A review of basketball player evaluation metrics

I would like to share a new publication. This is a series of three papers about player evaluation metrics. These are the abstracts of the three articles, and the links to a version of the papers. These papers have been accepted for publication in the "Revista Internacional de Derecho y Gestión del Deporte", and will be published shortly.

Papers are written in Spanish, but you can try to translate them to English (Thanks Crow) using: http://translate.google.com/# 

Please, be free to give any feedback.

Paper 1: A review of the basketball player evaluation metrics (I). A description of the existing methods

This research achieves a complete revision of the basketball player evaluation metrics, which are currently used by analysts. The aim is to depict the variety of systems proposed regarding the productivity of players, which can be handled by team managers in order to make more rational decisions. This is the first comprehensive review published in academic journals, and it provides a framework to analyse the “statistical revolution” started in United States. Likewise, systems applied by official leagues and fantasy games are depicted. This research is the first of a series of three papers that pretend to facilitate the understanding of a plethora of formulas and mathematical methods.

Download paper: http://www.upct.es/~beside/Textos/SVI__JAM.pdf  Updated! (5 April 2010)

Paper 2: A review of the basketball player evaluation metrics (II). Official competitions and fantasy games


In this second article of the trilogy on basketball player evaluation metrics, the systems used by the main competitions around the world and fantasy games are depicted. In both contexts, these systems play a fundamental role from an economic viewpoint, because these systems are used to grant players with individual awards, and to provide diverse prizes for success. The current state of development of information and communication technology is very asymmetric among leagues. However, the main competitions have the possibility to work with play by play data and, consequently, to use statistics in the most powerful way. The vast majority of leagues and fantasy games work with very simple systems, based on linear weights and box-score data, whilst only a few competitions use more advanced metrics, such as Net Plus Minus.

Download paper: http://www.upct.es/~beside/Textos/SVII__JAM.pdf  Updated! (5 April 2010)

Paper 3: A review of the basketball player evaluation metrics (III).  Overall discussion.

In this third article of the trilogy on basketball evaluation metrics, strengths and shortcomings of the different evaluation systems are discussed. In addition, diverse statistical analyses are achieved, in order to study the relationship among different systems, and discussing some assumptions. Moreover, this paper provides a framework to discuss about the basis of these metrics, proposing several ideas related to validity criteria, formative measurement, and the use of qualitative information. Finally, implications for further academic and applied research are discussed. 

Download paper: http://www.upct.es/~beside/Textos/SVIII__JAM.pdf  Updated! (5 April 2010)