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Since the All-Star reserves will be announced tonight on TNT, I thought I’d try to come up with some sort of formula to calculate who should make the All-Star Game.
What’s important in an All-Star? Well, to me, it comes down to two things: stats and wins. So I took my favorite (and flawed) all-encompassing stat, efficiency, and calculated it on a per-game basis for each player. Then, I multiplied each player’s efficiency with his teams win percentage to come up with a new stat: Win Efficiency. (Please note that rebounds are easier to come by than assists, so big men tend to do better in overall efficiency than guards do.)
From there, picking the All-Stars would be simple. Take out the five starters for each conference, and fill out the roster with three guards, three forwards and a center. Surprisingly, the results came out pretty well. (By the way, I put an arbitrary minimum of 35 games played.)
Here’s a look at the top 20 players from the Eastern Conference:
In his latest column, which is mostly about how certain NBA players are defying the aging process, Bill Simmons theorizes why stats are so much more important to baseball fans than they are to basketball fans.
For whatever reason, basketball fans don’t care about career NBA numbers like baseball fans care about baseball numbers. I see four reasons for this: (1) baseball has been around almost twice as long as basketball; (2) baseball’s signature threshold numbers are famously identifiable (500, 3,000 and 300), as are the players who broke its major records, whereas your average sports fan would struggle to answer questions like “Who leads the NBA in career scoring?”; (3) statistics matter more in baseball because it’s an individual sport; and (4) we need to throw ourselves into baseball statistics because the sport itself is so f—— boring. If we were eating lunch and I told you, “Johnny Damon has 2,571 hits right now,” that would mean something to you. If you’re a true baseball fan, you would process that information in 0.008 seconds and think, “He needs 429 for 3,000, that’s doable!” But if I told you “Dirk Nowitzki has 21,925 points right now,” you wouldn’t think anything other than, “That’s a lot.”
I agree with all four points. The only basketball stats I really care about are per game or season stats and that’s because I play fantasy hoops. It doesn’t really matter who is the league’s all-time leading scorer or who has dished out the most assists. The number of championships (Kobe potentially passing Michael Jordan in rings) is one that is important to a lot of NBA fans.
Now that Andy Pettitte has decided to retire, the general consensuses is that the Yankees’ are screwed when it comes to their starting rotation. But that’s probably an overreaction.
Assuming he doesn’t get injured or suffer a case of bad luck, CC Sabathia is still the best pitcher in the American League. If he can stay healthy, Phil Hughes is a solid No. 3 on a championship team and even has the talent to be a good No. 2. Freddy Garcia, Bartolo Colon, Ivan Nova and Sergio Mitre are the unknowns, but the Yankees don’t need any of those guys to be Cliff Lee or even Pettitte. They could do much worse for their No. 4 and No. 5 starters.
But with Pettitte retiring, the Bombers do need the 2009 version of A.J. Burnett to return and not the puss that took the mound in 2010. It’s not like the guy can’t pitch; he helped the Yankees win the World Series in ’09 by finishing with a 4.04 ERA and a 1.40 WHIP. But those numbers rose in 2010 when he went 10-15 with a 5.26 ERA and 1.51 WHIP.
The key with Burnett has always been his mindset. If he’s healthy and his head is in the right place, then the Yankees’ rotation will be fine with Sabathia, Burnett and Hughes rounding out the top 3 spots. But if Burnett’s confidence starts to go, then so does his stuff and the wheels can come off rather quickly.
Pitching in New York and the small dimensions at Yankee Stadium don’t help his cause either. Pitchers can’t get away with mistakes at Yankee Stadium like they can at Petco Park or AT&T. Leave one up to a lefty in the Bronx and the ball is likely to wind up in some fan’s office the next morning.
But the early reports on Burnett have been good. He’s working with pitching coach Larry Rothschild, who says Burnett has a new approach that should yield better results. He also thinks that Burnett’s “mind and heart are in the right place,” and that he wants to do well.
For the Yankees’ sake, hopefully Rothschild is right. Losing Pettitte to retirement could be a minor blip or a catastrophe depending on Burnett.
Alana G of Yardbarker had a chance to ask some of the Steelers a few goofy questions at the Super Bowl’s media day. There was quite the debate about what a player should do when he has to pee during a game.
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