Michael Schwartz – from Valley of the Suns – recently sent me a series of questions focused on Stumbling on Wins and the Phoenix Suns. The first part of my answers — 1 on 1 with David Berri: Part 1 – were posted today. Michael tells me that the second part should be posted tomorrow.
Today’s questions focus on
- the ability of an economist to serve as an NBA team’s general manager
- the status of the statistical movement in the NBA
- the ability of the Suns to get more wins from their money than other teams (a point made by Arturo Galletti)
- the factors one should focus upon in evaluating a player
- and the “amazing chemistry” of the Phoenix Suns.
I would like to thank Michael for sending these questions along. When the second part is on-line I will post a link.
NBA Team Reviews and Analysis
The discussion of team chemistry led me to offer a review of the Phoenix Suns in 2009-10. This review will serve as the Wages of Wins Journal team review for the Suns. With this review in hand, eleven team reviews of the 2009-10 season have been posted in this forum. These reviews have been collected on a page I constructed today.
NBA Analysis: 2006 to the Present is a collection of every team review posted across the past five summers. In addition, this page also presents both the league analysis and NBA draft studies presented across the past few years.
I should note that Arturo was scheduled to offer the review of the Phoenix Suns. Arturo, though, seems to have his hands full offering brilliant posts like the following: A Half Baked Notion about the difference between the Regular Season and the Playoffs.
Arturo claims he is going to be writing a post everyday (365 posts in 365 days). So make sure to check in each day to see the latest that Arturo has to say.
One last note… Mosi Platt – AKA “reservoirgod” – offered an analysis of the Team USA scrimmage from this past weekend that is well worth checking out.
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Lior
July 26, 2010
Could you also make a page linking to the “all players at time T” posts? (this mostly means the the end-of-season league-wide tables).
robbieomalley
July 26, 2010
Can we get a find a David Berri look a like contest using that sweet picture? The first person I thought of was Will Farrell in Blades of Glory. But it was mostly just the eyes.
Sam Cohen
July 26, 2010
I didn’t think my review of the Sixers (which also doubled as a conversation about the Samuel Dalembert trade) was so bad that it was going to be sent down the rabbit hole… :)
dberri
July 26, 2010
Oops! Sorry about that Sam. And I forgot Mike Madden’s discussion of the Kings. So I guess we have 13 finished.
benamery21
July 27, 2010
Why DID 6 Suns’ players comprising 59% of allocated minutes perform at least 25% better (individually) than last season on a Wins Produced basis (Amare, Amundson, and Richardson also had non-trivial improvements over last season)?
Why DID a 37 y.o. small forward who represents another 12% of allocated minutes improve by 5% instead of declining as one would predict based on his age?
Why DID a 6′-11″ also-ran center who represents another 11% of allocated minutes produce 3.6 more wins than Dave Berri predicted on 10/18/2009 using an almost entirely different style of play than in his NBA career prior to this season but 0.3 wins less than he should have from the perspective of 7/26/2010?
Why DID Jared Dudley (allocated another 10% of minutes) produce 3.3 wins more than Dave Berri predicted on 10/18/2009 but 0.8 wins less than he should have from the perspective of 7/26/2010?
4% of team minutes were allocated to an above average shooter, noted by Berri on this site as being above average, who performed abysmally this season due to wrist injury.
We can ignore the remaining 4% of minutes.
The answers to the above questions would explain why this team did so much better than predicted by virtually all analysts (including those using Wins Produced) leading up to this season. I think this worthy of analysis beyond: “a couple of young players played better and Steve Nash just won’t die.”
I personally think the broad brush answer is: “a coach who didn’t foul up Steve Nash’s productivity, including his ability to improve those around him”
Eliot
July 27, 2010
I should avoid reading the comments on WoW articles on other sites, due to the large number of “this does not match what I think thus it must be wrong” comments. And also disbelief about where Kobe is ranked. Otherwise, I found the playoff article pretty interesting as it conflicts with an often espoused belief that a deep bench is critical to a deep playoff run. From the article it seems better to have a solid 6th man (ala Lakers) than to have a deep bench without a starter quality player and as Arturo stated this makes the Miami team even more scary, as their perceived lack of depth may be an almost non-issue in the playoffs.
Leon
July 27, 2010
I guess the team I “follow” is the Suns. Being from the UK is a blessing as really you can picking any team you want. Considering the Suns play most of their games on the West Coast, unless I stay up till 5am I don’t get to see them play all that much.
Inevitably it falls to the box score to keep me going, and perhaps that’s all you need to look at so see the improvement. With respect to almost stat, as a team the Suns improved and their opponents regressed. A tentative answer to the puzzle for me would just be the change of coaching.
Why? Well there was a change in style in the previous season and emphasis (Shaq etc.) and this season has seen the Suns revert back to the more standard (if it’s called that style). In the play-offs (of which I watched, to the peril of my degree) there was a seemingly higher concentration of playing efficiently rather than the in-depth plays and rotations and styles of previous. And in the end, the best way to make a team improve is concentrate on doing the small things right, and worry about the big-time play by plays later.
reservoirgod
July 27, 2010
I guess my crime-fighting days are over now that my secret identity’s been revealed…
robbieomalley
July 27, 2010
Part Deuce
http://valleyofthesuns.com/2010/07/27/david-berri-part-2/
Alvy
July 27, 2010
“With Kidd, Murphy, and Lee in the top 20, I’m pretty sure that the most important stat in WP48 is being white.”
lol.
BTW, what is with this journal and people using …uh, funny names?
robbieomalley
July 27, 2010
LOL at the comments section on that site. Has nothing to do with Kobe but WTF NO KOBE!!!!
Eliot
July 27, 2010
I love how they completed dismiss the metric due to it not meeting their beliefs in which players are good, which is pretty much the basic human response when presented with anything that disagrees with what they believe.