Academic venue vs other is an old debate and you make good foundation of knowledge, carefully built arguments but it is not really not worth that much more harping about, especially on the specific question of sports economics as it relates to sports performance evaluation per se.

Yes it is an environment that should be used for more general learning and applicatin to other fields of study. It sounds like a good and generous development to open up and share this platform you have created. I look forward to reading more.

Who got nasty first (as referenced in arious recent articles) is about perspective and most of us arent interested in that that much other that to say we wish it had been avoided or could be ended somehow.

The discussion will continue in many places because not only do sports “belong” to all interested, but discussion and knowledge production in general is open to the efforts of all.
Let those efforts be heard and considered as they are due. Academia will in many cases lead. But not always. Plenty of evidence of that in other fields too.

Yes. But different, not only, and not always better.

“No, if one wishes to dispute a published finding you have to do more than note that you perceive yourself as an authority. The route those who disagree must follow is ultimatly the same academic route as everyone else. He or she will have to demonstrate that they have empirical evidence that comes to a different conclusion. And this empirical evidence would be submitted to a peer review process before it could be published in an academic forum.”

No you don’t. You must present a case with evidence to be listened to by most. You may have to go academic journal to be listened to and accepted by many academics but not all restrict themseleves to only listening to the ivory tower, though there is much of the best work available coming from universities in every field. Most people are open to listening to listening to a variety of sources.

Some listen to a writer like Gladwell. Some listen to practioners in a field, including the NBA. Some listen to writers about the NBA that meet their standards for thoughtful study and reason based statements.

The academic circle is an important circle but it is not the only circle where there is quality work being done. In any field.

If anyone wants to wants to

I’m confused on the Rodman thing. You wrote this paper http://www.csub.edu/~dberri/BerriMDE1999.pdf where you had Rodman as the MVP of the league in 97-98 and Jordan only 6th.

Do you now not agree with your original belief that Rodman was better than Jordan? If so, why has this belief changed?

“Per 48 minutes played, Rodman’s productivity even eclipsed Jordan. Rodman’s WP48 of .0.415 was four times the production offered by an average player in the NBA, and even surpassed the 0.386 WP48 posted by Jordan.”

The next sentence in the book is this:

“Of course when one looks at standard deviations above the average, Jordan was still more productive than Rodman.”