091: Counting and what counts
Thoughts about career stats when eras have different circumstances.
RJ Davis shared an Instagram video at 3 am on Wednesday, May 1 to announce his plans return to North Carolina for a fifth collegiate season.
Davis has already put together a decorated career. He is coming of a crescendo of a season as the ACC Player of the Year, a Consensus 1st-Team All-America, and winner of the Jerry West Award as the best shooting guard in the country.
The White Plains, NY native has a good chance to play more basketball in a North Carolina uniform than any other player in Carolina history. As the table shows below, Davis could break several career records next season.
Davis needs to make 26 three-pointers to reach 3001 made threes in his career and pass Marcus Paige in the record book. He attempted 284 three-pointers this season and needs only 61 attempts to surpass Paige for the most attempted three-point shots in UNC history.
Through four seasons, Davis has played 4410 minutes over 138 games. There are 21 different Tar Heels than have played in more games, but only four other players that have logged more minutes.
If Davis plays in at least 32 games and 361 minutes, he will eclipse former teammate and fellow fifth-year player Armando Bacot2.
Davis scored 784 points this past season on 607 field goal attempts and 173 foul shot attempts. The 607 shot attempts are most ever by a Carolina player in a single season3.
If Davis were to match that 784 point total or exceed it by one point, he would pass Tyler Hansbrough for the most points ever in a Carolina uniform. If Davis attempts at least 92 shots next season, he will go down as attempting more field goals than any UNC player in their career.
It would likely be foolish to expect Davis to repeat his senior season stats next year. We assume players success is linear and must go up.
That’s not how human beings operate though. We oscillate between ups and downs, peaks and valleys.
And even if Davis does repeat this past season’s success, how do we reconcile it was done through an extra season?
Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.
Albert Einstein made a lot of good points. Even if that quote is often misattributed to Einstein, maybe his theory of relatively can help us understand how to compare this current era of college sports to previous eras.
Davis and tons of other college athletes careers came during unprecedented times. A global pandemic bringing an extra year of eligibility, the opportunity to transfer without penalty, and even the chance to earn legitimate clandestine compensation.
Davis’ time is a different time than when Hansbrough played, which is different time than when Phil Ford played, and so on. The counting stats or stats that go up with more opportunity are one way to measure a player’s performance.
There are other ways though too. Rate stats and advanced stats. Because there are eras with no shot clock, a 45 second shot clock, a 35 second clock, and a 30 second clock. There are players with entire careers without a three-point line and with a three-point line.
The game evolves and how we think about players from different eras should take that into account. Time doesn’t alway pass at the same rate for everyone.
It’s all relative.
Either way, Davis will break lots of counting stat records with a healthy fifth season. He has a great chance to move his jersey to the front row of the rafters too. A front row with players from seven different decades.
One more thing . . . get a job?
This era of college basketball has older players. This is a feature. Not a bug.
A key criticism for players that exercise an extra year of eligibility is to get a job4.
The irony is players like RJ Davis have a job.
Few of the payments or contracts for collegiate players are overt. That’s a shame because it leaves people to use their imagination on how it all works.
Money complicates things and when the actual monetary value is allowed, but still obscure, it makes the discourse5 and environment silly.
My guess is Davis will make around seven figures while playing basketball next season. That’s a way above average income for a 22 year-old adult.
A well compensated job.
Find the code for the table in this post here, and please consider subscribing to the newsletter if you haven’t already.
I’ve been trying to compute UNC Career Stats too, and working on ways to surface more of the data to compare players from different eras.
For example, did you know Ed Cota and RJ Davis have played the same number of career games?
Cota logged 223 more minutes than Davis, and Davis has attempted 692 more shots than Cota. Both own a career three-point percentage around ~37 percent despite Cota attempting 487 fewer three-point shots than Davis.
Only three players in UNC history - Shammond Williams, Rashad McCants, and Jeff Lebo - have made 40 percent or better from three-point land with a minimum of 200 attempts. Davis’ career percentage is 37.2 through four seasons.
Armando Bacot’s legacy is complicated. His most overlooked trait in my mind was his durability. Bacot played in 169 of a possible 171 games (~99 percent).
Only eight players have attempted over 500 shots in a single season - Davis (607), Justin Jackson (596), Tyler Hansbrough (535), Caleb Love (534), Joel Berry II (525), Harrison Barnes (521), Luke Maye (516), and Wayne Ellington (507). Will Davis be the only player to attempt 500 or more shots in multiple seasons? Is that a good thing?
Not sure what is worse: clamoring about the age of players or shouting Cooper Flagg is HIM over and over. Both are stupid.
The news of Davis’ return breaking a week before he announced it himself and the time he announced it feels like a pretty good indication there were contract negotiations. Why can’t we just call it that?