Calculate Exactly How Good Basketball Players Really are at the Much Improved Quest Toolbox

Since May 2009 Quest for the Ring has produced Toolbox, which allows visitors to calculate Real Player and associated ratings for themselves. Our initial application, however, was cumbersome to use and even more cumbersome to improve, so we went in search of improvement. As of January 2010, we have the big improvement we wer looking for. The big breakthrough has arrived and the tools on Toolbox are now state of the art and are now truly easy to use and completely interactive.

Do you have raw data about a basketball player and do you now want to know exactly how good he or she really is? Go to Toolbox, enter the data, see the ratings, and use the evaluation scale to get an excellent idea of how good your player really was in a career, in a season, in part of a season, or in a game.

What follows is the complete "User Guide for Real Player Ratings Calculators on Quest for the Ring Toolbox". This Guide also appears on Quest Reference where all user guides can be found and it also is reprinted in full on the Toolbox Page itself.

INTRODUCTION
Welcome. The Quest for the Ring Toolbox is the only known place on the internet where anyone can rate players by entering game or season performance measurements. Exactly how good players are does not have to be a mystery anymore!

As of January 2010 there are two calculators: one that is intended for multiple games, in other words, for part of or all of an entire season, and one for single games and for small numbers of games. The calculators, using state of the art internet technology, have been embedded onto a web page and made to be fully interactive.

Most of what you can do with any excel file you can do on the calculator that appears in the embedded excel at the Quest for the Ring Toolbox site. In other words, you can quickly calculate ratings right on the web page. If you make a mistake and you don't know how to reverse what you did using Excel, you can simply refresh the page with your browser and start over.

How to use Excel is beyond the scope of this Guide. But even if you know nothing about Excel, you should be able to nevertheless calculate Real Player Ratings and the associated measures using the Toolbox page. You definitely do not need to know much of anything about Excel to be able to calculate Real Player Ratings using the Toolbox Internet page.

If you are well versed in Excel though, you can even change the formula used for calculating Real Player Ratings to one you for whatever reason think is more appropriate.

USE THE TOOL FOR ANY TIME FRAME YOU NEED
Provided you have the correct statistics, you can look at a player's performance for an individual game, for his or her entire career, or for anything in between, such as a season.

USE OF THE TOOL TO COMPARE TEAMS
You can also use the tool to rate and compare entire teams, simply by using the combined measures for all the players. Suppose you have two teams in a League that were considered extremely close, and they play in the Champiionship, and the Championship is decided in overtime. In such a case you might not be convinced that the team that won the Championship was really the better team. To investigate, you could compare the team RPRs of the two teams to try to get at which was really and truly the better team.

One interesting idea for Team RPR is to use combined team RPR (the sum of the player RPRs) to compare the same team from one year to another, which would go a long way towards answering a question that everyone asks all the time but that often no one ever has a very good answer for: which team was better: last year's or this year's?

CUSTOMIZED RATING
To request a custom rating scheme different from the one used in RPR, you can e-mail your request to questforthering at gmail.com.

HOW TO USE A REAL PLAYER RATING CALCULATOR
You need the items shown on the calculators to find out what the Real Player Rating is for one or more players for multiple games or for a single game. You need:

Minutes
Points
3-Point Shots Made
3-Point Shots Attempted
2-Point Shots Made
2-Point Shots Attempted
Free Throws Made
Free Throws Attempted
Offensive Rebounds
Defensive Rebounds
Assists
Steals
Blocks
Turnovers
Personal Fouls
Hidden Defending (Multiple Games Only)

Simply enter all of the items in any order you wish to enter them. When using the multiple games calculator, you enter the totals for all games for each item.

Don’t forget to type the first name initial and the last name of the player(s) you are rating just above the items, where it says "Name of Player >>>>>". Very long names will not entirely fit in the cell but presumably you will know who it is from just most of the name.

When all items have been entered the following will be automatically calculated for you:

Real Player Rating
Real Player Production
Offensive Sub Rating
Defensive Sub Rating

For very detailed and complete information about these four measurements and how and why the ratings are valid and valuable, see the latest User Guide for Real Player Ratings.

SAVING DATA TO YOUR OWN COMPUTER
Although at this time you can not simply save the file (the entire worksheet) to your computer, you can copy and paste the data on the live worksheet on Toolbox into an Excel worksheet of your own. On the Toolbox page, highlight and then right click on data you wish to save. Then click “copy to clipboard.” A small pop-up will appear with the data you highlighted. Right click the data within the pop-up and click copy. Now you can paste that data to your own excel worksheet on your own computer.

Note that you had to copy the data twice. The first time you copy it from the embedded excel that is on Toolbox by highlighting and right clicking “copy to clipboard” and a pop-up appears. (Note that on the first copy, right clicking “copy” will not work; you must right click “copy to clipboard”.) The second time, you copy the highlighted data from a pop-up by right clicking “copy”. Now you can paste to your own Excel worksheet (or to a Word or a Notepad or what have you) on your own computer.

HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATION FOR THE MULTIPLE GAMES CALCULATOR
The hidden defending element is included only on the multiple game calculator. It is the last item on that calculator. It is literally impossible now and for the foreseeable future to in any way, shape, or form include a valid hidden defending adjustment in the calculator for a single game.

For its regular NBA coverage, Quest for the Ring uses a multi-step, statistically valid process to fairly and competitively rate NBA players on their “hidden defending,” which is all actions not recorded by scorekeepers that succeed at preventing scores by the opponent. In the multi-game calculator, however, it is assumed that the extensive data needed to calculate hidden defending ratings the way Quest does it for the NBA is not available. The data you would need to use the Quest system would include the exact number of points scored by the opponent while the player you are rating is on the court, something which is hard or impossible to come by outside of the statistically rich NBA.

However, due to the big need to include hidden defending in ratings that span multiple games up to and including an entire season, the item is included and the following instructions are given for it.

HIDDEN DEFENDING EXPLAINED
The Quest for the Ring Hidden Defending Rating has a scale running from 0 to .307. The ratings follow a “bell curve” statistically. The vast majority of NBA players have ratings between .050 and .260. Only about the the top 2% of all defenders have hidden defending ratings higher than .260. Only about the bottom 2% of all defenders have hidden defending ratings lower than .050. At least 95% (19 out of 20) basketball players have hidden defending ratings between .050 and .260.

In order to incorporate hidden defending into Real Player Ratings and into defensive sub ratings for multiple games, you should use your knowledge of how well the player stops scores using hidden defending actions, which include the following:

--effective man to man defending
--effective rotation / switching on defense, especially off screens and picks
--effective pick and roll defense
--effective defensive recognition
--quickness of defensive reaction
--energy and hustle on defense
--effective taking of charges (causing a driving offensive player to be called for an offensive foul)
--effective hustling after loose balls

You need to make the most reasonable statistical estimate you can make even though you lack hard data. So you simply look at any player you are rating and ask yourself: how good is that player, compared with other players, in the above (and perhaps a small number of other related) actions that prevent the other team from scoring points it would have scored.

THINGS YOU MUST NOT CONSIDER WHEN YOU DO YOUR HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATES
Be careful not to simply rate a player’s defensive or overall style: this is a relatively common mistake that many basketball fans and sometimes coaches make. Managers, though, seldom consider a player’s style when deciding on acquisitions and contracts and that is one of the reasons they are managers. For about the same reason, be careful not to consider a player’s personality when you estimate his hidden defending. Remember, styles and personalities are completely irrelevant: the only thing ultimately relevant is whether and to what extent what the player does on defense prevents what would have been scores from being scores.

You also must not include tracked defensive actions in your estimations:

--Defensive Rebounds
--Steals
--Blocks
--Personal Fouls

These items are known and they are already included in the calculator, so you must not consider these actions when estimating hidden defending. Be warned that there are some players who get a lot of the above but are actually not very good hidden defenders and vice versa: there are some players who don’t make many defensive rebounds, steals, or blocks but are actually very good as far as hidden defending is concerned.

To emphasize, when you estimate how good a player's hidden defending is, do not be biased either for or against players who make a lot of defensive rebounds, blocks, and/or steals.

In fact, players who make a large number of defensive rebounds and blocks often have lower hidden defending ratings than do "defensive specialists" who do not make a truly large number of defensive rebounds and blocks. This makes sense insofar as that it is not automatic or all that easy for players to be extremely good at rebounding and blocking and at for example man to man defending at the same time. To some extent with defending, it is an either/or proposition. Great defenders can be either great rebounders and blockers or alternatively they can be great man to man defenders and defensive recognizers and rotators. Only a small number of great defenders are great at both tracked and hidden defending.

There can be other combinations. For example, there will also be players who are average in rebounding and a little above average in man to man defending. It's just that it would be rare for a player to be an outstanding rebounder, blocker, and man to man defender all at the same time.

And obviously, you should avoid bias for or against good offensive players. Quite honestly, how well or how bad a spcific player is on offense has almost nothing to do with how well or bad that player is on defense, allthough broadly speaking across the whole universe of players there is some degree of correlation.

CORRECT WAY TO DO A HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATE
What you want is your best estimate of the combined effect of the quantity and the quality of the player’s hidden defending actions. Both the quantity and the quality must be considered, not just one or the other. The best defenders use high quality hidden defending most of the time. Defenders who are just “ok” will be for example high quality hidden defenders but they are too lazy or whatever to show the high quality very often. Other defenders who are just “ok” will be players who try hard most of the time but they simply don’t at this time have the skills needed for high quality hidden defending. The higher the quality of the defending, the more often it will turn what would have been scores into stops.

The most important thing, of course, is to be objective and fair, which is really saying about the same thing with two different words. To sum this up in one sentence, you have to judge how good a player is, relative to other players, in terms of the quantity and the quality of his hidden defending.

Once you have in your head how good the player is relative to all other players, use the following to give that player a hidden defending rating. The first percentage shown on each of the following lines is how the player stacks up to all other players with respect to hidden defending:

HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATION SCALE
1% > better than 99% of other players: .285 to .305
2% > better than 98% of other players: .260 to .280
5% > better than 95% of other players: .250 to .255
10% > better than 90% of other players: about 245
20% > better than 80% of other players: about .230
30% > better than 70% of other players: about .205
40% > better than 60% of other players: about .175
50% > better than 50% of other players: about .140
60% > better than 40% of other players: about .110
70% > better than 30% of other players: about .85
80% > better than 20% of other players: about .65
90% > better than 10% of other players: about .55
95% > better than 5% of other players: about .50
98% > better than 2% of other players: .25 to .40
99% > better than 1% of other players: 0 to .20

If you are estimating more than one player, when you are done, review your estimates by making sure that your players rank according to who really is better and who is worse with respect to hidden defending.

Theoretically, a player who never changes any shots from makes to misses would have a hidden defending rating of as low as .000. But even most of the "bad defensive players" in terms of "made them miss" defending, via untracked actions will generally have hidden defending ratings of between about .050 and .070. Exactly in the middle players in terms of hidden defending will have hidden defending ratings of between .130 to .150. And the best defensive players in terms of hidden defending will generally have hidden defending ratings of between .240 and .260, although the absolute best such players can theoretically deserve a rating of up to .305.

EVALUATION OF YOUR RATINGS
Just below the ratings you will see an evaluation scale. Note that the scale for multiple games is different from the scale for single games. In just a single game or a small number of games, since players’ ratings will be more variable (due to, in effect, a small sample size) the range of the single game scale is a little bigger.

Actually, the multiple games scale should not be used unless the player’s minutes are 150 or more. For player minutes less than 150, use the single game scale, which should and probably will be relabeled at some time in the future: it will probably be relabeled “Evaluation Scale for Player Minutes Less Than 150”.

The evaluation scale uses terms that the vast majority of basketball fans, coaches, and managers understand as important descriptions of just how valuable the player is to the team and also the role of the player. See the User Guide for Real Player Ratings for detailed information about how to evaluate the ratings, and also for cautions about using the Ratings.

As the main User Guide will inform you, although Real Player Ratings are very valid and valuable, there are nevertheless reasons why they are not perfect and why they can not be the final word on basketball players. See the cautions section of the User Guide for complete details on this subject.