Okay, let’s continue with the “history” theme.  Previously I posted rankings of every player in the history (since 1977) of the Utah Jazz and the Boston Celtics (see below):

Ranking Every Player in the History of the Utah Jazz

Ranking Every Player for the Boston Celtics since 1977

Given the response to these “rankings”, I thought I would analyze another team.   Across the past three decade no other team has gone to the finals as often as the LA Lakers.  So in honor of their latest trip, here is what every player on the Lakers has done with respect to Wins Produced since 1977.

Table One: Ranking the LA Lakers (1977-78 to 2008-09)

Recently much has been said about the relative value of Kobe and LeBron.  And some have even compared these two players to Michael Jordan.  However, maybe people should think about Kobe and Magic.  If Kobe and the Lakers prevail – over the Magic – Kobe will have won four titles.  This is only one less than Magic (the player, it would be four more than the Magic franchise).

So is Kobe that close to Magic?  Table One suggests otherwise.  In 13 seasons, Magic produced nearly 300 wins and posted a 0.429 WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes].  This mark leads the franchise across the past thirty years.  Second on the list is Kobe.  But as one can see, it’s a very distant second.  In 13 seasons (and more than 1,000 additional minutes), Kobe has produced 149 wins with a 0.207 WP48.  It’s important to emphasize, Kobe is twice as productive as an average NBA player (average WP48 is 0.100).  But he has never offered anything close to what we saw from Magic.

Kareem vs. Shaq

Just like we see with the first two names on the list, there may also be a debate about the next two players listed, Kareem and Shaq.  The ranking is based on Wins Produced since 1977, and as one can see, Kareem did produce slightly more for the Lakers across the years examined.  But if we look at WP48, Shaq is clearly the more productive player.  Before fans of Kareem get too upset, it’s important to note that Kareem was 30 years old in 1977-78 and his numbers reflect what he did until the age of 41.  Kareem did manage to produce 12.3 wins [with a 0.225 WP48] at age 37 (which is great for an old guy).  But in his last four seasons Kareem only produced 14.0 wins (which is still pretty good for a really old guy).

In contrast to Kareem, Shaq’s numbers begin at age 24 and end when he is 31.  So we are looking at Shaq in his prime.  If we compare Shaq and Kareem at age 30 and 31 we see the following:

Kareem at 30: 18.6 Wins Produced, 0.394 WP48

Kareem at 31: 22.9 Wins Produced, 0.348 WP48

Shaq at 30: 17.0 Wins Produced, 0.321 WP48

Shaq at 31: 14.8 Wins Produced, 0.287 WP48

In sum, I think Kareem in his prime did more than Shaq.  Of course, if Shaq could have hit his free throws more consistently it might have be a different story.

It’s also important to remember when looking at this list that it is simply a ranking of what each player did – with respect to Wins Produced – since 1977 (in other words, it is what it is).  The Shaq and Kareem comparison tells us that you have to think about why each player posted the numbers we observe (in the case of Kareem, age is clearly an issue) before leaping to any conclusions.

The Top Ten

For those who don’t wish to click on the above table, here is the list of top 10 players (again, with respect to Wins Produced for the Lakers since 1977).

1. Magic Johnson

2. Kobe Bryant

3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

4. Shaquille O’Neal

5. James Worthy

6. A.C. Green

7. Vlade Divac

8. Michael Cooper

9. Lamar Odom

10. Byron Scott

There are 193 players ranked, so you will have to look at the table to see more.

Let me close by essentially repeating what I said when I posted the ranking for the Celtics.

In general, reactions to such analysis follow two paths.  If the person reacting likes the analysis (i.e. I always knew Magic was the best), then the reaction will look like this… “Professor Berri – with some of the best analysis I have ever seen – has confirmed that Magic is the greatest player for the Lakers since 1977.”

If the person, though, does not like the analysis (i.e. Kurt Rambis is 11^th?), then you see… “Berri – who no one thinks knows what he is talking about – actually thinks Rambis is a great player.  That is all you need to know to see how stupid all the advanced stats are.  Why can’t these geeks put the computer down and watch a freakin’ game.”  Or something like that (usually the language is more colorful).

Although I like the first approach (and I am not too keen on the second), both reactions have the same problem.  In both instances the person reacting is arguing from conclusion back to evidence.   In other words, their reaction to Wins Produced is entirely dictated by whether or not what it says confirms what the person already believed.  If it does, then Wins Produced is great.  If not, then it’s stupid.

Unfortunately, this is not how one should do analysis.  When we do research we start with the evidence and work to the conclusion.  And if we think a conclusion is incorrect, we have to actually go out and find sufficient evidence that allows us to reach a different conclusion.  Oh, and by sufficient, I mean the new evidence shouldn’t be accurately described as “horseshit”.

Okay, after I said that on the post for the Celtics there were still a few comments (just a few, I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush) that suggested reading comprehension is not important to every fan of the Celtics (or to put it another way… my impression of the unhappy fans was pretty good).  Now we get to see if fans of the Lakers react any differently.

- 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.

A few days ago I posted a Ranking Every Player in the History of the Utah Jazz. Jason Chandler noted in the comments to this post that it was “Best. Post. Ever.”

There have been 892 posts in this forum, and although I don’t wish to disagree with Jason, am not sure I think this was the best post ever.  Then again, Jason is a Jazz fan. And I might not be the best judge of what is “best”.

So with Chandler’s words in mind, I thought I would see if I could strike gold with fans of the Boston Celtics.  So here is what every Boston Celtic since 1977-78 has done with respect to Wins Produced.

Table One: Ranking the Boston Celtics (1977-78 to 2008-09)

Topping the rankings is… Larry Bird.  Larry Legend produced 261.9 wins for the Celtics. Across these 32 seasons, this mark is easily the best.  Of course, one suspects that if we went back before 1977-78 we would see Bill Russell produced more than Bird.  But alas, we don’t have the data so we don’t really know (well, we have enough data to be pretty sure Russell would be number one in Boston history).

Sticking with the years where we have data, here is the rest of the top ten.

2.         Robert Parish

3.         Paul Pierce

4.         Kevin McHale

5.         Cedric Maxwell

6.         Danny Ainge

7.         Rajon Rondo

8.         Reggie Lewis

9.         Kevin Garnett

10.       Dee Brown

Looking over the list we see a couple of surprises.  For example, I am not sure Maxwell is regarded as one of the five most productive Boston players across the last three decades.  And it’s hard to believe that Rondo (in just three seasons) and KG (in just two) already are in the top 10. Beyond who is on the list, the other big surprise is that 64.6% of the team’s Wins Produced since 1977 can be tied to these ten players. 

Beyond reporting the rankings, I wanted to take a moment to comment on reactions to such analysis.  In general, reactions to any post where players are ranks follow two forms.  If the person reacting likes the analysis (i.e. I always knew Larry Bird was the best), then the reaction will look like this… “Professor Berri – with some of the best analysis I have ever seen – has confirmed that Bird is the greatest Boston player since 1977.”

If the person, though, doesn’t like the analysis (i.e. Danny Ainge is the 6^th?), then you see… “Berri  (does anyone seriously thinks he knows what he is talking about?) actually thinks Ainge was a good player.  That’s all you need to know to see how stupid all the advanced stats are.  Why can’t these geeks put the computer down and watch a freakin’ game.”  Or something like that (usually the language is more colorful).

Although I like the first approach (and I am not too keen on the second), both reactions have the same problem.  In both instances the person reacting is arguing from conclusion back to evidence.   In other words, their reaction to Wins Produced is entirely dictated by whether or not what it says confirms what the person already believed.  If it does, then Wins Produced is great.  If not, then it’s stupid.

Unfortunately, this is not how one should do analysis.  When we do research we start with the evidence and work to the conclusion.  And if we think a conclusion is incorrect, we have to actually go out and find sufficient evidence that allows us to reach a different conclusion.  Oh, and by sufficient, I mean the new evidence shouldn’t be accurately described as “horseshit”.

One last note that is completely unrelated… previously I mentioned that there have been nearly 900 posts in this forum.  On average, each post is at least 1,000 words.  The Wages of Wins was only about 120,000 words, so this means I have offered enough material in this forum to fill seven more books.  And that doesn’t count the comment section.  The Wages of Wins is currently selling for $13.57 at Amazon.com.  If you read all these posts (and if  you did, I am sorry), does this mean you now owe me $94.99? 

- 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.

Not sure everyone is aware of this fact, but DraftExpress reports Win Score per 40 minutes for every player in the NCAA.  You will not see PAWS (Position Adjusted Win Score), but positions are provided.  Therefore if you know the average Win Score at each position it’s easy to make comparisons across positions.

Previously I noted that I have calculated the average college Win Score per 40 minutes [WS40] at each position from 1995 to 2008 (the specific data set considers all players who were drafted in these fourteen seasons, and who played at least 500 minutes their last season in college). 

Here are these averages:

Centers: 12.30

Power Forwards: 12.48

Small Forwards: 9.92

Shooting Guards: 8.43

Point Guards: 7.30

The numbers essentially follow what we see in the NBA.  Big men – because they rebound in greater numbers and tend not to turn the ball over – post higher Win Scores.  Smaller players are the opposite and post lower Win Scores.  Because positions in basketball are complements in production (economic talk for the idea that teams appear to need all positions to produce wins), it makes sense to evaluate a player relative to what we generally see from a player’s position.

Sometime before the draft I think an analysis of the prospects in the draft will get posted.   In the meantime, everyone can have these reference points to do some of their own analysis.  Please keep in mind, though, that college numbers are not a perfect predictor of NBA productivity.  Yes, there is a relationship.  But players who are above average in college can be below average in the NBA.  And players that are below average in college can become above average in the Association.  The tendency is for players to hold to form, but there are no guarantees and there are certainly exceptions.

And Now For Something Else…

A few weeks ago Julian Sanchez offered the following comment on the climate change debate.  What Sanchez had to say was then linked to by Crooked Timber, Brad DeLong, and JC Bradbury.  At the time I meant to follow suit, but then I never got around to it.  Well, better late than never.  Hopefully everyone will find this as interesting as I (and others) did.

Sometimes, of course, the arguments are such that the specialists can develop and summarize them to the point that an intelligent layman can evaluate them. But often—and I feel pretty sure here—that’s just not the case. Give me a topic I know fairly intimately, and I can often make a convincing case for absolute horseshit. Convincing, at any rate, to an ordinary educated person with only passing acquaintance with the topic. A specialist would surely see through it, but in an argument between us, the lay observer wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell which of us really had the better case on the basis of the arguments alone—at least not without putting in the time to become something of a specialist himself. Actually, I have a plausible advantage here as a peddler of horseshit: I need only worry about what sounds plausible. If my opponent is trying to explain what’s true, he may be constrained to introduce concepts that take a while to explain and are hard to follow, trying the patience (and perhaps wounding the ego) of the audience.

Come to think of it, there’s a certain class of rhetoric I’m going to call the “one way hash” argument. Most modern cryptographic systems in wide use are based on a certain mathematical asymmetry: You can multiply a couple of large prime numbers much (much, much, much, much) more quickly than you can factor the product back into primes. Certain bad arguments work the same way—skim online debates between biologists and earnest ID afficionados armed with talking points if you want a few examples: The talking point on one side is just complex enough that it’s both intelligible—even somewhat intuitive—to the layman and sounds as though it might qualify as some kind of insight. (If it seems too obvious, perhaps paradoxically, we’ll tend to assume everyone on the other side thought of it themselves and had some good reason to reject it.) The rebuttal, by contrast, may require explaining a whole series of preliminary concepts before it’s really possible to explain why the talking point is wrong. So the setup is “snappy, intuitively appealing argument without obvious problems” vs. “rebuttal I probably don’t have time to read, let alone analyze closely.”

If we don’t sometimes defer to the expert consensus, we’ll systematically tend to go wrong in the face of one-way-hash arguments, at least our own necessarily limited domains of knowledge. Indeed, in such cases, trying to evaluate the arguments on their merits will tend to lead to an erroneous conclusion more often than simply trying to gauge the credibility of the various disputants. The problem, of course, is gauging your own competence level well enough to know when to assess arguments and when to assess arguers. Thanks to the perverse phenomenon psychologists have dubbed the Dunning-Kruger effect, those who are least competent tend to have the most wildly inflated estimates of their own knowledge and competence. They don’t know enough to know that they don’t know, as it were.

Again, I thought that was pretty interesting.   One last note…the second book is almost completed.  When it is completed I will go back to writing posts that don’t involve me cutting and pasting.

- 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.

This past season was the 35^th in the history of the Jazz.  In honor of this anniversary, The Salt Lake City Tribune spent the season counting down the top players in the history of the franchise.  Each morning another player from Jazz history would be profiled and as I read these stories over breakfast I wondered: What would this list look like if we ranked each player in terms of Wins Produced?

Wins Produced can only be calculated back to 1977-78, so the first three seasons of this franchise cannot be considered. Still, I do have enough data to rank every player who ever played in Utah (there were 193 players) and a few who played in New Orleans.  The rankings – which only consider what a player did for the Jazz franchise – are reported in Table One.

Table One: Ranking the Utah Jazz: 1977-78 to 2008-09

The big question in ranking Jazz players is where you place John Stockton and Karl Malone.  The Tribune apparently punted on this question.  When we look at Wins Produced, though, we see that Stockton produced 311.1 wins while the Mailman produced 287.8.  So according to Wins Produced, Stockton was slightly more productive.  In looking at Stockton and Malone we must keep in mind that the summation of Wins Produced for this team across this time period is 1,428.7 (the team actually won 1,445 games).  This means that across these 32 seasons, Stockton and Malone produced 42% of the team’s wins.  So obviously – and I don’t think you need Wins Produced to see this – Stockton and Malone are the two most productive players by far in the history of this franchise.

Once we get past Stockton and Malone, the top 10 according to the Tribune was as follows:

1&2: Stockton and Malone

3. Adrian Dantley (4^th in Wins Produced)

4. Pete Maravich (186^th in Wins Produced)

5. Mark Eaton (5^th in Wins Produced)

6. Jeff Hornacek (6^th in Wins Produced)

7. Deron Williams (11^th in Wins Produced)

8. Darrell Griffith (25^th in Wins Produced)

9. Carlos Boozer (8^th in Wins Produced)

10. Ricky Green (7^th in Wins Produced)

After each name is where the player ranked in terms of Wins Produced.  For many of these players the Tribune and Wins Produced came to a similar conclusion.  The exception that stands out is Pete Maravich.  About two years ago I made the argument that Maravich really wasn’t that productive.  He was an inefficient scorer who was prone to turnovers.  Still, he was a prolific scorer and that tends to lead people to think he was helping his teams win games (although his teams were generally unsuccessful).

Although Maravich is by far the biggest difference, Wins Produced also argues that Williams and Griffith were not top 10 players (although Williams will probably crack the top 10 after next season).  According to Wins Produced, Maravich, Williams, and Griffith should be replaced on the list by

3. Andrei Kirilenko (12^th on Tribune rankings)

9. Greg Ostertag (22^nd on Tribune rankings

10. Byron Russell (16^th on Tribune rankings)

Ostertag was actually the subject of one of the first posts in this forum.  The comments on that early post included some attacks on Ostertag, which were actually answered by members of his family. 

Let me close by making two observations.  As I have noted before, most of a team’s Wins Produced is created by a small number of players.  The top 10 players in the history of this team (history since 1977-78) have produced 75% of this team’s Wins Produced.

And I also want to comment on Carlos Boozer. Boozer’s WP48 compares favorably to what we saw from Karl Malone.  The big difference between the two players – as Jazz fans have told me – is that the Mailman always showed up for work.  Boozer, though, is often on the bench.  And on the bench Boozer doesn’t help.

The question facing the Jazz this summer is whether they should keep one of the top ten players in the history of the franchise.  If they think Boozer can stay healthy and productive, then the team should try and keep him. If not, they should let him go.  Unfortunately, I don’t know how you can predict the future health of a player.  So although I can say Boozer has definitely helped when he has played in the past, I can’t say for certain he will be helpful (and worth a  huge contract) in the future.

- 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.

Such is the title of an article by Robert Lee in the Providence Journal.  Here are some excerpts from this story:

The Celtics’ first priority this offseason will be deciding whether to bring back restricted free agent Glen Davis.

… The 23-year-old forward will certainly entertain some big offers from other teams who have ample salary cap space, which the Celtics don’t, but because he’s restricted, the Celtics can match any offer he receives beginning in July.

Davis earned $711,517 this year, but his new contract figures to be in the $5-million to $10-million range, and the Celtics might not match his price tag if it gets too high, especially since Davis would be coming off the bench, backing up Kevin Garnett.

…Davis proved he can be a solid starting forward for any NBA team by averaging 15.8 points and 5.6 rebounds while knocking down 49.1 percent of his shots in the playoffs. And he proved that he can be called upon in the clutch when he won Game Four of the Eastern Conference semifinals at the buzzer with a 21-foot jumper, trying the series with Orlando at 2-2.

Now he is playing a waiting game.

“Baby plays with tremendous confidence,” Boston captain Paul Pierce said. “He’s shown the ability to be poised down the stretch and he’s hit some big shots throughout the season for us.”

Davis said signing a bigger contract is not what motivated him to perform well in the playoffs.

“I only thought about helping my team win,” Davis said. “I never thought about getting paid or what [the Celtics] were going to do. It is what it is.”

Davis took it very hard when Orlando eliminated the Celtics from the playoffs. He felt like the world was on his shoulders because most NBA experts said that the Celtics could not advance to the Eastern Conference finals without Garnett.

He believed that he was good enough to fill Garnett’s shoes and help the Celtics advance

…Davis improved by leaps and bounds this season, working on his mid-range jumper, but that wasn’t fully realized until Garnett went down. He averaged just 4.5 points and 3 rebounds per game as a rookie, and 7 points and 4 rebounds in 76 regular-season games, including 16 starts this season.

But his numbers skyrocketed in the playoffs.

Okay, let’s contrast this view with some numbers.  In the regular season Davis was one of the least productive players in the NBA.  In fact, he ranked in the bottom ten in the league.

But in the playoffs his numbers “skyrocketed.”  At least, so we are told.  Continue reading →