooting numbers and compare them separately without too much work. (Euro ball doesn’t report treys and twos together to start with.)
Adjusting your starting-point search to narrow it to guards who attempted a similar rate (per time) of twos and threes to Flynn actually narrows things down dramatically. I’m tinkering around and having trouble getting more than a few names, actually. That surprises me a little. Is it just that rookie guards don’t get this much leash?
(Excellent post. Just excellent.)
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
If you take the upper range off, you'll get more guys
But like I said, rookie point guards do not use many possessions. Flynn has the ball in his hands more than just about every little player since 1979-1980. That’s part of the reason I’d guess he’s struggling.
In fact, if you look at all the players 6’4" or shorter this year, playing in 28 minutes a game with a USG% over 24, you get Wade, Billups, Westbrook, Brooks, Rose, Davis, Jennings, Parker, Harris, Ellis and Flynn. That’s it. Now, USG% doesn’t take assists into play, only things which end possessions (turnovers, missed shots, made shots) and Flynn ends a ton of possessions with turnovers, but literally half the rookies in my sample had worse turnover rates than Flynn (including John Stockton, though Stockton made up for it by being the best point guard ever).
Case in point of why stat digging is cool, though
Just the fact that setting the parameters for the initial trawl gives us some thinking to do (granted, it was mostly on your part, and all I did was a single curious search ;-)) reminds me that when you look at the numbers they’re capable of telling you things you didn’t expect. That’s always a breath of fresh air. Our intuition has trouble with that sort of thing, even on the level of finding comparisons for someone.
Adding Jonny’s assist rate or lower, you get another very short list, even when the top limit’s off those shot attempt rates. I’m pretty sure none of us want to look at James “Hollywood” Robinson as a potential compare. (Dana Barros, anyone?) Short guards with the green light to shoot don’t tend to be iffy assist guys.
That assist rate, though, is the leading edge of an iceberg I don’t think we can deal with in numbers. How the heck can number grinding account for Rambis’s “Triangle Tricyle” offensive scheme?? Whenever I’ve poked around after comparisons to Flynn, it’s been very obvious that his assist rate is lower than other comparable players. But then, oops, we have at least some pretty good circumstantial evidence that Sessions too has had his assist numbers curtailed by playing Trike PG. Wolves lines, every darned night, show dimes spread around on the roster; it just doesn’t seem like the offense as currently run is going to result in those 12-assist nights, period. We also have the many years of evidence from Phil Jackson’s teams to go by, and it’s almost a stereotype that the Bulls and Lakers had PGs who played in a certain, limited, way.
Next to Nick Van Exel bombing away without conscience, that still seems like an even bigger stylistic difference. It’s behind many of the objections people have to dissing Flynn, too. Collison, or Jennings, or Curry: “Put Flynn in that system and he’d average X and so.” I’m not sure how we could ever deal with it in making comparisons, unless all we want to do is set Foye next to B.J. Armstrong….
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
I did a similar thing with Wayne Ellington:
Some notable players are: Rashad McCants, Bracey Wright (coincidentally both Timberwolves), Mickael Pietrus, Kelenna Azubuike, Quentin Richardson, Brandon Rush, and Tony Allen.
Look at the comparisons:
Monta: 18.1 2.7 6.5 .415 0.6 1.7 .341 0.9 1.2 .712 0.4 1.7 2.1 1.6 0.7 0.2 1.2 1.4 6.8
Wayne: 18.4 2.6 6.0 .429 0.8 2.1 .391 0.8 0.9 .845 0.5 1.7 2.2 0.9 0.3 0.0 1.0 0.9 6.7
Q
I’d like to see him turn out like Q Rich.
by scottysnowski on Mar 21, 2010 8:36 PM CDT up reply actions
Height matters
That’s why Nelson seems like the best case comparison.
As the 6th pick Flynn has certainly been disappointing, but he’s not a bust.
He’s probably more disappointing to us because his flaws seemed obvious before the draft and he was a late riser. And his rise seemed more predicated on interview ability (ugh) than on workout or one-on-one performance.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why Kahn drafted him…but we’ve all seen the T-Wolves draft worse. )
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why Kahn drafted him
Because the man has no real basketball knowledge, he had Donnie Walsh helping him in Indiana and now he has Hoiberg, where’s that going to lead us, you see what kind of advice he was giving McFail, what kind of compensation could we get if Flynn were to have a career ending injury?
by AnotherDraftPickBitesTheDust on Mar 21, 2010 10:20 AM CDT up reply actions
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recommended FanPosts
Recent FanPosts
Next Game
In Association With
Ball Don't Lie - NBA - Yahoo! Sport
- Days of NBA Lives: Wherein Roy Hibbert tap-dances to Maine
- Grizzlies Valentine’s Day cards are the key to love
- Kevin Love would like the NBA to take the MLB’s approach on All-Star games
- Kobe Bryant fires a few hilarious salvos at Jeremy Lin
- Brandon Jennings states the obvious regarding his 2014 free agency, everyone goes nuts
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
