Fred “The Mayor” Hoiberg has joined the front office of the Minnesota Timberwolves. It is hard to say at this point if he will make a good executive, although as I noted in “The Tragedy of Kevin Garnett”, the Timberwolves need all the help they can get in the front …
In my recent New York Times Keeping Score column I noted that turnovers in football are hard to predict. Two weeks earlier Martin Schmidt observed – again in the New York Times – that quarterbacks tend to be quite inconsistent. And in this forum, and in The Wages of Wins, …
Prior to 2001, the history of the New Jersey Nets in the NBA was not very pretty. Entering the league in 1976, this former ABA champion suffered through 25 years of mostly losing campaigns. In eighteen seasons the team failed to win half their games. Their very best mark was …
After four months I have settled into a regular schedule for The Wages of Wins Journal. Each day I try and make exactly one entry. After posting for 15 consecutive days, though, yesterday I was unable to post anything. My excuse is that I was in Philadelphia, where I was …
JC Bradbury – of Sabernomics fame and the author of forthcoming book The Baseball Economist – noted in an interview with Baseball Digest Daily that he was a fan of DIPS. For those who have not heard of this, DIPS is a metric used to evaluate the productivity of a …
In the 1980s the Bucks were just short of the NBA elite of the Celtics and Lakers. Beginning in 1980-81 Milwaukee won at least 50 games for seven consecutive seasons. Since this streak ended with the 1986-87 season, though, the Bucks have become the poster child of an average NBA …
Two weeks ago Martin Schmidt penned The Keeping Score column for The New York Times. This was Marty’s second Keeping Score column. In today’s New York Times you can see my first. The piece, entitled “To Get a Grip on Turnovers, Follow the Bouncing Ball”, expands upon a point made …
Next up in the review of last season is the Miami Heat, the 2006 NBA Champion. During the Finals I commented on the Heat (and the Dallas Mavericks) in the following posts: Myth and Measurement after Game Three of the NBA Finals Thoughts after Game Four: The Dallas Mavericks …
The opening game to the 2006 NFL football season featured two quarterbacks previously employed by the Detroit Lions, Charlie Batch and Joey Harrington. Of the two, Batch had the better game. Of course, Harrington didn’t actually play (people can insert cheap Harrington joke here). As I watched Batch play so …
One of the stories we tell in The Wages of Wins is – contrary to conventional wisdom – teams cannot simply buy a championship in Major League Baseball (or any other North American sport, either). Although there is a statistically significant relationship between pay and wins, the economic significance – …