Brian Lauvray – of Gapers Block (a web publication focused on Chicago) and Tailgate (the sports section of Gapers Block) – recently sent me a series of questions about the Chicago Bulls. My answers – which run about 2,000 words — have now been posted by Brian at Gapers Block.
Tailgate Talks: David Berri of Wages of Wins
These answers include the standard team analysis posted in this forum. And you will note that Brian does a much better job of incorporating this table in his post (relative to how I get these tables into a post).
I would encourage everyone to head over to Gapers Block. And if you like what you see, leave a comment or two [if you don’t like it, though, you don’t have to leave a comment :) ].
– DJ
P.S. Brian also notes that a review of Stumbling on Wins will soon be posted as well. I will link to that when it goes on-line.
Wages of Wins Journal 
Brian Lauvray
April 6, 2010
Thanks again, Dave! Can’t wait to see what you/NBA have in store for Playoffs.
Italian Stallion
April 6, 2010
I love the question and answer format.
Jim Smith
April 6, 2010
Speaking of the Bulls, any plans on featuring the career of Scottie Pippen?
brgulker
April 7, 2010
I second IS. The Q&A format is cool.
Alien Human Hybrid
April 7, 2010
I completely agree with the Q&A format comment- very informative. Perhaps we could lobby the good professor to establish a monthly Q&A column with media members, writers and/or coaches from around the basketball universe?
I think that would be sweet.
dberri
April 7, 2010
Apparently, though, the Q&A format ends all comments. There are no comments over at Gapers Block. And the comments here are just that you like the format. Does this format just end all discussion?
simon
April 7, 2010
It seems by now most Bulls fans accepted that Rose isn’t that great at this point in time and Noah is very productive, so the conclusion from the WP just isn’t controversial enough.
How about more Kobe posts? :D
dmortone
April 7, 2010
I have a question for you dberri. As a Hawks fan, sometimes it’s very frustrating to watch the team. Only the Lakers, Cavs and Nuggets have a better home record than the Hawks, yet teams like Houston and Memphis have similar road records. So my question is, how do the Hawks players’ performance change based whether they play at home or away?
dberri
April 7, 2010
dmortone,
I have not looked at home-road splits. This might be a good subject for future research.
simon,
I have to believe there are people who think Rose is great. Wasn’t he an all-star this year?
simon
April 7, 2010
Even though Rose is an all star, the perception I get from reading online forums, etc, is that he hasn’t really lived up to the lofty expectation the Bulls fans had prior to this season.
Alien Human Hybrid
April 7, 2010
Here’s a question for you, prof: Did you ask Brian how he embedded the chart in his page?
Just kidding!
Somewhat.
dberri
April 7, 2010
AHH,
I thought the charm of this site is the clear evidence that I have no real computer skills :)
Italian Stallion
April 7, 2010
dberri,
I think some people thought Rose played below his best in the early part of the season because he was injured. As we approached the all star game, he seemed to step it up to another gear as he got healthier. So the assumption was that those last few week before the all star game were going to be his new base level. I’m not sure what he has done since, but perhaps it might be worth splitting out his stats.
Rick Perry vs World
April 7, 2010
For those of you can’t get enough of the Q and A format, Professor Berri answered a few questions at for my blog.
Rick Perry vs World
April 8, 2010
Bad editing obviously. Don’t know why there are two prepositions in there.
Michael
April 8, 2010
Good interview.
Gapers Block sounds like the name of an ‘adults only’ site to me though.
Michael
April 8, 2010
Professor I was just on B-R and are you aware they have a new metric called ‘WS/48’ which is ‘an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player per 48 minutes.’
Also the ‘league average is approximately 0.100’
That sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it.
robbieomalley
April 8, 2010
Yeah except it is Win Shares per 48 minutes, not Win Score. I’m not sure how dberri feels about the accuracy of this metric in assigning and predicting wins. He’s talked about the flaws in PER and +/- much more than Win Shares, to my knowledge.
Man of Steele
April 8, 2010
Umm… didn’t we here the same excuses about Derrick Rose getting better as the year went on last year as well? NBA teams, and thus players, do have to play a full season, so it still seems iffy to just split up Rose’s numbers over different months and decide that he’s good since he has had a few good months.
dberri
April 8, 2010
WS/48 does sound familiar. I think we noted in The Wages of Wins that any measure of wins must result in an average preformance of 0.100 per 48 minutes (an average team wins 0.500 games per48 minutes).
I have a paper that might be published in the next year that reveiws different approaches to measuring performance in the NBA. If you had a choice between PERs, plus-minus, or Win Shares, the latter is the better choice. But relative to Wins Produced, Win Shares is not quite as consistent over time.
Italian Stallion
April 8, 2010
Man of Steel,
I don’t think it’s a mistake to break out a players stats as long as you aren’t doing in a random way to try to prove a point to yourself.
IMO, when you are dealing with young players that are likely to improve or players with injuries, I think a better understanding can potentially come out of a more detailed analysis.
For example:
If player “X” is a 20 year old rookie and his WP48 over several months looked like this:
.07, .10, .12, .11, .13 I don’t think it would unreasonable to assume the next month is going to be better than average.
If player “Y” looks like this,
.10, .13, .11, .01, .10, .09
I don’t think it would be unreasonable to take a close look at what happened in that .01 month and perhaps excuse it if the player was known to be suffering from an injury but is generally healthy.
Using smaller samples like that could easily lead to higher rates of error, but if you use some judgment/common sense and are actually trying to be objective I think you can improve your understanding.
Michael
April 8, 2010
“Yeah except it is Win Shares per 48 minutes, not Win Score”
That’s my point, all this time myself and others have been waiting for B-R to add Wins Produced to their site and instead they jack the format for their own metric. It’s disappointing.
dberri
April 8, 2010
B-R is run by people firmly in the APBRmetrics community. So they are not going to add Wins Produced to their website. The APBRmetrics community has made it clear: PERs is acceptable. Plus-minus is acceptable. Metrics done by other people, not acceptable. And you can point out the problems with PERs and plus-minus and it has no impact on their perceptions.
If it makes you feel better, behavioral economics predicts this sort of behavior :)
mrparker
April 8, 2010
Who cares what metrics Basketball-reference uses. They also make it possible to find just about any piece of information that I want going back 30 years. I’m kind of glad that they don’t calculate wins produced because that has given me a chance to try and figure out how to eyeball it myself.
Brian Lauvray
April 8, 2010
AHH, We use Scribd for uploading diff types of docs. I had some funky formatting hilarity to deal w in the original Q&A from D.Berri so I just took it to Scribd.
Michael, Gapersblock is a comically unfortunate name for an online magazine, but we are as clean as one can get when discussing Chicago sports (wokka, wokka).
Man of Steele
April 8, 2010
IS,
You are quite right. What I am reacting against is the use of this sort of cautionary logic to make overblown claims about a player. No matter how you slice or dice, Derrick Rose is not a star. Due to his young age and his problems with injury, it is possible that he will be a good player in the future. breaking down his month-by-month splits to make claims beyond this is inaccurate, in my opinion
John Giagnorio
April 8, 2010
The breakdowns I saw for Rose basically showed him hitting a higher percentage of his mid range jumpshots. Even if people do want to cherry pick, it seems unreasonable to assume Rose can hit 50%+ of these shots.
The one “positive” for Rose is that Deron Williams didn’t look like much of a player early in his career (at Illinois). As a Bulls fan, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he improves dramatically out of no where :)
treveyon curtis
June 1, 2010
can i get the number