Very difficult questions

I have spoken at Jane St. Capital a few times and it is perhaps my favorite audience; everyone wants analytic content and everyone came prepared.  All of the questions were tough, but two in particular I was not prepared for.

First, I was asked "Which is the most underrated statistic for judging the value of an NBA player?"

My attempted answer was the player's presence on a very good, consistently winning team.  There are many players with impressive statistics, including unselfish statistics such as assists and rebounds, who are only of value on bad teams.  We overvalue such players.  Overall, really good teams don't keep bad players and really bad teams don't keep good players.  If a player has never been on a really good team, he might not be so good, with apologies to the earlier Kevin Garnett.

Second, I was asked who is most likely to write a novel about the financial crisis which will stand the test of time.  I do not see any such author around today, but if you have ideas leave them in the comments.  "DeLillo, if he were thirty years younger" was the best I came up with.  Or maybe something from genre fiction.  There are notable works of fiction dealing with the Great Depression, but I can't recall that any of them focus on the financial side.  It's a hard topic to be dramatic about, without being either too simplistic or overly technical.

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