Kwame Brown’s Post Defense And The Failure Of Statistics

I hate what all these advanced statistics have done to the NBA fan/analyst.  As my regular readers have probably noticed I essentially steer clear of them completely, and it drives me nuts when someone uses them as the sole reasoning behind their judgement of a player.  This morning, I got in a brief, surprising Twitter argument with a writer from Sports Illustrated, who tweeted the following: “We really, really need to nip this whole ‘Kwame is one of the VERY BEST post defenders in the NBA’ thing in the bud. He’s decent. That’s it.”  Not at all expecting to be noticed, I sent a response stating that Kwame is in fact one of the league’s better man defenders in the post.  Just seconds later he answered me, and you know what this dude said?  “Opponents shot 49 percent against Kwame in post-up situations last season, ranking about 250th in the league.”  I’m going to be honest here: I lost this debate, and it felt bad, man.  I ...