Hence the beauty of the WoW journal. I’d love to see Rondo’s WP48 for the first round of the playoffs…

Which is the whole problem here – he probably has the biggest readership of any sports writer on the internet, and people who know stuff about stats (or think they do) probably make up .02% of his audience. If someone really wanted to read about stats in sports… they’d be reading this website, or Hardball Times or something. Most people read Simmons for the jokes about girls at his college, or bars in Boston.

It’s often frustrating to read some things he writes because of the blatant hindsight bias (“you just KNEW that _____ was going to _____”… or “______ had a sense of the moment that night”, etc). He’s sort of like the newsperson who always talks about things being “fitting”. “How fitting, that the gold medal had a red ribbon around it as the redheaded snowboarder won it”. “How fitting that a Yankees catcher hit the game-winning RBI today, 37 years to the day after Yogi Berra hit his first double in pinstripes”. Stats is trying to make things make sense in a whole different way than a prose writer is.

Just do what I do – ignore him when he talks about stats, and just pay attention to the OC, Anna Nicole Smith, and Charles Oakley jokes.

Paxson is a very smart man and the upcoming trade of Chandler to New Orleans will add PJ Brown (a productive PF with an expiring contract )and J.R. Smith (a young, relatively cheap SG). The loss of Chandler nearly offsets the contract signed with Wallace so the question becomes: Who would you rather have, Ben Wallace or Tyson Chandler?

Next up for the Bulls will be deciding the future of Gordon, Hinrich, Deng, and Nocioni. They will all demand high salaries (Gordon not deservingly so according to Win Score) and it will force Paxson to make some very difficult decisions.

1. They added the leagues top defender to a team that has led the league in opponent FG% for the past two seasons.

2. They took Ben Wallace away from their division rival Pistons and the Pistons responded by signing Nazi Mohammed.

As far as being “overpaid” that remains to be seen. Wallace keeps himself in great shape and is an emotional leader on what is a young Bulls team. The Bulls could have got Big Ben for less money but they will definitly be a top team in the East for the next four seasons.

I’m a HUGE Bulls fan and also a HUGE “Wages of Wins” fan, so you know I’m excited about the signing. But $60 million for four years? And he’s 32.

Well, it will be good for Chandler and Thomas to work under Wallace and learn from him.

a. Bill Simmons is probably being willfully ignorant. It’s a huge step to say “90% of what I said about players in the past can be demonstrated false” and it’s probably hard to take from an economist (whereas the moneyball stuff really came from a baseball insider so it was easier to swallow, pride-wise.)

b. This is an extremely well-written book far beyond economics, and you make observations that are tremendously insightful even for long-time sports fans. One thing I come back to is your discussion of how NFL quarterbacks are completely inexperienced relative to basketball players. That’s a way of explaining your data, sure but it’s also the astute observation of serious sports fans.

c. There is a prevalent fallacy (or phallacy even) in the sports world. It’s when fans equate “favorite player” with “Best Player.” Who hasn’t done this? What this book did for me was really draw a line between favorite and best, and once I did I felt fine about things. I’d like to say more on this subject but I’m late for work (I also wanted to talk about how you say imply unorthodox things in economics-in a good way- about the market not being self-correcting.) Anyway, great book.

Matt

He is a legitimately talented writer, and still entertains me despite all this. Just know that he is a vigorous defender of the conventional wisdom, in all fields.

To quote 19th century French economist Frederic Basitat.

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause – it is seen. The others unfold in succession – they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference – the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, – at the risk of a small present evil.