Today's post is a bit personal. Josh Smith blew up yesterday and posted a very fantasy friendly line of 19 points (on 53.8% shooting), 6 reb, 9 ast, 4 stl, 5 turnovers and 9 (!) blocks. I say this post is personal because Smith is on the team of my opponent this week, and those 9 blocks really, really suck.

So the AP write up names Smith as the catalyst for the Hawks' defeat of the 76ers. But how does Win Score view this performance?

Smith shot efficiently, which is something he tends to have trouble with. His possession stats look utterly fantastic as well, until you consider the five turnovers. Those turnovers cancel out his four steals, plus a couple of those blocks. Still, though, 7 blocks and 6 rebounds result in favorable net possession score.

What about his teammates, though? Specifically, what about the 'other Josh' - a player who plays a similar position to Smith but who comes off the bench (yet he does get big minutes).

Josh Childress shot an amazing 9-11 from the field for 21 highly efficient points. His possession stats were much less astounding than Smith's, but he pulled down the same number of rebounds in 5 fewer minutes and only committed one turnover. This certainly mitigates the discrepancy.

Was Childress' amazing shooting efficiency enough to compensate for his worse (but still good) possession stats and result in him being the more productive Josh per minute in last night's game?

The answer is no, but barely. Here are their WP48:

Josh Smith: .507
Josh Childress: .459

So while Smith's gaudy stats compelled the AP to fixate on his play, Childress quietly put together an almost-as-fantastic night in 35 minutes off the bench.

(Note: Childress has consistently been the more productive of the two Josh's over the course of their careers).

The moral of this story? Well, usually the moral of my stories is that scoring is overvalued. In this case, though, the top scorer wasn't the top story, and in fact Smith was the most productive player on the Hawks last night. But Childress wasn't far behind at all. So the moral is that the relative values of each stat are incredibly important (blocks and steals always appear next to each other in the box score, but steals are actually twice as valuable).

Oh, and just as scoring is overvalued, turnovers are undervalued. Big time.