Henry Abbott at TrueHoop today: Rip Hamilton says (via Piston Powered) “the more scorers we’ll have, the better we’ll be” and somewhere a vein pops out of David Berri’s forehead.
The Pistons have been collecting scorers the past couple of years (Tracy McGrady, Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva are good examples). Across the past decade (until last year) the Joe Dumars and the Pistons — with a team that was not populated by many scorers — did better than the Knicks (led mostly by Isiah Thomas). Isiah — as has been noted many times — clearly followed the philosophy echoed by Rip Hamilton. After such a decade, though, Joe Dumars and Rip Hamilton appear to have reached the conclusion that Isiah was right after all. In other words, all that losing by the Knicks — and all that winning by the Pistons — didn’t lead Hamilton and Dumars to the obvious conclusion. Not sure this means the “veins are popping” (and I laughed when I read this). But it is interesting how someone who played on the Pistons when they were good could make such a statement.
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
EntityAbyss
September 28, 2010
Yea, that’s funny. I have a couple questions. What are the reasons for why someone would take dip in wins produced from one year to another. Idk if there are many examples, but Ramon Sessions is one. He went from producing 9 wins from Milwaukee to less than 2 for Minnesota.
I don’t want it to seem like I disagree with WP (cuz i don’t), but if system doesn’t affect WP and Sessions wasn’t injured last year, what caused the dip in his production? By that, I don’t mean WP cuz I know that, but what caused his production. Looking at his stats, his assist numbers dropped. What caused the factors in the dip of his WP?
I also seen this in Shawn Marion from phoenix to Miami. What could’ve caused such a dip?
some dude
September 28, 2010
System and teammates clearly affect your WP48 numbers. The idea that stats are accumulated in a vacuum is laughable.
Ramon Sessions TOV% shot up while his assist % shot down. The assist ratio is most certainly attributable to both the triangle and playing with players who can’t shoot. He also had the ball in his hands less even though he was about as efficient a scorer as the previous year.
There’s no other explanation. A passer doesn’t just suddenly forget how to pass. Truth is that he is a pick & roll player miscast into a triple post offense. Or at least, was.
Chicago Tim
September 28, 2010
EntityAbyss — My Googling found a comment that Minnesota used Sessions as a cross-positional backup, did not employ him as a distributor as often as Milwaukee, and that Sessions had trouble grasping the triangle offense.
http://www.detroitbadboys.com/2010/6/2/1498789/the-point-problem-ramon-sessions
While NBA players are as a rule fairly consistent from ages 24-32, there are exceptions, and not just due to injury. Sessions and Marion both regressed after they changed teams; I would guess that had something to do with a new role on a new team under a new coach with a new system that just didn’t play to their strengths. It is almost as if they were being played out of position, even if they nominally were playing the same position.
EntityAbyss
September 28, 2010
So then that would mean that for some players at least, coaching does matter. The big thing with marion though was his rebounding decreased. I don’t see this often and I don’t believe that system has too strong an effect in the league because there aren’t many examples, but in those cases, there had to be something.
Also, the effect of drawing fouls. Mr Berri, you said you were gonna write or publish something on the effect of drawing fouls. I don’t want to rush you or anything, but I would just like to know if you have time for when you might drop it.
dberri
September 28, 2010
I might have something on fouls in a few weeks.
In looking at what causes performance to change… we have evidence it is impacted by age, coaching (not often, but sometimes), roster stability, and productivity of teammates. All of these effects are rather small, but are seen systematically in the data. To offer simple anecdotes to highlight other factors — or to increase the significance of what has been cited — would be considered a “laughable” approach (if I may use such language).
kevin
September 28, 2010
I went to a coaching clinic one time, around 1978 or so. Hubie Brown was speaking and he related a story after he had taken the reins as head coach of the Atlanta Hawks. He almost immediately created a controversy out of training camp when he got rid of Lou Hudson for basically nothing. When he was asked why he would get rid of such a good scorer, he said “Sure he could shoot! But he couldn’t do anything else!”
I’m afraid the Pistons will have a lot of players who won’t be doing much else.
some dude
September 28, 2010
“To offer simple anecdotes to highlight other factors — or to increase the significance of what has been cited — would be considered a “laughable” approach (if I may use such language).”
Good thing no one is doing this.
As you said, it exists. No one postulated that when taking every NBA player into consideration that the effect is large. But it is real.
I would wonder if the data would point to certain players being more susceptible to such changes.
Italian Stallion
September 28, 2010
“To offer simple anecdotes to highlight other factors — or to increase the significance of what has been cited — would be considered a “laughable” approach (if I may use such language).”
Perhaps to an academic, but not to someone that makes money gambling based on such insights. ;-)
Evanz
September 28, 2010
What Rip meant to say was, “more efficient scorers.” Right?
arturogalletti
September 28, 2010
Evanz,
“more efficient scorers who are tall and handle the ball well” you mean.
Alvy
September 28, 2010
Rip meant having LeBron James on the Pistons. You guys gotta read between the lines.
Chicago Tim
September 29, 2010
EntityAbyss — Sure coaching matters. Play someone out of position, or don’t give them minutes at all, and they won’t produce as many wins. What’s rare is the coach who can actually make the player play better, rather than just playing him more often in the correct position.
In Miami, for example, my big question this year is whether the coach can persuade James to play point and Bosh to play center so he can start Miller and Haslem. If not, then they won’t have their best five players on the floor. He may compromise by playing those five in “crunch time” rather than starting them, but if so their record will suffer, and so might their chances in the playoffs (although they are still overwhelming favorites).
A great argument has been made that the Celtics beat Cleveland last year in the playoffs because of the coaches’ decisions about distributing minutes during the playoffs.
And then there are some coaches whose impact goes beyond who to play at what position. Prof. Berri has said that under Phil Jackson players tend to improve their level of play, and that those improvements tend to carry over even when they leave his team. But that is much more rare. Usually coaches have little impact on the level of a player’s ability, but a greater impact on how often they play, and at what position.
brgulker
September 29, 2010
I was wondering if Dr. Berri would catch this. The last thing the Pistons need are “more scorers” like Rip, Gordon, McGrady, and Charlie V. Unless TMac is literally re-born, not only will he play mediocre ball at best, he’ll be taking minutes from other more productive players like Tayshaun Prince, and more likely, from a young but promising player, Austin Daye.
I still love the Thomas — Dumars analogy. It’s still amazing to me that none of the regular Detroit readers and bloggers have taken it and run with it. The parallels are so painfully obvious.
Chicago Tim
September 29, 2010
Message to Prof. Berri. Did you see yourself liberally cited in this article?
http://hoopspeak.com/2010/09/advanced-statistics-what-would-auerbach-do/
I thought you might be interested.
Evanz
September 29, 2010
OT, but I don’t know where else to ask. Why doesn’t WoW have a RSS feed? Most wordpress blogs have that as a default option.
Philip
September 29, 2010
Chicago Tim,
Miller and Wade have both played backup PG as well, while Chalmers, House and Arroyo are around .100 producers and certainly merit the minutes. Miller can still come off the bench, finish in crunch time, and get his 30 minutes/game, the same way Manu does for the Spurs. The Heat’s real problem, is that their backup bigs might offer negative production on aggregate, not minute allocation for their best players.
Zach
September 29, 2010
Interesting discussion here. I’d like to do some research on Wins Produced. Does anyone know where I could find WP data for all NBA players last year (I wish stuff like this was sortable on ESPN)? Either by position, team, whatever. I assume there is some place where all this data is tracked/recorded, but I haven’t been able to find it.
nerdnumbers
September 29, 2010
Zach,
If you’re a Windows User you can use my site: http://www.permanent-sketch.com, it requires a silverlight download (which is just Microsoft’s flavor of Flash essentially), let me know if you’re not.
Evanz
September 29, 2010
Works on a Mac, too!
Curious Guy
September 29, 2010
Prof Berri, speaking of popping veins…
http://www.wagesofwins.com/Atlanta0708.html
http://www.wagesofwins.com/Hawks0507.html
Why WP48 in 2006-07 for all players have two different versions even though they describe exactly the same thing? BTW, Atlanta is not an exception.
Plus, IMHO there’s a mistake in Lanier’s example in http://www.stumblingonwins.com/CalculatingWinsProduced.html because Lanier PROD’s is 622*0.032 + 298*0.017 + 537*-0.032 + 88*-0.015 + 197*0.032 + 518*0.033 + 225*-0.032 + 82*0.033 + 155.3*-0.017 + 93*0.019 + 216*0.022 = 29,2489 not 28.57 (which obviously screws up all following calculations…)
evanz
September 29, 2010
You meant 29.2489 (unless we’re using the European symbol for decimal point).
Daniel
September 29, 2010
I think the main issue is that Joe Dumars and Isaiah Thomas were considered the best players on the Pistons’ title teams. Neither of them were really superstars in regards to their performance, but the media pointed to their scoring exploits and pinned them as the best players on their teams. It only makes sense that they try to replicate that experience with the “best” players from their titles.
Daniel
September 29, 2010
p.s. This site has an RSS feed. Here it is…
https://dberri.wordpress.com/feed/
Zach
September 29, 2010
Nerdnumbers,
That’s exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much.
Chicago Tim
September 30, 2010
Philip — How many minutes do Chalmers, House, and Arroyo merit if they are taking away minutes from James, Wade, and Miller? Miller can’t get 30 minutes a game if he is backing up James, Wade, and some combination of Chalmers/House/Arroyo — that is, not unless James is playing forward, in which case Haslem has trouble getting minutes.
And yes, the situation is even worse at center.
All that being said, Miami will likely still romp. But they could romp even more impressively if they started their five best players.
Curious Guy
September 30, 2010
evanz: “You meant 29.2489 (unless we’re using the European symbol for decimal point).”
Yeah, thanks, that was the most important part of my comment ;-)
Philip
September 30, 2010
Chicago Tim,
There’s 144 minutes available at the PG/SG/SF positions in a game without overtime. Let’s say Wade gets 34 minutes at one of these positions, James gets about 25 (and 10 at PF), while Miller gets about 30. That leaves 55 minutes to spread among those three guys. I figure Chalmers to get about 25, while House and Arroyo split the remaining 30, but considering you can safely pencil in Miller and Wade to miss a fair chunk of the season to injury, those will probably go up.
Michael
September 30, 2010
Just because a league wide regression doesn’t show an impact on productivity for a given factor, does not mean that said factor may not influence an individual player.
The 2010 Eastern conference semis and Lebron James’ mother come to mind.