(January 6th) Christ Essandoko played very brief minutes across 3 games since the last profile while extremely limited by a hamstring issue. As a result, the “too small of a sample to draw meaningful conclusions” sample barely got any bigger. Most of his numbers still sit in that 30th-80th percentile range that low minutes will give you, and the only real thing to do, statistically, is wait.
(December 12th) Generally speaking, for a given player, you will almost always see some numbers in every percentile range. They’ll do exceptionally well at one facet of the game, exceptionally poorly at some other, and in the middle at some. Christ Essandoko’s numbers, currently, nearly all sit between the 30th and 80th percentile – right in a small cluster around the middle.
We believe this is an artifact of sample-size stabilization. Essandoko, by nature of how Providence uses him, is playing low minutes at high intensity. But that also can just be read as “low minutes”. That means that our sample-size stabilization, which penalizes players who haven’t played much by pulling them towards the middle in order to avoid unreliable results, is doing just that – pulling him towards the middle. In other words, while this profile may seem to just show that Essandoko has been merely good, as his sample size extends out by playing more games and the sample size correction falls off, his numbers should start to look really good – particularly his passing and shot-blocking, which are both just on the cusp of breaking the 80th percentile into elite territory.