For reasons I will touch upon in my next post, this has been a busy week. So busy that I have actually been out of touch with this forum and hence I am quite surprised to see more than 100 comments on my last post. At this point, many of these are unread. But I did read enough to get a sense that some people (although perhaps not many) are interested in some comment on the Detroit’s recent acquisitions.
The story of these acquisitions begins last fall. Joe Dumars decided very early in the 2008-09 season that the Pistons – as constructed in October of 2008 — were not going to win the NBA title in 2009. Having reached that conclusion, Dumars traded Chauncey Billups to the Denver Nuggets for Allen Iverson. At the time Dumars argued that Iverson would help. I disagreed, and even argued that Dumars might also think that Iverson would probably not help the Pistons win another title in 2009. And I went on to argue that Dumars was really motivated to trade Billups by the fact Iverson’s contract expired in 2009 and thus the Pistons would have substantial cap room this summer.
Although we could debate motivations, it’s now clear the results met expectations.
- The Pistons – with Iverson – struggled and barely made the playoffs.
- And the Pistons entered the off-season with substantial cap room.
Within moments of the start of the free agent signing period – as PistonPowered argues — much of this cap room vanished. And in its place the Pistons had acquired the services of Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva.
As a person who follows the Pistons, here is my initial reaction: Ugh!!!
When we look at Wins Produced we can understand the lack of enthusiasm for these signings. Here is what Ben Gordon has done across the first five years of his career:
Gordon’s Wins Produced = 15.3
Gordon’s WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] = 0.059
And here is what Villanueva has done across his first four seasons:
Villanueva’s Wins Produced = 11.2
Villanueva’s WP48 = 0.074
An average player posts a 0.100 WP48, so each player is posting a career mark that is below average. Now when we look at 2008-09 we see numbers that are much closer to average. That being said, each player is now being paid like an above average player (in fact, Gordon is getting more than $10 million per season). And I don’t think all the numbers support this position.
Of course, if all we focus upon is scoring, then Gordon and Villanueva are above average players. But once we move past scoring we see that Gordon was below average last season with respect to rebounds, steals, turnovers, blocked shots, and assists. And Villanueva was below average with respect to steals, turnovers, and personal fouls (and not really far above average with respect to anything else).
In sum, it looks like the Pistons have traded away valuable cap space for two players who are not going to take this team to a championship. As I noted a few posts ago, it seems clear that an NBA champion needs a player who posts a WP48 in excess of 0.200. At this moment, though, the Pistons do not have a player on the roster that has surpassed this mark. Now Antonio McDyess did post a mark in excess of 0.200 last year, but…
- McDyess is currently unsigned.
- and he will be 35 next season.
So even if McDyess comes back, he will be very old by NBA standards and therefore he is not likely to be the key player on a future NBA title team.
Once again, it looks like these two moves are not going to produce a title in Detroit in 2010. And given the length of the contracts, it doesn’t look like the first part of the next decade looks promising either.
By the way, had I checked earlier I might have put the Pistons aside and spent this post on the relative merits of Trevor Ariza and Ron Artest. I guess that post will have to wait for later.
– DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
The Technical Notes at wagesofwins.com provides substantially more information on the published research behind Wins Produced and Win Score
Wins Produced, Win Score, and PAWSmin are also discussed in the following posts:
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics
Finally, A Guide to Evaluating Models contains useful hints on how to interpret and evaluate statistical models.
Wages of Wins Journal 
Evan
July 2, 2009
Arriza = almost .200. iirc, Artest was average-ish.
Arriza is younger and likely to immediately improve, Artest is older and likely to immediately decline. It looks like they are paying the exact same price…plus the Rox get Arriza for 5 years of likely improving productivity.
Side issue: Arriza will also probably get more playing time, which may also marginally help his per minute productivity.
Looks like a huge deal for the Rox.
Michael
July 3, 2009
I disagree Evan, remember how Ariza was an above 0.300 player, and then with an increasing role dropped to like 0.180 (or something like that)?
What will happen to his production now he will be even more of a featured player (given how he has already shown decreasing returns across a larger sample and increased usage)?
There is a good chance that Ariza is the SF equivalent of Amir Johnson!
Whilst I don’t like this ‘swap’ for the Lakers because of Artests advanced age and unpredictable nature, I really doubt there is that much difference between them as players. Not enough to negatively affect the Lakers chance to repeat anyway.
Ariza is longer and quicker, but Artest is much stronger and has more savvy to his game.
The Lakers did well to replace Ariza so quickly imo.
chan man
July 3, 2009
Prof DB,
I knew you were gonna get sick on the Pistons’ newest acquisitions – it’s bad enough to use cap to get either one of BG/CV, not to mention both of them. I’m no Pistons fan but it’s still sad to see them decline so fast, starting a couple days ago. In fact, as rumor goes they might play JMax at center and trade away Rip, which means:
Stuckey at PG (about average)
Ben Gordon at SG (below average)
Tay at SF (above average, only if he stays)
Villanueva at PF (below average)
JMax at C (below average)
Other than Prince, everyone of them is ball-hogs and likes to shoot (even though not effectively). Looks like a 25 to 30-win team to me.
And people are celebrating on this move? And with Detroit economically dying (the motor industry + recession), they still have money to throw into nothing (in terms of win, which attracts home fan which in turn = gate revenue)?
Crazy stuff.
(Thanks for your post, prof, again always right on the button)
chan man
July 3, 2009
Just a quick thought regarding Villanueva –
When he was in TOR, I surely remembered he played all SF, sharing PT / Backup role with Joey Graham. Ever since he was traded to MIL, he started and stayed at PF. What happened there? I thought he was actually an average SF (in terms of Win Products/WP48), but a below-average PF. I think this is another case study that a player playing out of position (whether he realizes / prefers it or not) will hurt his production and team wins.
He is undersized PF when banging in the paint with other natural 4’s; he’s staying on the perimeter too much without an effective shooting percentage. No matter he’s below average as a PF.
Any thoughts? Thanks~
Rashad
July 3, 2009
Please do offer your thoughts on the effective Ariza-Artest swap. If Ariza keeps shooting threes anything like he did in the playoffs, it could go down as a historically bad trade, I think.
Austin
July 3, 2009
As a Blazer fan…
and considering that you’re already comparing small forwards…
and considering the now irrelevant speculation that Toronto and Portland were each going to get one of Turkoglu and Ariza…
I’d really appreciate if you could throw in a quick look at Turkoglu as the other big-name small forward. I’m mostly curious to see his WP48 for the last few seasons and what stats he is above and below average in.
In any case, thank you as always for your posts. I love reading them.
TRad
July 3, 2009
Technically it isn’t a trade (Ariza/Artest).
Being Lakers fan I’m shocked. And very sad. I woudl understand Lakers decision if some team (e.g. Pistons) has thrown on Ariza some stupid money (e.g. 45/5).
I think Ariza is worth $8-9M per year. There were 16 players last season with salary between 8 and 9:
Biedrins
Diaw
Dunleavy
Miles
Walker
Kevin Martin
QRichardson
Crawford
Thomas
Blount
Okur
Nesterovic
MoWilliams
Maggette
Ford
Nocioni
From this group I’d take Okur and Biedrins over Ariza. Somebody could argue about Dunleavy and Martin and maybe Williams. But 40/5 doesn’t look like an outrage.
OK, the economy is different and had somebody offered 40/5 I’d understand why Lakers let Ariza go. But he will sign with Rockets for MLE! Basically it’s the same contract as Artest will sign with Lakers! Maybe Artest’s will be 3 years long and Ariza 5 years long, but Ariza is going up while Artest is going down. I’d rather have 5y contract with Ariza than 3y with Artest.
Last thing: there are people saying that ariza’s last season is an example of CEY (contract’s ending year). I don’t think so. Ariza’s stats were steady thru the last three seasons. His TS% even went down, as Ariza became more of a spot shooter instead of slasher (but it’s good, because Lakers needed him to shoot open threes).
This is a sad, sad day for Lakers fans. Lakers probably still will be favourites, because they have four players with ability to be over .200 WP48 (Gasol, Bryant, Bynum, Odom). They could even be better than last season because healthy Bynum could be a beast. But Kupchak has made a wrong decision. Another victim of Isiah Thomas fallacy.
Peter
July 3, 2009
If Dumars really wanted a scoring guard and a power forward, why not sign David Lee this year and go for one of the bargain free agents this year or next?
Peter
July 3, 2009
Or heck, maybe even think outside the box and try to go for Lamar Odom AND Hedo Turkoglu?
6’10” forwards who can ballhandle are rare, and Detroit could have had two.
TRad
July 3, 2009
Detroit has contracts for $39M. After CV and BG the sum will be close to $54M. They don’t have space under salary cap to go after Turkoglu or Odom. They both will get offers above MLE.
brgulker
July 3, 2009
And people are celebrating on this move? And with Detroit economically dying (the motor industry + recession), they still have money to throw into nothing (in terms of win, which attracts home fan which in turn = gate revenue)?
As a Pistons fan who keeps up with almost all the local writers and bloggers, I can say that no one, and I mean no one is celebrating these signings.
We’re trying to come to grips with it, nothing more.
We turned Billups, Sheed, Dice into Gordon and Villanueva.
IT doesn’t take a genius to wonder what’s going on with that.
===========
Dr. Berri,
There has been some speculation that these two guys fit the bill of a Detroit player, a player like Billups who didn’t play great until beocming part of a team in Detroit. Do you think there’s any truth to that? Was Billups not a very productive player before arriving in Detroit and became one while there?
And like Dr. Berri, the first (well maybe second after a few words I won’t repeat), was Ugh!!
Peter
July 3, 2009
TRad:
I was referring to BEFORE they signed Gordon and Villanueva, not after.
TRad
July 3, 2009
Peter:
Oh, sorry. As we say in Poland:
– Do you speak English?
– Yes, I don’t.
Christopher
July 3, 2009
Four points (some from the last thread as my post always got bounced):
1- The Gordon and CV moves to DET give us a test case. The Pistons should be, compared to last year, a little worse to a little better. That is,
iirc, the net change from what DET had to the newbies should be pretty even. These signings will not do much at all. Also, fwiw, Joe D’s aura is
fading. I smell regression to the mean that started with firing Flip, signing Rip to an extension and, of course, Darko.
2- Re: Marion and the Nash effect. Nash was the motor. Go the basketball-reference and search for the Nash effect. There is really no debate here.
3- I’m not sure what to think of Ariza vs Artest. But Artest’s contract is 2 yr shorter so maybe that was a consideration. But since Ariza is signing for the MLE I’m not sure why he thought doing that in HOU (no chance at winning title) vs LAL (greater chance to win title) was better.
4- Lastly, DB’s team method is based on eff. diff. (and has nothing to do with WS per se). And since this model (eff. diff.) explains 95-99% of the variation in team wins any system built off of this will yield impressive results. Look at WinShares for another metric that individually
(player-level) is different in terms of what it says but collectively (aggregated to team-level) is quite similar to DBs team model because it is
also based on eff. diff. To put it another way, any model that assigns wins to boxscore (or other stats) that is driven by eff. diff. will behave
virtually the same on a team level.
In the end it’s all moot, CAVS will win next year’s title. I think a CAVS vs SAS rematch is very likely, actually… But this time CAVS sweep.
Peter
July 3, 2009
TRad, you are forgiven.
To be honest, I like Joe Dumars as a GM, but I think he was just a little too eager to try and cash in on all that cap space.
Through the latter part of his career in Chicago, Gordon has just barely eclipsed 1 point per field goal attempt, largely because he compensates a subpar field goal percentage with outstanding 3-point and free throw percentage. But compared with some of the standard bearers at the 2 spot (Kobe, Wade, Roy or even Joe Johnson), his non-scoring numbers leave a little to be desired.
Villanueva’s scoring numbers are even worse because he doesn’t shoot well from the perimeter. And his defensive stats wouldn’t be what I’d be looking for from a franchise power forward.
I’m envisioning Piston ball to become an offensive-based, poor man’s Knick or Warrior squad.
Lior
July 3, 2009
Regarding Ariza v. Artest: adjusted +/- (basketballvalue.com) has Artest as much better than Ariza. WP48 has Ariza much better (Artest is about average). While WP48 captures most of the defensive value of players (else it wouldn’t explain team wins) it is probably noisier regarding defensive specialists, so I wouldn’t use it as my primary measure when comparing the two players.
One my long-term pet peeves with the WP48 numbers is that there has been no analysis of the error bars — the confidence level in a players quoted WP48 value. This is absolutely essential when we try to argue that players are “better” or “average” etc.
Perhaps it’s in the new book?
simon
July 3, 2009
It looks like Toronto Raptors will sign Turkoglu for 5 years at 10+ mil per year. The Raptors fans are generally happy that the team now has a creator who will make the offense better instead of Marion who is useless without Nash. Also this probably Parker, Delfino, etc are all done with the team.
Colangelo hasn’t learnt from JO
Leon
July 4, 2009
Brandon Bass? There’s not much point now I guess for detroit. I just don’t understand. What is the point of CV? Why not go for Millsap or Lee or even leon powe and trying to hold on to sheed or dice. It makes no sense.
Kevin
July 4, 2009
For some reason, the Pistons have been looking for a PF with no muscles in his arms. They tried to play Prince there last year… they also tried to play 3 guards at once. I think Dumars has become too enamored of small ball.
If only the Rockets had obtained Gortat as well, you would be looking at the ultimate (possible, they might still start Brooks) WP48ers:
Lowry
Ariza
Battier
Scola
Gortat
Kevin
July 4, 2009
Another thing about the Rockets. According to hoopshype.com/salaries/houston.htm (and I added the midlevel cost of about 5-6mil for Ariza) about 56% of their player salaries are caught up in McGrady and Yao, who will not produce wins next year. If what is left of the roster is a good team (they will be) they will be the Florida Marlins of the NBA, a low cost but dangerous team.
brgulker
July 4, 2009
To those who have mentioned Joe D as a quality GM:
Unless Joe D is able to land at least one dominant, productive big man — one who rebounds, blocks shots, and scores efficiently and in bulk — I’m with those who think his ability as a GM is questionable.
Here are the good moves he’s made:
Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups, Memo Okur, Hunter+James, Larry Brown, Sheed, Dyess.
Notice that those are all related to our (one) championship run.
The rest of the moves I could mention, including the Darko debacle, would be very, very questionable, at best.
The one reason I’m willing to be patient is this: Joe has been able to find the mix of productive players who play the bulk of the minutes and specialists (who do one or two things well but aren’t generally very productive, like Hunter+James) in the past, and in our championship run, that didn’t happen until the Feb. trade for Sheed.
In other words, he still has some time to work with this cap space. For example, he could trade Kwame’s 4 mil. contract and receive up to 8 mil in return, because we have some cap space left.
IF he can swing a trade like that and bring 1-2 very productive players here to rebound and generate steals, then the BG/CV make more sense — bring in guys who can score in bunches and guys who rebound and generate steals, etc.
Kevin
July 4, 2009
@Michael, who said:
“There is a good chance that Ariza is the SF equivalent of Amir Johnson!”
Johnson’s foul rate was always astronomical, ever since he’s joined the league. Not so, Ariza.
Peter
July 4, 2009
Come to think of it, the Pistons are stocking up on a lot of twos through fours who tend to shoot well at the expense of other stats.
Gordon, Villanueva, Hamilton, Austin Daye and DaJuan Summers, Aaron Afflalo last year…
No wonder they have Avery Johnson so high on their search!
Peter
July 4, 2009
And by shooting well, I mean from 3-point range.
Daniel Suhr
July 4, 2009
One thing I’d be curious about with the Ariza/Artest swap is if Ariza can remain as productive when not playing with Kobe and Gasol or players of their caliber. I recall from the playoff run that Ariza had a lot of open threes. I mean it seemed like thats all he was shooting.
So he was very productive but I don’t know if he was doing it with defenses focusing on him or he was getting opportunities because he was playing alongside greatness.
And Artest is definitely older and will not be playing as well or efficiently. But on the Lakers he won’t be the focal point of the offense so depending on how he adjusts his efficiency will either go up (taking advantage of Kobe and Gasol) or decrease if he tries to maintain his previous levels and jacks up shots when he does touch to ball to make up for his decreased touches in general.
Caleb
July 4, 2009
“While WP48 captures most of the defensive value of players ”
Ha!
ian
July 4, 2009
Wins Produced is not a good stat. Basketball is too context-dependent to have useful sabermetrics the way baseball does.
simon
July 4, 2009
Wow, ian, you’re only about 3 years too late for that comment.
Lior
July 4, 2009
Caleb: the argument underlying WP48 has two parts:
1. The total weighted WP48 of the team is an excellent approximation to the total number of team wins. Since the team spends half the game playing defence, this shows that the models is capturing most of the team defensive value. On some level, this isn’t surprising: 1 defensive rebound = 1 defensive stop, after all.
2. The player WP48 numbers are actually attributable to the individual players. Berri’s book contains a detailed analysis of this point, mostly via year-to-year correlation.
Anon
July 5, 2009
the complaint, which has been said numerous times, is that WP48 transfers credit from the individual defender to the defensive rebounder. I would assume that is what Caleb is talking about.
Italian Stallion
July 5, 2009
I don’t understand the Ariza/Arest story at all.
Ariza is a good role player, but IMO he’s nothing special. He looked better than he actually is during the playoffs because of Kobe’s ability to draw double teams and get open looks for him. His actual shooting skill is probably not as good as his results were in that series (a little luck combined with all the wide open looks).
However, after a series like that his marketability was probably a lot of higher than his true intrinsic value. So I could see the Lakers not wanting to pay up too much for him. Then again, why not try to do a sign and trade to take advantage of someone else that might not be as astute and why pay similar numbers for Artest.
Artest is the more talented overall player, but he’s older, very unpredictable and takes so many bad shots they may not get as much out of him as they could out of guy like Ariza than knows his role and sticks to it.
Ariza gives you exactly what a role player should and doesn’t try to do more. That’s what makes him effective and productive despite limited skills (at least at this stage).
The only way this works to the Lakers advantage is if they turn Artest into a lower usage but more productive player on the offensive end and try to get him to focus primarily on his strength and defensive versatility.
Italian Stallion
July 5, 2009
The only thing I can say about Detroit is that every team that makes a bad move helps the Knicks. LOL
Italian Stallion
July 5, 2009
“the complaint, which has been said numerous times, is that WP48 transfers credit from the individual defender to the defensive rebounder. I would assume that is what Caleb is talking about.”
Yes, there are obviously some very good rebounders that are poor defenders. If you’ve been watching the Knicks for the last few years you’ve seen at least two of them. One remains….for now. LOL
ian
July 5, 2009
Simon,
It was true 3 years ago and it’s still true today.
Caleb S
July 5, 2009
You are basically correct Anon. It’s been said many times before… but assigning all the credit for the defensive stop to the rebounder is ludicrous. Now of course, that’s all WP can do since it’s based on the box score… and that’s fine, but to claim that the metric accurately measures a player’s defensive contributions? C’mon.
The fact that players’ wins produced closely matches team wins doesn’t really mean anything does it? So does win shares but the two metrics often come to differing conclusions. Christopher made this point above and made it much more eloquently.
romalley
July 5, 2009
According to Win Shares (basketball-reference.com)
Ben Gordon career wins = 29 wins
Charlie Villanueva career wins = 12.3 wins
So looking at Win shares Ben Gordon is about twice as good as he is when looking at Win Score. Villanueva is about the same. I don’t know if Berri has done any comparisons between his method and Win Shares but they seem similar. I wouldn’t mind seeing one.
Does anyone know if he’s done a post on Win Shares in the past?
simon
July 5, 2009
ian,
If it’s “true,” and there have been 3 years, some empirical evidence would be more helpful to back up your notion.
ian
July 5, 2009
I can’t provide empirical evidence that one stat fails to properly consider context. That’s the nature of my critique: basketball cannot be simplified in the same way as baseball. Not even close.
ian
July 5, 2009
Well, I’ll elaborate. One hitter in baseball is impacted negligibly by anyone except the opposing pitcher. The adjustments necessary to contextualize for Albert Pujols are straight-forward.
Basketball players are severely impacted by the players they play with, unlike in baseball. How do these stats adjust for playing next to Derrick Rose 82 games a year, or Lebron, or Shaq?
Compared to playing on the Grizzlies and being the #1 scoring option?
Evan
July 5, 2009
Ian, for an answer to your question, you might want to purchase a book called “Wages of Wins.”
kevin
July 6, 2009
David, I’m curious about what you might have to say about the Celtics, now that it appears Rasheed Wallace is going to join them.
RY
July 6, 2009
Ian, I think everyone agrees that the basketball stats are not as clean as the baseball stats but they are still useful to make these analysis.
I do think Artest is a minor upgrade over Ariza but a better fit for the Lakers (if you at the stats and not just the WP48) but also think Ariza is better off in Houston where he will get more of an opportunity to grow as a player (and secure more $ in his next contract).
Hated the Gordon and Villanueva signings for the Pistons. What a waste of cap space.
Evan
July 6, 2009
RY — Ariza signed for 5 years, didn’t he? Seems weird to talk about next contract.
I Hate Flowers
July 6, 2009
Please make a post about Shawn Marion and how the statistics used by every popular basketball model overrated his true skill level and contributions to winning.
Tom Mandel
July 7, 2009
Ian — first off, Wins Produced is not “one stat.” It’s a number produced by analyzing multiple stats.
Secondly, Wins Produced correlates to a very high degree with actual results in the NBA. The sum of Wins Produced by all a team’s players will be very close to the team’s actual wins. Perhaps you’d like to take a stab at critiqueing that?
Thirdly, players seem to produce about the same kinds of results from team to team and year to year.
Finally, would you consider that a guy is better if he shoots a higher FG% than a lower? Gets more rebounds rather than fewer? Commits fewer turnovers rather than more? Makes more steals rather than fewer steals? Etc. You would? Good, that means you credit the data on which Wins Produced is based. What was your citicism of it, btw?
Peter
July 7, 2009
I blame a combination of Steve Nash and playing in his prime. Marion just doesn’t look as dominant without either of those two things.
mrparker
July 7, 2009
I hate flowers + Peter,
I beg (please please please pretty please) you to look at the difference in Marion’s production as a pf vs. his production as a sf. His PF numbers in every year are off the charts. His SF numbers in every year are pedestrian. I posted some examples in another recent comment thread but am too lazy to copy and paste from 82 games again. Basically, his production has everything to do with position and nothing to do with coach or point guard.
mrparker
July 7, 2009
I also want to argue against the notion that wins produced gives all the credit for a defensive stop to the rebounder. If you understand how individual defensive ratings are calculated(you have to read Dean Oliver’s book) then you realize that this isn’t true. To give an example a player like Hakeem Olajuwon(sic) would consistently get 70% of the credit for his team stops if Defensive rebounders were given all the credit. Instead its something like every one gets 4/5 of the credit for what their team defensive rating. Plus a bonus for what they bring individually. Its a little simple but close enough to the truth that because its incorporated into wins produced its the most accurate method for approximating wins.
Tball
July 7, 2009
Kevin,
Not to put words in his mouth, but I think db would say Wallace has been an average to slightly above average player the last few years (based on thumbing through the Detroit Pistons tables from the last couple of seasons in this blog). At his age, he cannot be expected to do any better than that and should probably be expected to do a little worse. If he’s taking minutes away from Scalabrine and Glenn Davis, he will be a tremendous upgrade, as these two players were among the worst in the league last season. He’ll also be taking minutes from Powe (for health based reasons), who was the equivalent (with a different skill set) of Wallace this past season.
db doesn’t predict the redistribution of minutes, but if the backup C/PF for the C’s (Davis, Scal, Powe, Moore, O’Bryant) played over 2400 (about 3800 minutes thanks to KG’s injury) minutes with a net 0.0 WP48 (I haven’t done the math, but this would be well below average and better than Davis’s -0.058 or Scal’s -0.147) and Wallace replaces 2400 of those minutes at 0.1 WP48, that produces a net gain of about 5 wins(2400*0.1/48 = 5).
Not every team can field five starting players that will produce 0.1+WP48, much less an 8 player rotation that can produce at this level. At this point in his career, Wallace is a good rotation player for a championship caliber team. He also combats what db spoke about in the linked post.
Peter
July 7, 2009
mrparker,
There is clear evidence that, in the years he played with Nash, his shooting percentage, and by extension, his productivity, increased. In fact, from his second season with Nash right up until his trade with Miami, he shot well over 50% from the floor, numbers he did not attain before Nash arrived, and numbers he did not touch with either the Heat or the Raptors.
And he was 25 years old when he played in his first season with Nash and just shy of 30 when he played his last game with him. In a typical NBA player, that age range is usually when a player has his best years from a productivity standpoint.
My hypothesis is that Nash’s court vision, combined with his ability to create mismatches on the floor and Mike D’Antoni’s emphasis on offense, helped Marion’s numbers.
Peter
July 7, 2009
26 to just shy of 30, excuse me.
Christopher
July 7, 2009
Re: Nash effect wrt Marion
Please, MP, go to basketball ref blog, search Marion and Nash effect… It has everything to do with Nash. Until a better and more thorough analysis of this gets done there is just no way to not see Nash as the motor.
Christopher
July 7, 2009
“Secondly, Wins Produced correlates to a very high degree with actual results in the NBA. The sum of Wins Produced by all a team’s players will be very close to the team’s actual wins. Perhaps you’d like to take a stab at critiquing that?”
I’ll take a stab. Not because I think WP is bunk, quite the opposite. But if WP credited all players on a roster (let’s assume 12 players) with 1/12 of all wins in a year it would still aggregate well to the team level. Similarly, if WP gave just the “best” 2 players all the wins, it would still aggregate well. Ultimately, the WP model is constrained to make the sum of WP over players on team x come very close to how many games team x won. That’s how it’s derived. Other metrics (my standard example is Win Shares) based on eff. diff. will also do this. Note that this works because eff. diff. is, in effect, “winning”. If DB used actual wins in his model then the fit would be even better as the noise in the eff. diff. ~ “winning” relation would be factored out. Again, this is not a criticism per se of WP. More of how it is evaluated. Any performance metrics based on in sample data points are inflated. What I want to see, to really beef WP up as a player evaluation tool (as opposed to a retrospective longer-term benchmark) is for DB to predict how many wins teams that have had significant trades will produce _next_ season based on the WP metric. So let’s look at DET, LAL, HOU, ORL, TOR. Plug-in WP numbers, guess at minutes (and I understand this is a sticking point) and see. That would be a more compelling observation in terms of how “good” the model is. Also, we can look at behaviors. When Kidd ~ Harris went down, based on Kidd’s WP, one should be to anticipate certain changes in DAL offense. Did we see those? I don’t think anyone has looked. For the record, not having a portal with current, sortable WP-stats makes this poking around difficult. In any event, DB kinda sorta did this for wins in this last season. I’ll see if I can find it.
Christopher
July 7, 2009
If you search “Projecting the 2008-09 NBA Season” here you will find forecasts. DBs is included. This was done by Erich Doerr. Interesting to look at…
mrparker
July 7, 2009
Ok you guys made me do it.
Prepare to be amazed.
All stats from 82games.com per 48
I will concentrate on the 4 factors
efg, reb, to, fta…There is no steal data per position
avg power forward (http://www.wagesofwins.com/DavisCurry.html)
19.3 pts 48.4efg 11.4reb 2.8to 5.6fta
Marion’s career as a PF
03′ 26pts 51%efg 13.1reb 1.6to 4.4fta
04′ 24pts 47%efg 12.9reb 2.2to 4.4fta
05′ 24pts 52%efg 14.1reb 1.9to 4fta
06′ 26pts 55%efg 13reb 1.8to 4.2fta
07′ 24pts 60%efg 14.3reb 1.9to 4.3fta
08′ stats not available
09′
tor 24pts 53%efg 16.5reb 2.1to 3.9fta
mia 22pts 57%efg 15.2reb 1.6to 3.6fta
avg small forward(http://www.wagesofwins.com/GrangerMIP.html)
19.9pts 48.2efg% 7.6reb 2.8to 5fta
as a sf
03′ 24pts 49%efg 10.6reb 2.4to 4.2fta
04′ 21pts 48%efg 10.o reb 2.4to 3.7fta
05′ 23pts 52%efg 12.8reb 2.4to 5.6fta
06′ 0%sf minutes
07′ 20pts 52% 10.9reb 1.8to 3.6fta
08′ stats not available
09′
tor 17pts 47% 9.1reb 2.6to 2.8fta
mia 13pts 43% 9.6reb 1.9to 2.2fta
I don’t have the data but I highly suspect he blows the average power forward away in steals as I have him at 2.4pef 48 for his career and the avg pf sits at 1.4.
If someone else is less lazy than me they can figure out his wp48 for each position.
If you disdain wins produced as a model he has a much higher PER as a PF according to 82games.com. I don’t have in depth info on any other model.
Tom Mandel
July 7, 2009
Your point is valid, but I think the problem was in how I expressed myself.
Not sure exactly what you mean by saying that WP is “derived” from eff. diff. Yes, it attempts to *explain* eff.diff. by assigning responsibility for it to the players on the team based on what they did in their time on the floor.
Basketball is a team game; the goal is to win the game (i.e. have a positive eff.diff). Given that (as you rightly point out) there is no way to assess a player’s excellence (or the relative excellence of a set of players) except with reference to this context, I think one concludes that no other assessment is *relevant.*
If there is some other way to assess a player, or compare players, that is independent of this context, than by definition it doesn’t bear on wins and losses. In that sense, for example, AI is *obviously* an extraordinary player — something anyone who watched him in his prime knew. Incredibly exciting, pound for pound amazing, etc.
This is a fact about entertainment — AI was incredibly entertaining.
But on that basis, you could trade for him as Denver did, and your team would get worse.
John W. Davis
July 10, 2009
Maybe we can trade Rip Hamilton for Carlos Boozer.
That would definitely be a steal.