Who is the best player in the NBA? The search for the best typically begins with the best team. This year, the best team is the Boston Celtics. And the best player on that team is Kevin Garnett. So should KG be MVP?
Sportswriters – the people charged with choosing the MVP – appear confused by KG’s candidacy. Certainly they see that Boston is on the verge of the biggest turn-around in NBA history. And just as certainly, people understand that it’s Garnett who is the most responsible for Boston’s ascension to the top of the league.
Given these facts, why does it appear that Garnett is lagging in the MVP polls? The problem is in the numbers. KG is posting the following per-game averages:
18.9 points
9.4 rebounds
3.5 assists
1.4 steals
1.3 blocked shots
Certainly these are “nice” numbers. But how can the MVP in the league fail to average at least 20 points per game, or double figures in rebounds or assists? After all, this same player had the following career averages heading into this season:
20. 5 points per game
11.4 rebounds
4.5 assists
1.4 steals
1.7 blocked shots
Garnett has been at least a 20-10 guy in every season since 1998-99. Since his numbers have “clearly” declined this season, how can anyone vote KG as MVP in an apparent down year for him?
The Playing Time Illusion
Last year Eddy Curry was considered a much improved player. As I noted, though, all that had really change was Curry’s minutes. On a per-minute basis he was actually a worse player.
The playing-time illusion is not just confined to Curry. Mikki Moore was able to cash in on this illusion with the Sacramento Kings last summer.
Garnett’s story is characterized by the same illusion. But for him, this illusion is not providing any benefits.
For his career Garnett has averaged 38.3 minutes per game. This season his minutes per game have fallen to 33.5. As a result, Garnett’s per game averages in a number of stats have also fallen.
What would KG’s numbers look like, though, if he went back to playing 38 minutes a game? The answer is in Table One.
From Table One we see that KG would have the following per-game averages if his minutes per game had not declined.
21.7 points
10.8 rebounds
4.0 assists
1.6 steals
1.5 blocked shots
Would these numbers help KG’s candidacy? I think if KG was once again a 20-10 player he would be the favorite for the MVP award. But because sportswriters are missing the obvious — in other words, per-minute numbers are a better barometer than per-game stats — Garnett has become the John Edwards (or Mitt Romney depending on your persuasion) of the 2008 NBA MVP vote.
Has Garnett Declined?
Okay, KG looks better if he played more minutes. But exactly how does his performance – on a per-minute basis – compare to his past?
For an answer we turn to Table Two.
Table Two: The Boston Celtics after 75 Games
Table Two offers two projections of the Celtics. The first looks at how many wins we could expect if each of the Celtics (except the rookies) played as well as they did last year. The second looks at how each player has played this year.
Judging by last year’s numbers, the Celtics should have expected to win 54 of their first 75 games (or 59 for the season). This year the team has done even better. Although many players have improved a bit, about half of the leap forward can be tied to the play of Kendrick Perkins. Perkins only posted a 0.042 WP48 last season. In 2005-06, though, his mark was 0.156. Had we known Perkins was going to return to his form from two years ago we would have forecasted 64 wins for Boston this year.
Like Perkins, KG has also improved. Yes, although his per-game numbers are lower, his per minute – or per 48 minute – production has increased slightly. Last year KG posted a 0.330 WP48. This season, primarily due to improvements in his shooting efficiency, Garnett is posting a 0.361 WP48. Such a mark leads the Celtics. So Garnett is indeed the most productive player on the best team.
KG for M2P?
But is Garnett the Most Productive Player (M2P)? His lack of minutes is going to hurt his wins production. If we focus on WP48, though, we see ….. okay, he is not the leader there either.
No, I don’t think KG is the most productive player in the league. I will say he is more productive than Kobe Byrant (just had to mention that). And Garnett is more productive than all but two or three other players (and maybe next week I will talk about the leaders). The MVP and M2P awards, though, can only go to one player. So if one player offers more than you, then you are probably not the best choice for the M2P award (of course MVP is not defined so it is hard to say if KG is not really the best choice).
A Summary
To summarize, if the MVP and the M2P are the same player, I don’t think KG should be MVP this year. I do think, though, that he should be a significant part of the MVP conversation. But the obsession with per-game stats is stealing some of Garnett’s thunder.
Let me close by noting that I don’t think that people should solely look at WP48 or just per-minute stats. If you did that, Jerome James – who posted a 1.341 WP48 – would have been the first half MVP. James, though, only played five minutes in the first half of the season, so his WP48 doesn’t really mean much.
Although I do think people need to look at more than per-minute numbers, I also think people need to stop focusing solely on the per-game stats. Specifically, when we are looking at players who played at least 30 minutes a contest, we shouldn’t penalize players whose minutes are closer to 30 than to 40. Such penalties — as we see in the case of KG — can easily cause us to miss the obvious.
– DJ
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
The Technical Notes at wagesofwins.com provides substantially more information on the published research behind Wins Produced and Win Score
Wins Produced, Win Score, and PAWSmin are also discussed in the following posts:
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics
Finally, A Guide to Evaluating Models contains useful hints on how to interpret and evaluate statistical models.
Wages of Wins Journal 
Faizan Hassan
April 4, 2008
I discovered your website today via a link from somewhere during my daily foray through NBA news at about 5 PM. It’s 4 AM now and I’ve spent the greater part of the last 11 hours reading through stuff on your website. No joke. Excellent work, thanks for putting this information online, I look forward to reading your book as soon as I can get my hands on it.
I do have a question for you, however. Knowing what you do about win score and player productivity, how do you (or do you) listen to the conventional media and their debates on MVP candidates, the values of players, etc? I would think you would no longer regard these discussions as valid. Is that true? I ask this question because I was just listening to one of Bill Simmon’s podcasts and heard him discuss Kobe as a top-3 MVP candidate. Having read your earlier post about Kobe not being the MVP, I smacked myself in the head and fast forwarded about 20 minutes.
Another question I have is one regarding pace. Does win score take into account the pace of the team the player is playing on? If this question is answered in your book, you don’t have to answer it and I will find out when I read it.
Thanks, once again, for your work. I hope you continue it for a long time to come.
Tim
April 4, 2008
Thanks, Professor! I guess all those blow outs where Garnett sat in the fourth quarter took their toll. But Garnett doesn’t seem to care.
I look forward to the M2P award. Will the ceremony be televised? ;-)
Ben Guest
April 4, 2008
I predict the M2P will be Marcus Camby.
Tball
April 4, 2008
A statistic making the rounds in Boston over the past week is that players defended by KG (presumably PFs sharing the court when KG is in the game) are shooting 13% below the league average for their position. The other players in the MVP discussion, for comparison, all have the players they defend shooting within 3-5% of the league average for their respective positions. Now I’m not all hot and bothered about an MVP award, but does/should this statistic factor into the M2P award?
Ryan Schwan
April 4, 2008
Something else Garnett-related. I did an evaluation of Defensive and Offensive Efficiency changes for every team in the league over on Hornets247.com. The Minnesota Timberwolves defense has only declined by .1 points this year. As in, they give up only .1 more points every 100 posessions. Maybe Taylor, the Wolves owner, wasn’t far off by saying Garnett wasn’t playing hard last year, because you’d think losing a player with his defensive skills would have more of an impact.
andrew
April 4, 2008
I’ll guess Dwight and Paul.
mrparker
April 4, 2008
In regards to defensive rating, I think its a case of KG’s teammates being so bad that he couldn’t make much of a difference.
Last year he had a defensive rating of 101, which is right around his career average of 99. This year he is having a career year at 94, but this is helped by having Paul Pierce(career 102), Rajon Rondo(rookie 103), Perkins(career 101) and Posey(career 103). All this being said as the league average is 108.
I don’t think Garnett played poorly so much as Minnesota is so bad that even a great defensive player couldn’t make much of a difference.
antonio
April 4, 2008
i think the amount of minutes should factor in for mvp consideration. to be an mvp, at least in my mind, you should be on the court a certain amount of time. so while its not KGs fault that his minutes are way down this year, it is still a penalty i think he has to suffer in the mvp race. i think part of being valuable is being on the court a lot.
ilikeflowers
April 4, 2008
The problem with applying the minutes-should-count theory to Boston is that they’re typically pounding teams by so much that they can afford to rest their most valuable player more than less-dominant teams can.
antonio
April 4, 2008
while to an extent thats true, if you look at other star players on teams in the past that have had a great point differential, they still usually play at least 38 minutes, which is what KG used to play. Duncan is the only other star I can think of who plays less than 37 or 38 minutes a game. The last time Duncan played that many minutes was 03-04, when he average 36.6. So even considering that the Celtics are the top team in the league right now, it is still an unusually low amount of minutes for their best player.
ilikeflowers
April 4, 2008
The more that I think about this the more complicated it gets. I guess that the best comparison would be what is the largest average lead that a given team has and when do they typically enjoy it? This would be great data to have, although I’m not sure that it is readily available. Then we could differentiate between two teams with similar point differentials where one is beating teams by 20 at the end of the third quarter but only by 10 at the end of the game and the other that is winning by 5 at the end of the third quarter and 10 at the end of the game.
I’m not saying that this is the case with Boston relative to dominant teams of the recent past, but it does seem like an interesting topic.
scipio202
April 4, 2008
Someone quote’s the “change in shooting percentage” stat for defense above. How come that hasn’t been used more generally as a defensive measure. Ex. take the winscore (or PER or whatever) of everyone KG is guarding during the time he is guarding them, subtract that from the player’s average winscore, and the difference is a measure of the defense provided by KG. 82games.com has PER-against, but doesn’t tell you what those players normally do. That’s going to overvalue the defense of people who always guard the weakest player on the floor, and undervalue the defense of people who always guard the best player on the floor.
MarkT
April 4, 2008
Actually this analysis persuades me someone else in the league has to be more valuable. If the Celtics can win more games than anyone else with KG playing only 2/3 of the game, they must be a really good team ex-KG. Which you can confirm by looking at all of their plus-minuses. To me, the MVP is better suited to someone who has to play 40+ minutes for the team to win and the team does win. LBJ, CP3, Kobe, etc.
Jason
April 4, 2008
Per minute stats can provide very important context, as should the reason for a player getting limited minutes. I was an undergrad at UNC when they were recruiting Rasheed Wallace. I remember him being regarded as one of the top 5 recruits (#1 or 2 with Stackhouse in many people’s opinions) that year. He was, however, only scoring about 12 ppg. That seemed worrisome, even in a shorter 36 minute high school game. Someone nearly 7 feet tall has a huge advantage in high school and failing to put up big numbers seemed like a red flag. The context though was lost in the first reports. His team won all their games, usually by huge margins and it was very, very frequent that he would only see a few seconds of floor time in the second half. 12 points in <18 minutes all of a sudden seemed more impressive. The context explained why his minutes were low and thus why his pergame totals were ‘poor’.
Another case: Many a Warriors fan considered Andris Biedrins’ first two years in the league to be a failure. His low scoring average and rebound average were usually cited as evidence. When he played more in his 3rd year, he was considered by many to have “improved” and to be a surprise. However, these numbers were much more a result of increased playing time. Indeed, on a per minute basis he’d done well in his first two years. Or at least done well in *some* areas. His lack of playing time was, at least in part, due to a propensity to foul early and often. While it’s probably true that coaches still underutilized Goose, he managed to make most appearances short as he’d be in foul trouble long before he could make a mark.
ilikeflowers
April 4, 2008
It all gets back to what the MVP really means. Is it the best player on the best team? Is it the most valuable player on the best team? Is it the most valuable player on a playoff team?
I tend towards the most valuable player relative to their teammates on a playoff team. Using plus-minus the top three are: LeBron, Nash, Nowitzki. I guess I’m rooting for LeBron.
ilikeflowers
April 4, 2008
When I use Wins Produced I get Dwight Howard.
Logic
April 4, 2008
I predict the M2P will be Zach Randolph.
Tommy_Grand
April 5, 2008
MVP = CP3
M2P darkhorse = Amare Stoudamire
Tim
April 5, 2008
Here’s a challenge for you, Professor Berri. Why stop with the M2P? How about an all-NBA first, second, and third team as in this article from ESPN’s Marc Stein?
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-080405-06&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1
I’m betting Alan Iverson doesn’t end up on your teams, even on the third team. And I’m betting you would have some surprises for us.
If not, then I might just have to wait for your results for the whole NBA and try to figure it out for myself. But then I would miss your sparkling commentary!
Tim
April 5, 2008
More on the MVP race from Jemele Hill at ESPN.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/080404&sportCat=nba
She votes for Chris Paul if the Hornets finish on top in the west, because, she claims, Paul does more for his team than Garnett does for the Celtics, and the Hornets have (so far) had more success than the Lakers or Cavaliers.
GoldShammGold
April 5, 2008
It’s not just the Celts’ blowouts that lowers KG’s minutes. Doc also sits him because they’ve had 2 intriguing bigs emerge from nowhere: Leon Powe (2nd rounder in 06) and Big Baby (2nd rounder in 07).
ilikeflowers
April 5, 2008
Using w48, it looks like Marc Stein’s second team would beat the first. The weakest players for each unit are Kobe (of course) and Boozer. The third string would get annihilated by both despite the best efforts of Camby.
ty w
April 6, 2008
Mr. Schwan:
Youre right.
Over on Bucks Diary (the Siberia of the NBA blogosphere) I like to occasionally calculate a “Wages of Wins” derivative statistic I call “Defensive Win Score”. Its just, basically, the collective and position adjusted Win Scores of the players the particular player has guarded throughout the season. Its a bitch to do, but the results can be interesting.
Anyway, I came up with the same results Mr Schwan did with regard to Garnett. He was dogging a bit last year. Or at least he wasn’t living up to his own superior defensive standards. If you go back to years prior, his DWS was consistently much better… more like this year.
Interestingly, the same is true writ large for Paul Pierce. He played very poor defense last year… yet he’s locking guys down hard this year.
Kind of understandable. Defense takes effort which sometimes requires inspiration… or at least a semblance of hope for victory.
MarkT
April 7, 2008
WoW overvalues rebounds, so a good shooting all-star team will render WoW specialists like Camby less effective.
ilikeflowers
April 7, 2008
Thanks, MarkT. I will accept your opinion as the truth.
/sarcasm