Using The Usage-Efficiency Distance Metric to Create Aging Curves for the NBA

[DenButsu]

I found this pretty interesting. I'm only posting the beginning bit so you can get a sense of where he's going with it, but proceed to the original post here to see his methodology and the charts.

Using The Usage-Efficiency Distance Metric to Create Aging Curves for the NBA
Posted on April 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

An age-old question — see what I did there? — among APBRmetricians is trying to understand how aging affects players. Consider this post my first contribution to the discussion.

I calculated the distance metric that I introduced in a recent post for the 10,000 or so player seasons since the 3-pt shot was instituted. I then divided these seasons into four groups by age, as follows:

“very young” (18-21)
“young” (22-25)
“prime” (26-29)
“old” (30+)

For each group, I used the lme4 package to create a mixed-effects model. Here is an example for the first group:

[Patman]

Interesting Charts. The Overall Chart shows about what you would expect. Some nice individual charts. Would be interesting to see if there are difference between positions on how players develop.