With each team I review I am listing, at the bottom of the post, all the teams I have analyzed thus far. That list is getting a bit lengthy. So I am going to list all the Eastern Conference teams in this post, and then I will just reference this comment. Of course, I guess I could also just create a place for this on the homepage of The Wages of Wins. Perhaps I will do that later when I have finished reviewing the Western Conference teams.
- DJ
Update: Joel Witmer – of The Disappointment Zone – read this post and asked why I don’t just set up a page at The Wages of Wins Journal with all the reviews. My response: I did not know I could do this. Joel’s response: Rather than laugh at my ignorance, he pointed out how one does this in Word Press. So thanks to Joel, there is a new page with the Eastern Conference Reviews. I will also add a page with the Western Conference reviews. All of this will still not make The Wages of Wins Journal look as good as Disappointment Zone. But it’s a start.
4 responses so far ↓
p-dawg // October 8, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Hi David. I LOVE this stuff! But, as a Celtics fan, I have a few questions about measuring player productivity.
The Celtics front office has been selling fans on the upside or potential of their draft picks and trades. That’s one of the reasons why, even though last season was the worst in seven years in terms of W-L, there is great anticipation for this season. Ainge and Rivers are careful not to promise anything, but the message is clearly “our kids are ready to deliver on their great potential.”
But, while we can look at the wins produced for a player during a previous year, can we use this measure to help predict player development? For instance:
-Ainge has defended the Portland trade by saying Telfair is young and coming from a system poorly suited to take advantage of his gifts. He says, moreover, that the three year mark is when point guards really start to “get it” and produce. But what is the trajectory for win production in an NBA player’s career? What about for point guards in particular?
-The team’s most touted young players – Al Jefferson and Gerald Green – were both drafted out of high school. These kids sure looked great playing against other high schoolers, but how likely are they to become great pros? More to the point, are college players more likely to turn into productive pros (as Billy Beane would contend)?
-Finally, your formula gives players all the credit for wins produced. Does this mean you believe coaches have virtually no impact on team performance? Is there a way to accurately measure wins produced for coaches?
I’m a blogger for Cheap Seats, one of the CelticsBlog family of blogs and very much want to incorporate your methodology into my analysis and comment this season. I hope to hear from you soon.
dberri // October 8, 2006 at 3:18 pm
p-dawg,
Glad to hear you like what we are doing. Let me try and answer your questions.
In The Wages of Wins we review a variety of factors that determine the productivity of a player. The most important factor—by far — is how productive the player was in the past. Although NBA players can improve — or get worse — in general “what you see is what you get.”
Still, there are a few factors that can cause a player to perform differently. As we detail in Chapter Seven of our book, these include injuries, experience, coaching, the productivity of teammates, and the stability of a team’s roster. Briefly, injuries tend to make you less productive (not surprising). Early in a player’s career we see some evidence that players get better, but it is weak. There is also some evidence that players get worse towards the end of a player’s career.
The more productive your teammates, the less productive you will be. In other words, the Law of Diminishing Returns holds in the NBA. Also, the less stable a team’s roster from season to season the less productive the individual players will be.
About coaching…all wins are produced by what the players do on the floor. What coaches can do is change what the players do when they play. I am currently working on research in this area, but there is some evidence that certain coaches can make their players more productive.
About Telfair… yes it is possible he could play better for the Celtics. But you need to remember he played very badly for Portland and NBA players tend to be fairly consistent. Still, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he could play much better for Boston. Clearly he needs to learn how to hit his shots. I am fairly certain that the coaches in Portland mentioned to Telfair that the team is more successful when the ball goes in the basket. Is it likely the Boston coaches can make this same observation any differently?
Finally, I have not looked systematically at the success of college players vs. high school players. Now that the NBA has ended the practice of drafting high school players we can now look at the entire history of high school players. Just looking at the anecdotal evidence it appears that high school players tend to do a bit better on average than the typical college player. But again, I have not looked at this systematically.
Hope this helps.
p-dawg // October 9, 2006 at 11:16 am
Thanks David. It seems to me your research implies the most effective way to build a winning team is through free agency. If true, this would go a long way toward explaining the now twenty-year demise of the Celtics, one of the most storied franchises in sports.
There are three ways to build a team: drafts, trades, and free agency. Looking at your research, draft picks appear to be the riskiest of the three. If 65%-75% of future performance can be predicted by past performance, then relying on draft picks to build a winning team is essentially a roll of the dice.
This has certainly been the case with the Celtics in recent years. As your analysis reveals, Delonte West has been an above average player in terms of win production, largely because he is such an effective shooter. So far though, the team’s other picks have not been serious contributors. Jefferson and Perkins are slightly above average in terms of wins/48 minutes, but they really haven’t played all that much. Same for Green, who is below average. Greene, Banks, and Reed are no longer with the team.
This calls into question the entire notion of player development. Is it really rational to give up on Al Jefferson? Can we really say that Kendrick Perkins is about as productive as he’s likely to get? How about Gerald Green, who last year was below average in terms of wins produced? All of these players are 21 or less and haven’t really had consistent playing time. And what about late bloomers like former Celtic Chauncy Billups? In other words, when do we have a large enough sample size in terms of playing time and years in the league to make past performance a meaningful predictor?
Trades seem like a better bet. Teams can improve areas of weakness by trading from areas of strength. I’ve got a good veteran center, but I get lucky in the draft and pick up a great rookie big man. My point guard is kind of lousy, though. So I trade with a team that has a logjam at point, but needs a center. Also, I’m trading for a known entity. I can look at a player’s win score and get a sense of whether or not he will really improve my team.
If you’re a team like the Celtics, though, you don’t really have extra talent at any position. The salary cap makes it particularly difficult to upgrade because, unlike in baseball, your low-priced prospects alone won’t land you someone else’s high priced star. You’ve usually got to take on a bad player, a big contract, or both to make the deal work. So the Celtics got rid of Antoine Walker, but took on Raef LaFrentz, who was scarcely more productive and had a monster contract. They traded Ricky Davis, and his below average production, for Wally Szczerbiak’s barely above average production and enormous long-term deal. Occasionally you can swindle someone, but mostly GMs expect to trade for player’s of similar value.
This leaves free agency. Teams need to shed payroll in order to be a player, which can be difficult when fans expect a winner. If you’ve cleared cap space, though, free agency helps in two ways. First, it allows you to get rid of players who don’t help you win. Second, you get to replace those guys with more productive players. This sounds incredibly simple, but it’s actually extremely difficult for teams to do these two things effectively outside of free agency. Rookies have no performance to extrapolate from. Trades involve a quid pro quo that makes upgrading difficult.
The Celtics decline since 1986, when they last won a championship, seems to illustrate the points I’ve made above. The team won 16 championships by drafting Hall of Famers like Cousy, Russell, Heinsohn, Bird, and McHale, and by swindling teams out of great players like Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson, Bill Walton, and Scott Wedman.
Since the introduction of free agency, though, the team has struggled to manage its payroll and has never been much of a player in the market. It tied up its money first in deals that allowed Bird, McHale and Parish to hang around until the end of their careers. Then it spent big on aging or overvalued stars like Dominique Wilkins and Dana Barros. It also spent big on players who just weren’t very good: Travis Knight comes to mind.
As I’ve written above, Danny Ainge’s strategy is essentially the same one the Celtics have employed throughout the history of the franchise: build through the riskier strategies of drafts and trades, eschew the more reliable free agent market. Consider what might have been if Ainge had kept his powder dry and held onto Antoine Walker. After two years, he’d have shed Antoine and a max deal. Hold on for one more year and he could have been the one throwing the big bucks at Ben Wallace. But despite twenty years of (mostly) losing, including two of the last three years under Ainge, the team still thinks it’s smarter than everybody else, that they will draft better players, make lopsided deals, and win another championship. Twenty years and counting for banner number seventeen.
Any of this make sense to you?
dberri // October 9, 2006 at 6:11 pm
p-dawg,
That is one long comment.
Here is something to think about. A key to building an elite team is having an elite player. The Celtics have Paul Pierce, so that piece is in place. Now Boston just needs a few additional pieces. So far the Celtics have failed in finding the players to complement Pierce.
Given the age of some of the Celtics it is possible the young players could make a leap. So it is not impossible that that Celtics could get better. Although, given what these players have done so far, it will take a major leap forward by some of these players for the Celtics to improve in the standings.
One last note. The evidence we present in The Wages of Wins suggests that role players are undervalued. If you were building through free agency, it is those players you should focus upon.