A (Statistical) Truth About Mike Bibby

As we have looked closer at the potential of a Mike Bibby resigning, we have become more sure that Bibby services need to be retained. Not only was Bibby extremely helpful in bringing it all together for the Hawks the past two seasons, but he fits an increasingly hard to find talent set in the market right now, a true facilitator who can shoot. Reports on Monday out of Portland were that the Blazers may be down on Andre Miller due to his lack of killer J, the skill of which Mr. Bibby excels.

Also, though we not the most statistical here at the HHB, we have brought in a team of summer interns that have helped us crunch the numbers and revealed a very interesting statistic about Mike Bibby's season last year--consider:

We ran certain numbers from Bibby's 2008-2009 season (Stats Courtesy of Basketball Reference-go sponsor a page today!), PER, Minutes Played, Assist Rate, and Effective FG percentage. We also filtered by Position, Age, and Years in the League. What we found is that only (12) times since the 1989-90 season a player has done what Mike Bibby did in those (4) categories.

Totals																	Shooting
Rk	Player	Season	Age	Tm	Lg	G	MP	FG	FGA	3P	3PA	FT	FTA	ORB	DRB	TRB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV	PF	PTS	FG%	3P%	FT%	PER	eFG%	AST%
1	Magic Johnson	1989-90	30	LAL	NBA	79	2937	546	1138	106	276	567	637	128	394	522	907	132	34	289	167	1765	.480	.384	.890	26.6	.526	45.5
2	Magic Johnson	1990-91	31	LAL	NBA	79	2933	466	976	80	250	519	573	105	446	551	989	102	17	314	150	1531	.477	.320	.906	25.1	.518	49.3
3	Steve Nash	2006-07	32	PHO	NBA	76	2682	517	971	156	343	222	247	30	239	269	884	57	6	287	117	1412	.532	.455	.899	23.8	.613	50.1
4	Chauncey Billups	2007-08	31	DET	NBA	78	2522	393	877	137	342	401	437	42	170	212	529	101	17	160	130	1324	.448	.401	.918	23.6	.526	34.7
5	John Stockton	1994-95	32	UTA	NBA	82	2867	429	791	102	227	246	306	57	194	251	1011	194	22	267	215	1206	.542	.449	.804	23.3	.607	52.6
6	John Stockton	1996-97	34	UTA	NBA	82	2896	416	759	76	180	275	325	45	183	228	860	166	15	248	194	1183	.548	.422	.846	22.1	.598	46.0
7	John Stockton	1995-96	33	UTA	NBA	82	2915	440	818	95	225	234	282	54	172	226	916	140	15	246	207	1209	.538	.422	.830	21.9	.596	49.1
8	John Stockton	2001-02	39	UTA	NBA	82	2566	401	775	25	78	275	321	59	204	263	674	152	24	208	209	1102	.517	.321	.857	21.9	.534	46.3
9	Steve Nash	2007-08	33	PHO	NBA	81	2780	485	962	179	381	222	245	28	254	282	898	53	5	295	113	1371	.504	.470	.906	21.1	.597	47.3
10	Steve Nash	2008-09	34	PHO	NBA	74	2484	428	851	108	246	196	210	19	204	223	717	55	10	248	108	1160	.503	.439	.933	19.5	.566	42.4
11	Jason Kidd	2008-09	35	DAL	NBA	81	2886	257	618	131	323	86	105	85	415	500	702	160	39	185	168	731	.416	.406	.819	16.9	.522	34.7
12	Mike Bibby	2008-09	30	ATL	NBA	79	2740	437	1005	167	428	135	171	38	240	278	392	98	11	128	145	1176	.435	.390	.789	16.3	.518	24.2

The goal of this exercise was to see the following:

1. Was there anything unique about the season Bibby had last year?
2. Is it easily repeatable?
3. Was this an outlier season for Bibby?

We chose PER, Assist Rate, Minutes Played and Effective Field Goal percentage because we felt it best captured what the point guard position on the Hawks was looking for: A facilitator who can shoot, play a lot of minutes (though we only used 30MPG * 82 as the measure here, Bibby played over 36 MPG last season--Billips was the only player who wouldn't have made the cut @ 36 MPG), and overall offensive effectiveness.

We chose the age (30) and years in the league (11) to gauge how common it is to do this later in one's career, effecting repeatability.

You're talking the likes of Steve Nash, John Stockton, and Magic Johnson here. There's Jason Kidd with last season like Bibby and two seasons ago Chauncey Billups.

We wanted to check if this was an outlier season, so we stretched the criteria to include any age of season and we found that this is Bibby's only season realizing all of these statistical thresholds at once. Being that the .518 EFG was a career high, we dialed it back slightly to .500 and found three other seasons. Bibby had a total of (4) out of the 142 occurrences (at the .500 eFG) since the 1981-1982 season. Not too shabby.

So, it seems that Bibby's season is somewhat unique in that it occurs less than an average of (5) times a season in the NBA among guards. We also saw that the season was not an aberration for Bibby, as he has dotted his (11) seasons with (4) of his own entries.

Looking at this and understanding his offensive value to the team, and given there are no true facilitators on the roster or elsewhere in free agency that can help spread the floor when the other isolators are doing their thing in the Hawks "offense", it seems a good thing to do to bring Bibby back. And consider, as we've written before, that Kidd's speculated 3 year, 25 million dollar deal is the high watermark for any Bibby deal--most believe it will come in below Kidd and above the MLE, which would put it in the 3 year, 20 million range.

We just wanted to attempt to put some statistical context around what Bibby provided last season and we feel that was accomplished by this exercise. Whether Bibby can continue that level of output over the next three years is debatable, but the HHB feels as though what Bibby does provide is unique in the NBA and needed for what the Hawks do and we welcome the resigning.

Now go make it happen.

Link for the search: http://www.basketball-reference.com/fc/ ... der_by=per

UPDATE: According to Sekou Smith, they did make it happen! A reported 3 years and 18 million according to Smith and two sources familiar with the situation.