In the midst of the NBA conference finals – contested between four small market teams – a big mouth from a big market decided to speak up. Kobe Bryant announced this week that he is disappointed with the Lakers attempt to rebuild a title contender around his talents, and now he wants a trade. No, wait… now he doesn’t want a trade. Okay, we don’t know what he wants, but we do know he’s unhappy.
The problem may be that Kobe was just a bit spoiled by how easy the NBA was earlier in his career. Kobe entered the league in 1996 out of high school. With Shaquille O’Neal as his teammate, the Lakers won 70% of their regular season contests — and three titles — in Kobe’s first eight seasons. In the summer of 2004, though, the team trade Shaq to the Miami Heat. As detailed in The Wages of Wins (specifically in the chapters entitled “Shaq and Kobe” and “Who’s The Best?”), in 2004-05 the Lakers only won 34 contests. This was the worst performance by the Lakers since 1993-94, and the second worst performance by this franchise since 1974-75. The 1993-94 season came in the post-Magic/pre-Shaq era (1991-95) while the 74-75 campaign was the year before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came to LA. The Lakers had historically been led to victory by major stars, and the failure of this team to win with Kobe suggested that maybe he wasn’t one of those “major stars.”
After 2004-05, though, the Lakers with Kobe did improve, suggesting that Kobe might indeed be a “major star” that can lead the Lakers back to glory. Unfortunately, although the team improved, the team hardly found regular season or post-season glory. The regular season success is detailed in the following table.
Table One: The LA Lakers in 2005-06 and 2006-07
The Lakers won 45 games in 2005-06. Of these, 14.3 could be linked to the performance of Kobe. This past season the team won 42 contests. Again, Kobe led the way with 15.3. In both seasons the Lakers won more than half their contests, still no one believed the Lakers were among the very best in the NBA.
Although the Lakers have been bounced two consecutive seasons in the first round, there is actually not much that separates this team from teams like the Utah Jazz and Houston Rockets. In fact, there are two specific reasons why the Lakers were unable to cross the 50 win threshold that seems to separate the contenders from the pretenders in the NBA.
The Injury Excuse
It is often said that injuries are no excuse. Of course, injuries are “the excuse.” Clothes do not win games. People win games. If you change the people in the clothes, you change the outcome of the games.
The three most productive players on the Lakers in 2006-07 were Kobe, Lamar Odom, and Luke Walton. Odom and Walton, though, missed 48 games combined. What if these players were each able to play all 82 games?
Let’s start with Odom. It’s possible that Odom’s injury problems caused his Wins Produced per 48 minutes [WP48] to decline from a stellar 0.210 in 2005-06 to a respectable (although not stellar) 0.158 in 2006-07. If Odom played all 82 games and produced as he did in 2005-06, the Lakers would have won an estimated 6.5 additional games this past year.
And then there is Walton. If he was available the full season, the Lakers could have captured about 2.2 more wins. So when we erase the injuries to Odom and Walton we see a Lakers team that goes from 41.2 Wins Produced to 49.9.
Getting a Point
Beyond the injury problem is the production the Lakers received from the point guard spot. Of the 49 point guards who played at least 1,000 minutes this past season, only Speedy Claxton and Sebastian Telfair offered a lower WP48 than Smush Parker. Unlike Claxton and Telfair, though, Parker started virtually every game for the Lakers this past season. It was not until the very end of the season that the Lakers finally decided that his anemic production was not helping the team win games.
Parker was a slightly above average player the previous season. If he could have maintained this performance, or if the Lakers simply found another average point guard (average WP48 is 0.100), the Lakers could have won four or five additional contests.
If you combine the injury problems with the decline in Parker’s productivity, you see the Lakers could have won about twelve more games this year. This mark would have rivaled the Rockets for the fourth best record in the West. In other words, had Odom and Walton played the entire season and Parker not fallen so far so fast, it’s possible that the Lakers could have been at least the fifth seed. And if the Lakers, like the Jazz, defeated the Rockets in the first round (and eliminated the Warriors in the second), then Bryant this week would have been in the conference finals. Of course, he would have probably been losing. But at least he wouldn’t be in the papers demanding, or not demanding, a trade.
Driven to Win or Deserving to Win
There are a few more observations I wish to make on this episode, including Peter Vescey’s report that the Lakers might consider trading for Jermaine O’Neal (a bad idea) and Bryant’s suggestion that Jerry West could “fix” the Lakers (although what West did in Memphis this past year was not impressive). But I wish to limit myself to about 1,000 words, so all I have room for is this last observation.
There is a difference between being “driven to win” and a feeling that you “deserve to win.”
Kobe is not a tennis player. He’s a basketball player. And despite LeBron’s efforts last night, one player does not win a basketball game. Teams win basketball games.
As a basketball player, Kobe can control how well he plays. And when we look at his career, we see he plays very well. But as we saw with Kevin Garnett (who is much more productive than Kobe), one great player cannot win consistently by himself.
My sense is that it’s okay for Bryant to drive himself to be the best player possible. But his demand to have better teammates strikes me as less than consistent with being a good teammate. Productive teammates are relatively scarce in the NBA. And Kobe can demand such teammates all he wants, but such demands are not going to change the short supply of quality players.
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Moose
June 1, 2007
Maybe 300 words can get it done some times but often to present a case in meaningful depth a 1000 or more are needed.
82games counterpart data (imperfect) raises question is Bryant better at SF than SG?
Would Lakers? Should Walton be signed and traded for a PG or SG? This is first year of a large % of Kobe’s time showing up at SF at 82 games but past data also shows him better at SF.
I’d talk about whether Kobe could do more to improve teammates but dont have anything unique to add at the moment.
Troy
June 1, 2007
Hey Dave,
People are talking about Lebron’s game as one of the greatest in NBA playoff history. Can we validate in terms of Win Score? I also wonder what his Win Score as a percentage of the teams’ overall Win Score is.
(Hope I’m right that WinScore is the right metric for single-game analysis.)
dberri
June 1, 2007
Troy,
Okay I looked. His Win Score was 19 last night, which gives him a per-minute Win Score for the game of 0.380. In game three of the series he had a Win Score of 18, but since he played fewer minutes, his Win Score per-minute was 0.391. So one could argue that LeBron’s performance last night was not even the best perfomance by LeBron in the past week.
Last year in the NBA Finals, Dwyane Wade posted a per-minute Win Score of 0.453 in game three and 0.411 in the deciding game six. So Wade has had better games as well.
You must remember, though, that I am a Pistons fan. So I might not be the most objective observer of LeBron at the moment.
Steve Walters
June 2, 2007
Re: “…despite LeBron’s efforts last night, one player does not win a basketball game. Teams win basketball games.” Agreed.
But this relates to a very badly expressed LeBron-related comment that I left on the WNBA post yesterday, so let me clarify. I did NOT mean to imply that “one-man teams” are typically successful (though I knew as soon as I clicked “submit” that it would be taken that way).
What I meant to say is that hoops and baseball are wildly different in terms of the extent to which a match-up advantage (sometimes, though not always, related to the presence of a superstar) can be exploited. This is true both offensively and defensively, and it can have important implications for competitive balance in the two sports.
In baseball, I may have the best hitter in history, but I only get to send him up to the plate 1/9th of the time (and then my opponent might walk him!). In hoops, obviously, I get to run up to 100% of my plays through a player who can offensively dominate his match-up–and if the opposition double- or triple-teams him, then his supporting cast will benefit with more open looks. If I have a defensive whiz in baseball, I can hope a lot of balls are hit his way, but I can’t do any more than hope. But in hoops I can throw that whiz into the teeth of the other team’s offense with far greater frequency.
I submit this explains some of the NBA’s competitive balance problems. Sure, we can say it’s about supply issues with respect to the kinds of elite players who create exploitable match-up problems. But I’m not sure the shape of the distribution of talent is any different in baseball than it is in basketball. In the latter, however, the nature of the game is such that the guys at the extreme tail of the distribution can have a much bigger impact on outcomes.
Ergo, baseball is a more “egalitarian” sport. The rules diminish the importance of the guys at the extreme tail of the skill distribution, and increase the importance of the rest. In hoops, it’s the opposite; elite talent is much more important in hoops. I’m not arguing that’s bad–just pointing out it’s different.
dberri
June 2, 2007
Steve,
First of all, you don’t get paid for commenting on the comment section. You have to write stuff I can actually post.
About this comment… this is the short supply of tall people argument. If the NBA were a 6 feet and under league, what LeBron did would be much more difficult. The players would be much closer in ability and one person could not just “take over” the game. But because the NBA prizes height, big players dominate. And that population is very, very small. Consequently the difference between a player like LeBron and everyone else is much larger.
Steve Walters
June 2, 2007
Well, Dave, my indifference to where I post my blather is totally consistent with the price incentives you’ve given me…
Anyway, perhaps because I’m bitter about those incentives, I shall be argumentative: I think my comment is the “short supply” argument + more.
Consider Tiny Archibald. Most men in this country are taller than Tiny was/is. He’s listed as 6-1, but don’t believe it: I stood next to Tiny Archibald in his prime–and looked down at him from my 6-0 vantage point.
Few, however, could play like him. My point is that his employers could exploit Tiny’s skills to a far greater extent than in baseball or, indeed, any other sport. In ’72-’73, for example, the Kings’ offense revolved around Tiny: he took (and made) 28% of his team’s shots from the field and accounted for 43% of its assists.
That would be like letting A-Rod bat every inning or sending Big Papi up there whenever there’re runners on.
The thing is, I suspect (but cannot prove) A-Rod or Papi have skills that are every bit as rare as Tiny had, or LeBron has. But the rules of their games differ, and as a result their productivities will differ. No baseball player has ever or will ever account for as much of his team’s output of wins as an elite hoopster–and it’s not just because of supply issues, but because of supply + rules issues.
If you said all that in WoW, I apologize for my faulty memory, for being trite, and for being argumentative. But, hey, the Sox lost to the Evil Empire last night…
The Franchise
June 2, 2007
Just to nitpick: if the Lakers had finished with the fourth-best record in the Western Conference (ahead of Houston), they would have faced the Utah Jazz, rather than the Rockets. Certainly a much more winnable series than facing the Suns or Spurs, though.
dberri
June 2, 2007
Franchise,
Your right. Jazz were the fourth seed (although Houston had the fourth best record).
Sports Geek
May 29, 2009
Check out this blog: http://thesportsdebates.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/the-nba-championship-debate-–-its-kobes-time/
There’s a debate about who will win the NBA Finals. This guys says the Lakers!