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Serious question: in your statistical analysis, when Shaq gets an offensive rebound and slams it for two points-- how many points do you give him?

I submit, in that case, if you give him any points for the rebound, your system is unfairly skewed to reward big men and not point guards.

Well than your submission is wrong. He gets credit for the rebound because he collected the rebound, then he gets credit for the points because he scored the points. You want to deny him the credit for the rebound because he ALSO scored? Why? Had he gotten the rebound and then passed the ball he would get credit for the rebound. If someone else got the rebound and passed it to him for the score he would get credit for the score. So if he both gets the rebound and scores he gets credit for both.

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I'll do an analysis like you did. CJ had 7.4 more points a game and 1.9 more assists per game. Assuming every assist results in 2 points and not 3 - this gives CJ 4 additional points per game. So, CJ accounted for 11.5 more points per game than Shaq. And yes I rounded up bc at least one assist per game was a 3 point score.

With you so far.

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Shaq had 10.5 more rebounds per game. Since roughly 1/2 were on offensive side where he slammed them back

This is just ridiculous. First of all, offensive rebounds generally account for about 25-30 percent of all rebounds, not really all that close to 50%. Second of all, you're saying that EVERY ONE of Shaq's offensive rebounds led to an immediate dunk? I guarantee that is not true.

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-- points have already been accounted for in his points per game.

I discussed this above already; it is not double-counting to give credit for both the rebound and the put-back. It is giving Shaq credit for two distinct parts of the play. Just because he is capable of fulfilling both aspects of the play doesn't mean you discount one of them.

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This means 6 rebounds more per game were on the defensive side. If I give a generous point for each, Shaq closes the point gap to 5.5 points-- CJ still leads.

Well, I already showed that 6 rebounds is too few. I would say one point per rebound is fairly low, not generous. Defensive rebounds are generally more valuable than in-bounding the ball, both because it can lead to a fast break more easily and because it prevents the other team from getting a quick put-back on the offensive rebound. Therefore a rebound should be worth somewhat more than a standard possession (which in college is usually around 1 point per possession national average). 1 point may be in the ballpark, but it isn't generous.

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With a 4.5 block per game lead-- I give Shaq 4 points. This is calculated bc most players shoot less than 50%-- so more than half the blocks would have been missed anyway. So only 2 shots would have scored.

OK, so, most shots that the center is in position to block are much higher-percentage shots than average. If two blocks per game are on lay-ups, those are 95% shots without the block. If another two are on 5-10 footers, those are probably 75% shots or so without the block. If the final .5 blocks are on 15 footers, yeah, those shots are probably 50% to be made. If you think an average blocked shot is on a shot with a 50% chance to be made without the block I would say you probably haven't watched ANY basketball games, let alone every game Shaq and CJ played.

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CJ was refined and polished. Shaq was raw.

This sounds more like you're reviewing brands of sugar than talking about basketball players.

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So by my accounting-- CJ wins.

Yeah, and all you had to do was randomly erase some of Shaq's stats, understate the value of others, and talk about sugar for a while.

If you'd like to see some numbers that are actually based in reality, here's a link to an article including a regression for box score stats against team performance with and without the player: LINK /
In the regression, found values are:
Points - 1 point per point
Rebounds - 1.7 points per rebound
Assists - 2.2 points per assist
Turnovers - 5.4 points per turnover
Blocks - 6.1 points per block
Steals - 9.1 points per steal

When you plug Shaq and CJ into this formula, you get 38.66 for CJ, and 69.45 for Shaq.