There is some discussion on how the Milwaukee Bucks – a team many believed would be one of the worst teams in the NBA this season – suddenly have a winning record and look posed to make someone unhappy in the playoffs. Chris Sheridan – of ESPN.com – has a story that seems to focus on coaching, the acquisition of John Salmons, and team chemistry. Chris Mannix of SI.com has a story that focuses primarily on Scott Skiles.
Such stories seem plausible, but I think the answer is a bit more obvious. Milwaukee is having a respectable season because…
well, for my answer I am going to direct you to Bucketsball. Across this past week Jeremy Schmidt and I have exchanged a few e-mails on the topic of the Milwaukee Bucks. In “Five Questions with Dave Berri” you can see my responses to Jeremy’s questions. These answers not only cover the Bucks, but also offer a few more comments on Stumbling on Wins. In addition to posting my answers, Jeremy did a great job of posting the standard table I usually create within his post (hmmm….wouldn’t it be great if I did that in this forum?).
I want to thank Jeremy for sending along the questions. Hopefully fans of the Bucks (and fans in general) find the answers to be interesting.
– 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 
Italian Stallion
March 29, 2010
I really enjoyed the question and answer format. I think it allowed for a much clearer presentation of your thinking. Maybe you should do that kind of thing more often.
Ravenred
March 30, 2010
Thanks for this. I think John Hammond, Bucks GM, may be a WoW / SoW fan, given the nature of his acquisitions and more importantly, his write-offs (Jefferson, Redd to a degree). The other comment that’s been made on forums is that Jennings isn’t a WP type of player… your thoughts?
Joe
March 30, 2010
raven,
.064 is pretty solid for a rookie
brgulker
March 30, 2010
Ravenred,
If that’s the case, letting Sessions walk would have been a very confusing move.
Letting Charlie V and RJ go would confirm what you are saying. Drafting Jennings and letting Sessions walk works the other way.
mrparker
March 30, 2010
Prof,
I’m starting to think that scoring will always be overvalued in the NBA. In sports like baseball the players are statistically much closer to each other. There is no such thing as one player carrying an entire team to a championship. In the NBA it is next to impossible to win with one player being amazingly productive.
Until teams like the Pistons of 05′ start winning championships routinely or the NBA changes its playoff format to top 4 teams of each conference noone has any incentive to change.
Tom Mandel
March 30, 2010
Wouldn’t it be great if you posted your performance tables *inside* your posts? Why yes, Dave, it would!
dberri
March 30, 2010
Tom,
I tried once and it just seemed like a big hassle. It seems like you have to make the table into a picture, then post the picture. Just easier to post an html document.
Ravenred
March 30, 2010
Joe: Yeah, it’s not horrible, but his offensive efficiency is truly dreadful. You have to go back to *1966* to find a less efficient volume shooter. Given that shooting inefficiency is one of WP’s holy grails, I was wondering to what degree he is a productive PROSPECT…
Brgulker: it was somewhat of a headscratcher for Bucks fans, certainly. The general consensus was that Hammond liked the look of Jennings, which appears to more or less have worked out. Sessions’ poor performance at the Wolves has provided a lot of hindsight confirmation for the decision…
K
March 31, 2010
Hi Professor Berri,
I am curious about your methods and I was looking at the Wins Produced Calculation for 1977-78 and 2006-07 and I noticed part of PROD is FTM(opp.) or free throws made by the opponent and it was listed as one of the Player Variables as opposed to one of the Team Variables. I was wondering how you calculated this. At first, I assumed it must be a minutes-weighted average based on team FTM(opp.). However, when I calculated Bob Lanier’s minutes weighted average FTM(opp.) for 77-78, I got different numbers than what you plugged in in your calculation.
To put it more concretely, according to the data at Basketball-Reference.com, Lanier played 2311 minutes out of 19855 total player minutes logged by Pistons players. The Pistons surrendered 1662 FTM in those 19855 minutes. So multiplying (2311/19855)*1662, I get 193.45. However, in the FTM(opp.) field for Bob Lanier’s PROD calculation you used the number 155.3, so I’m curious how you got that number. I’m trying to calculate WP48 from scratch for a couple of players and clarification on this would be helpful. Thanks in advance.
Italian Stallion
March 31, 2010
MrParker,
I know few here agree with me, but I don’t think “scoring” is as overrated by competent coaches and GMs as is thought here. Perhaps it’s overrated by many former players, media types, and fans, but that’s another issue.
I think virtually every reasonably competent coach and GM wants a few highly efficient high usage scorers. They understand that low/average efficiency “volume” scoring is not much of a contributor to wins.
At the same, they also know they can’t build a successful team with “all” very low usage efficient scorers that contribute in other ways because many of those guys simply don’t have the offensive skills, shooting range, athleticism, shot creativity etc… to put enough points on the board to win.
The problem is that there’s not enough of those highly efficient high usage scorers to go around.
So coaches and GMs try to strike a balance between the need to score and the desire to be efficient and do other things well. Hence they will occasionally overpay for an “average efficiency” high usage scorer when they need one to fill out a team of mostly role players.
You aren’t going to win a championship that way, but you aren’t going to win a championship scoring 85 points a night either.
Johnny Y.
April 3, 2010
Sessions looking worse in Min is probably partially a result of the offensive system rambis is running. It’s kind of a waste to draft/trade for all these PG’s when they don’t run much pick and roll offense.
They either had to let sessions go or ridnour to make room for Jennings, and skiles has had a hardon for ridnour since last season (not that its a bad thing since ridnour isn’t horrible or anything)