The following is from Mosi Platt of the Miami Heat Index.
If it’s the weekend, then it’s time for another Wages of Wins Network podcast!
You can listen to the podcast one of three ways:
- By downloading it from nerdnumbers.com,
- Subscribing to the RSS feed or
- Going to iTunes.
The Cast:
- Dave Berri from the Wages of Wins Journal
- Mosi Platt from the Miami Heat Index
The Synopsis
- Dave Berri began the podcast with his thoughts on Roger Goodell’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, capitalism and the NFL lockout.
- The conversation moved from the NFL lockout to the NFL draft. ESPN Magazine’s NFL Draft Preview issue used pro-football-reference.com’s Approximate Value model to identify the career value of every player that was on an NFL roster last season. They reported Peyton Manning was the most valuable 1st round pick in the NFL and Brett Favre, a 2nd round pick, had been more valuable than every player in the league. Despite a good career, however, Favre was only the 40th-ranked quarterback last season in terms of Wins Produced per 100 plays. And despite the value of Manning and Favre, draft position is not a good indicator of future performance for quarterbacks.
- Dave Berri discussed the state of advanced stats for the NFL, how they’re perceived by coaches and how statistical analysts for NBA teams managed to reduce the reliability of their models despite having access to better data than NFL analysts.
The conversation moved from a comparison of advanced stats in football and basketball to the NBA playoffs. The following topics were discussed:
- How much value are coaches bringing to their huddles? It can’t be too much if you ask Larry Bird. He said NBA coaches are wrong 60 percent of the time.
- Are the Bulls still the best team in the East, or have they been passed by the Heat and the Celtics?
- Does the half-baked notion need to spend some more time in the oven?
- What happened in the Spurs vs. Grizzlies series?
- Should Otis Smith be fired by the Magic? Will Dwight Howard and Chris Paul make their next teams instant title contenders?
- If defensive players like the Heat’s Joel Anthony have a positive impact on their team’s efficiency differential but their actions aren’t captured in the box score, then do they make their teammates better?
- Are the Thunder the best in the West?
- Mark Cuban wants to kick bloggers out of the Mavericks locker room because they bring nothing but negativity to the team and provide little value, but is there anything positive to say about that team’s title hopes? And does it make sense to revoke online journalists’ media access?
– Mosi Platt
Posted in: Basketball Stories
Wages of Wins Journal 
Sam Cohen
April 29, 2011
Off topic, but this thread seems as good a place as any to ask one of the datasheet gurus if they can fact check something.
In his chat today (http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/chat/_/id/38103), Ric Bucher made the claim that “No element of a team’s offensive game can be derailed from regular season to postseason more easily than its three-point shooting.” Does anyone have the data available to quickly prove/disprove this claim? I’m assuming it wouldn’t be too difficult for one of the spreadsheet mavens to calculate the historical variation of a playoff team’s 3 point shooting percentage between the regular season and the playoffs. And, for the sake of comparison, we’d probably also want to calculate the historical variation of a playoff team’s 2 point shooting percentage between the regular season and playoffs.
If I was better at spreadsheets and data mining I’d do it myself. But since I’m not, I’m hoping someone else out there might be able to provide some answers.