Last week I posted a less than serious examination of the best NBA players to graduate from the University of Arizona. The post was a response to the assertion from Gilbert Arenas that he was the best Arizona Wildcat in the Association. As occasionally happens, Henry Abbott – whose mission in life is to report all things basketball (a good mission to have) – linked to the Arizona alumni post at TrueHoop.
The day after the Arenas post appeared I wrote a more serious post – albeit in a delightfully lighthearted fashion (well, I tried to at least) – examining NCAA President Myles Brand’s claim that the vast majority of Division I programs do not make a profit. I found Brand’s argument to be, to put it mildly, misleading. Once again, Abbott – who brought the Arenas assertion and the Brand argument to my attention earlier in the week – noteed my post.
So here we have two posts that are mentioned at ESPN’s TrueHoop. One would expect that given the same attention to two posts we would see a similar result with respect to viewership.
Well, at least that’s what I would expect. But this is not what happened. In the day after Abbott’s link to the Arenas story appeared, WordPress reported more than 10,000 page views of that story. As of now, page views on this post have now surpassed the 12,000 mark. The previous record for page views of a single story at the WoW Journal was held by The Tragedy of Kevin Garnett, a story that has been viewed by nearly 9,000 people since it first appeared in May, 2006. The Arenas story broke the KG record in less than 24 hours.
The story of Brand and the NCAA, though, was not quite as popular. As of now, less than 400 people have viewed this column. Yes, the story on “who is the best Arizona alumni” – which is best described as “not important” – was read by thousands. A story where I argue that the President of the NCAA has made a misleading statement regarding the financial health of Division I athletics, is hardly noticed.
So what lesson have I learned? Clearly people want less than serious stories examining such issues as “who is the best?” And as is often said in show business, you have to give the people what they want.
Such a mandate tells me that the path ahead at the WoW Journal is clear. There are currently more than 300 colleges and universities in the NCAA. Given the interest in the Arizona alumni column, for about the next year I will be looking at one school each day. At 10,000 page views per day, this means the WoW Journal will see page views pass the 3 million mark in the next year and this forum will certainly become one of the top five business and economics sites (there is an attempt at humor somewhere in this paragraph. At the end of the column we will get to this).
The Michigan Alumni
Let me start with the school I started following as a child. Basketball-Reference.com tells us that 37 graduates of the University of Michigan have logged time in the NBA. In examining the Arizona graduates I only focused on those who played at least 1,000 minutes. For the Michigan alumni we need to add another restriction. Prior to the 1977-78 season, turnovers were not tracked for individual players. Prior to the 1973-74 campaign, steals, offensive and defensive rebounds, and blocked shots were also not reported for players. Consequently, players who played all (or most of their career) before these seasons cannot be examined. For Michigan this means we cannot examine the careers of Cazzie Russell, Bob Harrison, George Lee, Ollie Darden, C.J. Kupec, Craig Dill, and John Clawson.
Despite these issues, we are still left with 21 Michigan alumni, a list that includes Chris Webber, Glen Rice, Rudy Tomjanovich, Juwon Howard, and Campy Russell. Which of these players was the greatest Wolverine ever to play in the NBA? For now, I just want to focus on these five players. These are the only five alumni of Michigan to have a career scoring average of 15 points per game or more (well, Cazzie Russell also surpassed the 15 points per game mark, but we don’t have complete data on his career). And since we know that scoring is “the determinant” of player value (regular readers of this forum would read that as a joke), clearly the best player must come from these five (regular readers of this forum probably guess from that statement that the most productive Wolverine must not among these five).
Table One: Five Michigan Graduates
As Table One indicates, if all we focused on was scoring, then Chris Webber is clearly the best Wolverine. With a per game average of 20.9, Webber is the only Michigan player to surpass the 20 points-per-game mark.
Next on the list is Glen Rice, who has scored more points than any other Michigan alumni. And unlike the other four players listed, is the only player to win an NBA title. A few of the more than 50 comments on the Arizona alumni post argued that championships won is the best indicator of player quality. And if this were true (and I think it’s not), then Rice is the best player.
Of course points scored and championships won is not too “sophisticated”. What about NBA Efficiency? When we turn to NBA Efficiency, we still see Webber on top. But now Juwan Howard takes the second spot. I don’t know the extent that Webber, Howard, and Jalen Rose debate who the best Fab Five player has been in the NBA, but from the perspective of points scored and NBA Efficiency it looks like Howard has bested Rose (although neither are better than Webber).
The Wins Produced Story
The Fab Five have already been discussed in this forum, and that discussion indicated that Howard has actually been a very unproductive NBA player. So at least with respect to Howard, NBA Efficiency and points scored may not be the best picture of player quality.
So we turn to Wins Produced. First, let’s take a slight detour and briefly review a bit of history for the Dallas Mavericks. In 1986-87 and 1987-88 the Dallas Mavericks were in contention in the Western Conference, winning more than 50 games each season. In 1988-89, though, the team only won 38 games. The next season the Mavericks rebounded with 47 victories. However, from 1990-91 to 1993-94 the Mavericks averaged less than 20 victories a season. Then in 1994-95 the Mavericks won 36 contests, only to return to an average of less than 24 wins per season over the next three campaigns.
Let’s recap: the Mavericks were good in 1986-87, 1987-88, and 1989-90 and appear to have a brief rebound in 1994-95. What do these four seasons have in common? These were the only years that Roy Tarpley played more than 1,000 minutes in a season during his brief and troubled career.
Now I need to emphasize, we cannot attribute these wild swings in the Mavericks performances over a decade solely to the presence or absence of Tarpley. Still, these swings are evidence that Tarpley – when he was on the court – was a very good basketball player.
When we look at Wins Produced this is the story we tell. Like I did in looking at the Arizona alumni, I am considering Wins Produced per 82 games. For his career Webber has averaged 11.2 wins per 82 games. No, Webber has never played even 80 games in a single season. But he has played more than 70 on six different occasions. In contrast, Tarpley only surpassed 70 games twice in his career. Still, per 82 games, Tarpley – with an average of 12.7 wins – ranks as the top Michigan alumni. Which makes his tragic career all the more tragic. Mavericks fans, as well as NBA fans in general, have to wonder what might have been.
What of the other Michigan graduates?
Table Two: Ranking Michigan Alumni
After Tarpley and Webber, the next three on the list are Loy Vaught, Tomjanovich, and Rickey Green. Tomjanovich was probably a bit better than Vaught, but his career started in 1971 so I could not consider his first three seasons in calculating Wins Produced. In looking over what numbers are reported for these first three years, though, it’s likely that Tomjanovich’s career marks were better than Vaught.
When we look immediately past the top five we see Rice and Campy Russell, two players in the top five in both points and NBA Efficiency. But you have to look down to the 15th spot to the name Juwan Howard. Yes, as indicated earlier, Howard has not been a very effective NBA player. Yes he can score. But he really does nothing else well.
Okay, that’s the Michigan story. Again, for the next year this is all I am going to talk about. So sit back and enjoy these stories.
Yes, I am joking. I am not seriously going to do this kind of story over and over again for the next year. I would much rather talk about Myles Brand and have 300 page views than talk about “who is the best” kind of questions and have 10,000. So don’t count on more “who is the best alumni stories”. Not that I will never do this again, but there are more stories we can tell than just this. For my sake, there damn well better be.
– 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
Brett
August 27, 2007
I’ve gotten one link from TrueHoop ( I felt like a big shot that day) and was somewhere between the results on traffic that you experienced, with a little over 2000 hits within the first day. My column that got mention was the best lineups used by the Charlotte Bobcats in one game from this past season. Despite more in depth articles since, that would provide a reader with much more valuable information, I have not been able to secure another link from Henry. What I notice is what you observed: People are more interested in the light hearted, humorous articles, so that is the majority of what TrueHoop links to.
For my part, I really enjoy your blog and check every day for a new post (and I’ve read both of the articles mentioned, and actually found the article on Brand much more interesting). Keep it up.
Ben
August 27, 2007
“Such a mandate tells me that the path ahead at the WoW Journal is clear.”
No, No, No. Please stick with what you do best. A steady diet of who is the best at (insert random school) would be stupefying. I’m sure that the only reason your Arizona article got the attention it did is because Arenas has made such a big deal out of it.
B
August 27, 2007
Last night’s Olympic qulaifying game aptly illustrated what is lacking from your forumla. That is real defense, on-ball defensive measures. Last night Kobe Bryant allowed Leandro Barbosa 1-7 shooting, and when Bryant was guarding him, he couldn’t even get the ball, he’d pick him up at half court, Barbosa would try to get the ball for about 7 seconds and then end up giving up and standing in the corner. Now part of this is the coaches fault for not then making Barbosa the point so that there best scorer could touch the ball because no one else had a chance either, and Barbosa has proven he can score in the NBA at an efficient clip. But that’s where the game was won. With on-ball defense, as it is with all these games. (And with shooting effeiciency.) The US barely outrebounded Brazil, and turned the ball over at the same rate, but they limited everyone on Brazil’s efficiency. That’s what is missing, shooting efficiency isn’t something that someone just has, it is an effect of the defense played upon them for the vast majority of basketball players in this world.
The only player who statistically had a good game was Tiago Splitter and if you actually watch it really wasn’t very good. He gets defensively abused by almost everyone he plays aside from a single block when Amare Stoudemire, believeing he was pre-injury Amare Stoudemire tried to posterize him with 2 hands instead of one, while taking off from way outside the lane. For example, Carmelo’s utter destruction of Brazil took part largely when he was guarded by Splitter.
The other problem with your formula is also on display if you look at Jason Kidd’s rebounding numbers. Playing with actual players who can rebound on his team, even against sub standard competition, his rebounding rates are way down. That is, he’s a good rebounding point guard, but he only rebounds so well throughout his career, and especially last year, because only once has he ever played with a good rebounder (Shawn Marion in 2000-2001) and even then Marion was the only player besides Kidd who even rebounded averagely for his position. Their center was Clifford Robinson. That is, a great rebounding point guard doesn’t rebound at such a rate if he’s on a team populated by big men that can actually rebound. When you add the fact that Jason Kidd is now slow, though he doesn’t look it against these players, and can no longer affect another player’s effciency like he once could, that is, he gets taken often on defense now, and you have one of the more overrated players in the league by everyone. Of course, his poor defense is suppressed statistically by the fact that the Nets employ big men that can’t guard any of the even semi-elite big men in the league, but look at the splits, he almost certainly has no positive on ball defensive effect (which agrees with my eyes) and gives up quite a few fantastically efficient shooting days to players like D. Williams, T. Parker, Steve Nash-who destroyed NJ, Andre Miller, C. Paul, Mo Williams, C. Billups (who in the Cleveland series even ahd problems against big defenders), J. Terry/D. Harris, K. Hinrich/B. Gordon. He’s certainly no longer a great defender, and as such must be in some way costing his team wins on that side of the ball.
mrparker
August 27, 2007
B,
1. Everyone’s rebounds are down. Lebron had
2 rebounds last night.
2. On the ball defense is useless without
someone to cleanup the misses, so all of
Kobe’s defense doesn’t matter without
the right players around him.
3. Kidd’s assist numbers are way up
because all those rebounders are also
great at catching alley oops. There
were 16 made baskets while he was on the
floor. 5 assists were credited to kidd. Thats
over 30% a very high number.
4. For the most part when a teammate
is taking away from aspect of another
teammates numbers that energy usually is
realized elsewhere. Especially when
considering a great player.
mrparker
August 27, 2007
ps-
Jason Kidd’s per 40 min stats
8 reb
12 assist
2.67 steals
2.67 blocks
66% fg shooting
Every one of these numbers is above
what he did in the NBA for his career
What is your point about Kidd?