the same people who regurgitate stats from box scores are the first to dismiss "advanced" stats...that come from box scores. most of the stuff we talk about on here is really, really basic: pace adjusted numbers, TS%, offensive rating. i feel like it takes more effort NOT to understand those things than to have relative fluency in them.

to SPM's credit he actually fucks with these things, even if he's somehow on the other side of the "debate" here (which is mostly because his anti-morey/harden/asik/lin agenda). other skeptics are just being willfully obtuse, but they're a vocal-but-dwindling population.

personally, i don't enjoy the binary "player X is better than player Y" part of metrics like PER/WS as much as using numbers to figure out what players/teams are doing right and doing wrong. it's also nice to be able to weed out rhetorical bullshit about "heart" and "leadership" and "clutchness" that are popular with the punditry. after delving into this stuff, it's astounding to realize how much wrongness is ceaselessly recited as facts from fans and analysts.

if you're not talking about TS% in 2013, you're doing it wrong. but i do think we're in the midst of a pretty tidal change: the amount of criticism that "hero ball" now gets is entirely different from a couple years ago.