The following article is satirical but all of the cited box score statistics are true (they are deliberately taken out of context but the raw numbers are accurate). Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. Hopefully, most readers understand the nature of satire but in case you don't and/or are new to this site, here is a serious, detailed analysis of how Derrick Rose and other elite NBA players perform: Selecting NBA Award Winners: The Battle of Stats Versus Storylines Versus Logical Analysis.
Derrick Rose Refuses to Trust his Teammates
by Aenry Habbott
Before I started the False Bucket website I had a variety of different jobs and I met people from all different walks of life. One time on my lunch break I went to Starbucks and I was standing in line behind an elderly, somewhat shabbily dressed gentleman. He looked like he had not had anything to eat or drink for days. He ordered a coffee and a sandwich but then realized that he was a dollar short. I gave him a dollar and he smiled at me. I felt good all day and I will never forget how good it felt to help someone.
What does this have to do with basketball?
Basketball is part of the tapestry of life. On the court five people must work together in harmony, just like we all should work together in harmony to make the world a better place. Sharing is good on the basketball court and in life. Being selfish is bad.
Using all of your dollars only for yourself is selfish. Most of us understand that this is bad.
But a basketball player who shoots too much is just like a person who spends all of his money on himself.
Shooting is not sharing!
Derrick Rose is a very gifted basketball player. It is exciting to watch him cross over hapless defenders. It is cool to see him dunk over much bigger opponents. I get that. Derrick Rose is fun to watch!
But is Derrick Rose really an effective, efficient player? Before the advent of advanced basketball statistics we would have just had to rely on how we felt watching Derrick Rose play. And like I said, Derrick Rose is fun to watch. No one can deny that.
Derrick Rose is a point guard. Point guards are supposed to be the ultimate basketball sharers. They are supposed to give out dollars--i.e., shots--to all of their friends. I am sure that Derrick Rose is a good person. But advanced basketball statistics show that he is not a sharer.
Bave Derri is an economist at Southwest Northeast Central Eastern College in Looneyville, Texas, an institution that is to economic research what the Institute of Advanced Study was to physics back when Albert Einstein worked there. Derri does not deny that it is fun to watch Rose play but he recently sent me an email explaining exactly how the numbers show that Rose does not share as much as he should.
In the 2010-11 season, Rose attempted exactly 31 shots in a game once--and the Chicago Bulls lost. They also lost three of the five games in which Rose attempted exactly 27 shots. The Chicago Bulls were pretty good last year. They had the best record in the NBA (62-20). But four of their losses came when Rose attempted either 27 or 31 shots.
I get that Chicago fans want Rose to be the next Michael Jordan but Rose only ranked sixth on the Bulls in true shooting percentage. That means that when Rose shot the ball it was less likely to go in the hoop than it was when Rasual Butler, Joakim Noah, Kyle Korver, Keith Bogans or Omer Asik shot the ball. Luol Deng's true shooting percentage was barely less than Rose's (.549 for Deng compared to .550 for Rose) but Rose attempted 1597 shots while Deng only attempted 1155 shots.
Sharing is caring, whether you are helping a homeless person in Starbucks or a Sudanese friend on the basketball court.
I know that advanced basketball statistics make some of you feel cranky but true shooting percentage is not only an advanced basketball statistic but it contains the word "true." If you are against using true shooting percentage to rank basketball players then you really are a primitive person who has not learned to value truth.
The sad story of Rose hoarding shot attempts carried over from the 2010-11 regular season into the playoffs. When Rose attempted 29 or more shots the Bulls went 0-2 but in the three games in which he attempted 18 or fewer shots the Bulls went 3-0. If Rose had attempted 18 or fewer shots in every playoff game the Bulls would have had a perfect playoff record! They would have been the greatest championship team ever!
What about poor Carlos Boozer? He went to Duke for three years so he probably is smart enough to understand the value of advanced basketball statistics. When he played for Utah, a team with a point guard who shared the ball, Boozer had two straight seasons in which he averaged at least 20 ppg and at least 10 rpg. That all changed when Boozer became a Bull and started playing alongside Rose. Boozer's scoring average plummeted to 17.5 ppg last season and in the playoffs it dropped to 12.6 ppg.
Rose tried to win those playoff games all by himself. He did not trust his teammates. He did not share the ball with them. If Carlos Boozer had been a homeless person in Starbucks, Rose would not have given him a dollar.
Derri came up with a new advanced metric to quantify the importance of sharing. He calls it Derri's Ultimate Methodology (DUM). This DUM formula is so advanced that only an economist could understand it so I will not even attempt to describe it here but Derri informs me that Rose has a -206.5 DUM number. Derri says that the only two guards he can find in NBA history who were more selfish than Rose are Isiah Thomas and Allen Iverson. Derri estimates that Thomas and Iverson have combined to ruin 10 NBA franchises. Derri is still investigating what impact Iverson's brief stint in Turkey had on Derri's beloved Detroit Pistons but preliminary indications are that Iverson is the reason that the Pistons are still struggling.
But, wait a minute. Didn't Isiah Thomas win two championships? Didn't Allen Iverson carry a thin Philly roster to the NBA Finals in 2001? Derri has all of the answers to your simple questions. Thomas' Detroit teams were successful because of Dennis Rodman. Derri notes that Rodman was a greater player than even Michael Jordan. Rodman had a DUM number of 666! Rodman's DUM number was more than three times larger than Einstein's IQ. That means Rodman was a basketball genius! Similarly, Iverson's Philadelphia teammate Dikembe Mutombo had a DUM number of 319. Mutombo was not quite the basketball Einstein that Rodman was but Mutombo was at least at the Kurt Godel level.
I spent half a day on the phone with various NBA executives talking about Derrick Rose and the DUM numbers but after I said my piece each of them just replied "Dumb----" and hung up the phone. I am mystified why NBA executives would not want to use every means available to improve their teams.
Joakim Noah, Omer Asik and Carlos Boozer are not basketball Einsteins or even basketball Godels but Derri's DUM numbers show that they at least are equivalent to some of the lesser known figures at the Institute for Advanced Study. It would be smart for Rose to pass the ball to them more often.
After all, a hero is nothing but a sandwich and a player with a low DUM number like Rose would not even buy a sandwich for a starving man.
What if ESPN's Main Basketball Blogger Wrote About the Chicago Bulls the Way that He Writes About the L.A. Lakers?
