A Quick Sunday Tour Around The Wages of Wins Network

Posted on August 22, 2010 by

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For those who are not making a review of the blogs of The Wages of Wins Network a part of their day, here are some wonderful stories that have been offered in just the past week:

Let’s start at NYK Mistakes. Andrew Shookhoff recently made the following observation about Carmelo Anthony: My dad says you need to factor in that Carmelo Anthony can “get his shot off”  Interesting is that in games where Carmelo doesn’t play, his teammates take more shots than normal.  Andrew’s observation is extremely important.  When “star” players are not available, other players do tend to take the shots.  Such analysis should be offered each time people discuss the impact of scorers in the NBA.

Arturo Galletti – of Arturo Silly Little Stats — has a series of posts called 30 to 16 to 1.  These posts are built upon what Arturo call his “half baked notion”.  Specifically “ the half baked notion tells us that a good deep team filled with average and above average players will get you in the playoffs but to get far in the playoffs you need your wins to be concentrated in your Top 6.”  With this notion in mind, Arturo has been offering comments on a variety of NBA teams.  All of this analysis has now been gathered into a single page: 30 to 16 to 1: 2010 NBA Playoffs review (Half Baked-Style) & Predicting the playoffs. 

Andres Alvarez – of Nerd Numbers – is obviously a fan of the Denver Nuggets.  And he has recently been discussing the potential departure of Carmelo Anthony.  A few days ago I gave him a challenge.  As Andres notes: “ The challenge presented was to see if I could find a situation that would make Denver, their trade partner and me happy! Let’s say Denver uses Win Shares as their metric of choice. They want to trade Carmelo but get back a player as good or better in Win Shares. What if they luck into a team that uses PER. Can they make a trade such that the PER team thinks they win, Denver thinks they win and that also makes me happy? In more exact terms

  • The Trade Team gets Melo without giving up a player with a PER greater than 18.0 ( PER ranks 18.0 as a solid second option)
  • Denver gets player in return that has a WS48 of greater than 0.140
  • I get a player in return that has a WP48 of greater than 0.150 (my standards are high!)
  • I get a player that will not be over 31 when the 2010-2011 Season ends.
  • Denver, the Trade Team and I only want players that played at least 500 minutes in 09-10.

Andres actually found several trades that fit this criteria.  So it is possible for Denver to turn the “Melo Melodrama” into a significant opportunity to improve.

Andres is not the only one proposing trades for his favorite team.  Devin Digham – at NBeh? – has been proposing trades for the Toronto Raptors.   Like Andres, Devin establishes several criteria for any proposed trade.  Despite a lengthy list of conditions, Devin uncovered twelve potential transactions that can improve the Raptors. 

Finally, Ty Willihnganz – of Courtside Analyst – has been providing posts examining NBA history. His latest looks at the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar years in Milwaukee.  Those who understand the history of the NBA box score know that all the elements we see in today’s box score were not there prior to 1977.  And Kareem was only in Milwaukee prior to this point.  Despite this issue, Ty has still managed to analyze these Bucks teams.  To see how he did this, click on over.

Let me close by emphasizing that I am just touching on some of the work being done in the network.  Hopefully everyone is enjoying all of this work as much as I am.

– DJ

Posted in: Basketball Stories