A Top Trio in Houston?
After it was announced that Ron Artest was heading to Houston, Chris Broussard of ESPN offered a list of the NBA’s top trio (a list that was picked up by Dime Magazine). As the following list (from Dime Magazine) indicates, Broussard ranks Houston’s new trio as the fourth best in the Association.
1. KG, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen
2. Duncan, Parker, Ginobili
3. Kobe, Bynum, Gasol
4. T-Mac, Yao, Artest
5. Chris Paul, David West, Tyson Chandler
6. Nash, Amare, Shaq
7. Chauncey, Rip, ‘Sheed
8. Dirk, Kidd, Josh Howard
9. Arenas, Caron, Antawn Jamison
10. Elton Brand, Andre Iguodala, Andre Miller
Looking over this list I wondered how it would appear if we used WP48 (Wins Produced per 48 minutes) to rank the trios. Specifically, I calculated the average WP48 of each trio from the 2007-08 season (for Brand and Arenas I used their 2006-07 values). Here are the results:
1. Kobe, Bynum, Gasol [0.280 average WP48]
2. Duncan, Parker, Ginobili [0.270 average WP48]
3. Chris Paul, David West, Tyson Chandler [0.264 average WP48]
4. KG, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen [0.246 average WP48]
5. Nash, Amare, Shaq [0.245 average WP48]
6. Dirk, Kidd, Josh Howard [0.241 average WP48]
T7. Chauncey, Rip, ‘Sheed [0.192 average WP48]
T7. Arenas, Caron, Antawn Jamison [0.192 average WP48]
9. Elton Brand, Andre Iguodala, Andre Miller [0.184 average WP48]
10. T-Mac, Yao, Artest [0.140 average WP48]
A few notes on each list…
- As I noted a couple of days ago, the addition of Artest does not dramatically improve Houston. And I would add, as WP48 indicates, this does not give the Rockets one of the top trios in the league. If we expanded our coverage to all NBA teams, we would not see the new Houston trio in the top ten.
- Let me amend that previous comment by noting that Broussard’s list does not always report the top trio on each team. In other words, if Ron Artest continues performing as he did last year, it is not likely that he will be one of the top three players – in WP48 – for the Rockets next season.
- A similar observation could be made about the Celtics (Rajon Rondo tops Ray Allen) and the Pistons (Rip Hamilton is not in the top three in Detroit).
- All that being said, with the exception of where he put Houston’s trio, Broussard’s ranking is quite similar to the ranking we see from WP48.
In the next few days I will try and rank all the top trios from 2007-08. This ranking will follow the methodologies laid forth in the following posts from 2007:
The Pareto Principle and the New Boston Celtics
- DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
The Technical Notes at wagesofwins.com provides substantially more information on the published research behind Wins Produced and Win Score
Wins Produced, Win Score, and PAWSmin are also discussed in the following posts:
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics
Finally, A Guide to Evaluating Models contains useful hints on how to interpret and evaluate statistical models.