A couple of months ago fans of the NBA were given a very big gift by Bill Simmons. The Book of Basketball is more the 700 pages of Simmons’ thoughts on everything NBA basketball. When this book was released it was my intention to read it over and offer some thoughts. Two months have passed, though, and I just haven’t had time to read all that Simmons is offering.
Fortunately, I came across a review from No Time to Read. The review does go on for more than 6,000 words. So it’s a bit lengthy (not as lengthy as the actual book, but as you read the review the difference will not seem large). But I think this review of The Book of Basketball – titled Statistical Certainty – is excellent (and not just because I am mentioned a few times).
Here is how the review begins:
I read Bill Simmons’s The Book of Basketball. I enjoyed his book, as it is a fun survey of NBA history. The book isn’t just a numbers game or just breaking down plays. It includes enough human interest elements that it should appeal to a casual fan or diffident parties (like me; I can count the number of basketball games I’ve seen – TV or live – on both hands.) Simmons does a fantastic job of conveying his love of basketball. For me, he really brought different basketball eras to life, inserting comments from players, coaches, and sportswriters. He also seems fairly astute in breaking down plays and describing the flow of the game.
Yes, I bought the book because I think Bill Simmons’s writing. If you enjoy his blog, you will find that same breezy conversation style here. Read more at No Time to Read…
By the way, I also promised Wayne Winston a review of Mathletics. Not sure when I will get to that (or find someone who does it for me). But I would encourage everyone to get a copy of both The Book of Basketball and Mathletics.
– DJ
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Wages of Wins Journal 
notimetoread
January 2, 2010
Thanks for the hat tip, Prof. Berri.
I guess we can be thankful that I ended the review when I did, despite having had more to say.
I want to emphasize how much I liked Simmons’s book. I know I’ve written now 2 lengthy posts that seemingly trashes him, but I’m just interested in using how he sees statistics to say something interesting about how one could look at science and statistics heavy findings.
I think it’s strange he finds the “advanced” statistics so annoying when, throughout his book and in his blog, he makes executive decisions to rank order players who have very similar stat lines. And in the Wilt vs Russell debate, he pretty much ignores Wilt’s numbers.
Ultimately, his disagreements with PER, WP48 (and WinScore), and adjusted plus/minus may result from his not having a feel for how a rebound or an assist or a turnover contributes to the final scores. Maybe if he played around with a spreadsheet, the final outcome wouldn’t bother him so much.
I will add one point: the epilogue in the book shows the type of game that Simmons wants to see. He sees Kobe as a selfish player. It is interesting that ball hogs tend to be high volume scorers (and may not offer much else), the very type of player that WP48 exposes as less productive than one thinks.
Maybe WP48 actually quantifies how much a player follows “The Secret” (or, alternatively, how selfish he is)?
benamery21
January 2, 2010
Breaking news:
Phoenix loses to MEMPHIS? Frye, Richardson, Dudley and Barbosa miss 3’s (1/12), nobody but Amundsen (22min) rebounds. AARGH!
Channing Frye, Barbosa, Jason Richardson, Jared Dudley and Grant Hill combine for 103 minutes and a NEGATIVE (-2.5) Win Score to award an L to the outstanding efforts of Amundson (0.275 PAWSmin tonight) and Stoudemire (.229PAWSmin tonight) as Steve Nash commits 6 TO en route to a 103-128 defeat.
John
January 2, 2010
Hi Professor Berri
Any chance you can influence the good folks at http://www.basketball-reference.com to start publishing the wins produced score on a season progressive basis?
They calculate a “win share” statistic on their own (http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html), do you have any thoughts on this metric?
Keep up the good work, your blog and methodology are top notch.
Regards
John
Jason E
January 3, 2010
Simmons’ book is highly entertaining, though he should fire his editor. There are a sizable number of factual mistakes and typos that one expects in a blog, not a book.^1
Ultimately, it’s strange that he mentions how “stats don’t matter” time and time again, but presents stats (rarely beyond ppg/rpg/apg) throughout as part of his argument.^2
1. This applies to the main body of text as well as to the large number of footnotes. Many of the footnotes reference his “grumpy old editor”. Grumpy, old, and rather careless, as the case would be.
2. Yeah, I realize that you shouldn’t read Simmons for internal consistency in his arguments. I’m just say
Ray
January 3, 2010
Memphis is a pretty decent team, there’s not much shame in losing to them.
kevin
January 3, 2010
“Any chance you can influence the good folks at http://www.basketball-reference.com to start publishing the wins produced score on a season progressive basis?”
I suggested to Neil Paine, who runs the site, to get with Dave do just that. He sent me a link to a long screed he wrote disagreeing with Dave over interpretation of WP40 and said it probably won’t happen, as they have obvious diferences of opinion statistically-speaking.
benamery21
January 4, 2010
Ray, for background Phoenix had just beaten LA and Boston and they were tied for best home record in the league. They should not have lost to Memphis at home. But hey, Boston lost to the Clippers, so like they say: ‘any given night….’
Justin Kubatko
January 6, 2010
kevin wrote:
“I suggested to Neil Paine, who runs the site, to get with Dave do just that. He sent me a link to a long screed he wrote disagreeing with Dave over interpretation of WP40 and said it probably won’t happen, as they have obvious diferences of opinion statistically-speaking.”
This is not accurate, as Neil does not run the site. Neil does blog for the site (and does a very good job, I might add), but I am 100% responsible for all other content that appears on the site.
As for adding WP, I feel it would be redundant given the presence of Win Shares.
kevin
January 6, 2010
Well, Justin, as I mentioned on Neil’s blog, there are serious flaws in how you calculate Win Shares, so I don’t see how adding an alternative system of evaluation is going to hurt your site any. It just gives lurkers another set of numbers to consider.
You also put up PER numbers and PER is a brutally bad statistic, just brutal.
kevin
January 11, 2010
I spent some time in Barnes and Noble this weekend and picked up simmons book to browse for awhile. I was going to buy it but decided not to because the book is so randomly organizes and wanders every which way so often, it started giving me a headache just keeping track.
This is what I dislike about Simmons writing: he still writes as though he were working on his Digital City blog. For instance, he will spend an entire page discussing something not related to the heading of the subchapter and end the discussion with the quote “But I digress.”.
You know, that line loses its cuteness after the first time. After about 10 or 15 times, it screams immaturity and lack of disclipline. Simmons has been around long enough to understand the imperative of a prose narrative: stay focused and on point. If you have to digress, keep it brief. If you can’t keep it brief, then reorganize the book structure to accomodate it.
Also, I’m older than simmons and have seen a lot of the players play, where he only imagines how they played based on his own assumptions. Usually, they take the form of “so-and-so was a 60’s version of Dominique Wilkins, except with fewer turnovers a mad passing game.”.
These kinds of assumptions are dangerous because he makes them without qualification, porrly contextualizes them, and instead frames the player image in a contemporary context, so distorts the true picture of the player. He’s also bad at interpreting statistics.
so, as much as ai wanted to liek the book and buy it, I decided to pass. Which is unusual for me, since I’ve bought just about every book on the NBA that’s worth reading in the last 30 years.
John
January 17, 2010
Hi
This was the response I got from basketball-reference.com when I emailed them about including Wins Produced:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi John,
We are aware of the Wage of Wins stats, including Wins Produced, but we feel its addition to our site would be redundant, since we already have a win-based stat in Win Shares. Thanks for writing and taking interest in our site, though.
-Neil
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Given Neil/Justin run the site, they don’t really have a vested interest to publish a score that rivals their own invention (i.e. win shares).
I think the most objective way to assess these 2 alternate value systems would be to calculate their standard deviation from the actual # of wins by team, and I’d probably limit the scope to just the past 10 years since rules have changed and increased statistics are now available in the modern era. Also I am biased towards wanting more accurate estimates for the present game vs. the games in history. One component of Win Share I do like is the way it treats how a player uses a possession, given that a possession is a scarce commodity (like capital in a business).
@ Kevin – any basketball book you particularly liked besides Wages of Win? I recently bought Red and Me.
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