One question I am occasionally asked is why an economist spends his time studying the NBA. Obviously this gives me a good excuse to watch and talk about the Association. But is there any real academic value?
My answer – when I am being serious (which isn’t often) – is that the NBA provides an excellent place to study how economic actors evaluate and utilize information. And as we note in The Wages of Wins , this study has shown that economic actors in the NBA make systematic errors. Specifically, teams tend to over-value scoring and under-value other aspects of player productivity. So in a small way we think we made a contribution to our understanding of economics.
Of course our work doesn’t just have value for economists. For those working in the NBA and/or just following the league, our work has highlighted the importance of role players. This point has been made frequently in this forum, but most explicitly in the following posts.
Star Power and the Washington Wizards
Team USA and the Importance of Role Playing
Isiah Thomas Discovers Role Players
Scorers and Role Players in the NBA
Last Thursday, Henry Abbott of TrueHoop told the same story. In a post entitled Seeking Role Players in a Star System, Abbott noted that the NBA’s pre-draft camps are primarily about finding role players.
What teams are shopping for are complementary players. Role players. Guys who can fit in to the team’s larger goals, while contributing very specific things. Playing really good perimeter defense and hitting the occasional three, for instance. Rebounding and blocking shots without getting the ball much. Players who can shine without the spotlight, and who will not be a disturbance in the locker room if they don’t get a lot of minutes.
These are guys who might play 15 years without scoring 30 points, or faking someone out of their socks.
The teams that win titles every year all have fat supplies of highly effective role players. Consider that the Spurs just waltzed to the NBA Finals getting long minutes from the likes of Bruce Bowen, Robert Horry, Fabricio Oberto, Jacque Vaughn, and Francisco Elson.
I talked to ESPN’s David Thorpe, who is in Orlando, and he points out that you could stick any of those Spurs I just mentioned in the pre-draft camp, and no one watching would be certain that they were sure-fire NBA players. Because they just do not have the skills to thrive in this hyper, ball-hog, show-your-moves environment.
But they are, in all likelihood, about to be key players on a championship team.
Weird, huh? You practically have to be a star to make the NBA. But then once you get there, the star jobs are almost all filled, so in most cases you then have to learn to be a role player. (No wonder so many NBA players are grumpy.)
Wouldn’t it be smarter to develop, nurture, and evaluate who will make the best role players?
Let me try and answer this question. Yes, it would be smarter to develop the best role players, but the incentives created by the NBA’s decision-makers hinder this action.
Coaches since Red Auerbach have noted the value of non-scorers. But the front offices of the NBA continue to pay most of the major contracts to the scorers. The media also gives most of its attention to the scorers. Hence players learn that their income and fame are maximized when they score, not when they do all the other things necessary to win.
The value in metrics like Wins Produced (or Wayne Winston’s and Jeff Sagarin’s plus-minus approach) is that attention is shined on the non-scorers (in contrast, metrics like NBA Efficiency and the Player Efficiency Rating re-enforce the bias towards scorers).
With metrics that quantify the value of role players, NBA coaches – who know the game is not just about scorers – might be able to get others in The Association to align the incentives of the players with the objective of the coaches – i.e. winning basketball games. At least, one hopes that having objective evidence that role players do indeed contribute to wins might force people to increase The Wages of Wins of such players (how is that for working the title into a sentence?).
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Jeremy
June 3, 2007
You’ve shown how there *should* be economic incentives for team management to reward players who produce wins, yet they make systematic errors. What sustains this scoring bias?
One explanation might have to do with the game experience. A basket made tends to draw an intense emotional response from an audience. This intensity makes the field goal more memorable after the fact than a rebound, a steal or not turning the ball over.
This experience reinforces scoring as the lead metric in basketball. More emotion is tied to that points number than any other and so we end up with scoreboards designed to emphasize scoring, management systematically caught up in the moment with the fans, and so on.
Look at the absence of emotional intensity around the name “role players.” Guys doing the yeoman’s work end up a kind of curiosity of the game because what they do isn’t exciting enough to be that memorable.
dberri
June 3, 2007
Jeremy,
I think you are right. Decision-makers in the NBA appear to depend immensely on visual observation. Such observation is drawn to scoring. The statistical measures that are most popular — NBA Efficiency (and its forebears TENDEX and Points Created ) as well as PERs — re-enforce the focus on scoring.
The problem with metrics like Wins Produced and plus-minus is that they are often inconsistent with what people “observe.” And people would rather believe their “eyes” than the numbers. Hence the focus on scoring is hard to eliminate.
I do think that over-time that will change. Non-scoring focused metrics have only been around for a few years. As time goes by, decision-makers will increasingly incorporate the new information.
Steve Walters
June 3, 2007
Actually, I think Dave may be under-selling the “anomaly” he’s discovered in the NBA salary structure. Since scoring brings you fame as well as fortune and the dirty work does not, in an efficient market you should see role players getting a wage premium (a “compensating differential”) for their willingness to do the things that yield Ws if not the plaudits of fans.
On Jeremy’s point that “[audience] intensity makes the field goal more memorable after the fact than a rebound, a steal or not turning the ball over,” I agree, but…
…I can’t help but point out that one of the most “intensely emotional” experiences of my youth was hearing the late, great Johnny Most yell “Havlicek stole the ball! Havlicek stole the ball!…” Someone should put that audio highlight up on YouTube or someplace.
Classic.
Jason
June 3, 2007
NBA decision makers are not always rational actors. At some point this year Chris Mullin commented that he uses statistical analysis but when it disagrees with his preconceived notions, he ignores it, treating analysis as yet another yes-man when it pleases him.
dberri
June 3, 2007
Jason,
Don Nelson said the same thing. The quote was quite explicit. He said he uses statistics to support what he already thinks.
The first time I spoke to someone working in the NBA (and this was about 10 years ago) I asked how statistics were used to make decisions. I was told that when the stats supported what the person believed, the stats were quoted. When the stats didn’t give support, they were ignored.
workingsforsuckers
June 3, 2007
The pre-draft talk makes me think of Vashon Leonard, who was a college player of the year candidate, and I’m pretty sure went well ahead of Michigan State teammate Eric Snow in the draft. Snow is the perfect example of a role player, and is on his way to a second finals. Leonard was a great college scorer, but wasn’t much of one in the NBA, and I can’t recall him ever playing for a good team.
Jeremy
June 4, 2007
Steve, absolutely! There’s no doubt some of my favorite, most memorable plays are things like the steals, blocks and rebounds my Warriors got when pounding the Mavericks this year. In general, though, making field goals is what gets the most consistent charge out of fans (or crushes us emotionally).
Jason or Dave, do you have a link for those Nelson or Mullin quotes about cherry-picking stats? I missed that story completely.
dberri
June 4, 2007
Jeremy,
This is from an article by Mark Emmons in the San Jose Mercury News (February 20, 2007)
“I don’t believe in overdoing statistics,” Warriors Coach Don Nelson said. “I’m from the old school. What you see is probably what you get. I just use the statistics to confirm what I see.”
(not the) Jason (who posted above)
June 4, 2007
On the other hand, Nelson is notorious for not tipping his cards so I’d discount at least 50% of that statement. Just not sure which 50%. I know that Nelson was tracking player +/- during the early 90s long before it became popular to do it and has hired statisticians as consultants for a long time.
Since you mentioned that he’s one of the coaches who is known to get better statistical outputs out of players than their stats would predict, perhaps he really is seeing something else.
Jason
June 4, 2007
Actually, I *was* the Jason who posted above. Damn cookies remembering things I typed…