Who is the second best team in the NBA in 2009-10?  If we focus on wins and losses, the NBA’s second best are the LA Lakers.  But efficiency differential – or offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency – says it is the Orlando Magic. 

With nearly 87% of the regular season completed, here are the top ten teams in differential:

• Cleveland Cavalier: 8.0
• Orlando Magic: 7.3
• LA Lakers: 6.3
• Utah Jazz: 6.2
• Atlanta Hawks: 5.0
• San Antonio Spurs: 4.9
• Boston Celtics: 4.8
• Denver Nuggets: 4.8
• Phoenix Suns: 4.1
• Oklahoma City Thunder: 3.6

After 72 games the Magic have posted a mark of 50-22.  However, the team’s differential – and corresponding Wins Produced – indicate a team that should have won 52 games.

As Table One indicates – and this is not surprising – Dwight Howard leads this team in Wins Produced.

Table One: The Orlando Magic after 72 games in 2009-10

Number two on the list, though, may be surprising.   On a roster with twelve players, Matt Barnes is currently 10^th in salary.  But with 8.0 Wins Produced, Barnes is the second most productive Orlando player.

The player who leads this team in salary – Rashard Lewis – has only produced 1.0 wins.  This paltry production can be linked to the health of Lewis as well as the issue that he has been playing power forward for the Magic.  But even if he played small forward – and posted the same numbers – he would only be about average this season. So Lewis – regardless of position played – has not been key to this team’s success.

The lack of production for Lewis may be a problem for Orlando going forward.  Lewis is already 30 years old, and he is owed $66 million more across the next three seasons.  As has been noted before, players age like milk.  So even if Lewis gets healthy, it seems extremely unlikely that Lewis – given his advanced age — will be worth all the money he is going to be paid across the next three years.

This problem, though, is not really an issue for this season.  For 2010, the Magic are clearly in position to contend for a title.  And here is how that path to a title currently appears.

As of this morning, Orlando’s first round opponent is Charlotte.  Yes, the Bobcats are better.  But Orlando should escape to the second round.

In round two – again, as of this morning – the Magic should face Boston or Atlanta.  Again, Orlando should be favored (despite what happened this week).  So a return trip to the Eastern Conference Finals seems likely.

Last year in the Eastern Conference Finals the Cavs were the favored team but the Magic advanced.  This year it is the same story.  The Magic shouldn’t be favored against Cleveland.  But it’s more than possible that Orlando will advance to the NBA Finals.

The team they would be expected to play for the title is the LA Lakers.  On a neutral court, the Magic would be favored over the Lakers (remember, Orlando has the better differential). LA, though, will have homecourt advantage.  So again, a Magic victory would be a bit of an upset.  In other words, if it is LA-Orlando in the Finals again, we might expect LA to repeat as champions.

Of course, both Orlando and LA have to get that far for us to see a repeat of last year.  And LA does have a more difficult path.  The Lakers might have to face Portland or San Antonio in the first round.  In the second round, the Dallas Mavericks might be waiting.  And then in the Western Conference Finals it might be Utah or Denver.  All of these teams are capable of defeating the Lakers.  Yes, it is possible for the Lakers to fail to get out of the first round (or second round or Western Finals).

In sum, although the Lakers might be slight favorites to defeat the Magic in the Finals, there is a good chance someone else from the West will survive until the end of June.  And that someone else is simply not going to be favored over Orlando.  So if you are a Magic fan, your summer could get off to a very good start (and of course, I would say the same thing to fans of the Cavaliers).

- 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.

The following is from Ty Willihnganz.  Ty’s the author of the Courtside Analyst, an extremely good blog (which primarily focus on the Milwaukee Bucks with metrics derived from Wins Produced and Win Score) that has been noted before in this forum.   Ty got his copy of Stumbling on Wins yesterday.  Today he posted his review.  I encourage everyone to read the entire discussion.   But I want to highlight these paragraphs:

Here’s what I can tell you, and I think you’ll get the point.  I am an extremely particular reader, okay?  If the material is weak, if the research is weak, or if the writing is weak, the book gets put down.  I don’t care if the author is my brother.

Well, I got the book yesterday.  Okay? I started to read it last night.  You follow me?  Its morning and I’m finished.  And I’m really f’ing tired this morning, and its my birthday, and I have no idea how I will get through this business day.  (So please, forgive the disjointed nature of this review).

We do have to apologize for diminishing Ty’s birthday. But we are glad he enjoyed our latest.

For those who don’t wish to follow the above link, here is Ty’s entire review.

The Review from the Courtside Analyst

(This is going to be a “Publishers Weekly” abridged review, because I want to follow up with a series of posts discussing in depth some of the fascinating points made in the book, many of which will not be basketball related, but all of which are sports related.)

Disclaimer.  Professor David Berri of the WoW Journal has been very generous to this author and this blog, in fact much more generous than even internet protocol (whatever that is) requires, so when I was asked to review the newly released follow-up to The Wages of Wins, I’ll tell you the truth, if I hadn’t liked it I would have just demurred on the review.  Thankfully that’s not necessary.

This was a terrific book.  It was a book that was ostensibly about sports, but really about the foibles of human judgment.  A fascinating study.  I learned a lot of new information in this book (eg, the NBA’s conventional drafting strategy is so clueless the fact that a player made a trip to the Final Four in the same season as the draft causes his value to soar – unbelievable.  Hold fo my alternative why tomorrow. Its different from the authors). 

I wish I could write a proper review extolling this book.  But I don’t have much time this morning. 

Here’s what I can tell you, and I think you’ll get the point.  I am an extremely particular reader, okay?  If the material is weak, if the research is weak, or if the writing is weak, the book gets put down.  I don’t care if the author is my brother.

Well, I got the book yesterday.  Okay? I started to read it last night.  You follow me?  Its morning and I’m finished.  And I’m really f’ing tired this morning, and its my birthday, and I have no idea how I will get through this business day.  (So please, forgive the disjointed nature of this review).

That my friends is the ultimate compliment I can give to a book.  And I mean it.  After “reading” Bill Simmons desecration of the English language and of all forms of logical reasoning and valid argumentation, I needed to read a well-written, well-researched, and well-argued book in the worst, and Stumbling on Wins delivered. 

Now, I’ll admit to you, when I saw “Defending Isiah Thomas” as Chapter One, my first thought was not a good one.  I thought, “Warmed over WoW Journal”.  Not at all.  If material that has appeared on Prof Berri’s blog, its presented in a new light, or reframed in some way.  Thus even old points appear as new.

As I said, abridged review, but two quick points before I close. 

First, what I absolutely love about the work put out by Berri and Schmidt is it is written in plain English.  Subject-Verb-Object. Subject-Verb-Object.  That may sound like a back-handed compliment, it absolutely is not.  The hardest form of English writing is simple, understandable, well-structured writing, especially when you are dealing with a subject like Economics.  These guys can do it, and they do it through out the book, and this reader appreciates the effort and skill that it took.  (One nitpick, they use the contrivance “the material tells a _______ story” a few too many times, but that’s small potatos).

The reason I point this out is the basketball “stats” world in particular is filled with way, way too many writers who hide the logical foundation of their arguments behind impenetrable mathematical work.  Its annoying.  Berri and Schmidt have the confidence not to do this, and it makes the book read more like “Freakonomics” than “Calculus 203″.  (No offense to the guy, but if you want to read the polar opposite style of writing, pick up a copy of Dean Oliver’s “Basketball on Paper”).  Its getting better, and sites like Basketball Prospectus are leading the way, but the basketball analytics is WAY behind baseball analytics in that regard.

I want to close by defending the pair.  While they are adept with the English language, sometimes their economic brains get them into unneccesary trouble.

In Henry Abbott’s review, and I don’t have time to site it but its on his blog, he pulls a quote that makes it seem like the book is a pair of smarty pants mocking the sports establishment.  Not at all!  As I said, their book is a study of general human decision making.  It examines why we, all of us, make poor decisions.  Yes, GMs and Coaches happen to be the subject matter, but it might as well have been MBAs and Lawyers.

Remember, when you ask an economist what the weather is like outside, if its nice he’ll say “I have no evidence to suggest it will rain.”

FOOTNOTE:  This is NOT a “Stat Geek” book.  Henry Abbott characterized it as such in his review, but his focus was misplaced. 

This is a book that applies economic theory to the sports industry.  It is a study of irrational decision making and the misunderstood, or overvalued inputs that cause faulty outputs.  Its a study of human behavior, in other words, not of numbers necessarily.

More Comments

Ty is not the only one to comment on Stumbling on Wins.  Here is part of what Wayne Winston – author of Mathletics – had to say:

David Berri and Martin Schmidt of  Wages of  Wins fame have just published their new book Stumbling on Wins. The authors do a great job of showing how math can help teams make better player personnel decisions and better in game decisions.  I hope you will pick up a copy.

And here is JC Bradbury with a quick comment.

Berri and Schmidt are true pioneers of modern sports economics, proving time and again that sports are the perfect laboratory for social science research. Stumbling On Wins reveals that sports are more than entertainment; they tell us something important about ourselves.

Again, we thank Ty, Wayne, and JC for these reviews and we are very delighted that people are enjoying our latest. 

- DJ

Michael Jordan is the new owner of the Charlotte Bobcats.  For those unfamiliar with Bobcat history, this is a team that has never made the playoffs and never posted a winning record.  So this team is not exactly the jewel of the NBA.  But it does look like NBA life in North Carolina is getting better (and not just because MJ is the team’s owner).

Today the Charlotte Bobcats are on the verge of a franchise record.  With one more victory the 2009-10 team will have won more games in a regular season than any team in the history of Bobcat basketball. 

The magic number for the Bobcats is only 36.  So this team doesn’t even have to finish with a winning record to set the this mark.  It does appear, though, that a winning record – and the first playoff berth in franchise history – is possible.

Last summer I argued that this outcome was indeed possible.  But this forecast focused on the play of Tyson Chandler.  Prior to this season the Bobcats had consisted of Gerald Wallace, Emeka Okafor, and not much else (hence the lack of success).  Last year Okafor was sent to the Hornets (where he will miss the playoffs again) for Chandler.  In 2008-09, Okafor was clearly the more productive player.  It was a different story, though, before last season; and last summer I argued that if the Chandler from before 2008-09 appeared in Charlotte, the playoffs were possible.

Table One: The Charlotte Bobcats after 69 games in 2009-10

A glance at Table One, though, reveals that the Bobcats appear to have acquired the Chandler from 2008-09 (in fact, not even that much).  Thus far he has only produced 0.7 wins, so clearly Chandler hasn’t helped.

When we look at what the Bobcats could have expected given the performance of the team’s veterans in 2008-09, we see a team that should currently be 31-38.  In other words, last year’s performance indicates a team out of the playoffs again.

So how has this team improved?  The team’s – somewhat modest – improvement can be linked primarily to the play of Wallace and Raymond Felton.  The team is also getting more from Nazr Mohammed and Stephen Graham. 

And now the team has added Tyrus Thomas.  In just 408 minutes, Thomas has produced 1.5 wins with a 0.181 WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes].  If Thomas can finally start to live up to the promise of his college numbers, the Bobcats could make someone feel uncomfortable in the playoffs.  Probably not so uncomfortable that a favorite gets an early vacation.  But uncomfortable, nevertheless.

The addition of Thomas – assuming he keeps playing well– finally gives the Bobcats more than two above average players (the team now has Wallace, Felton, and Thomas).  And if Chandler ever produces again, Charlotte might be able to contend in the East.

So it looks like Michael Jordan has bought himself a team on the rise. It isn’t anywhere close to as good as many of the Chicago teams that employed Jordan.  But it’s starting to look like the teams Jordan and the Bulls used to defeat in the playoffs (and that’s better than being a team not in the playoffs).

- 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 afternoon I am scheduled to appear on The Hays Advantage on Bloomberg Radio.  Kathleen Hays and I will be discussing the NCAA tournament at 12:30pmMST (2:30pmEST). 

- DJ

My latest at Huffington Post – Stumbling on Wins: Using Sports to Paint a Bigger Picture – explores the bigger picture told in our latest book.  Stumbling on Wins doesn’t just tell a host of different stories drawn from the world of sports.  We also hope to show that the study of how decisions are made in sports can contribute to our understanding of how human beings in general make choices.

For sports fans, though, the many stories we tell from baseball, football, basketball, and hockey might obscure this bigger picture.   After all, the impact Final Four appearances have on NBA draft position — or the idea that rebounding doesn’t impact NBA draft position (but does impact future performance) — are stories can generate a conversation  quite independent of the larger picture.

To illustrate – in the midst of a fairly positive (and very lengthy) review from Henry Abbott – the NBA draft-rebounding story was one tale Henry highlights (citing John Hollinger and David Thorpe in his discussion). 

More on Rebounding and the Draft

This story – as we note in the book – goes beyond sports.  Th NBA draft-rebounding story actually highlights a key problem with human decision-making.  This is specifically what we say in the book:

It may seem somewhat surprising to hear that decision-makers are better off considering less. This argument can be illustrated if we consider what was uncovered with respect to rebounds. Rebounds don’t impact where a player is chosen on draft day, but are found to be related to future productivity in the NBA.  Such results suggest that decision-makers are not aware of the importance of rebounds.  Such a suggestion, though, is hard to believe.  Rebounds have been tracked for NBA players since 1950 and we can be fairly certain that decision-makers in the NBA understand that better rebounders help teams win games.

We also suspect, though, that decision-makers believe a vast list of factors is connected with winning basketball games.  Unfortunately, the size of the list is the problem. People are taught to consider everything before making a decision.  Such advice would be good to follow if the human mind had unlimited computing power.  The human mind, though, has clear limits.  Too much information has actually been shown by researchers to result in declines in the quality of decisions.

We believe this is what’s happening on draft day.  Decision-makers try to consider everything, but the limits of the human mind undermine this effort.  In order for a decision to be made, the human mind has to simplify the vast list of factors considered.  The simplification process ends up emphasizing the factors that are most conspicuous.  In other words, the final decision is dominated by scoring, age, height, and Final Four appearances; a list of factors unrelated to future productivity in the NBA.

The limitation of the human mind is one story told by Jonah Lehrer in How We Decide.  Lehrer – as we note in the book – explicitely argues that the human mind is constrained.  Therefore when people say “we look at everything before making a decision” they appear to be arguing that their mind can do things that don’t appear to be physically possible.  A good decision-making process. therefore, doesn’t focus on everything; but rather focuses on the factors most relevant to the decision being made.  In other words, a better approach to decision-making is to systematically uncover which information is actually important and which information should be ignored.

Advantages and Difficulties with Sports Research 

The research cited by Lehrer – just like the research noted in the books by Daniel Gilbert (Stumbling on Happiness), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (Nudge) — is generally drawn from laboratory experiments.  As noted at Huffington Post, critics of experiments note that the “real world” is not in a lab.  Consequently, we hope that the fact similar stories are seen in the very real world of sports strengthens the arguments offered by behavioral economics.

Although the study of sports does offer some advantages, it does have at least two problems.  First, the very nature of laboratory experiments means the people making “mistakes” are anonymous.  In contrast, every decision-maker in sports can be identified by name.  Consequently, although we insist that we are not calling anyone in sports “stupid” (just as researchers do not call those who participate in the aforementioned experiments “stupid”), we do understand the tendency for feathers to be ruffled when people’s decisions are explicitly questioned.  As we note in the book, people in sports are likely to be just as smart as decision-makers in other industries. And they bring a great deal more passion to their work.  Despite these advantages – and despite the many other favorable characteristics of the sports industry – decision-makers in sports do not behave in a fashion consistent with the assumption of rationality traditionally found in economics.   Yes, once again we turn to the bigger picture.

Beyond this issue is the fact sports are a subject with many, many experts.  Players, coaches, members of the media, and many fans are all people who believe they already know the answer to many of the questions we address.  And consequently, when our answers contradict what is “known”, people become unhappy with our stories.

Such a reaction brings to mind the following quotes from John Kenneth Galbraith and Leo Tolstoy.

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” John Kenneth Galbraith

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, with a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.” Leo Tolstoy (via Michael Lewis – and The Big Short — as seen on Charlie Rose).

Each of these quotes highlight the problem human beings have with information that contradicts what is already believed.  And again, contrary to what traditional economics argues, a person does not change his or her mind easily. 

For good decisions to be made, though, new information has to be sought and understood.  What we see in sports – as we see in many other industries (and even sometimes in academia) – the challenge posed by new information is not always met.

- DJ

The WoW Journal Comments Policy