Stats Tell

The same Chad Ford article I mentioned early says that Andris Biedrins "falls somewhat into the Anderson Varejao category: energetic big man whose stats don't tell the whole story in terms of on-court contributions." But the story the stats tell is that Biedrins is a pretty good basketball player. Unless, that is, by "stats" you just mean "per game scoring average." But my stats say that Biedrins' ten points per game come on just seven field goal attempts. They tell me that he's also averaging ten rebounds and one block per game, and he's doing all this in 27.5 minutes as a young center who's coach likes to play small ball.

Ford's not wrong about Biedrins, the numbers say exactly what he's trying to say, namely that Biedrins is a good player and that especially given his age your team would be glad to have him. But for some reason he thinks these attributes are intangible when, in fact, they're right there in the numbers.