Stat-Tracking

In February of 2010, I was watching an old Chicago Bulls game and started counting how many times an opponent missed a shot when being guarded by Scottie Pippen. Of course, Michael Jordan was playing in this game as well, so I started charting his shots against too. After a while, I figured I might as well do every player on the court. Then Pippen took a charge, so I started tracking those too…

The goal with anything I track is to add to the available information to evaluate the game. It has always struck me as bizarre that so little has been added to the NBA box score since 1978, especially given the sheer paucity of measured defensive actions.

The composite metric I use as a result of all this is “Expected Value,” explained here. Below is a list of posts related to my stat-tracking:

• Opportunities Created
  
• FG% Against
  
• Defensive Errors
  
• Forced Turnovers
• Unguarded Shots
• Fouls
• Defensive Usage
• Offensive Load

I’d also like to thank the invention of the DVR, which allows me to watch and track games in about an hour.