Once upon a time, Scottie Pippen was an amazing basketball paper. In seventeen seasons he produced 203.1 wins. His Wins Produced per 48 minutes [WP48] for his career was 0.237, which is well above the average mark of 0.100. In sum, he had a wonderful NBA career (emphasis on the word “had”).
If we look at his year-by-year numbers, posted in the following table, we see the classic player performance profile.
Table One: Scottie Pippen’s Career
His rookie season he was below average. In his sophomore season he became an above average performer. Further improvements were seen in seasons three and four. After season four he had a collection of extremely productive campaigns. But after posting a WP48 of 0.223 in 1999-00 (with Portland), his last four seasons were progressively worse. In his last season, back with the Chicago Bulls, he returned to what he was as a rookie.
Today he is a 41 year old ex-NBA player who wants to help an NBA team win a title. But the help he offers involves taking minutes from a current player. Given his below average level of productivity in 2003-04, exactly how would it help a team seeking an NBA title to allocate its scarce supply of minutes to such a player?
Easy answer — it probably won’t.
Here is the problem facing Pippen. In basketball, 41 is an old man. Although he can remember what it was like being a very good player (and Pippen was very good), his body is probably not going to let that happen today. And there isn’t anything Pippen can do about this fact.
Yes, if he plays only limited minutes for a team he won’t hurt his new team very much. But why should a team trying to win a title bother to give minutes to a player who can only promise “not to hurt his team too much”?
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Katie Gold
February 27, 2007
Chris Sheridan and David Thorpe have two great articles on espn.com about the Scottie Pippen comeback. I believe that he actually would be a very good fit for the Lakers, given their current situation with Radmonivic and Luke Walton out. They have a horrible point guard situation regardless, and Pippen can likely play a key passing role in the triangle offense, which he knows very well. And he wouldnt cut into anyone’s minutes, because there is really no one right now who is fulfilling that role. I think the move could definitely improve the team and possibly bump them to a 4 or 5 seed.
Rashad
February 28, 2007
Random question. Does PAWSmin follow anything close to a normal distribution? Since zero is average, it would be useful to know what the standard deviation is so we can see just how good a player is/was. I’m sure a .14 PAWSmin is great, but just how great is it?
Matthew Dalton
February 28, 2007
Excuse me, could someone please explain the strange thing about win-score that a field goal attempt is just as bad as a turnover? How does this possibly make sense?
anon
February 28, 2007
I think the intuitive explanation is that both tend to terminate a possession and the most important thing in a game, under the DBerri paradigm, is to use your possessions efficiently.
Note that if you’re field goal attempt is successful, you’re not penalized and get an additional point added to your win score.
Mark T
February 28, 2007
41 year old Cliff Robinson can barely move so why should 41 year old Scottie Pippen be any different? I don’t see how Scottie could perform at a meaningful level in the Western Conf playoffs with all the uptempo offenses out there.
The Franchise
February 28, 2007
Katie-
“Bump them to a 4 or 5 seed”? This would require making up four games on Houston to get the 5 seed, and six to also catch Utah for the #4. Even if Pippen can offer more than a player he could supplant, it’s doubtful that his WP could reach 4 greater than whoever he replaces in only 24 games. Hopes of LA reaching a middle seed rely heavily on continued injury trouble for the Rockets (or Spurs). Continued injury trouble for the Jazz could give them home-court, even as a #5 seed, too.
That’s too many “what if” statements to be probable. The point differential for the Lakers thus far this season suggests that they will continue to play at about the same pace, and finish with the #6 seed they deserve. As I see it, getting the #5 seed is less likely for the Lakers than slipping to #7 or #8.
anon
February 28, 2007
totally unrelated to this post:
Reading your post on the Miami Heat, I noticed the Kapono discussion in the comments. Looking at his numbers, it seems obvious why he has a poor WP48 (can’t do anything besides score efficiently). But then I remembered that you’ve written several times about how Brent Barry is one of the most productive Spurs. Although, his numbers aren’t much better than Kapono’s. What explains Barry’s productivity and Kapono’s lack of productivity?
dberri
February 28, 2007
For a post I threw together in a minute yesterday afternoon, this generated some comments. I think anon re-iterated the explanation of field goal attempts and turnovers. One issue to remember, if you lower the value of field goal attempts you then run into the problem of a player being able to increase his value simply by taking more shots. Of course, I would once again add, it is not a valid argument to change the value of a stat simply because you think “it doesn’t look right.” You have to try a bit harder than this.
About Brent Barry and Jason Kapano. One difference is that Barry is a shooting guard while Kapono plays small forward. If we look at the individual stats — about the same in shooting efficiency, rebounds, and turnovers. Where they differ is in assists and personal fouls. Barry is better with respect to both of these issues.
Rashad,
One of the problems with any simple measure is that it lacks intuition. When I say a player produced X number of wins, we can know what that means because we know how many players there are and how many wins a good team will produce. Win Score and PAWS lack that intuition. I think if you look over the Scottie Pippen table you start to get an idea which PAWSmin translates into a “good” performance by simply looking at the corresponding WP48.
Matthew Dalton
February 28, 2007
Okay but this still doesn’t equate that a field goal attempt is as bad as a turnover. The shot could go in, or there could be an offensive rebound – both much better than a turnover.
Also, as has been argued before, taking a lot of shots is a heavy burden to bear, so perhaps the incentives for scoring seen in the NBA are appropriate, or at least not so out of wack as Dberri suggests.
dberri
February 28, 2007
Matthew,
You are including in the value of a field goal attempt the value of other events. You need to isolate just the field goal attempt, not the points (which are credited to the player when they occur) or the offensive rebounds (which are also credited).
How heavy of a burden is it to take shots? Has this been documented, estimated, etc…? There is an argument that if these high volume shooters left a team that the remaining players wouldn’t take shots. Is that what happened with Iverson left the 76ers? Have people documented a team that just dribbles around in circles until the shot clock expires becuase no one is willing to take shots?