In economics we teach that success leads to imitation, or copying. With that in mind….
Henry Abbott and TrueHoop – as Wikio notes – has the number one basketball blog (and I think the margin of victory is quite large). In an effort to close the gap, here is an “imitation” of what Henry had to say today (okay, I am just copying):
Poor Kobe Bryant.
Even though he has proved himself to be the emotional and intelligent leader of the NBA’s best team over the last two seasons, and one with deep connections and good working relationships with the likes of Derek Fisher and Phil Jackson, Bryant’s evidently still an icon of selfishness and gunning.
In that context, he comes up in a fascinating essay about what’s wrong with Wall Street.
On The New York Times’ website, professor J.M. Bernstein explains that Wall Street bankers should be in favor of strong and smart regulation. Usually the regulators are seen as being obstacles to Wall Street’s freedom to profit. Citing philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel, Bernstein instead makes the case that good regulation is the precise thing that gives banking meaning and value.
To illustrate his point, Bernstein summons the image of a selfish Bryant, who plays the role of a greedy banker in this analogy.
Actions are elements of practices, and practices give individual actions their meaning. Without the game of basketball, there are just balls flying around with no purpose. The rules of the game give the action of putting the ball through the net the meaning of scoring, where scoring is something one does for the sake of the team. A star player can forget all this and pursue personal glory, his private self-interest. But if that star — say, Kobe Bryant — forgets his team in the process, he may, in the short term, get rich, but the team will lose. Only by playing his role on the team, by having an L.A. Laker interest as well as a Kobe Bryant interest, can he succeed. I guess in this analogy, Phil Jackson has the role of “the regulator.”
The series of events leading up to near economic collapse have shown Wall Street traders and bankers to be essentially knights of self-interest — bad Kobe Bryants.
Bernstein proposed regulation that would reward bankers for making good investments — no big bonuses for investments that lose money. I guess that’s a little like paying a player for wins, instead of points scored (which is still the biggest factor in determining NBA salaries). It’s a reform that sure seems to make sense for Wall Street, and maybe for basketball, too.
Carrying the analogy one step further… given the contracts that Rudy Gay and Joe Johnson received – and the contract that Carmelo Anthony is refusing to sign – basketball is still an “unregulated market.” Players have an incentive to shoot as much as possible, even at the cost of team victories. Perhaps if the coaches were better regulators…
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Ty Ahmad-Taylor
October 6, 2010
This thread begs the question: after any/some/one team begins to evaluate players using the WP metric, will that team or any other begin to structure its *contracts* in a way that incents what we can call “proper” behavior, on the court, for its players.
Put simply: who will be the first GM to structure his player contracts to reward play that increases efficiency by the metrics that most of readers of this blog (and the Wages of Wins network, by extension) take as assumed wisdom?
The direct question that follows is whether or not it drives the incented players to play more efficiently.
Great post, Dr. Berri.
Italian Stallion
October 6, 2010
I think the analogy may fall apart if examined closely.
An NBA team doesn’t have a central banker willing to print whatever amount of money it takes to buy the bad investments and transfer massive wealth from the rest of us to Wall St via the back door in order to ensure that the system (team) does not collapse (lose).
It also doesn’t have a bought and paid for President and Congress (no matter which party is in power) to provide endless direct bailouts.
With incentives to do whatever it wants during a boom to maximize profits and the government and its institutions standing ready to protect them during the bust, Wall ST institutions would be crazy to want regulation.
The only thing that is going to prevent this nonsense in the future is the threat of actual failure and the massive loss of wealth by shareholders, partners, and high level executives. Of course it would also definitely help if we had sound money and the Fed wasn’t providing almost endless credit out of thin air during the booms and fueling all that irresponsible and unethical behavior.
If I was Kobe and knew that my turnovers, missed shots, offensive fouls etc.. would be wiped out at the end of the game by some NBA institution and allow me to win even when I had a terrible night, I’d shoot every time down the court.
Sorry for the rant.
I understood the point very well and agree, but even though some regulation is required it is not going to keep the lunatics on Wall St under control. Phil Jackson on the hand can demonstrate that bad behavior does lead to losses and have a chance to impact Kobe.
todd2
October 6, 2010
The analogy doesn’t apply in a respect that’s been mentioned elsewhere on this site; winning isn’t a priority for some franchises as long as they turn a profit. A different yardstick is being used to determine a team’s success.
some dude
October 6, 2010
I don’t agree with the conclusion of shooting more. Let’s stop pretending only scorers get paid.
Noah just got paid.
Ben Wallace got paid
Dalembert got paid
Jermaine O’neal got paid (he was never a top tier scorer)
Kenyon Martin got paid
Nene got paid
Bynum got paid
Lamar got paid
Oh, and the #2 salary this season is Rashard freaking Lewis. He is not a “scorer.”
I also agree with Todd2. See: Clippers.
dberri
October 6, 2010
Dude,
Try and read a bit slower. No one said that scorers are the only players who get paid. And no one said that scoring is all that matters. What was said is that scoring is the biggest determinant of a player’s salary. It is easy to argue against something when you change what is being said. Try and focus on what is actually being said. Criticism that simply distorts an argument is useless.
not the last player chosen
October 6, 2010
I am not convinced heavy emphasis on WP would produce a title worthy team — the team may consistently win games, but a title team needs a superstar who is playing at the highest level of his game with blended talents around him. If you left out the obvious superstar athletic talents like D Wade, LeBron, Dwight Howard, Kevin Durant, and take the next group among the WP leaders who are not considered ‘superstars’ or ‘great athletes’, Jason Kidd (too old), David Lee (too small ), Lamar Odom (doesn’t have a great jump), Gerald Wallace (never played on a team that won a playoff game), Manu Ginobili (always injured), as a GM you would spend a lot of money and probably would be lucky to win a playoff series. If you looked WP statistics, you’d think you would have a winning combination.
WP is based on the premise that players are fairly consistent in their production, but the truth is that many players fluctuate a good deal.
Here is Trevor Ariza over the last three years
2010 Houston WP 6.08
2009 Lakers WP 8.16
2008 Lakers WP 2.25
Anyone care to venture a guess about his WP with New Orleans. It really depends on how he’s used and how well he blends in with Chris Paul
Take Ramon Sessions the last three years:
2010 Minn. 1.65
2009 Milw 8.87
2008 Milw 2.08
Anyone care to venture a guess about his WP with Cleveland this year.
WP may provide an overall assessment of a player’s production based on many facets of the game, but you’d have to be a total idiot to think Jason Kidd with WP 20.23 in 2010 is a far superior player to Kobe Bryant with WP 10.57 in 2010.
some dude2
October 6, 2010
The professor is censoring my arguments despite the fact that I have not made any insults or attacks.
Wow.
some dude2
October 6, 2010
“Criticism that simply distorts an argument is useless.”
You lob an accusation and then censor my reply which was filled with nothing but NBA based material.
What’s that about? Censoring arguments is not a way to convince people of anything, professor.
dm
October 6, 2010
I agree that the NBA is an unregulated market that overvalues points per game but isn’t possible there would be weird outcomes for paying for wins produced?
I know that the article “Dave Berri’s Dismal Science” at Free Darko (http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2007/01/dave-berris-dismal-science.html) is old, but I just read it yesterday and it brings up an interesting point. The correlation between win score from the past season and current is quite high (R-sq=.70) but between the the two main inputs there is a large difference, non scoring (R-sq=.85) and scoring (R-sq=.30).
If a player was paid for wins produced wouldn’t he focus on the less risky non scoring statistics rather than risk going into the red by shooting a bad percentage one year? Couldn’t this possibly lead to players avoiding shooting and overall worse and less effective basketball? Perhaps General managers would need to reward points per game to a degree if only to encourage shooting. What you guys think of this? DJ?
I’m tired and probably didn’t word that well lol, so please read the article.
Michael
October 7, 2010
Some Dude, are you sure your reply didn’t get caught in the spam filter?
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
If Dr Berri doesn’t respond to some of the points raised by ‘not the last player chosen’ and ‘dm’ I will lose some of my respect for him.
I’d like to add to dm’s point about what players might be expected to do if they were suddenly hyper aware that they were being evaluated on the basis of WP.
There is a classic text in psychology entitled “Nonreactive Measures in the Social Sciences”. Dr Berri is undoubtedly aware of it.
An example of a non-reactive measure that I like is that New Orleans officials estimate Mardi Gras crowd size by the number of tons of trash that are collected along parade routes the day after the parade.
If there were an incentive for parade goers to exaggerate crowd size, and they were aware of how crowd size was going to be estimated, they might intentionally dump bogus trash brought from home or at the very least be more likely to casually discard whatever potential trash they might have at hand.
This is kind of what dm is saying might happen if NBA teams started incentivising players for having higher WP48 scores.
To me it raises the interesting question of whether most sports statistics go through a life cycle of starting out as nonreactive and therefore potentially most useful in evaluating player contributions and wind up distorting play the way points scored presumably is foremost in the minds of NBA players in their contract year?
There may presumably have been a point back in professor Naismith’s peach basket days when players were unaware that some budding statistician was recording their points scored per game.
Is WP48 a useful measure precisely because it is nonreactive and unlikely to be publicly adopted by NBA talent evaluators anytime soon?
Italian Stallion
October 7, 2010
If I was a player and was my production was being measured using WP, I would work to improve my shot selection and maximize the relationship between my scoring and my efficiency (WP does reward high scoring as long as it is efficient). I would also hit the boards a little harder.
The result might be that guys like Kobe and Melo would only score 20-25 PPG instead of 25-30 PPG and produce better team basketball.
If they overdid it (like never shooting anything other than a dunk or layup) they would improve their efficiency further but it would reduce their production. You still need scorers on this metric. They just have to have smart shot selection and be efficient.
Italian Stallion
October 7, 2010
Bill,
I have argued the same things as Not the last player Chosen, but the reality is that most coaches/GMs recognize the skills and talents of individual players and both choose players that fit well and then use them effectively. When they don’t fit the system or work well with the other players as anticipated, they are traded somewhere they will as Ariza and Sessions demonstrate.
So yes, IMHO those things matter, but the measure of their production is accurate.
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
Ironically, fantasy basketball has taught me that any system can be gamed.
Undoubtedly, some NBA players game the system for gains that even arise outside the system.
‘Melo is trying to work his way to some major media market, preferably New York, where his “scorer” ways will not only earn him a max contract for his ability to put butts in seats, but will earn him untold millions in product endorsements etc.
And we mustn’t forget it is all ultimately about putting butts in seats and only tangentially about winning games and only to the extent that winning puts said butts in said seats.
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
Maybe Dr Berri should generate a metric for “Putting Butts in Seats” (PBS48).
Then he could show whether PER or WP48 correlated better with PBS48.
Sadly, my bet would be on PER!
dberri
October 7, 2010
Bill Gish,
I take it you have never read either book (or any academic article I have written, or many of the posts here). Attendance has already been studied. Wins put people in the seats. Scoring (and PER) does not.
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
I admit to not having read your books, they are not held by my local library, and they are expensive. Not going for the sympathy vote, but I am retired on a fixed income.
But I am a fairly loyal reader for the past couple of years.
I don’t think I deserve to be dissed for my comments. I do understand how it feels to think that any fool would see how self evidently right you are.
I was an anti-war Vietnam vet. Can’t understand to this day why the great silent majority didn’t see the war the same way we did.
I want to point out that I did say “sadly” that I thought PBS48 would correlate more with PER.
I just looked at the ’09-10′ NBA league attendance. I think it looks like losing is highly correlated with driving people out of seats. But losing is also correlated with having no high scoring star power because the owner won’t spring for free agents or with incompetent GMs.
I’d say it also looks like “location, location, location” is the common factor in most of the high attendance cities.
How else do you account for the high attendance of Golden State? It couldn’t be Nellie ball.
But please, in all humility, give me a link to previous posts on attendance that I missed. I genuinely have learned much here, and regret distracting from earlier posts I praised that deserve your attention more than mine.
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
I’d much rather you responded to this comment of mine below, and the earlier comment by dm that inspired it:
“Is WP48 a useful measure precisely because it is nonreactive and unlikely to be publicly adopted by NBA talent evaluators anytime soon?”
dberri
October 7, 2010
Sorry Bill.
Check out the columns for the NY Times (page above). There is one on Allen Iverson’s gate appeal. And I think I will write another a column on this for HuffPo soon.
As for the Free Darko stuff… I responded to that when it was written. In fact, I went back and forth with the writer of the column. I found his argument to be unconvincing then. And I still feel the same way. More specifically, I do not believe NBA players are paid to shoot to compensate them for the riskiness of shooting. At least, I can’t find a player who refuses to shoot becuase he thinks it is too risky (except when a coach told him not to). Players will shoot if you let them (and they believe — as some have explicitely stated — that every shot they take is a good one and bound to go in). And that is because they are rewarded when they score (and not rewarded as much when they don’t). The Free Darko author was bending over backward to come up with another story. In the end, his story wasn’t very plausible.
marparker
October 7, 2010
Everyone arguing against incentivizing by wins produced is forgetting that wins produced is the most accurate measurement we have so far. Measuring crowd size by trash is pretty non sensical because there are many more accurate ways of counting people. In your example amount of trash per person actually perfectly illustrated the problem with the scoring based metrics. Bad shots can be equated with generating extra trash for the purpose of distorting perception.
Wins produced is an accurate measure of something which is finite. For players to increase their productivity another player’s productivity must fall. Therefore players wold have to actually generate more wins than the guy across from him to collect more money. I don’t think player x can generate more wins by never shooting.
Regardless, I think their are consequences to gunning for paychecks. Allen Iverson is out of the league while Jason Kidd and Steve Nash and countless other less gifted athletes are still collecting huge paychecks. The league eventually weeds out the “losers” it just takes its sweet time doing so. It realizes that as dumb as we public are we can’t be sold on potential forever.
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
marparker,
I see I picked a poor example of a nonreactive measure and so you were distracted from my point which is actually pretty close to the conclusion you drew but you think you’re disagreeing with me.
Let me try a definition instead:
“unobtrusive (nonreactive) measures Measures of behavior that eliminate the problem of reactivity, because observations are made in such a way that the presence of the observer is not detected by those being observed.”
So, everyone from your coach to the team statistician to the poor slob in the seats is obviously observing your scoring. Result? As you noted “Bad shots can be equated with generating extra trash for the purpose of distorting perception.”
Exactly!!!!!
Then my question to Dr Berri and you follows logically:
Is WP48 a useful measure precisely because it is nonreactive, and unlikely to be publicly adopted by NBA talent evaluators anytime soon?
p.s.
Actually, Mardi Gras crowds are hard to count. The routes string along miles of totally open, public, city streets. There is no paid attendance (It’s the greatest free show in the world!) and people come and go over the course of hours.
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
I took Dr Berri’s advice and did find article where he addressed star power and team attendance. Here’s a link for anyone who doesn’t want to do the search I did:
The article was from 2007. I admit I haven’t been following that long. It is interesting. But it again suggests that NBA owners and GMs are fools for paying “scorers” with low WPs. That may be true, but I’d like to understand their behavior not just scorn it.
dberri
October 7, 2010
Bill,
Perhaps you could visit a library now and read the books.
Bill Gish
October 7, 2010
My local library doesn’t have your books.
Why weren’t you willing to address the issue of whether WP has more utility if it remains a nonreactive measure?
dm
October 7, 2010
Thanks for the reply DJ, didn’t realize you addressed the article before, sorry about that.
I agree the article’s premise is a stretch, I only brought it up for speculative purposes. It’s just interesting to ponder the implications of wins produced becoming the standard box score statistic known and used by fans, players, gms, coaches and the media.
I just can’t help but think about that part in the Michael Lewis article “The No-Stats All-Star” where Shane Battier holds the ball at the end of quarter as time runs out instead of shooting it. The gm obviously wants him to shoot it because from the team winning perspective there’s nothing to lose but Shane feels as a role player he’s judged on his three point shooting percentage. Just makes me wonder if the game would be different if every player thought he was judged and paid to a larger degree on his shooting percentage.
Just a little example maybe it’s silly, but it might qualify as an example of a player refusing to shoot because he thinks it to risky.
dberri
October 7, 2010
dm,
Well that might be one example of what Free Darko argued. On the other hand, how many examples do we have of players becoming very angry when their shot attempts are reduced? Clearly players think they need to shoot to have value. They do not regard shooting as a risky venture to be avoided.
Alexander
October 7, 2010
“At least, I can’t find a player who refuses to shoot becuase he thinks it is too risky (except when a coach told him not to). Players will shoot if you let them (and they believe — as some have explicitely stated — that every shot they take is a good one and bound to go in). And that is because they are rewarded when they score (and not rewarded as much when they don’t).”
Prof,
Of course you wouldn’t find such a player right now, because the primary determinant of player salary is currently total points scored.
The question is whether players would become afraid to shoot if WP48 became the primary determinant of player salary.
Again, the interesting point that the freedarko article brings up is the fact that, if WP48 became the dominant metric, making your money as a scorer would be riskier than making your money via the other box score stats, because scoring efficiency is more variable than performance in the other stats. I.e. a player knows less about how efficiently he is going to score this year than he does about his performance in the other stats.
If WP48 accurately weights the importance of the different box score stats to winning (and the article doesn’t dispute this, contrary to what the anti-WP48 comments are interpreting it to say), then it’s true that completely rational players will be encouraged to contribute to winning, to the best of their ability.
However, it has been shown in other contexts that people generally are not perfectly rational in situations of risk: we tend to be risk-averse, rather than risk neutral. E.g. when given the choice between a 50% chance at $5000, and a guaranteed $1500, most people will take the guaranteed money, despite the fact that the gamble has a higher expected value.
Therefore, I think it’s plausible that GMs would have to pay more for scoring than the other forms of production in order to overcome risk-aversion. I definitely think that switching to WP48 as the primary determinant of player salary would change the way that the game is played. But for good or ill, in terms of overall player efficiency? I don’t know! Sure we can name players who seem to be over-shooting right now, to the detriment of their teams, but it’s not as if we can’t name any players at all who seem to be under-shooting (Mike Miller?).
some dude2
October 7, 2010
Michael, he’s blocked my original name. It’s not a spam filter issue, my post was on the site for a good while. He then opted to correct the mistake he made in his response which I had pointed out.
He’s censoring me, plain and simple. And like I said, my post was content based. I wasn’t cursing and attacking, so I don’t understand how there is a legitimate reason to censor me in defending my position.
dberri
October 7, 2010
Alexander,
As I recall, the author of the FreeDarko article argued that players were being compensated for the riskiness of shooting. In other words, he was trying to explain why scoring dominated (past tense is important here) salaries. As I have noted, that story doesn’t seem to fit what we observe with respect to the players. Players today get angry when shots are taken away. That behavior is not consistent with the “compensation story” FreeDarko was telling.
some dude2
October 7, 2010
Josh Smith is a good example of a player who willingly changed his shot selection for the betterment of the team.
Baron Davis is a good example of the opposite.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the main factor in this is the franchise themselves. Guys like Ellis and Baron belong to joke franchises (GSW possibly in the past tense, now) while Smith does not.
entityabyss
October 7, 2010
Some dude, changing your shot selection could make you a better player, but it hasn’t really been seen.
Consider players on bad teams that go to good teams. They reduce the amount of shots they take and I’m pretty sure it’s for the betterment of the team. The thing is though, there doesn’t seem to be an increase in their shooting percentage. The wages of wins had a post on increasing and decreasing shot attempts. The percentages don’t change much. I looked up different players and that is the case. Players are for the most who they are. Their percentages don’t change with the number of attempts and they tend to attempt the same shots. So to answer many people’s question on this, if wins produced became the main metric used, it’s possible that players would try to change, but it’s unlikely that they would or their wins produced would change.
teams would probably be better because inefficient shooters wouldn’t shoot as much, but individual players’ WP wouldn’t change much. Not a lot of players have high scoring WP. So if those players decreased their shots, their WP wouldn’t change much. As for the very good scorers, they would probably shoot more, but once again, the change wouldn’t be too much. As for the other factors (rebounding, turn overs, assists, etc.), once again, the players are who they are. For example, when marcus camby left denver, they lost their first couple games and george karl said it was marcus camby wasn’t there any more and more players would have to go for rebounds as supposed to running out. There wasn’t a significant change in carmelo anthony’s rebounding numbers. Eddy curry has been criticized for not rebounding much and turning over the ball too much. he never really improved in those categories significantly.
So yean if kobe shoots less and pau and bynum, shoot more, the lakers will be better, but individually, kobe’s WP would probably go up less than 1 more win in a season and pau and andrew would probably increase a little too. The lakers could get 1 or 2 more wins if they used WP, but that change isn’t too big.
So I’ll restate it- players are for the most part who they are. You can tell them to change, but it won’t make too much of a difference.
Hope that answers some questions.
some dude2
October 7, 2010
I’ll agree with that. I am always confused with people who say that the Lakers don’t have Pau shoot enough. If you watch the team you’d notice he has the ball in his hands a lot but opts to not shoot as much. Trust me, I’d love if he’d shoot more but he doesn’t shoot less because of Kobe, he shoots less because of Pau.
But I think the point being made by other posters is that players would also “over rebound” and only shoot when wide open (which isn’t common).
Your referring to small tweaks to a person’s game. Not shooting as many 3s, perhaps, or deferring a bit more. The other posters are wondering if players, knowing it would affect their salary to a large extent, would change everything about their games.
silverbird from freedarko
October 7, 2010
As the author of the FreeDarko post in question, I just want to second Alexander’s comment defending my argument. It’s true that players don’t act as if they think scoring is risky and are afraid to shoot. But that’s only because of the way scoring is (over-) rewarded in the current system. If we switched to a world in which compensation was based on WP48, shooting would be risky, in a way that it isn’t now. Given that shooting percentage varies widely from season to season (see my original article), risk-averse players acting with imperfect information might not be willing to shoot unless scoring is rewarded in excess of it’s true marginal value. And while the current system may have inefficiencies in the direction over-shooting, a WP48-based compensation regime could have even greater inefficiencies in the direction of under-shooting, wherein high-percentage shooters opt to pass or rebound rather than shoot, in order to avoid the risk of missing and having their pay docked. A world of Shane Battiers at the end of the quarter, just holding the ball and waiting for time to expire.
Italian Stallion
October 7, 2010
>>The question is whether players would become afraid to shoot if WP48 became the primary determinant of player salary.<<
I don't think so because WP48 would still require that they score if they wanted to rate higher and get paid more.
It's not like scoring doesn't count on this model. The more you score the higher you will rate. It's just that you have to be efficient for it to have any value. Therefore a rational person would still want to score as many points as he could, he would just want to make sure he "remained efficient" while doing so.
The best way to do that would be to analyze your own strengths and weaknesses (shot distance, location etc…) and stay within your strengths.
For some people that might mean a change of usage and for others that might mean a change in shot type distribution, but if they wanted to get paid, they would still be highly motivated to score as much they could.
The thing that's screwing up the efficiency of the market now is that guys like AI, Starbury, Melo etc… don't get punished for their mediocre efficiency. Therefore no one has to ask themselves how to maximize the relationship between their scoring and efficiency. They only have to ask themselves how to score 30 point per night at any efficiency.
philos
October 7, 2010
I don’t think that a reward system that recognizes efficient possession usage would be less useful when people are more aware of it. If everybody rebounded better, then there’s more opportunity to score. If they only took shots they can make, then each possession counts for more. Now obviously a team that would hold the ball instead of shooting it would not increase they WP because they didn’t use the possession properly. They will end up turning the ball over and produce less than 1 point per possession, now wouldn’t they? But instead of say Kobe Bryant shooting over 2 people, he’d see that Pau just got open and pass it to him. Players would start buying into coaching that focus on putting the players in the best position to make their shots. How is that bad basketball?
And I imagine that the efficient scorers, assuming they get scared away from shooting the same amount they do today, might see that they don’t hurt their shooting percentages (and conversely their WP48) by shooting more as long as they take the shots they can make, then they will start shooting more.
Will players start undershooting? Temporarily perhaps, but that won’t necessarily increase their WP. A 40% FG% is inefficient regardless of the number of shots you take. They would avoid taking ridiculously difficult shots though. Which while may be pleasing to the eyes, are inefficient as hell.
As for increasing their other stats, it’s not as if you’d suddenly become a better rebounder just because you want to.
Italian Stallion
October 7, 2010
“a WP48-based compensation regime could have even greater inefficiencies in the direction of under-shooting, wherein high-percentage shooters opt to pass or rebound rather than shoot, in order to avoid the risk of missing and having their pay docked. A world of Shane Battiers at the end of the quarter, just holding the ball and waiting for time to expire.”
As I said in my previous post, scoring matters on this metric too.
A high percentage shooter would be crazy to avoid shooting unless he was avoiding a bad shot.
There might be a handful of extreme situations where a player wouldn’t shoot a logical shot in order to avoid the risk of hurting his efficiency to scoring relationship and getting a worse WP48 (like Battier), but one would think that a smart coach would bench a player that’s turning down opportunities at the expense of the team just as they try to keep out of control players under control.
I can give you an example from last year.
Nate Robinson had the ball on the opposite end of the court with one second to go and could have taken a very long shot. Instead he held it and then tossed it into the opponent’s basket after the buzzer. Coach D’Antoni ripped him a new asshole for that. That incident was the final straw that put him in the doghouse and eventually got him traded.
I don’t think there’s a perfect system, but rewarding efficiency and better play has to be a step in the right direction.
arturogalletti
October 7, 2010
Wow,
If only someone had written a post on how to run an NBA Team using the principles of Wins Produced (including a shots incentive program) :-) (Hint: Click my name search for Build me a winner)
Alexander
October 7, 2010
I’m not sure that there really are more players chomping at the bit to take more shots than players who need to be encouraged to shoot, as it is right now.
Consider the way that players are lionized for hitting shots in crunch time. The implication is that there are players who don’t want the ball in these situations. Of course, we don’t hear as much about them because players who don’t want the ball are quieter than players who do want the ball.
You bring up players stating that they believe that every shot they take is going to go in. This is a bizarrely delusional thing to believe. I think it’s obvious that players don’t literally believe this. They’re bullish about it as a form of positive thinking.
I recall Brandon Jacobs’ comments last season that there were times after his shooting percentage started to tank where he simply didn’t feel like shooting, and had to be reminded to keep shooting. (Of course…it could be argued that he was on the right track here, but the point is that players’ shooting confidence isn’t limitless).
As I say, I really don’t know what would happen if WP were the primary determinant of player salaries. However, I do think that it would be dogmatic and ideological to believe that rewarding players precisely what they deserve in terms of win production would necessarily be the system that maximizes efficiency. That’s what I took away from silverbird’s article.
Alexander
October 7, 2010
***Jennings.
Brandon Jacobs would really have to be encouraged to jack up 3s.
reservoirgod
October 8, 2010
some dude: I think the Hawks are a joke. Just a joke w/ more talented players.
Italian Stallion: I don’t think AI, Marbury & Melo are to blame. The problem is that most coaches suck and can only implement these junk defenses that suppress scoring instead of implementing innovative offenses that make it easier to score in 24 seconds or less. Too many coaches are willing to rely on individual players’ talents to generate shots against a set defense instead of their offensive systems. Which is why D’Antoni was a genius because he realized that individual players’ offensive talents are more likely to be successful when the defense isn’t set. How did he figure this out? I’m guessing by watching NBA basketball from the 60s to the 80s.