To be fair, Darko does have the ball tossed to him sometimes. I'm not sure Eaton was ever the intended receiver of a pass.
That is actually pretty impressive. Looking at FGA per game and assists per game, Eaton looks like he touched the ball a fair amount. Eaton's resume: All-Star in 1989 DPOY in 1985, 86, and 89 Defensive 2nd team in 87 and 88. So, just for fun, let's look at Eaton's #'s per game in that season and see how far Darko is from that level if given the same amount of minutes (35.5). Player/ Pts/ Reb/ Ast/ Stl/ Blk/ TO/ PF Eaton/ 6.2/ 10.3/ 1.0/ 0.5/ 3.8/1.7/3.5 DMilic/ 11.9/ 8.2/ 1.6/ 0.9/ 2.6/2.3/ 4.0 Although, it looks like Eaton's best year came in 84-85 when he had: 9.7 pts, 11.3 rebs, 1.5 ast, and 5.6 blocks!
If you use the scoring I picked up from 82games for Sprocket Points about blocks... - on average a blocked shot has a 62% chance of going in, so a block is worth two points times 0.62 or 1.24 points saved, plus... - the blocking team gets the ball 57% of the time after a block and has another possession, so 0.57 * 0.98 (average value of a FGA) is 0.56 points generated, ...then Eaton's 5.6 produced or saved over eleven points a game. Double damnnnn!
That really surprises me. Blocked shots actually end up going in more than half the time? I didn't think you even got credit for a block if you deflected a shot but it still went in. EDIT: Oh, you must mean that it had a 62% chance of going in if you didn't block it...LOL. Obviously. But I wonder how that gets measured. Blocks happen around the basket far more often than they happen on the perimeter, so that would account for the higher percentage, but that seems like it would be a difficult stat to measure.
It can't be measured, only estimated. I would guess that they just took the FG% from inside the paint after excluding all shots that were blocked and used that. There are many complicating variables here, but it probably is not a bad % to use.
I think that's what they do. They look at where blocks happen (shots closer to the hoop tend to be blocked more often than long jumpers) and the average shooting percentage from those areas of the court. I'm not sure how many areas they use (but I do think it's more than paint / not), but when they put them together you get 62%. You could probably argue that Eaton, being barely able to move from the paint, was probably blocking a higher than average share of close in shots that were even more likely to go in, making his points erased / points produced number even higher. It's a good day when you line up for the jump knowing you have a dozen or so points in your pocket.
So, do we intentionally let the Nets win on Friday? We could do the same with the Knicks on April 9th. We could just say some of our key guys have the flu, and let the scrubs battle it out.
Lottery Pick Nerds might dig this... http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2007/04/12/01/lottery.source.prod_affiliate.4.pdf
