I've just recently started getting used to www.basketball-reference.com and finding out how to look at the different advanced stats using different criteria. Before that, I really thought stat collection was lacking (and still think it kind of does). But since I've been using it, it's allowed me to look deeper into the play of the Pistons and find things that need work or places where we can see progress. Well, thanks to NBA.com and SAP, that may have gone one step further.

I wasn't aware that NBA.com was trying to upgrade their stats. But when I went to NBA.com today, I saw a picture that had the following caption:

A New World Of Stats
Delve into our redesigned, fully sortable stats engine, now available for your use.

So, I clicked on it to see what they've done. I have only looked at it for about 15 minutes, but I'm liking what I can see so far. (By the way, here's the press release from SAP about being contracted by NBA.com) Here's a brief overview of some things I've seen that I like so far.

Shot Charts

Yes, there are shot charts on many sites. But I've never seen them visually like I've seen here. Here's a few images of Andre Drummond's shots from this year.

Shot Conversion

I've always been curious to see what shots players are more efficient at. Well, here's a start (by the way, the list is much longer).

Still Lacking?

There are things that I'm sure teams report on, that have been discussed before, such as turnovers from steals compared to turnovers from bad passes or offensive fouls. It does show other stats such as Personal Fouls Drawn.

Summary

Again, I've only been looking at it (including the time spent writing this post) for about 30 minutes. I would like all stat heads to go check it out, if you haven't already, and tell me what you think. Also, if MFMP could possibly do a comparison of the information from Synergy as compared to what's on NBA.com, that'd be cool as well. Ok, I'm going to go look at more stats now.