Mosi Platt – of “Miami Heat Index” – has offered another fascinating look at Team USA at Bleacher Report. Once again, this is fascinating because
- it uses Wins Produced (always great)
- it has a slide show
And it offers analysis that is somewhat different (but not completely different) from what Ty Willihnganz of Courtside Analyst offered (I linked to Ty’s analysis yesterday). So everyone, please click over to
World Domination: Kevin Durant Is Leading Team USA to The World Championship.
By the way, Team USA defeated Angola today by 55 points. In Olympic play, Team USA has defeated Angola by an average margin of 39.5 points (since 1992). So I am not sure anyone should be too excited about today’s results (then again, if you want to get excited… well, whatever makes you happy).
– DJ
Posted in: Basketball Stories
Wages of Wins Journal 
Russell
September 6, 2010
Now that there is a pretty large slate of WoW commentators, why don’t they predict the WP48 of every player in the NBA for the 2010-2011 season? This seems to make more sense (at least to me) then predicting how many games individual teams will win because there would be no guess-timating injuries.
arturogalletti
September 6, 2010
Russell,
I’m pretty sure that’s coming.
Joe
September 7, 2010
I clicked through about 2-3 slides of the bleacherreport stuff. The slideshow frustrated me, though, and I closed it out.
reservoirgod
September 7, 2010
Joe:
What frustrated you about the slideshow?
On another topic – did anybody read the excerpt of Jerry Zgoda’s story from the Star Tribune on Truehoop? “Chauncey Billups asked the other day, ‘Is he going to let anybody else get a rebound?'” Thought that was interesting since there’s been plenty of debate in this forum about David Lee/ Troy Murphy stealing rebounds or their diminishing returns. It read like Billups could’ve been joking but my mother always said, “Behind every joke, there’s a little bit of truth.”
Joe
September 7, 2010
reservoirgod,
Maybe it is IE. I can’t choose my browser at work. The show is just lousy. Took a decent amount of time for the page to load, then each slide took about as long as a full page load.
In general, I also just hate slideshows. I have to flip through them to get to the content I want and then to reference something from earlier in the show I have to flip back. The 2 second delay per click just compounds everything.
Maybe the problem is I skim my articles typically before deciding whether to invest my time in reading the whole thing?
Daniel
September 7, 2010
A post on predicting WP48 for every player for next season would just be a post of WP48 from last season. One of the central assumptions of this model is that NBA productivity is consistent over time regardless of minutes played, which is the only reason why it has predictive power.
:)
arturogalletti
September 7, 2010
Daniel,
It a little more complicated than that . ADJP48 (raw productivity before the position adjustment) remains mostly consistent over time (with some variation related to age see here http://wp.me/pYIAy-76). The two big changes comes from minute allocation by position (say for example if David Lee has been playing C minutes at and all of a sudden he’s going to get PF minutes if we use 2010 numbers that’s a .079 WP48 difference or about five wins for the minutes he played ) and the second is the talent pool (if the players you’re comparing him get better or worse it’ll affect his WP48 see here http://wp.me/pYIAy-6m). So AdjP48 stays the same (mostly) but you have to look at where the guy will play, the minutes played and you have to look at all the guys playing the position to make an accurate guess at WP48 .
Mark
September 7, 2010
AdjP48 is more consistant over time thab WP48? That is really ineresting to me since I always thought part of the position adjustment was basically to account for increased opportunities from a player’s location on the floor. An example to illustrate my thinking: if Rashard Lewis is playing small forward on defense, then he typically has two teammates closer to the basket when a shot goes up, but if he is playing power forward then typically there is only one teamate closer to the basket when a shot goes up. The extra opportunity from positioning should account for an extra rebound or two per 48 minutes without any change in skill from the player. A similar conjecture could be made for shooting a higher percentage when playing PF instead of SF on offense. Obviously the skillset of a particular player varies on how much he can take advantage of the extra opportinities.
It would be interesting to see if some patterns could be found in how AdjP48 changes for players playing out of position by one spot. In general, I would expect an increase in AdjP48 when moving from a position with a lower position adjustment to a position with a higher position adjustment, but a decrease in WP48. Of course there will be exceptions like Shawn Marion who is more productive at PF than SF.
arturogalletti
September 7, 2010
Mark,
The correlation numbers are all based on ADJP48 independent of position. Actually Sum of AdJP48 * Minutes played for all players on the team vs Sum of AdJP48 * Minutes played for all players on the average opposing team, Go take a look at guys who switch position over the years at Andres automated site and you’ll find that ADJP48 is very consistent. Players are who they are and changing their position doesn’t seem to impact their raw productivity. This is one of the reason why size seems to matter in the NBA. If you have guys that produce like PF but play SF or produce like C and play PF (Barkley,Duncan,Marion,Odom,Gasol) you will have a competitive advantage.
Curious Guy
September 8, 2010
Prof Berri, I have a technical question: will there be a data page for the whole 2009/10 season like this one: http://www.wagesofwins.com/AllTeamMid0910.html ?
Or does AA’s page mean that was the last one of that kind?
dberri
September 8, 2010
Curious Guy,
We will see. Now that we have the AA numbers there is less incentive for me to keep up with every team throughout the season. So we will see if I even have midseason numbers for everyone next year.
Curious Guy
September 9, 2010
Prof Berri, will there be stats from full 2009/10 in that form?
I’m asking because new season is not so far away and on this blog you still can’t find final numbers from last year for more than a half of teams.
BTW, I enjoyed both of your books but (as usual) I was curious about a lot of things so is there a specific page/e-mail where I can comment on them and you will at least read it (and hopefully respond to it)?
Or should I simply comment under one post (this one?) on this blog?
poker affiliate
October 6, 2010
Kevin Durant was clearly the star of the team. He is already a top 5 player in the league with only a few years in the league. He could very well win the NBA MVP this season if he continues to improve.