On election night Matthew Yglesias posted the following after Ohio was called for Barack Obama: And that’s the presidential election, folks. McCain “could” win, but at this point in fact he can’t.
Yglesias made this call at 9:26 EST. The networks, though, had to wait until polls closed on the West Coast to call the election. These polls closed at 11pm EST, and within minutes Obama was declared the winner by everyone.
Of course, at 11pm EST few votes had actually been counted in California, Oregon, and Washington. But the polling data (including exit polls) all indicated that John McCain had no chance to win those states. Consequently, the election was over once Obama took Ohio (although the networks still had to wait until the polls closed).
One Team Surges Ahead in the Race
A couple of weeks ago Erich Doerr posted a number of forecasts of the 2008-09 NBA season. Essentially, these are the equivalent of the polls. And these polls indicated that two teams – the Boston Celtics and LA Lakers – are likely the top teams in the NBA in 2008-09. And now we have some early returns on the season, and these returns suggest that we might be ready to narrow this race down to one team.
Let’s start with the numbers from the Celtics. Boston finished the 2007-08 season with a 10.95 efficiency differential (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency). Across the past three decades this mark was only eclipsed by the Chicago Bulls of 1995-96 and 1996-97. In sum, the Celtics were amazing last year and it was not a surprise when this team won the championship.
After nine games in 2008-09, the Celtics are 8-1. Such a mark looks outstanding. But the team’s efficiency differential is only 6.23. So Boston – after nine games – looks to have slipped.
The team the Celtics defeated in the 2008 NBA Finals, though, has surged ahead. The Lakers finished the 2007-08 regular season with a 7.35 efficiency differential. But the Lakers never had Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum together at the same time last season. With these two players together in 2008-09, it was expected the Lakers would get better.
After seven games, that expectation has been more than met. The Lakers are currently the only NBA team without a loss. And the team’s efficiency differential is 18.39. To put that mark in perspective, the Chicago Bulls of 1995-96 – who set a record with 72 regular season wins – had a differential of 13.00 (the best mark since 1973-74).
Wins Produced takes what we learn from a team’s efficiency differential and uses this to evaluate individual players. When we look at WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes], we can see which players are responsible for the Lakers’ success.
Before we look at the numbers, let’s note that an average player posts a 0.100 WP48. In other words, a team of average players will win 41 games. A team of players that surpasses the 0.200 mark will win 82 games, so if a player doubles the average mark he is very, very good.
With these benchmarks in mind, let’s look at the top nine players for the Lakers (ranked in terms of minutes played) after seven games in 2008-09.
- Pau Gasol: 0.312 WP48 [08-09], 0.273 WP48 [07-08]
- Kobe Bryant: 0.207 WP48 [08-09], 0.247 WP48 [07-08]
- Andrew Bynum: 0.272 WP48 [08-09], 0.394 WP48 [07-08]
- Derek Fisher: 0.072 WP48 [08-09], 0.043 WP48 [07-08]
- Lamar Odom: 0.062 WP48 [08-09], 0.253 WP48 [07-08]
- Vladimir Radmanovic: 0.141 WP48 [08-09], -0.023 WP48 [07-08]
- Trevor Ariza: 0.427 WP48 [08-09], 0.245 WP48 [07-08]
- Jordan Farmar: 0.277 WP48 [08-09], 0.125 WP48 [07-08]
- Sasha Vujacic: 0.182 WP48 [08-09], 0.113 WP48 [07-08]
Looking at these numbers we see four players – Gasol, Bryant, Bynum, and Ariza – who have surpassed the 0.200 threshold in both 2008-09 and 2007-08. Two more players – Farmar and Vujacic – have above average marks in both seasons. And two more players – Odom and Radmanovic – were above average in either 2007-08 or 2008-09. In sum, the only player who is clearly below average is Derek Fisher.
With all this talent, it’s not surprising to see this team dominate its opponents in 2008-09. And given what we have seen of these players in the past (our polling data) and the early returns this season, maybe it is time to just call this race for the Lakers.
So far Joe Dumars has already approached the podium and conceded the race. Entering the season the Detroit Pistons were considered contenders for the title. After just two games (and two wins), Dumars agreed to send Chauncey Billups – the team’s most productive player last year – to the Denver Nuggets for Allen Iverson. Although Dumars argued that Iverson will help the Pistons this season, many people think (and I would be one) that this trade was motivated by Iverson’s expiring contract. In other words, although Iverson won’t help the Pistons win a title in 2009, his expiring contract may help Detroit build a contender in the future. In sum, it looks like Dumars is conceding the 2009 race for the chance to win in the future.
A Few Issues
Of course – despite the action of Dumars — there might be a few issues to consider before we call this race for the Lakers. In no particular order…
- It should be noted that the last unbeaten team in 2007-08 was the LA Clippers. Apparently being the last team to lose a game is not a perfect predictor of a team’s ultimate level of success. That being said, the past data on the Clippers strongly suggested that their early returns last season would not stand the test of time.
- In an election, all the votes have been cast when the polls have been closed. Once you have counted a significant sample of these votes, you can forecast the outcome from the uncounted votes. Sports are different. Although the early returns say the Lakers are the dominant team in 2008-09, they are still going to have to play the remaining 75 regular season games. And to win the title they will need sixteen wins beyond the regular season. Since injuries are part of the game, it’s entirely possible that the Lakers could suffer a setback.
- Injuries are not the only issue. One would expect that a player like Ariza will suffer a setback. At least, it’s hard to think he will finish with a 0.427 WP48. That being said, one might expect Odom to finish with a better mark than 0.060.
- Even if players do not change what they offer in the regular season, there are still the playoffs to consider. Although the best team tends to win a seven game series, upsets can happen. So it’s possible the Lakers will not win the 2009 title.
Although the Lakers are not guaranteed a title, it certainly looks likely. And I say this as someone who is not a big fan of big market teams like the Lakers. Teams and players in New York and LA tend to receive far more attention than their performance would indicate. In other words, if Kobe had spent his entire career with the Hornets (the team that drafted him), I doubt anyone would think he is one of the greatest players ever.
Despite the issues I have with big market teams, I think the numbers – both the projections and early returns – suggest that this edition of the Lakers is likely to dominate the 2008-09 season. And it soon it might be time for other teams to join the Pistons at the podium.
– DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
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 
Phil
November 14, 2008
The Lakers have had a soft schedule thus far. While 18 is a simply staggering efficiency differential, achieving it against mediocre teams slightly diminishes the accomplishment.
In terms of outright basketball (stats aside), the Lakers have successfully employed a high-pressure trapping defense; look at what they did to Portland at the season opener. How long it will be effective remains to be seen; I would guess that every Lakers scouting report has “Ball movement” listed a dozen different ways.
Also, while you predict that Odom will bounce back, what gives exactly? Seems like diminishing returns have taken a big bite out of his productivity.
Jim
November 14, 2008
Since this is such a small sample size, I was curious how the Lakers of this year compared to other teams which started the season with 7-0 starts. I did not have data for the number of possesions per game, so I used points/fga to calculate the offensive and defensive efficiencies, and multiplied by 100 to normalize the data for 100 possesions per game. Here are the results after 7 games.
2008-2009 Lakers – 7-0 – 19.18
2007-2008 Celtics – 7-0 – 26.82
2005-2006 Pistons – 7-0 – 11.77
Also three Spurs teams started 6-1 from 2004 to now.
2007-2008 Spurs – 6-1 -16.18
2006-2007 Spurs – 6-1 – 13.50
2004-2005 Spurs – 6-1 – 11.72
When put in this context the Lakers accomplishments so far are still impressive, but they are not once in a lifetime events. While it is still probably a good bet that they will win the championship this season, having a good start is not everything, the spurs team with by far the best start (07-08) did not win the championship, while the other two years they did so. Also the Celtics start last year was even more impressive than the Lakers of this year. Hopefully someone else finds these numbers interesting.
Jordan
November 14, 2008
Andrew Bynum: 0.272 WP48 [08-09]
I have been calculating my own WP48, and I have Bynum at .239, any idea what I may be doing wrong?
Winscore/min at .308, subtract positional average of .225 from that, get .083, plus that into:
=0.104+1.621*.083 to get .239
Am I doing something wrong? Or is this just as accurate as the simple WP48 will get you without the team adjustment?
dberri
November 14, 2008
Jordan,
I am sure you did it right. Going from WSmin to WP48 gets you an estimate. As noted, the correlation is 0.99 between these two variables. This is good, but not perfect.
Vince Gagliano
November 14, 2008
There is a big difference in this case between calling an election (when the vast majority of the votes have been counted) and calling an NBA season seven games in.
It should be noted that with the exception of Vujacic, every player on the list has clocked an average of 20 minutes per contest.
Also, there are signs that the triangle offense has led to a resurrection of sorts in Pau Gasol’s career. At time of writing, he has an estimated .201 WP48 for his entire career, assuming he has played all of those minutes at power forward.
However, as the Lakers’ center, he posted an estimated .311 WP48, as much as anyone, propelling LA to the Finals.
Through his first seven games, he has registered a .306 WP48 at power forward using the model, compared to the actual value of .312. In other words, it’s almost as if the Lakers traded for Pau’s productivity PLUS that of an average, run-of-the-mill, NBA player.
Also, his surge has helped balance out some of the drop witnessed in Andrew Bynum.
Jeremy
November 14, 2008
While there is no question the Lakers have been extremely impressive thus far, I do have to agree with the other commenters that it is too early to call it.
I am not surprised the Celtics started off last year with a similar differential. I am suprised that they were actually nearly +8 better through the first 7 games.
Either way, the Lakers are the clear team to beat, buts lets see them beat some great competition first…the NO win was impressive.
Robert
November 15, 2008
They lost last night to the Pistons. (Your Pistons, I should add) Although the Lakers still have an impressive PD (+14.4) it’s silly to view this out of context – they’ve played 5 of their 8 games at home, have only had 2 B2B games, and haven’t faced a single injury. Contrast this to other contenders (like the Jazz) and it’s way too early to write off the season.
The biggest problem with forecasting a champion (aside from injuries) is that “winning a championship” is not binary – a team isn’t “championship caliber” or “not championship caliber”. So although the Lakers are likely the plurality favorite to win the title, their chances surely aren’t greater than that of the field… Put another way, at this point in the season, there is no team that has a 0% chance of “winning it all.”
Italian Stallion
November 15, 2008
The Lakers are very deep in talent. That will cushion any potential injury blows during the season and allow their second team to typically get the best of their opponents. A great final season record is assured.
But their ultimate success will come from NOT GET DIMINISHING RETURNS on all that talent on the court at the same time. If they don’t, all their individual stats will slowly go down without getting a correspnding improved increase in efficiency from each that leads to better team results. I think that’s sometimes tougher to accomplish than it looks because these are highly motivated athletes with big egos.
Second, winning games in the season is mostly a test of talent.
Winning games in the playoffs is a test of both talent and heart. I don’t see these Lakers on the leader board of any heart stats YET!.
Vince Gagliano
November 15, 2008
By the way, it should be noted that efficiency differential describes a team’s average “margin of victory” per a set number of possessions. In other words, how much of a scoring difference do the Lakers or Pistons or Celtics have for every 100 possessions on offense and 100 possessions on defense.
There is often an overall imbalance between point differential and predicted wins because NBA teams do not always win and lose by the exact same margin. For example, the Reggie Miller-era Pacers might have often had a lower differential than their win total. This wasn’t necessarily because they faced easier competition, but rather because with Miller, one of the best clutch performers of his era, the Pacers would often eke out a number of extremely close wins, while their losses might be by wider margins.
If we count the game at the Clippers as a home game for the Lakers (since they play in Staples anyway) then LA has won its five home games by an average of almost 19 points per contest.
However, in their three road games, all against playoff competition, their margin dropped to only 7 points per contest. In other words, much of their large differential is due to a familiarity with their home court. But away from Staples, they look considerably more mortal.
We’ll probably see similar numbers for the rest of November, since the team has only the road game at Phoenix on their schedule. However, it should dip heading into the new year.
All in all, the team will probably have the best record in the NBA and home court advantage in the playoffs, but their performance on the road will be key.
Vince Gagliano
November 15, 2008
By the way, Dave’s predicted wins from efficiency differential assume that teams win and lose by the exact same margins.
John W. Davis
November 16, 2008
wp48=Pistons
Jeremy
December 16, 2008
Should we now proclaim the season over now that the Celtics have proven to be the hands down best team?? How about another useless, called it too early post, Dave??