Lenovo Stats: A total farce, or merely completely useless?

The NBA would like you to get very excited about the Lenovo Stat. They would like you to understand the Lenovo Stat as often as possible, and treat it with the same level of importance that you treat points, rebounds or assists. That's why they've created a whole special section on their Web site just for it, and are promoting the hell out of it at every opportunity.

Which would be fine, if it was a stat that meant anything, and not just some made up, BS stat with the same name as "The Official PC Partner of the NBA". Because when commerce and sports collide, the result is usually riveting statistical analysis.

So what is this "Lenovo Stat" that's going to revolutionize the concept of basketball statistics? If you guessed "a warmed-over version of the plus/minus stat that they've been using in hockey for years", you guessed right. Essentially, it's the total amount of points that your team scores while you are on the court, minus the number of points your team gives up during that time.

I don't think I need to tell you how useless this is. First off, there is no way to compare players from different teams - players on winning teams are almost always going to have higher rankings than players on losing teams, just because their teams are scoring more points than their opponents regardless of what they do. If you were comparing how many points a team scored/gave up while a certain player was on the court versus how they did when he was on the bench, or versus their overall performance, maybe you would have something.

Actually, no, you wouldn't. It would still be absolutely pointless, but at least it would be slightly more useful.

Want an example? Guess who the "Lenovo Stat" leader is for the Los Angeles Lakers? It's obvious, right - Vladimir Radmanovic. He of the 9.7 points and 2.9 rebounds per game. As for Kobe Bryant - you know, the most feared player in the game? Of course - he's fourth on the team on the Lenovo Stat, behind not only Radmanovic but Andrew Bynum and Luke Walton.

Any stat where Luke Walton is ahead of Kobe Bryant is pretty much inherently flawed and worthless.

"But," you might counter if you were a marketing person with Lenovo reading off a list of talking points proponent of the Lenovo Stat, "it isn't an individual stat - The Lenovo Stat shows the power of teamwork. It's a way of showing the best-engineered, best combination of players on the court."

"Really?," I would counter."Because it still seems like a crock of crap to me. Take at look at the Lenovo Stat for the best two-person combinations on the team. No. 1 is Radmanovic and Bynum. Kobe isn't on there until No. 4, and he's only part of five of the Top 20. Now, you want me to believe that Vladimir Radmanovic and Jordan Farmar are a better combination than Kobe Bryant and...well, anyone?"

And you would not answer, because you would run screaming and in tears back to Lenovo world headquarters rather than admit defeat. And then I would treat myself to a two-piece chicken plank basket at Long John Silver's, but really reward myself by ADDING A THIRD PLANK! And then my official LJS Stat count would be a +3 for the season.

(Note: in the time it took me to finish this post, the Lenovo Stat section on NBA.com appears to have imploded. I'll take the credit for it - I'm sure they were so scared about the power of my upcoming post that they panicked and removed the site entirely.)

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 2:10 PM