Mav-elous First Half

OK, my dreams are coming true. A long, long time ago, I wanted to figure out if this statistic in my head had any sort of use. ADS seems to make sense between my ears, but let's see if it actually makes any sense to anybody.

What is ADS? Read the FAQ and find out.

But the first thing that had to be done was to test it and see what it told us. Does it hold any water? Does it tell us anything worth knowing?

Data had to be collected for us to know what it was worth. For instance, if Dirk has a ADS night of "15", we had to know what "normal" was. And thanks to several fine young interns, we can actually now look at data from the first 56 games.

So, the team number for the season so far is 13.5 and their opponent is 12.4. Those numbers all make sense. Obviously - and before you dismiss all of this - I concede that different players have the ability to make shots more than others.

At the very least, we can judge a player against himself. If Dirk normally gets 14 footers on average, but against a stiff opponent he is shooting 18 footers all night, then we can assume it is tougher to get the same types of shots off of this defender or this team.

Also, if an opponent normally would get 10 footers, but against Jason Kidd he is getting 6 footers, we know that Kidd cannot keep him from driving. And so on..

So here are the numbers for each player as well as "ADS+" and the total number of shots this season so far.

Not many surprises, but rather the confirmation of what we assumed all along. Barea gets to the rim so much that his perimeter shooting does not bother me. On the other hand, Kidd never gets to the rim, so his perimeter shooting is all he has at this point of his career.

Brian Cardinal has the worst rating? Who knew?

Tyson Chandler has nearly the best and with all of the shots he takes, you can see his value to bringing the entire team's ratings down.

Now, all future game readouts can be compared to the season numbers to see if this was a particularly normal game, an exceptional one, or a disappointing effort.

Feel free to comment below your thoughts.

Mavericks First Half 10'-11' FGA ADS ADS+ Haywood 154 3 2.6 Chandler 292 3.5 3 Mahinmi 58 5.2 4 Marion 545 7 6.6 Jones 45 9.7 8.7 Beaubois 23 11.6 11.6 Barea 439 11.7 10.8 Nowitzki 737 14.4 13.1 Butler 378 14.9 13.6 Terry 780 16.1 15.2 Stojakovic 50 19.5 18.1 Kidd 281 20.2 19.7 Stevenson 276 20.9 19.8 Cardinal 73 22 20.9 Team Total 4,131 13.46 12.35

Former Mavericks 10'-11' FGA ADS ADS+ Ajinca 32 14.7 14.2 Pavlovic 35 17.3 16.4 Novak 8 22.8 22.8 Team Total 75 18.3 17.8 Opp. First Half 10'-11' Season ADS ADS+ Total 12.41 1.38