Tom Van Riper has written an excellent review of Stumbling on Wins for Forbes.com. The title – LeBron James is not the NBA’s MVP – might be familiar to readers in this forum. At least, that was the argument made in May of 2009 (LeBron was the Most Productive Player – or MPP – in 2009-10).
Van Riper’s article covers much more than the notion that Chris Paul was the MPP of 2008-09 (and LeBron finished second). He also reviews many of the stories we tell in Stumbling on Wins.
And if that isn’t enough, Forbes.com also provides an amazing slide show, featuring 10 stories told in our book. It was fun talking to Tom and it is interesting to see how he reviews our stories.
– DJ
Posted in: Basketball Stories
Wages of Wins Journal 
Evan
May 5, 2010
prof, you got the year wrong in the second paragraph.
dberri
May 5, 2010
Thanks Evan. Got it fixed.
Dre
May 6, 2010
There does have to be some level of irony in the fact that Melo is listed a positive example of a final four draft “success”. . . .
Mo
May 6, 2010
“Any GM with the Knicks’ budget would have done the same thing,” says Berri.
If this is true, why don’t the Lakers look like the Knicks?
Dino Gunners
May 6, 2010
I don’t agree with one of the premises in the book outlined in the article. Granted, I haven’t read the book yet but the assertion that Jerry Sloan does not really make players more productive seems laughable to me. When comparing the WP of players moving from one team to another, it totally negates the impact of teams drafting and developing their own players. Maybe it is addressed properly in the book, but Jerry Sloan’s change in win produced would be significantly different had he ‘traded’ for Karl Malone and Stockton one year in their careers. I am assuming that only players that changed teams was analyzed with respect to coaching performance, is that correct?
Dre
May 6, 2010
Mo: There are several types of scorers: Scorers that score well and do other things well (ala Tim Duncan and Shaq in his prime), Scorers that just score well (Reggie Miller) and then Scorers that don’t score well(Allen Iverson, Isiah’s Knicks. . . )
The problem using just scoring as a metric is all three of these look alike. Imagine if Isiah Thomas had been able to trade Curry for Garnett? And instead of Marbury had traded for Steve Nash?
This kind of happened in LA. They went for scorers, but luckily Kobe is a “Good” scorer (albeit arguably not worth 20+ million) and Gasol a good “Scorer”, who also does other things well.
So LA vs NY? They both went for scorers but NY got fool’s gold.