Four months ago I put together an advanced stats primer and have been using stats like DREB%, dMULT and WS in my posts ever since. However; I still get the feeling most readers either don't understand advanced statistics, enjoy advanced statistics, or both.
Advanced stats have their flaws and are far from perfect, obviously. But I think they do a much better job of portraying player's impact than conventional statistics. Win shares (WS), Win shares per 48 (WS/48) and Wins produced per 3,000 minutes (WP3K) are a good indicator of a player's overall impact. Although individual defense is near-impossible to properly evaluate, Defensive rating (DRtg) and Defensive multiplier (dMULT) do a decent job of representing a player's defensive impact. And the advanced rebounding stats like Defensive rebounding percentage (DREB%) are nearly flawless, and worlds better than sister-stat, rebounds per game.
Advanced stats are a terrific tool to help evaluate players you watch every night -- like the Sixers -- and an even better tool to help evaluate players on other teams, who you might not watch more than once or twice a year.
Do you guys like when I use advanced stats? What's your favorite stat? Least favorite? Are you still confused? Questions? Don't hesitate to post a question in the comments, send me an e-mail or tweet me. Consider this an open forum.