My last post focused on media’s decision to give the 2009 Rookie of the Year award to Derrick Rose. The post began by noting that Rose was essentially an average point guard in 2008-09. It then proceeded to offer the following argument: So why was he named Rookie of the …
According to 111 members of the sports media (out of 12o voters), Derrick Rose was the very best rookie in 2009. Of the nine voters who differed from this conclusion, five preferred O.J. Mayo, two preferred Brook Lopez, and two preferred Russell Westbrook. Of these choices, none was actually the …
For a fan of the Detroit Lions, the annual NFL draft is the highlight of the year (yes, it’s sad to be a Lions fan). After a 0-16 season – which in the perverse world of American professional sports was rewarded with the number one pick in the draft – …
Now that regular season is over there are many, many stories to be told. For example, I could – and probably should – talk about the Rookie of the Year (Derrick Rose is the best rookie?), the 6th Man of the Year (Jason Terry is the best 6th man?), the …
The NBA season ended last week and now we have (thanks to Basketball-Reference.com) all the data needed to measure each player’s Wins Produced (and WP48, Win Score, etc…) for the 2008-09 season. With data set in hand, there are numerous stories to be told. While most people start with the …
Two years ago I placed third in the TrueHoop Stat Geek Smackdown. As I noted when the final results were announced, Justin Kubatko and I based our picks solely on the numbers. The difference was that I only considered the quality of the teams (as measured by efficiency differential). Kubatko …
Last week my sports economics class at Southern Utah University had a visit from Joe Price. Joe is an assistant professor of economics at BYU. More importantly – at least to readers in this forum – Joe is also one of the authors of the famous Price-Wolfers study. Readers might …
A few days I was asked the following by Henry Abbott (of TrueHoop): It’s possible he won’t qualify, but if he does come off the bench for more games than he starts, how crazy would I be to lobby for Joel Przybilla as sixth man of the year? The Competition …
Back in December of 2007 I observed that Andrew Bynum – who was much maligned by Kobe Byrant and others during the summer of 2007 – had improved tremendously in 2007-08 (relative to what we saw from Bynum’s first two seasons). In fact, per-minute Andrew Bynum was offering – in …
Yesterday Richard Goldstein – of the New York Times – reported that Marvin Webster has passed away at the age of 56. For those unfamiliar with NBA history, Webster – a.k.a. the Human Eraser – led the Seattle Supersonics to the 1978 NBA Finals. He then signed with the New …