Exactly How Good Is R. Kelly?

YOU SEE ME RUNNIN' THROUGH THAT OPEN DOOOOR.

Before I begin, I must honor the fact that I am a die-hard Carolina fan. I bleed Carolina blue and I hate Duke the instant I wake up each morning. But that cannot change the impact of the beardy white man, R. Kelly.

You might remember last season that I tweeted LeHigh's praises in terms of their ability to possibly beat Duke, *even before the brackets came out*...but my statistics pushed LeHigh's odds way up when we learned that Kelly wouldn't make the LeHigh game...because in my system, he was definitely their best player.

I've heard a lot of claims from all sorts of people on how good R. Kelly is...the boys over at 99.9 The Fan (Raleigh represent...) seem to think that he has made Duke's defense impeccably better. I'm not so sure...but only because Ken Pomeroy mentioned that in a blog post.


By my SPR measure that estimates per-100-possession impact, he is the best player in the ACC (same as Daniel Myers' ASPM. But I am more interested in how much worse their defense got with him out. Let us investigate.

I looked at Duke's expected efficiency differential based on kenpom.com efficiency stats (and home-court advantage), versus how they actually played, and here's the difference we see:

So despite Kelly's immense impact on offense, we can tell that at least Duke's defense looks better with him on the floor. Sixty-four places better.