If you spend as much of your life in front of a mic as he did, you’ll say some dumb stuff
Bill was a legend in myriad ways, a true apostle of the sport, and seemingly a good man.
Probably less important, one of the best college players ever (possibly only behind his predecessor at UCLA for whom I also hold the highest esteem), and a potentially top ten pro robbed of his career by his feet.
I never got to see him in his prime, but enjoyed his 12 minutes of “old guy at the Y inexplicably kicking my a$$” ball for the 86 Celtics.
I would rather have Bill Walton still around and healthy but there’s a bitter-sweetness that he won’t have to see the day that UCLA basketball is playing in the B1G and not in the Conference of Champions.
so i imagine that, say, GR3 had a higher usage rate in college than one might expect just because he was ending like seven possessions a game with very high-percentage shots?
yeah, sorry, i obfuscated it with the last clause. ignore the last five words about the likelihood of it going in. he has a higher usage than i would expect because i never thought of him as having the ball in his hands until his head was like eleven feet in the air
What’s the stat for dribbling the air out of the basketball instead of making the right passes/initiating offense?!? Feels like we could’ve used that stat last year.
Several stats to measure that are referenced in the thread (touch time, number of dribbles, etc.), but mostly an NBA thing, because there’s not really widely available player tracking data in college.
right, exactly. i’m talking about what the misperception is. it was mentioned in the tweet you shared:
i’m laying out a possible michigan fan application of this misperception, as a way of illustrating the point. “if you incorrectly believe that usage rate is related to having the ball in your hands, you might expect GR3 to have a low usage rate, since he rarely had the ball in his hands. however, this is borne of a misunderstanding of usage rate; once you understand that usage rate measures how often you finish a possession, you instantly understand why GR3 had a higher* usage rate than you think!”
or am i understanding it wrong?
*hypothetical for illustrative purposes only. i have no idea what GR3’s usage rate was and don’t even really know how to find out
I.e. Ignas Brazdeikis being an off-ball guy (despite a high usage)
Or Zavier Simpson being the primary creator on the 18 Final Four team despite a low usage.
