One of the interesting aspects (at least, interesting to me) of basketball performance is the consistency we see across time. Relative to what we see in baseball and football, year-to-year performance in basketball is simply more stable.
Although consistency is the general trend, exceptions do happen. Players can decline because of age (when they are old) and injury. They can also get better because of age (when they are young) and when they recover from injury. And changes can occur for other reasons as well (although the “other” reasons seem less systematic).
The players who get “better” are generally thought of as candidates for “Most Improved”. But how do we define “better?” Not surprising, the focus here will be on Wins Produced. Specifically, we are going to look at each player who played 1,000 minutes in 2008-09 and 500 minutes across the first 41 games of 2009-10. And then we are going compare how many wins the player produced in 2009-10 to how many wins we could have expected given the player’s per-minute performance in 2008-09.
Given this approach, the fifteen most improved players are as follows (number of additional wins after 41 games reported):
- Corey Maggette: 4.8
- Josh Smith: 4.4
- Chris Bosh: 3.8
- Marc Gasol: 3.2
- Baron Davis: 3.1
- Gerald Wallace: 3.0
- Ben Wallace: 3.0
- Zach Randolph: 2.9
- Steve Nash: 2.4
- Kevin Love: 2.4
- Jermaine O’Neal: 2.3
- Raymond Felton: 2.3
- Carlos Boozer: 2.3
- Kevin Durant: 2.2
- Louis Williams: 2.0
Two quick thoughts on this list:
- Maggette’s leap is primarily tied to an increase in shooting efficiency. He is getting a few more rebounds and assists, but for the first time in his career his adjusted field goal percentage is above 50%. Last year he posted a mark of 47.9%. This year, though, his mark was 55.5% after 41 games.
- The Josh Smith story has been noted before (see HERE and HERE). If Josh Smith maintained what he did last season – and every other Atlanta player continued doing what they are doing this year – the Hawks would only be on pace to win 47 games this season (last year the Hawks won 47 games). So the improvement we see in Smith’s production is really driving the story we see in Atlanta in 2009-10. Interestingly enough, Smith’s shooting efficiency hasn’t changed much (50.8% adjusted field goal percentage last year, 51.2% adjusted field goal percentage after 41 games this year). No, Smith has improved with respect to offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots, and free throws. In essence, Smith has gotten better across the board. And now the Hawks are serious contenders in the East.
Certainly other stories can be told (and I look forward to seeing these in the comments). I want to close, though, by observing how little change we are seeing. Zach Randolph is eighth on the list. But his dramatic improvement is only worth 2.9 wins across 41 games, or less than six additional victories across an entire season. Obviously if he is 8th most improved, the vast majority of players are not making this much progress from what we saw last year.
Consequently, what we see in Atlanta is all the more impressive. In general, players do not make huge leaps from season-to-season. And therefore – again, in general – teams cannot expect to return the same cast of players and get very different results.
– 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 
Carl Spackler
February 2, 2010
Im curious to see how Tony Allen looks come season end. He has been a really big surprise since coming back from injury. Obviously the sample size is too small right now, but if he continues at the pace he’s on…
Carleton Wu
February 2, 2010
Im thinking that they don’t give the MIP to a player who just had a bad year the year before (eg Jermaine O’Neal). Rather than just looking at the last year, Id say MIP ranking should be the player with the most improvement over their best previous year. Or something like that.
dberri
February 2, 2010
Tony Allen has improved his WP48 mark from 0.088 to 0.148. So he is better, but not MIP.
Carleton,
I think I agree, although I am not going to do the computation.
Garth
February 2, 2010
What about Andrea Bargnani?
diehardNFFLbarnone
February 2, 2010
What do you think of the job that Mike Brown is doing in Cleveland?
brgulker
February 2, 2010
The two guys who jump out to me on that list are Gasol and Bosh.
Bosh has always been touted as a superstar without really producing like one. This year, he’s actually producing like one. I don’t watch the Raptors, so I have no theories. Others have suggested that it might be due to the fact that he’s surrounded by so many poor rebounders, but I’m not sure I buy that theory.
Any Raps fans have a suggestion?
Gasol has been overshadowed in the media by all the scorers on his roster. I’m hoping that the same thing is happening in Memphis’ management. I’m purely selfish here. Detroit might have enough money to make a run at him when his contract is up after next season. He’s exactly the kind of guy I’d want anchoring the C position in the D.
Matt Walters
February 2, 2010
Not a raptors fan, but isn’t it Bosh’s contract year?
Jared
February 2, 2010
Bosh’s increased productivity looks like it’s coming from a few things…
1) Better shot selection
-he’s cut down on his 16-23 footers (6.3 attempts per 40 minutes last year; 4.8 this year)
-increased shots at rim (5.7; 6.7)
-more than doubled his shots from inside 10 feet, which he’s hitting at a 50% clip (1.7; 3.6)
2) More aggressive/getting to the line more
-percentage of shots where he’s drawn an “and 1” is up from 4.1% last year to 5.7% this year
-he’s getting blocked on a greater percentage of shots (typically between 5%-5.5%…this year up to 7% of shots)
3) Better rebound rate
-both his offensive and defensive rebound rates are well above his historical rates
-he might have improved at rebounding, but it could also be that he has less competition for rebounds on his own team. Last year Moon, Graham, Bargnani, and O’Neal/Marion were all decent rebounders and took some of the boards Bosh is getting this year. All those players except for Bargnani are now gone. The only decent rebounder on the Raps now other than Bosh and Bargnani is Amir Johnson, and a significant number of his minutes come when Bosh is not on the floor.
Jared
February 2, 2010
Maggette’s increase in shooting efficiency doesn’t appear to be sustainable. While he has slightly increased his shots at the rim and decreased his 3 point attempts (he’s been awful from 3-point land the last 2 years), those changes only account for a small percentage of his increase. If his average shooting percentage from each area of the court between 06-07 and 08-09 would have remained stable in 09-10, his eFG% would be 49.0%. This would still make for one of his better shooting seasons, but it’s a far cry from the 53.1% he’s put up this year.
As such, rather than attributing his increase to some change in his style of game, he’s simply making more of the same types of shots he’s made in the past. Standing out the most is his increase in efficiency from 16-23 feet. He’s shooting 44% this year, compared to 38% in 08-09 and 35% in 07-08. While it’s possible that at 30 he’s suddenly developed this part of his game, I would guess that it’s more of a fluke. Look for his eFG% and WP48 to regress to his career norms.
khandor
February 2, 2010
It should almost go without saying that the reason so few players qualify as having made tangible improvements this season, in their overall game, according to your assessment, is because of the Wins Produced metric which you are using to measure their overall performance, in the first place.
From a non- Wins Produced perspective, this is a list of players who have shown improvement this season, in the way in which they play the game:
[teams are listed in order based on Points Scored Differential]
1 CAVALIERS – Hickson
2 LAKERS – Brown, Bynum
3 NUGGETS – Anthony, Afflalo
4 CELTICS – Rondo
5 MAGIC – Redick
6 HAWKS – Smith, Horford, Pachulia
7 SPURS – Hill
8 JAZZ – Brewer, Fesenko
9 BLAZERS – Oden, Batum
10 MAVERICKS – Nowitzki, Barea
11 THUNDER – Durant, Westbrook, Green, Sefolosha
12 SUNS- Dudley, Dragic
13 BOBCATS – Wallace, Mohammed
14 HEAT – Beasley, Haslem, Wright
15 GRIZZLIES – Gasol, Gay, Mayo, Conley
16 ROCKETS – Brooks, Lowry, Landry
17 BUCKS – Mbah A Moute, Ilyasova, Bogut
18 RAPTORS – Johnson, Weems, Belinelli, Bargnani
19 HORNETS – N/A
20 BULLS – Noah, Deng, Thomas, Rose
21 KNICKS – Gallinari, Lee, Chandler
22 76ERS – Williams
23 CLIPPERS – Gordon, Kaman
24 WIZARDS – Blatche
25 KINGS – Udrih, Greene
26 WARRIORS – Randolph, Morrow, Watson
27 PISTONS – Bynum
28 PACERS – Hibbert
29 TIMBERWOLVES – Brewer
30 NETS – Lopez, Douglas-Roberts
Personally, I’d be very interested in seeing how each of these players actually compare to one another, based on their percentage increase/decrease in Wins Produced compared to last season.
Alex
February 2, 2010
Hi David – If I read the table you posted around this time last year correctly, it looks like the top 8 players also produced a spread of 3 to 4.5 extra games won. So do you think these past two years have been ‘lean’, or is that actually typical?
Also, you make it sound like Zach Randolph’s extra 6 games isn’t that great. But if those wins come for ‘free’ without taking anyone else’s productivity, 6 wins seems like a lot to me. Teams 2 through 8 in the Western Conference last year were only separated by 6 games, and 6 more wins would’ve moved most of the teams in the bottom of the Eastern Conference into the playoffs, or from the low seeds to the 4th seed. That strikes me as pretty useful.
brgulker
February 3, 2010
I thought the same thing as Alex, particularly because Memphis is out West. 6 wins is a big jump in the standings out that way.
Mike
February 3, 2010
Is Wins Produced the best way to measure this? Isn’t WP48 a better indicator because it’s not tied to how many minutes have been played?
Also, when discussing consistency, it could be helpful to look at all of the players who have gotten worse, as well.
Man of Steele
February 3, 2010
It’s interesting that Memphis has gotten such improvement from Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, essentially keeping Hasheem Thabeet glued to the bench. I’d bet that probably less than 1% of all NBA teams ever have both of their big men improve significantly from one season to the next.
TBall
February 3, 2010
Echoing Mike here. Using WP, even with a minimum of 1000 minutes last season, could be tainted by a material increase in minutes. Why not simply stick to 1000 minutes last season, on pace for 1000 minutes this season, and track WP48 improvement.
I always thought MIP had as much to do with an increase in minutes and the resulting increase in counting stats (ppg primarily) as it did anything else.
JJ
February 3, 2010
this is why i don’t pay a whole lot of attention to metrics and in-depth statistical measurement. corey maggette is terrible. if corey maggette is the most improved player using your metric of wins, you need to change how you calculate most improved.
being a warriors fan i have wanted to light myself on fire countless number of times this season watching maggette play basketball.
he doesn’t pass the ball, is a streaky shooter who doesn’t recognize when he’s slumping and to stop shooting, his version of 1 on 1 is standing 20 feet from the hoop jab stepping 2-3 times and then firing a fade away shot, he does his paltry 1 on 1 routine and shoots with 20 seconds on the shot clock, when he drives to the hoop he FLOPS a large majority of the time, and when he doesn’t flop he creates contact to draw fouls (as in gets bailed out by the refs a lot of the time), he has a high scoring average due to getting foul calls and because the warriors have no other 2nd scoring option behind monta, i could go on.
change your metric, corey maggette is an awful basketball player.
mrparker
February 4, 2010
Just looking for a place where someone would care about this thought.
I watched the Heat fumble away the game tonight losing alot of “uncontested” rebounds. Maybe it is important to have a guy who isn’t going to do that. The Heat don’t have a great rebounder and I watched them lose rebounds with no Celtics around tonight.
Is that an aberration or does it point to importance of having good rebounders on your team?
Tommy_Grand
February 4, 2010
Dr. Einstein:
The reason I don’t pay a lot of attention to theoretical physics and in-depth mathematical analysis is because of counter intuitive theories such as yours. Space-time does not curve. Change your metric. I have looked at the evidence with my own eyes hundreds of times and my personal view is inconsistent with your conclusions. Have you ever actually piloted a rocket? If your theory says that space-time curves, then you need to change your theory because space-time does not curve.
brgulker
February 4, 2010
To put it scientifically, that was pure pwnage.
huh
February 4, 2010
wtf is ‘spacetime’ anyway?
mrparker
February 4, 2010
failed to recognize the pwnage
brgulker
February 4, 2010
Tommy_Grand’s satire was teh pwnage.
khandor
February 4, 2010
————————————-
re: Have you ever actually piloted a rocket? If your theory says that space-time curves, then you need to change your theory because space-time does not curve.
To put it scientifically, that was pure pwnage.
————————————-
Except, of course, if/when those who have successfully pilotted a Rocket-ship, state that they, too, just happen to agree with the antiquated ideas of parochial soles like JJ.