Value Add: Guide to New and Improved Database

A couple of clicks on www.valueaddbasketball.com gives you the precise value of any player on any team on the screen above. The new and improved Value Add (click here for story on recent improvements) once again lets readers know exactly how many points a player adds to his team’s scoring and takes away from the opponent’s scoring.

When you first click on www.valueaddbasketball.com you are shown all of the preseason projections and actual Value Add for each player starting with the most valuable. If you prefer, you can go to the lower right corner of the screen (not in the picture) and instead choose one of three other options: 1. Switch to the Low Major page; 2. See team totals only; or 3. See all 2003-2014 stats.

Assuming for this example that you are reviewing 2015, you can then search for any word. You may choose a conference (type “ACC,” to just look at freshman “1 Fr.” In the example, I typed my favorite team, “Marquette,” in the upper right box, so that only Marquette players would b presented.

You can do this for any team to see why they are over performing or underperforming.

At that stage, the players were listed from most valuable to least valuable, but I wanted to compare each player’s actual Value Add this year to his Projected Value Add from before the season. To do that I clicked the arrow next to the “Player” heading across the top (between “Season Rank” and “Team”).

This year we have added jersey numbers, so any player who had a projection but does not have an actual rating came to the top. Therefore, you will immediately identify which players on the team are missing – and determine if they are just hurt or not playing. In Marquette’s case, Luke Fischer is the only player taller than 6-foot-7 but has no actual rating because he transferred from Indiana after one semester and therefore will play his first game when Marquette next plays (vs. Arizona State). John Dawson also has a projection but no actual rating, and it turns out the coach is simply not playing him.

For the players that have both, you can compare to see who is over- or under-performing. The worst underperformer for Marquette has been Deonte Burton (number 30), who was projected to be worth 3.36 points per game to be the 358th best player, but mainly due to foul trouble, has actually only been worth 1.47 points – which makes him the 1150th best player.

On the flipside, four players are improving Marquette by at least two points more than expected: Steve Taylor (0.10, 2.34), Matt Carlino (3.07, 5.35), Juan Anderson (1.30, 3.90), and Duane Wilson (1.80, 4.41).

Add those four totals together, and Value Add concludes that if all four players had to be replaced by a decent player (8th or 9th man or the 500th-best player at his position) then Marquette would do about 16 points worse in each game. This would mean that if the 500th-best center replaced Taylor, the 500th best point guard replaced Carlino, the 500th^–best Power Forward replaced Anderson and the 500th^–best small forward/swing player replaced Wilson, then we would have expected Wisconsin to beat Marquette by about 27 points today instead of winning by 11 as they actually did.

Further explanations are included in stories that have run in Sports Illustrated, NBC Sports, ESPN and Fox Sports that can be accessed via the link at the bottom of www.valueaddbasketball.com page and in the recent piece on the improvements made to the system.