Clumsy- you can make stats say anything you want if you are crafty with them. Somebody made a statistic to prove that there were over 50 players in NBA history better than MJ. Statistics are numbers that can be toyed with and often present problems because all statistics are not created equal. I.e. scoring 20 ppg in the west a couple years ago was much different than 20 ppg in the east. It's like baseball, a 2.2 ERA in the National League is MUCH different than a 2.2 ERA in the American League.
Plus you have to account for teammate productivity, teammate injury and all kinds of other things. Of course statistics are important but they are also subjective, very VERY subjective. I agree, statistics is one of the better classes of information available but most people (especially on this board) use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post, for support rather than for light. I mean, I can go in and pick out random statistics that say what I want them to say and posit that as definitive evidence of "proof" of an outlandish theory, like 9-11 Conspiracy Theorists who take a random smattering of interviews to prove their point and ignore the rest of the interviews or the actual scientific answers to what they question, or JFK conspiracy theorists. Stats can be good if you use them the right way, but they can easily (read: VERY easily) be manipulated.