The Suns are setting.  Across the past four seasons the Phoenix Suns have averaged 58 regular season wins a year.  After 47 games in 2008-09 the team has only won 26 times.  This puts the Sun on pace to only win 45 games.  All NBA observers can see this record and I think all can agree that Phoenix is not what it was last year.  The question, though, is why.

Avoiding Blame

When an organization declines outside the world of sports it’s easy for everyone to make excuses. The workers blame management.  Management blames workers.  And both might blame the economy.  The lack of data on performance, though, allows everyone to deny responsibility.

It’s a different story in sports.  At least, it can be if we pay attention to performance. Continue reading →

Basketball players tend to be relatively consistent.  At least relative to what we see in baseball and football (and some aspects of hockey), what you see from an NBA player in the past is generally what you will see in the future.

Thankfully, though, there are exceptions (after all, if there were never any changes this would not be a very interesting sport). 

Each year, the biggest exception – at least in the minds of sports writers – is named the Most Improved Player (MIP) in the league.  Two years ago that exception was Monta Ellis.  Ellis wasn’t really the MIP in 2006-07 (at least, not according to Wins Produced), but oddly enough, he was in 2007-08. Ellis, though, could not be named MIP two years in a row since the second award might suggest the writers were wrong the first time.

This year the writers might have a similar problem.  When we think of the MIP in the NBA in 2008-09, Kevin Durant has to be towards the top of the list.  When we look at his per 36 minute stats (courtesy of Basketball-Reference) we see that Durant’s shooting efficiency has improved tremendously.  And he is rebounding more as well. Although he is not yet the player we envisioned the night he was drafted, he’s now an above average NBA player.  And as Table One reveals, his improvement with respect to Wins Produced ranks toward the top of the league this season.

Table One: The Candidates for MIP at the Midpoint of the 2008-09 season

The top name listed in Table One is Dwayne Wade.  Although Wade is doing more than last year, improvement isn’t the word for what Flash has done.  Wade really has just reverted to what he was before the lost season that was 2007-08.  A similar story can be told for Gerald Wallace.

The next two names on the list – Luke Ridnour and Mike Bibby – are having their best seasons ever.  But again, these players are mostly reverting back to form.  When you compare what these players are doing to their prior career best performances, the change is quite a bit smaller.

And that bring us back to Durant.  As noted in November, Durant got off to a very bad start this season.  His WP48 was -0.038 after 10 games.  After 41 games his mark was 0.125. This means he posted a 0.166 WP48 from game 11 to the midpoint of the season.  Last season his WP48 was 0.012, so Durant has made a significant leap.

All of this might present a problem, though, for the media.  I don’t think one needs Wins Produced to know Durant is much better.  But last year, the same media that selects the MIP gave Durant the Rookie of the Year award.  It would be very odd to say the Rookie of the Year in 2008 has become the MIP in 2009.  This might be the statement, though, the sports media should make when this season is over.

- 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

Wins Produced vs. Win Score

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.

Last week every single team finally played its 41^st game in the 2008-09 season.  Consequently, I was able to analyze every player and every team at the season’s midpoint.  And although there are many stories this data set could tell, I thought I would just post the data.  So without further introduction, here is the Wins Produced and WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] of every player at the midpoint of the 2008-09 campaign.

Table One: All Teams at the Midpoint of the 2008-09 Season

Table Two: All Players at the Midpoint of the 2008-09 Season

Table One organizes the players by team.  Table Two organizes by Wins Produced.  Here are a few quick stories this data tells (again, I am sure there a many others).

A Few Stories

• As noted a few days ago, the most productive player in the NBA is Chris Paul.
• Obviously Paul is the most productive point guard. The top players at the other positions are as follows:
  • Center: Dwight Howard
  • Power Forward: Kevin Garnett
  • Small Forward: LeBron James
  • Shooting Guard: Dwyane Wade
• There are a number of outstanding centers and point guards. Of the top ten players in Wins Produced, five are centers and three play the point. Garnett, the top power forward, only ranks 12^th in the league in Wins Produced.
• I was going to write a post on the All-Star selections, but I think it would read the same as my post on the Rookie Challenge. David West, Joe Johnson, Danny Granger, and Rashard Lewis can all score. But none of these players are really that productive (at least, not relative to the top players in the game). Yes, scoring is once again being rewarded. And although people might claim that fans are most interested in scoring (and the game is for the fans), the role scoring plays in all-star selections is consistent with what we see when we look at free agent salaries. In sum, players are consistently rewarded when they score (even if they do not do much else).

Stoudemire, the Suns, and Red Auerbach

The emphasis on scoring is why All-Star Amare Stoudemire is currently frustrated.  Stoudemire may lead the Phoenix Suns in scoring, but his shot attempts are down from last year (and so is his rebounding and overall productivity).  As a consequence, he has suggested that he’s not happy with how the offense is being run in Phoenix. 

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports has a column on this topic that contains the following quotes and observations:

• One Western Conference scout, who’s watched the Suns several times, believes that when Stoudemire and O’Neal are on the floor, Porter runs two out of three plays for Shaq. Stoudemire confessed to a level of frustration with a diminished scoring role, but ultimately more offense isn’t what Kerr and Porter have yearned to get out of him.
• Without getting the ball, without getting his rhythm, Stoudemire insisted that it’s costing the Suns on defense and the boards. “It is harder,” Stoudemire said. “When you’re in the flow, everything flows. When you’re not, sometimes it’s hard to get involved.”
• Nash sighed.”A lot of mouths to feed,” he said. “I’m willing to just feed and feed. But then they get mad at me because they want me to be aggressive. They want me to make big shots down the stretch, so they need me to shoot periodically during the game.
• “It’s difficult. It’s difficult for the reasons you said, and it’s difficult to find the balance, that aggressiveness for me.” Nash needs the ball in transition, needs to run, because Shaq clogs the lane in the halfcourt. “Or otherwise,” Nash said, “I’m going to be a little sacrificial. …So trying to get Amare off, getting, Shaq off … getting [Jason Richardson], Grant [Hill], Leandro [Barbosa]. …A lot of mouths to feed.”

In sum, the Suns have problems because they have many players who want to shoot and only one ball.  As a consequence, some players are not happy.

When I see players expressing frustration over their lack of shots, I am reminded of the Wisdom of Red Auerbach. 

Currently I am reading “Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game” by John Feinstein and Auerbach.  As I have read this book I have become convinced that Auerbach was successful because he understood why teams win and lose in basketball.

Although I highly recommend the book, I think you can get a sense of what I am talking about from the following paragraph (originally posted in this forum a couple of years ago). Continue reading →