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 Year? 

The key issue is point score per game.  Rose had the second highest scoring average among rookies. And since the leading scorer – O.J. Mayo – played on a losing team (and was also drafted after Rose), we should not be surprised that most of the media focused on the point guard from Chicago.

Explaining the Vote

After writing this sentence I thought it might be a good idea to investigate my claim.  Essentially I am arguing that the media primarily focuses on scoring in voting for the Rookie of the Year.  And beyond scoring, draft position and playing for a winner also matters.

My argument is bolstered by past studies – detailed in The Wages of Wins and elsewhere — of how talent is evaluated in the NBA. However, none of these past studies – at least, none that I am aware of – looked specifically at voting for the Rookie of the Year.  So I thought I would spend a bit of time seeing if the conjecture I offered was supported by some empirical evidence.

The study begins with the voting process.  The Rookie of the Year award is decided as follows: Each member of the sports media asked to vote for this award names three rookies. The top choice from this trio receives five voting points.  Second place is worth three points.  And the third choice receives a single point. After all the votes are in, the voting points of each rookie placed on a ballot are added together.  The rookie with the most votes gets a trophy.  And everyone else gets to wonder why they didn’t get a trophy.

With voting explained, we now need to look at the data.  As is the case with all awards given out by the NBA, voting data for the Rookie of the Year can be found at Patricia’s Various Basketball Stuff, a great NBA website maintained by Patricia Bender. According to Patricia’s website, from 2003 to 2009, 62 rookies received at least some consideration for this award (prior to 2003, Patricia Bender only reports the players who received a first place vote). What we wish to identify is the factors that caused the voting pattern we are observing.

Let’s start with a very simple model.  Specifically, let’s regress voting points on the three variables identified earlier:  points scored per game, team wins, and draft position.  To this list I am going to add two more factors: number of games played and the size of the market where a rookie plays his home games. Continue reading →

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 most productive rookie.  But before I get to that story, let me discuss why the Rookie of the Year in 2009 was merely average.

An Average Rose

Let’s first compare what Rose did this past season to what we see from a typical point guard.

Adjusted Field Goal Percentage: 47.4% avg. PG, 48.2% Rose

Free Throw Percentage: 78.8% avg. PG, 78.8% Rose

Points Scored per 48 minutes: 18.4 avg. PG, 21.8 Rose

Rebounds per 48 minutes: 4.7 avg. PG, 5.1 Rose

Steals per 48 minutes: 2.0 avg. PG, 1.1 Rose

Turnovers per 48 minutes: 3.4 avg. PG, 3.2 Rose

Blocked Shots per 48 minutes: 0.3 avg. PG, 0.3 Rose

Assists per 48 minutes: 8.6 avg. PG, 8.2 Rose

Personal Fouls per 48 minutes: 3.6 avg. PG, 2.0 Rose

Win Score per 48 minutes: 6.3 avg. PG, 6.6 Rose

From these numbers we see Rose is below average with respect to steals and assists.  He is above average with respect to shooting efficiency (barely), points scored, rebounds, turnovers, and personal fouls.  But except for scoring and personal fouls, the difference between Rose and the average point guard is quite small.  And his advantage with respect to scoring is only due to his propensity to call his own number (i.e. he is above average with respect to field goal attempts). Consequently – when we put the whole picture together – we see there is little difference between the Win Score of Rose and the average point guard.

In sum, all these numbers tell us that Rose was essentially little better than an average player in 2008-09.  And this is because he really didn’t do anything exceptionally well.  Yes, Rose has his fans.  But I think even his fans would be hard pressed to find any facet of the game where Rose currently excels. 

I should emphasize that I am not talking about the future.  At some point, Rose might develop into an above average player.  But as a rookie, this didn’t happen. 

So why was he named Rookie of the Year?  Continue reading →

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 6^th Man of the Year (Jason Terry is the best 6^th man?), the Coach of the Year (Mike Brown is the best coach?), or the playoffs.  But in the April 27 issue of Sports Illustrated is an interesting article by Phil Taylor about the misfortune of Jamal Crawford.  And after reading the story I decided to offer a comment (or two).

Unlucky Crawford

Let me start with some of what Taylor had to say.

Not once in his nine years with the Bulls, Knicks and Warriors have you Higher Powers of Hoops allowed Crawford into a postseason game without a ticket. When Golden State put the finishing touches on its 29-53 record last week, yet another one of his idle springs commenced. “You would think after all this time, I would have gotten at least one chance,” Crawford says. “It’s weird, right?”

It’s more than weird; it borders on historic. Crawford, 29, has played in 597 games without a playoff appearance, the longest current streak and the sixth-longest in league history. At least he’s not close to Tom Van Arsdale’s record 929 games (yet). Crawford thinks he’s just had a run of rotten luck, but you know better. This is the NBA, where 16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason — it’s about as hard as getting called for jury duty. Sometimes it seems the six-month regular season exists just to eliminate the Clippers.

…..If you’re going to try to make the case that Crawford is the cause of this, don’t bother. Sure, he launches the occasional ill-advised 25-footer and sometimes plays less than inspired defense, but who in the NBA doesn’t? His résumé clearly shows that his failure to pass through the postseason gates is due to powers beyond his control (and we’re not just talking about Isiah Thomas’s coaching in New York). Crawford averaged 19.7 points for the Warriors this season, and he’s one of only four players in history to score at least 50 in a game for three different teams. The others? Wilt Chamberlain, Bernard King and Moses Malone. The guy can play.

Measuring Crawford

Okay, Jamal Crawford is not Wilt Chamberlain or Moses Malone.   And even though King is overrated – as noted HERE and HERE – Crawford isn’t quite Bernard King either.  For his career King posted a 0.112 WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes].  Crawford’s best season thus far was in 2005-06 when he posted a 0.109 WP48.  This was Crawford’s only above average campaign (average is 0.100), and after this last season his career mark was only 0.047.  In sum, Crawford is a below average shooting guard.

Of course one might wonder how this is possible (okay readers of The Wages of Wins might not wonder, but Taylor might).  Crawford has averaged 15.2 points per game for his career and managed to average 20.6 points per contest in 2007-08.  And since we know player evaluation often begins and end with scoring in the NBA (as it did in this article), Crawford must be a “good” player.

When we look at all the individual stats, though, we can see some problems in Crawford’s game. 

Table One:  Career of Jamal Crawford

For his career, Crawford is below average with respect to shooting efficiency, rebounds, and steals.  And other than taking shots, he really isn’t much different from average with respect to anything else.   Once again, though, scoring dominates player evaluation.  Therefore one should not be surprised that “unlucky” Crawford has collected more than $40 million in his career (and is scheduled to make more than $10 million in 2010-11).

What-If Crawford

Okay, so the evaluation of Crawford seems to be overly influenced by scoring.  And Crawford really hasn’t helped his teams be more successful.  But that doesn’t mean Taylor is wrong.  It’s possible that Crawford has missed the playoffs because of bad luck.

To check out this story, I went back over Crawford’s career and played a game of what-if.   Specifically, what-if Crawford was more productive?  How often would he have made the post-season? Continue reading →

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 best (i.e. MVP, All-NBA, Rookie of the Year, etc…), I thought I would start with a story that is often overlooked.  Specifically, who are the least productive players – in terms of Wins Produced — in the NBA?

Before we get to the list, let’s define what it means to be “unproductive”.  A productive player will tend to shoot efficiently, grab rebounds, gets steals, and avoids turnovers.  So an unproductive player is one that tends to shoot inefficiently, fails to rebound and get steals, and is prone to commit turnovers. 

When we pair productive players with unproductive performers we see that the latter can minimize the success of the former.  In other words, a productive player can get a rebound or steal, only to see the unproductive miss the shot or commit a turnover. Or the productive player can miss a shot, only to see the unproductive fail to get the rebound.  In sum, just as a team cannot succeed without productive players, it can also find failure when it employs too many unproductive performers.

The Least Productive Lead the Way

So who are the unproductive performers? During this past season 445 players were employed by NBA teams.  So the bottom 10% would consist of 45 names.  And topping this list – as Table One reveals – is Al Thornton of the LA Clippers.  Consequently Thornton has been named the Least Productive Player – or LP2 – for 2008-09.

Table One: The Bottom 10% in 2008-09

Obviously Thornton and the Clippers struggled this year.  But as we scan down the list we can that the Clippers’ problems are not all about Thornton.  In addition to Thornton, the LA Clippers employed Ricky Davis (ranked 7^th), Tim Thomas (ranked 11^th and a Clipper for part of the year), and Steve Novak (ranked 31^st).  So although the Clippers also employed Marcus Camby (the 13^th most productive player in the game), the abundance of unproductive players did much to limit this team’s success.

A similar story could be told about the Toronto Raptors.  Toronto employs both Jose Calderon (20^th most productive player) and Chris Bosh (26^th most productive player).  But the Raptors also have Andrea Bargnani (5^th least productive), Jason Kapono (6^th least productive), Roko Ukic (27^th least productive), and Jake Voskuhl (28^th least productive).  When Toronto fans seek to understand why this season was so unsuccessful, this quartet – that played more than 25% of the team’s minutes – should certainly come to mind.

Three other teams also employed at least three players listed in Table One.  The Wizards received -4.47 Wins Produced from Nick Young (10^th least productive), Darius Songaila (23^rd least productive), and DeShawn Stevenson (33^rd least productive).  Meanwhile the Minnesota Timberwolves were led to 58 losses by Bobby Brown (3^rd least productive and a Minnesota employee for part of the year), Jason Collins (12^th least productive), Brian Cardinal (24^th least productive), and Sebastian Telfair (25^th least productive).

Bringing Down Boston

And then there are the Celtics.  The Boston Celtics won 62 games this past season.  When we look at Wins Produced we see the team received 48.3 Wins Produced from Rajon Rondo (6^th most productive), Paul Pierce (29^th most productive), Kevin Garnett (30^th most productive), and Ray Allen (35^th most productive).  But the team also received -4.44 Wins Produced from Glen Davis (9^th least productive), Brian Scalabrine (20^th least productive), and Stephon Marbury (41^st least productive).

Unfortunately for the Celtics, KG is probably lost for the entire playoffs.  And perhaps more dismaying to Boston fans is that the team has turned to Glen Davis to take many of Garnett’s minutes.   Had Davis played all the minutes played by Garnett this year, Davis would have seen his Wins Produced fall from -1.98 to -4.12.  Plus the Celtics would have lost the 10.16 Wins Produced from Garnett.  The outcome of these changes is that the Celtics would have seen their Wins Produced fall from 61.06 to 48.76 (assuming the per-minute performance from Davis did not change).  In other words, moving from Garnett to Davis takes the Celtics from a title contender to a team that will struggle to defeat the Bulls.

We only heard that KG was lost for the playoffs the day the TrueHoop picks were due.  And my schedule last Thursday prevented me from doing much thinking about this before I had to submit my choices. As a consequence, I thought the Celtics would still be good enough to defeat the Bulls in five games.  Although this is still possible, it seems unlikely.  Yes, the Celtics did win on Monday night.  And yes, Davis actually played well.  But given what Davis did in 2008-09, it doesn’t seem possible for Davis and the Celtics to take the next three from Chicago. 

And this means that once Chicago wins another game in this series, my rooting interest in this series moves from the Celtics to the Bulls.  Everyone in the Smackdown picked Boston, but only Neal Paine and I took Boston in five games.  So to stay even with the other competitors, once “Boston in Five” can’t happen anymore I need Chicago to take the series (and then everyone loses the points).

If Boston keeps playing Glen Davis, it seems possible that the defending champions will indeed lose in the first round.  And the legend of Derrick Rose – which I will address in a future post – will certainly grow.

- DJ

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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.