Rajon Rondo: The Most Important Piece Of The Puzzle Part 2
By bpaul
About a month ago I sat down in hopes of figuring out which member of the Boston Celtics was most important to the Celtics success. At that time there were no key injuries and everything seemed to be going somewhat smooth. Now it is January 20th and the Celtics have hit a slight bump in the road.
Today I reached into my draw and pulled out my TI-83 calculator in hopes of doing some more statistical analysis similiar to that of which I did back on December 18th. Because of all the injuries I had to change what I was trying to prove with the research. Before I was trying to prove what member of the team we couldn’t afford to lose. This time I tried to find out which member of the team has had the biggest statistical impact on the team through injuries and all.
Alright now to the fun part. As you can see the above chart displays each players impact in each statistical category mentioned on the chart. You can roll over each players total statistics to see what kind of impact they had percentage wise. So lets cut to the chase. To try to make my study more reasonable I cut out the Personal Foul category, and the Turnover category to limit confusion. After I did that I took my old friend, TI-83, and added up each players impact for each category, then divided by nine (the number of categories), in hopes of figuring out each players impact (percentage wise) on the team.
Without further ado here is what I came up with:
- Rondo 14.78%
- Perkins 14.57%
- Pierce 14.19%
- R. Allen 13.18%
- Rasheed 11.17%
- Garnett 10.52%
- Eddie 6.33%
- Shelden 4.85%
- T. Allen 3.76%
- Daniels 2.77%
- Scalabrine 1.95%
- Davis 1.9%
- Walker, Giddens, Hudson .03%
What you should be able to get from these findings is that statistically at this point in the season Rajon Rondo has had the most impact on the team. Again you must remember that this does not include the total amount of games played by each individual so it is hard to make the claim that he is the most important. I can however make the claim that statistically Rajon Rondo has been the most important player so far this season.
These numbers also prove the point that Rondo is one of the most versatile players in the league. Not only is he a true past first point guard, but he is also beginning to create scoring opportunities for himself. When you think of Rondo you don’t really think of rebounding but he is beginning to be more physical inside and he is using his athleticism to pull down a respectable 4.2 rebounds per game. And of course being the gambling man that he is Rondo currently leads the team in steals with 2.5 steals per game. All of these are very solid numbers to see a guard putting up, and they all contribute to the fact that this guy truly deserves to be in Dallas on February 14th for the All Star Game.
Another thing that I really notice from these numbers is how similar Glen Davis and Brian Scalabrine’s numbers are. There has been debate on multiple occasions of whether Davis or Scalabrine should be in the game during clutch moments. Taking in consideration the amount of games missed by Davis and how similar their numbers are I think it is easy to say that Glen Davis is a much better choice than Brian Scalabrine.
I hope to do more research and calculations before the all star game to try and find out which player is the most important considering in minutes played, games played, etc. For now take this data however you may wish too but it does give a good insight on the production of each individual so far this year.