All anybody has to do is look at Houston to see that teams are taking a long hard look at stats. Have to wonder if the fact that they are a “surprise” team so far this season has anything to do with it. Hard to tell.

I’m not a huge believer in personal stats in basketball since so much relies on those around you. As you point out, numbers are bigger in baseball and are probably more accurate considering you have double the sample size in number of games alone.

It seems to me that basketball fans are just now starting to get into the numbers side of the game a little more other than the basic numbers that have been around for years.

I doubt that hoops fan will ever come close to obsessing over the numbers as Baseball fans, but then Baseball is definitely a numbers game as much as anything else.

Having said that NBA team managment are getting more and more into the numbers behind the numbers as the technology to quickly and accurately capture and process the detail has greatly improved.

Numbers can deceive. If you take them on face value, which is always a risk with numbers, I think they support a lot of what is being said about the Raptors players contribution to winning so far this eeason.

Roland Ratings is another good matrix along with the detail behind it. Those numbers have yet to be brought current.

1. Offense and Defense Ratings
2. Win Shares and Win Share Rating*

Team Games Played———16

Player——Min—Off Rating—Def Rating—Net—Win Share—WS Rate*
———————————————————————-
Bosh——–568———123——–113——10——-2.7——–0.23
Johnson—–277———133——–112——21——-0.9——–0.16
Belinelli—296———119——–118——01——-0.6——–0.10
Calderon—-526———119——–119——00——-1.0——–0.09
Bargnani—-534———114——–116—–(02)——1.0——–0.09
Turkoglu—-511———112——–116—–(04)——0.7——–0.07
DeRozan—–289———-99——–115—–(16)——0.0——–0.00
Jack——–390———100——–119—–(19)—–(0.1)——(0.01)
Wright——235———-91——–119—–(28)—–(0.3)——(0.06)

*Win Share Rate = The Number of Win Shares Earned per 48 minutes played.

Source: Basketball-Reference.com