And last (and probably not least) we have the Utah Jazz. With this discussion of the Utah Jazz in 2005-06, the review of the NBA last season is concluded.
Although the Jazz are the last team reviewed, players employed by Utah have already been the subject of previous entries in this forum. For example, one of the very first posts in The Wages of Wins Journal discussed the retirement of Greg Ostertag, a long-time above average role player for the Jazz.
More recently a discussion of Andrei Kirilenko was offered. The discussion focused on the following quote from Arn Tellem, the agent for Al Harrington:
“Al is going to be an extremely valuable addition wherever he lands,” Tellem said. “He has already cemented himself as one of the NBA’s up-and-coming young stars.” Tellem said Harrington is much like Utah’s Andrei Kirilenko — someone who can play multiple positions and is effective on both ends of the court.”
As noted earlier, this statement is just difficult to comprehend. It is the equivalent of Jon Kitna’s agent arguing that is client is every bit the same quarterback as Peyton Manning.
Per 48 minutes Kirilenko produced 0.295 wins, a mark well above the 0.100 Wins Produced per 48 minute [WP48] offered by the average player (for those who did not see the very brief review of the Atlanta Hawks, Harrington was well below average last year). Of players who played 2,000 minutes last year, only seven players – Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Ben Wallace, Shawn Marion, Steve Nash, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade – were more productive per-minute played.
The difficulty with Kirilenko is not the numbers he posts per-minute, but his number of minutes. Yes, he did play 2,606 minutes. But he missed 13 games and over the past two seasons has not played in 54 games. And no matter how talented a player you might be, if you are not on the court you are not helping.
This is the same story one can tell about Carlos Boozer. Boozer – a second round draft choice in 2002 – has produced 36.7 wins thus far in his career. His career WP48 is 0.237. To put that in perspective, Yao Ming – the first player taken in 2002 – has produced 45.7 wins and posted a 0.231 career WP48. Amare Stoudemire’s best season was 2004-05 when he posted a WP48 of 0.225. Yes, one could argue that Boozer has thus far been the top player in the 2002 class.
There is one problem with this argument. After only missing six games in two years with Cleveland, he has missed 80 games the past two years in Utah. Like Kirilenko, Boozer has trouble getting on the court.
Had Kirilenko and Boozer played all 82 games last year the Jazz could have won as many as ten additional games last season. Clearly the loss of these two players hurt this team.
The loss of Kirilenko and Boozer was somewhat mitigated by the fact that Utah had other above average players in the frontcourt. Mehmut Okur, Matt Harpring, and Greg Ostertag were all above average performers last year. In fact, all the above average players employed by the Jazz (who played significant minutes) were at either a forward or the center position.
This means that the backcourt was where this team had problems. Utah had a chance to add Chris Paul in the 2005 draft, who produced 18.0 wins for the New Orleans Jazz (I mean Hornets, but shouldn’t it be Jazz?). But the Jazz took Deron Williams, who produced 0.9 wins. Had the Jazz taken Paul, and Boozer and Kirilenko stayed healthy, this team could have had three players with a WP48 in excess of 0.200. As noted in the discussion of the Washington Wizards, teams need at least one player above this mark to seriously contend for a title. And the Jazz could have had three.
But the Jazz didn’t take Paul. And Kirilenko and Boozer were not always on the court.
In 2006-07 life can be a bit better. No, the Hornets are not going to trade Paul for Williams. But Kirilenko and Boozer might play the entire season. The team also added Derek Fisher, who is actually a below average guard. But he is not quite as far below average as many of the guards Utah employed last year.
Given that Fisher was the only significant move Utah made, it looks like this team will go as far as its frontcourt can take it. That might be to the playoffs. But unless Deron Williams becomes as productive as Chris Paul, this team will probably not contend with the best in the west in 06-07.
– DJ
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
Wins Produced and Win Score are Discussed in the Following Posts
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Wages of Wins Journal 
Jason
October 28, 2006
It’s interesting that the discrepancy between actual wins and statistical sum wins for the Jazz is so large. You didn’t seem to present that in your summary, though it’s rather striking and I think it’s the real story of the Jazz in 05-06. They had a large differential by other statistical approximations (e.g. Pythagorean W-L) as well, all of which predicted that they should have won 7 to 10 fewer games than they did.
You mentioned that had they had more minutes from Boozer and Kirilenko they may have won as many as 10 more games. I think it’s important to point out that what you’re really saying is that they could have summed as many as 10 additional wins as computed by the “wins produced” sum of statistics. While the correlation may regularly be rather good, these aren’t actual wins but virtual wins.
Ten such virtual wins as computed by “wins produced” that puts them a couple or three of wins ahead of their actual record. This assumes that not only would they have gotten the production out of these players but they’d also have maintained whatever intangible they had (luck?) that allowed them to have as good a record as they did with as slanted a statistical season as they had.
Do teams that exceed their expected W-L total based on statistics regress towards the mean of the approximation estimates or is there something truly “intangible” (or not yet accounted for in the present models) that they can carry over?
dberri
October 28, 2006
Jason,
This is the best way to think about the error. We are looking at these teams via aggregate season statistics for the players and the teams. These statistics are broken into 82 games. The stats from each game do not carry over, so large blowout wins and losses can distort the aggregate picture. For most teams, these distortions even out and actual wins and losses match closely to wins produced. For a few teams, like the Jazz, the distortions do not even out. And so we get a larger error.
Jason
October 29, 2006
I understand how the approximations of records get skewed when teams win or lose “the close ones” more often than not.
But my point was more that *given that the Jazz overperformed based on their statistics, there’s as great a chance that Kirilenko and/or Boozer wouldn’t have really improved the team as much as their raw numbers would suggest in isolation. They would have contributed stats, but some of those would be applied in the “close ones” that the Jazz already won and it’s unlikely that they would have realized as many wins the individual stats that either Kirilenko or Boozer would have contributed would, in isolation, predict.
dberri
October 29, 2006
Jason,
I think I w0uld agree with that point. I would also build upon what I said in the post. The strength of the team is where Kirilenko and Boozer play. So these players were replaced by others that were also somewhat productive. Given these points, had Kirilenko and Boozer been healthy this team would probably not have won 50 games.
Moors of Utah
September 8, 2008
It’s weird I came across this post and now realize how far the Jazz have come along the last few years. Obviously, it’s all because of Deron Williams, but it’s still amazing.