Welcome to the weekend edition of the Wages of Wins Podcast
- Brought to you by “Small Sample Sizes”. They don’t prove anything but are a lot of fun if you want to make bold assumptions that can’t be verified.
Super Stat Team Assemble!
- Andres Alvarez of NerdNumbers.com
- David Berri of the Wages of Wins Journal
- Mosi Platt of the Miami Heat Index
- with a last second addition of Arturo of Arturo’s Silly Little Stats
Listen to us at Several Convenient Internet Locations Near You
- Super Stat Team Podcast – 05/17/2011 – Direct Download
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Smackdown
- Dave Berri is an active participant in the Truehoop Stat Smackdown. He’s put his money on Chicago winning and his fate as a stat expert is tied to this.
- Mosi Platt in the Wages of Wins Smackdown has put his money on Miami and Oklahoma.
The Miami Heat
- Mosi Platt predicted 75 Wins for this Team. Dave Berri says that with their current playoff line up, that wouldn’t have been far off.
- Turns out Miller and Haslem matter!
- Arturo actually said Miller mattered way back.
The following table illustrates how good the Heat would have been in 2010-11 had they played the players we have seen in Games 2 and 3. As one can see, with Miller and Haslem playing, the Heat are a 75 win team (and clearly the favorites to win the NBA title).
The Chicago Bulls
- Charles Barkley calls the Chicago Defense great. Mosi points out this isn’t exactly true.
- Dave talks how in terms of players they’ve signed the Bulls look good for a while. Andres and Mosi question if the team will keep the right pieces.
Scoring, Role Players and “Playoff Mode”
- Dave’s pointed out that losing your top scorer is not always the end of the world. The fine folks at Basketball-Reference agree (based on your interpretation)
- Does a good playoff series make you the greatest of all time?
- Kobe’s had some bad playoff games. Although the one Mosi brought up didn’t look so terrible (well at least if you just look at Kobe)
Management and Optimism for Next Season
- Can anyone in Toronto really be optimistic?
- Has management in Memphis improved? And do they actually know what they’re doing?
- Mosi says Abbott’s said management doesn’t like listening to their medical staff. A shame OKC decided to.
- Dave tries to be optimistic for Detroit. A good point he makes is that it is really hard in the NBA for a team to get rid of bad players. Even an amnesty clause would likely not stop bad management.
- Arturo tried to be optimistic for Boston. Dave brings up some evidence why that may not be easy to do.
- Mosi said Boston is trying to get more athletic. Ty at the Courtside Analyst explains what that really means.
Kareem
- Despite claims to the contrary, I am actually a big Kareem fan.
- “On the Shoulders of Giants” is a great film by Kareem that is available if you have Netflix.
Enjoy!
-Dre
Posted in: Basketball Stories
Wages of Wins Journal 
James
May 23, 2011
A few duos better than James & Wade, who produced 41.6 wins together (I didn’t look at every possible duo, just the ones that I thought might have had a chance):
Rodman & Robinson ’94 ~51.8 wins
Jordan & Pippen ’91 ~47.3 wins
Jordan & Pippen ’92 ~44.9 wins
Bird & McHale ’87 ~44.1 wins
Kareem & Magic ’80 ~42.8 wins
Jordan & Rodman ’96 ~42.0 wins
Italian Stallion
May 25, 2011
D Berri,
I was wondering if you ever did a recalculation of Wins Produced for all the players for the 2010/11 season using .5 as the value for (defensive?) rebounds so I could compare it to last year .
Andrew Roberts
May 26, 2011
D Berri,
I am curious to see who you consider to be this year’s true MVP. To put this in context, I have been arguing with a group of guys about Derrick Rose and whether or not he truly was the most valuable player. The measure of value that my friends would like to use is “win contribution”. They attest that if Rose were removed from the Bulls they would be a sub .500 team and therefore is much more valuable to his team than my pick (LeBron James).
I personally do not believe that “win contribution” should be the only contributing factor when considering an MVP. But if it is, who should take the cake? Also- if you have a better method of measurement, then by all means please settle our argument for us.