Nate Silver: evaluation

Transcript context

…Here’s a question I was asked during a Jane Street talk once. What is the most underrated basketball statistic for judging a player? It’s contextual because I think we’ve gotten to the point now where offensive rebounding has gotten underrated, actually. If you try to tease out the effect of rebounding in statistical models, then there are various things where different variables are correlated. Basically, I think if you look carefully, then offensive rebounding is actually quite valuable. You regain a whole possession. That’s worth a lot. Whereas defensive rebounding — rarely is an individual player doing something right to get a defensive rebound. Whereas an offensive rebound requires a lot more skill and provides a lot more value because the expectation is 75 percent chance that you lose the ball. If you get an offensive rebound, then it’s like adding seven-tenths or eight-tenths of a point, basically. You get a whole possession back. My answer was team wins, at least if you’ve been on more than one team. Like, does a good team want you? That’s picking up your intangibles.…

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