Using Metric Basketball Stats to Solve Debates 1st Edition- Tracy McGrady Was better than Kobe Bryant

There are a lot of stats in basketball and most of one general flaw, they are all relative and over simplified. What metric stats do is use a formula to calculate many factors into one stat. The data metric stats use can help determine a players overall efficiency, true shooting percentage, win shares and more. For my first experiment I'm going to show that in an ideal season Tracy McGrady is better than Kobe Bryant. Of course this is in the short run and it shows that T-Mac may have more talent that Kobe or worth to his team, but it does not take into account a full career in which Kobe wins in certain categories.

I'd like to first say all this data can be found at basketball-reference.com and books written by ESPN analyst John Hollinger.

PER- Player Efficiency Rating. 

The Player Efficiency Rating (PER) is a per-minute rating developed by ESPN.com columnist John Hollinger. In John's words, "The PER sums up all a player's positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player's performance." It appears from his books that John's database only goes back to the 1988-89 season. I decided to expand on John's work and calculate PER for all players since minutes played were first recorded (1951-52). - http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/per.html

In a nutshell, PER represents a players per minute production while taking into account league and team pace. This eliminates "era differences" and other similar factors. It uses the following stats: FG, 3pt FG, REB, BLK, STL, AST, FT and Turnovers. The league average is always set at 15. Lower is worse and higher is better.


Kobe's top three seasons were 2005, 2002 and 2006. His average PER for those 3 seasons is 26.76. That is very high and was consistently 2nd in the league in each of those years. He has consistently put up numbers a little lower than this for his whole career, but remember this is an evaluation of the players when they were at the top of their game.


Tracy's top three seasons were 2001-2003. His average PER was...26.9. Okay so it IS better. But not but much so haters still gon' hate I'm sure. Even the creator of this stat admits it is not the greatest at determining defensive player. It is more of a measure of a players offensive worth. So T-mac has a barely higher PER, at least we can say he is AS good. A misconception about Tracy is that he cannot get past the first round. It's no where near his fault. In simple stats he is 5th career in PPG only behind MJ, Iverson, Jerry West and LeBron. Kobe is way down at 15th. In career playoff PER Tracy is 7th behind playoff greats MJ, Shaq, Duncan, Olajuwan, LeBron and George Mikan. Where's Kobe? 13 spots behind at number 20.

Defensive Rating

Defensive Rating attempts to measure a players defensive ability by averaging how many points allowed per 100 possessions against the player. I don't even have to take their best years. Even with T-Mac's injury plagued years and recent fail out of Superstardom, his career average is 2 points lower than Kobe's. Couple this with Tracy's higher Defensive Win Shares (estimates a players defensive worth to a team's win), a block percentage double that of Kobe's, and a steal percentage only .2 lower than Kobe's and you will see that overall Tracy is a better defender. 

Offensive Rating

I will start with the 2 categories Kobe wins (slightly). He has a higher average Offensive Win Share and Offensive Rating(points scored per 100 possesions). The ORTG could be because Kobe never passes though. For everything else T-Mac is the victor.  

Assist, Rebound and Turnover Percentage

Assist Percentage (available since the 1964-65 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * AST / (((MP / (Tm MP / 5)) * Tm FG) - FG). Assist percentage is an estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on on the floor. 

Kobe's best three years average out to 27.2 while Tracy's average out to a much higher 32.4. We all knew Kobe was a ball hog so this is nothing shocking.

Offensive Rebound Percentage (available since the 1970-71 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * (ORB * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm ORB +Opp DRB)). Offensive rebound percentage is an estimate of the percentage of available offensive rebounds a player grabbed while he was on the floor.

Kobe's top three years average out to 4.7 while T-Mac averages a whopping 10.1 I guess it is hard to get rebounds when you are the only guy shooting. In fact, Kobe's best year would be T-Macs 6th best. Tracy's highest was 12.4% while Kobe's was only 4.9%. Their Total Rebound % also goes in T-Mac's favor. Kobe = 9% and T-Mac = 12.9%.

Turnover Percentage (available since the 1977-78 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * TOV / (FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV). Turnover percentage is an estimate of turnovers per 100 plays.

Kobe once again loses this category. He turns the ball over at least 9.7% of the time he has the ball. Tracy (not counting this season because it is incredibly low since he didn't play much, which would make this unfair for Kobe) turns it over 8.9% of the time. Career wise Tracy is even 2% lower than Kobe. 

The one thing I will give Kobe is he has a higher shooting percentage. Other than that Tracy pound for pound in the prime of their careers is better than Kobe. If Tracy was on the Lakers all this time I assure you he would have as many if not more Championships than Kobe because he is even a better playoff baller. Case closed. Eat your heart out haters.

P.S. If you look at each persons best year (which was 2002 for T-Mac), Tracy's best year beats out Kobe's in every category.

My final thought is that after all this research I learned that these two players aren't even the best. LeBron and Wade beat them out in almost every category. And when it comes to playoffs, they are even better.