This past weekend – in the words of Henry Abbott – Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball) brought the Moneyball story to the NBA.  On the pages of New York Times Magazine, Lewis told the story of the No-Stats All-Star, Shane Battier.

As Lewis notes, “Here we have a basketball mystery: a player is widely regarded inside the N.B.A. as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars. And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.”

Lewis contends that the traditional basketball metrics tell us that Battier is not an effective player.  Yet Battier’s teams tend to win.  To explain the magic that is Battier, Lewis turns to Daryl Morey (the young general manager of the Houston Rockets).  Morey argues that by looking past the box score – to a player’s plus-minus – the value of Battier can be measured.  And that measurement tells us Battier is a good player. 

In sum, the traditional box score in the NBA is simply inadequate if we wish to measure a player’s value.  Only the “advance” approach of plus-minus can tell us which players are “good” or “bad”.

Repeating the Story

The story Lewis tells is well-written and quite interesting.  It’s also not entirely original.

Here is what Matthew Yglesias observed on Monday:

Of interest to any fan of this blog will be Michael Lewis’ long New York Times Magazine article about Shane Battier, in which Battier becomes a jumping-off point for some discussion of analytic approaches to basketball. One thing about the article that bothered me probably had nothing to do with Lewis, but the piece has been given the headline “The No-Stats All-Star.” The implication being that statistics can’t measure Battier’s important contributions.

On the contrary, as Dave Berri observed in response to a similar claim back in November 2007 if you understand the statistics correctly they say Battier is very good. Stats say that Battier is an efficient scorer with his modest number of shots, and that his net possessions numbers resulting from steals and turnovers are very good. Battier also appears to be, as best as one can tell, an excellent on-the-ball perimeter defender. This last bit really is an aspect of the game that conventional statistics don’t do a good job of capturing, but certain statistical systems-including Wins Produced-indicate that Battier is a valuable player.

As Yglesias notes, the story told by Lewis has been told before.  The original author was Jason Freidman, who wrote Rocket Science: Daryl Morey Brings Hard-Core Statistical Analysis to the NBA in October of 2007.

When Friedman’s story appeared I posted the following:

What the Box Score Data Says About Shane Battier. 

This post built upon these two stories:

Walking in Memphis Back to the Playoffs (September 19, 2007)

Walking in Memphis (April 5, 2007)

Each of these columns detailed Battier’s contribution to the Memphis Grizzlies and Houston Rockets.  And those details – based solely on the NBA’s box score – revealed that Battier is indeed “good”.

The past few days a number of people have contacted me – via e-mail and the comments section in this forum – to comment on the Lewis story.  What I said back in 2007, though, is essentially what I would say today.  So my comment is going to consist of an updated version of my earlier post.  After this post, though, I will link to a few more stories on Battier and Plus-Minus (and also offer a few more thoughts). Continue reading →