According to the New York Post, “Isiah Thomas believes he’ll ultimately be judged by the development of Knicks center Eddy Curry next season.” The Knicks owner, James Dolan, has given Isiah one year to fix the Knicks and if this quote is to be believed, we can now see that the odds are not in Isiah’s favors.
Eddy Curry entered the NBA directly from high school. Had he gone to college for four seasons then Curry would have just completed his rookie season in The Association. But Curry did not follow this route, and he has now played five seasons.
What have we seen from Curry the past five seasons? Curry can definitely score. For his career he has averaged more than one point per two minutes played. And if all that mattered was scoring, Curry would be thought of as at least a future star.
But there is more to the game than scoring. Teams win because they elicit more points from their possessions than their opponent. To utilize possessions efficiently, and to prevent your opponent from doing likewise, a team has to do more than focus on scoring. Rebounds and turnovers matter. And these are two dimensions of the game where Curry does not excel.
The average NBA center will turn the ball over once every 17.3 minutes played. In Curry’s career had has turned the ball over once every 11.8 minutes. So Curry, more often than we should expect, ends a possession for his team without a score.
Beyond turnovers, Curry also has problems rebounding. The average center will capture one rebound every 3.9 minutes played. In Curry’s career he has averaged one rebound every 4.6 minutes. As we note in the book, the lack of rebounding makes it harder to end an opponent’s possession without the opponent scoring, and extend a team’s possession after a missed shot.
If we put the positives and negatives of Curry together, what do we see? For an answer look HERE. When we look at Curry’s Wins Produced per 48 minutes (WP48) and his Wins Produced across his career, we can see that Curry’s weaknesses have more than cancelled out his positives. Curry’s turnovers and lack of rebounding hurt whatever team that employs him at center.
Now it is possible that Isiah will find some magical words to change the tendencies we see in Curry’s game. Perhaps he can get Curry to focus more on rebounding. Perhaps he can get Curry to stop turning the ball over. Of course, other coaches – like Larry Brown — have no doubt tried and clearly failed. Isiah has one year to prove he can do something Brown and the other couldn’t do. But as the data suggests, if Isiah is pinning his hopes on Curry, the betting line is that Curry has a new coach this time next year.
— DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Tom Mandel
July 15, 2006
A related question: how effective do you think the Bulls moves have been? I.e. can you make a quantitative comment?
Tom Mandel
July 16, 2006
I now see that you have covered this question elsewhere…
Travis
July 16, 2006
Judging from Eddie Curry’s past productivity (or lack there of) he looks like he will fit right in with the 2006-2007 Knicks. Isiah has already built a team full of inefficient players (Marbury,Francis,Richardson just to name a few) so the adding of Curry, obviously not an intelligent move, is definetly a move that Isiah will pride himself on. When this roster fails and the Knicks blow up the team yet again one can only speculate that their next addition will be adding A.I to the roster.
-Travis
Tom Mandel
July 17, 2006
What’s with the new template, DJ? The previous design was easier to read.
dberri
July 17, 2006
Tom,
I didn’t like the old template. I thought this one looks better. This may not be the final choice, though. Any suggestions?
I am going to post again on the Bulls in 2006-07. That should go up today or tomorrow. I think they are a bit better than I originally thought with Ben Wallace.
Harold Almonte
July 17, 2006
It´s bio-psychological. The brain left side focus on measurable things like a scored point or a possesion. The most of the people don´t overlook things like team defense, triangle offense, princeton offense, etc., and whatever that means to spread the weight and results in many people, like assists, and subjectives things like not be spotted on the right place, don´t help, don´t hustle, group leadership, etc. But, to translate all of that to mathematics becomes almost impossible (+/- is a try), imagine to translate to economy. It´s more simple to look at the game like a scoring summatory: Who score more WINS, or who avoids more points WINS, and maybe some EFFICIENCY doing that.
It´s already a big thing to try to relate imperfect measurable players performance and wins, with such error margin.
Harold Almonte
July 17, 2006
Sorry for my bad (thinking in spanish) english. When I said “big thing”, I wanted to say “great thing” – “such error margin”/ “such little margin of mistake”.
Tom Mandel
July 17, 2006
Hi DJ – research seems to show that sans serif typefaces (e.g. Verdana) are easier to read online than serif faces (like Times Roman, which I think is what you are using right now).
Other than that, you know what they say – chacun a son gout. I liked the earlier tempalte; it’s one of my favorite wordpress templates. But, hey, it’s your blog!
Just finished your book, btw — good work!
Travis
July 17, 2006
DJ,
Your book was mentioned on ESPN’s Parden The Interruption today. Dan LeBatard was commenting on your stat showing how inefficient A.I was during his MVP year and he (LeBatard) mostly however agreed with you. Michael Wilbon, however, did not like your A.I stats very much. He said something similar to that, “Whoever wrote this book should be fired” and “no one should ever listen to these stat guys.” Dan LeBatad even mentioned your book by name.
-Travis Walker
dberri
July 17, 2006
Travis,
Thanks for the information. I’m pretty sure you can’t fire a college professor for saying that Allen Iverson was not the best player in the NBA when he won the MVP award.
Harold Almonte
July 18, 2006
Roland Beech (Roland Rating) made observations too, in The Berkeley Electronic Press. Look at 82games.com.