I was curious because of your mention of Econometrics. I've got a B.A. in Economics from Georgetown and work as an Equity Research Analyst at Raymond James Financial for a 10-man team that manages $5.5 billion of institutional and high net worth assets in small and mid cap stocks.
I have a strong enough background in statistics, especially in my job, to pretty much disregard your criticisms as insignificant. The criticisms you mounted can be said literally about every conclusion or observation ever made about any two players in comparison with each other, because the conditions will never be exactly the same.
Yes, the criticisms can be said about every conclusion -
based on the unsubstantial evidence you supplied in the post - about any two players in comparison.
But, again, you've made two critical logical fallacies here:
One, you're stating you are right because of confidence in your training - which says nothing about whether you drew statistically valid conclusions or even had enough data in this instance - again, based on the kind of analysis you did - to arrive at that conclusion.
Two, you putting up a straw man and it's obvious. You're trying to say that I'm arguing for conditions to be, in your own words here, "
exactly the same." Nope. Never said that, never argued that, never would argue that.
There are light years of difference between two games against uncommon opponents and what I would look for as a legit comparison.
What I am arguing is that the only way to legitimately compare the two, given their uncomparable schedules, is to do some good film work. Now, that won't get you to perfection and you would have to incorporate some of the variables you have as well as others.
Further, as I noted elswhere, your analysis may be legitimate - in the sense that the data on Russell versus elite defenses, and Quinn versus elite defenses, may acurately reflect the quality of the player. But, it certainly may not and the data is simply insufficient -
in this instance. That does not argue that the data need be perfectly identical.
I would prefer Quinn for a compilation of reasons - but, I also realize that this opinion, like 99.9% of the opinions on this group - is a product of insufficent data.