{"id":712,"date":"2006-01-30T02:34:01","date_gmt":"2006-01-30T08:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/67.227.157.91\/~kenpom\/wp_blog\/measuring-intangibles\/"},"modified":"2006-01-30T02:34:01","modified_gmt":"2006-01-30T08:34:01","slug":"measuring-intangibles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/measuring-intangibles\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring Intangibles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe I&#8217;ll just answer e-mail the rest of the season, or at least this week. Send me your questions, criticisms, complaints, insults, etc. <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Ken,<\/p>\n<p>Jordan Farmar is &#8220;occasionally celebrated&#8221; because he&#8217;s just a sophomore and he is one of the reasons the Bruins continue to compete in spite of a rash of injuries.&nbsp; When they need a big play, he makes a big play.&nbsp; Efficiency stats are great but they don&#8217;t reflect intangibles, and can&#8217;t measure heart.&nbsp; He put the team on his back against Memphis, Arizona St., West Virginia, and Oregon.&nbsp; The Bruins came up short against Memphis and West Virginia, but without Jordan those games are blowouts.&nbsp; Here&#8217;s a description (from Bruin Basketball Report) of Jordan&#8217;s game against Oregon St. which encapsulates what he means to the Bruins:<\/p>\n<p>\n<i>[Sophomore Jordan Farmar showed again why he is one of the top point guards in the nation. Whenever the Bruins needed a score in the game Farmar would hit a jumper, drive for a basket, or pass an open man for an easy score. He finished with 13 points, 8 assists, and committed only 1 turnover in the game.]<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Stan<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is email is in response to my criticism of Farmar in <a href=\"http:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/a-correction\/\" title=\"\">this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Let me straighten out a couple of things first. I never suggested UCLA would be better without Farmar. Of course, he is a big reason for their continued success without Josh Shipp, and the Bruins would collapse without his presence. <\/p>\n<p>Having said that, our e-mailer is right that I&#8217;m not much for talking about heart and intangibles. I leave that for Johnny Analyst, who &#8220;knows the game&#8221;. I focus on things that can be dissected with a combination of meaningful data and common sense. So until intangibles become tangible, they are off limits.<\/p>\n<p>But I find it interesting that in touting Farmar&#8217;s heart, the supporting material is stuff that can be measured by stats. And sure, he had a terrific game against OSU. If that was the norm for Farmar, I&#8217;d be on the bandwagon.&nbsp; In an off-night for Afflalo (4-14 on FGs, 0-5 on threes), which admittedly has been a regular occurrence recently, Farmar came through. But let&#8217;s keep in mind, in the previous four games he produced a 44.5% eFG and had 23 turnovers. Mind you, with 32 assists.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the high turnover rate he brings, my other problem with Farmar is this:<\/p>\n<pre>          <b>FGA\/40 Min      eFG%<\/b>\nFarmar        14.0        47.6\nAfflalo       13.8        57.2<\/pre>\n<p>Farmar&#8217;s not a great shooter, and yet he takes the most shots on the team. If he could get others involved more often, especially Afflalo, who is the better scorer, UCLA could squeeze a little bit more out of the offense.<\/p>\n<p>So to summarize: Farmar is a solid point guard. But just limiting the discussion to sophomores or freshman, I wouldn&#8217;t put him on the same level as Darius Washington or Rajon Rondo. I&#8217;d put Marcus Williams and Taurean Green ahead of Farmar also, and Devan Downey and Sean Singletary have to be in the discussion if we&#8217;re considering defense. <\/p>\n<p>While Farmar&#8217;s heart may be bigger that those guys, his production is not.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u><b>Friday<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n<pre>                           <b>FG   3pt   FT    Reb\n                      Min  M-A  M-A   M-A   O-T  A F S TO BLK Pts<\/b>\nKiril Wachsmann        34  7-12 0-0   1-2   7-13 2 2 2  3  1   15\n<b>Result: Win.<\/b> Iona 71, Niagara 69. (OT)  <\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p><u><b>Saturday<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n<pre>                           <b>FG   3pt   FT    Reb\n                      Min  M-A  M-A   M-A   O-T  A F S TO BLK Pts<\/b>\nJ.J. Redick            34 11-13 8-10 10-11  1-4  1 1 2  4  0   40\n<b>Result: Win.<\/b> Duke 82, Virginia 63.<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp;   <\/p>\n<p><u><b>Sunday<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n<pre>                           <b>FG   3pt   FT    Reb\n                      Min  M-A  M-A   M-A   O-T  A F S TO BLK Pts<\/b>\nBobby Jones            34  1-11 0-4   2-2   4-6  3 4 3  1  0    4 \n<b>Result: Loss.<\/b> Stanford 76, Washington 67. (OT)<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe I&#8217;ll just answer e-mail the rest of the season, or at least this week. Send me your questions, criticisms, complaints, insults, etc. Ken, Jordan Farmar is &#8220;occasionally celebrated&#8221; because he&#8217;s just a sophomore and he is one of the reasons the Bruins continue to compete in spite of a rash of injuries.&nbsp; When they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}