One Fish, Two Fish, Stat Fish, Jew Fish

2009 Player of the Year

After my bold declaration about DeJuan Blair’s superiority, I had a moment of hesitation. Blake Griffin is an excellent player, and I hadn’t truly run the numbers on the two of them. And you know me, I hate making assertions without numbers to legitimize my iconoclasm. So I sat down with the two of them, to try and figure out their values. (It truly is a two man race, there isn’t anyone else with their performance levels. Hansbrough is certainly competitive on the scoring end, but his rebounding is firmly on earth while these two are soaring in the clouds.)

So. Comparing Griffin and Blair. Griffin is a much better scorer. He shoots extremely efficiently at 1.27 points per shooting possession, and he takes a huge number of shots. His shooting is worth 120.69 points over an average player. Griffin is an excellent offensive rebounder, and a spectacularly good defensive rebounder - his rebounds are worth about 170.7 points above average. Blair puts up fewer shots, and does so less efficiently, and his scoring is only worth. 62.49 points. His rebounds, on the other hand, are the best in basketball. The man almost gets more offensive rebounds than the next two closest players combined. His rebounding is worth 215.2 points. Put these numbers together and Griffin comes out on top, but this is missing the major remaining variable - Griffin turns the ball over much more often, because Blair turns the ball over incredibly rarely. That difference is worth 30 points for Blair. Take those numbers, shake them to adjust for possession numbers, and the differences are, as they say, quite similar. Over a 30 game season, Blair is worth appx. 9.13 wins above average, and Griffin is worth 8.97 wins. (This is for a team that otherwise would be 15-15; a better team would make their value worth fewer wins comparatively.) Tell me that isn’t a little mind blowing - take a completely average team (say Witchita St. or something) and give them Blair/Griffin’s rebounds, turnovers and scoring, and that team becomes Brigham Young / UCLA / Xavier / Clemson, a serious top 25 team at 24-6. Phrase it from the flip side - take away Blair from Pitt, and Pitt plummets from a top contender to being Texas level (high seed but not a serious contender) - if Oklahoma lost Griffin they’d be at Wisconsin/Temple level (probable bubble team). Overall, however, Blair does come out a bitty bit on top. Add in the fact that Pitt has played better teams (19th SoS as opposed to 47th) and the numbers definitely favor Blair, very slightly.

One thing though. One thing the calculation doesn’t consider is the value of the shots Griffin takes - every shot he takes has value not only for its efficiency, but also for the fact that his teammates are able to take higher efficiency shots. It is this particular value that I haven’t calculated because it is, frankly, a pain to mess with, and today is not the day for me to slay that particular monster. Griffin’s value from this contribution is much higher than Blair - Griffin takes many more shots. How valuable is this? Not sure, but I’d honestly guess that the difference is enough to make the numbers favor Griffin again. Add in the fact that Griffin plays a lot more minutes than Blair… I guess it’s hard not to give the tiebreaker to Griffin. Of course, at this level, if there’s a substantial difference in defensive performance, whoever’s better would probably be the most valuable.

In short, there’s not really a good answer here. They both deserve it. My instinct would be to grant a slight edge to Griffin. That’s bearing in mind, however, that Blair is an offensive rebound way way way beyond anyone we’ve seen in the last 5 years. He gets more offensive rebounds than some teams. And he deserves a ton of attention for that. (One other tidbit, on average teams Griffin would be more valuable, because the value of an offensive rebound depends on how good your offense is at shooting, so Blair’s offensive rebounds at Pitt are 20% more valuable than they would be at an average school. Just saying, it would shift things a bit.)