Our society is lazy.

We like to boil things down to very, very simple takes.

Good vs Bad.

Black vs White.

We are not fans of gray.

I've been making a more concerted effort to engage in sports discussion that leaves room for nuanced evaluation and complexity.

But when it comes to advanced stats, I can't resist the urge.

I want one stat to rule them all, one stat to throw in people's faces when arguing why my preferred player is better than their preferred player.

But which one should it be?

Over the past year, I've jumped into Win Shares and Wins Produced.

Theoretically, they seem very similar. However, they sometimes yield radically different results.

For instance, a Win Share analysis shows that Ricky Rubio has had a slightly better season than Derrick Williams, clocking in a .071 WS/48 to Derrick's .059.

Full breakdown here- Win Shares: Ricky vs Dwill

Wins Produced tell a different tale.

Ricky comes in at .135, DWill at .054.

Wins Produced: Ricky vs DWill

That seems to pass the smell test a lot better.

I've gravitated towards Wins Produced over Win Shares because of obvious examples like this. My understanding is that Wins Produced values rebounds and shooting efficiency more than Win Shares. I've also seen people dismiss Wins Produced for this very reason.

Unfortunately, when I wade into the equations that power both metrics my eyes eventually glaze over.

When you start talking about regressions and coefficients, you lose me.

I've searched for a definitive summary of this Advanced Stat Battle, but haven't landed on anything that seems to prove anything.

I'm hoping someone like vjl10, Madison Dan or even Stop-n-Pop can weigh in on the relative merits of both metrics and offer their wisdom on which one I should throw in people's faces when arguing about player worth.

Stat heads... drop your knowledge.