According to the NY Post, Al Harrington wants to join the New Jersey Nets next season. (HT: ESPN Rumor Central)

Knicks forward Al Harrington often wears a ballcap with a scripted “NJ.”

The former star at St. Patrick’s High in Elizabeth, who lives in Edgewater, said he’s not trying to send out any subliminal messages — but told The Post he definitely would be interested in signing with his hometown Nets this summer, especially since they will play in Newark, 10 miles from Elizabeth, the next two seasons.

“If they had interest in me, I’d take a strong look at that,” Harrington, a free-agent-to-be, told The Post.

“It’s still the city. It’s still home. I’d rather play at the Garden, but I’d play in Newark, too.”

According to a source, the Wizards, Blazers and Bulls are expected to have interest in Harrington this summer.

And the NY Post also reports that the feeling is mutual:

Team president Rod Thorn admits the Nets will have to look everywhere to find players after this nightmare season concludes and at least six player contracts expire.

And current Knicks forward Al Harrington hopes they look his way.

Of course – as the article indicates — the Nets would prefer LeBron James.  But as the article notes, LeBron is likely to look elsewhere.  Therefore (continuing with the story)…

maybe the Nets, with $23.3 million to spend, will get lucky with the second tier-type free agents that include Harrington, 6-foot-9, a 14.1 career scorer who stated he would be open to signing with the Nets.

The notion is not far-fetched. Multiple team sources agreed Harrington “would be someone to consider” during this summer’s free agency.

Thorn declined comment — teams are not permitted to discuss players under contract to other teams. But he didn’t do anything to squash the idea.

“We’ll look at everyone. At the end of the day, we’ll have six or seven players under contract,” Thorn said. “We’re going to have to fill out our roster. We’re going to have to get players somewhere.”

So if we are following the logic of the NY Post, the Nets will first look at LeBron.  If LeBron passes, then the Nets might get “lucky” and land Al Harrington? Really?

Okay, let’s look at what Al Harrington has done this year.

Table One: The New York Knicks after 68 games in 2009-10

As Table One reports, Harrington’s WP48 mark is currently in the negative range. And his performance last year was also in the negative range.  In fact, Harrington was the “Most Overrated” performer last year. 

The story that Harrington is not a very productive player was originally told in this forum back in 2006 (see HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE). But Harrington can score so he keeps finding work in the NBA.

One would think, though, that there would be quite a few players on New Jersey’s wish list between LeBron and Harrington.  For example, David Lee – the most productive player on the Knicks — might want to stay in the area.  In fact one wonders, what are the odds that

a. Lee departs the New York area and

b. both the Nets and Knicks fail to land a free agent as productive as Lee?

The odds on (a) are not clear.  But if (a) happens, the odds on (b) don’t look bad.  Especially if the Nets are serious about Harrington.

One last note on the Knicks.  Looking back on Table One we see that the Knicks are just about where we would think given the numbers posted by the team’s veterans last year. Players in the NBA tend to be consistent, but the Knicks players seem to be taking this to an extreme.  And this is surprising given how much turnover there has been on the team’s roster.

Such consistency highlights the basic strategy both the Knicks and Nets should pursue this summer.  If either team wants to improve it needs to bring in more productive players.  Although it’s possible for players to improve, this is not something a team should count on.

- 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.

Jessica — my youngest daughter — is 10 years old.   On her NCAA bracket she is currently 8-0.  She picked Murray State, Saint Mary’s, and Old Dominion.   This is her method:  She says she picked the teams that didn’t win as much because she thinks they try harder.  Not sure about the statistical validity of this method.  But she is currently winning the Berri family pool (I am tied for last).

- DJ

Our next book – Stumbling on Wins (FT Press) – will officially be released next week. But you can already order the book at Amazon.com (in hardcover and the Kindle edition).  And now we have some early reviews.

Henry Abbott has actually offered two comments on the book.  On the back cover of the book you will see the following:

“This book takes the hallowed traditions of sports decision making and pokes them with a sharp stick.”

That is a great sentence on the book.  But 17 words is not enough.  Henry has also offered more than 2,500 words at TrueHoop.  In “The robots are coming, and they’re cranky”, Henry details what he likes about our latest (quite a bit) and what he isn’t quite as thrilled about.  All in all, it’s a very good discussion of our book.  So please check it out.

And Chicago Tim – an commenter at this blog – also has had a chance to read our latest (via Kindle).  Here are the comments he posted a couple of hours ago:

I’ve now finished The Wages of Wins and Stumbling on Wins on my Kindle. I liked them and recommend them. I’ll admit that I don’t follow all the math, and I don’t understand the disputes between various sports statisticians. But you and your co-authors do a good job of making your theories sound plausible to non-experts like me. And although the statisticians seem to disagree about precisely which statistics to use, they tend to agree that GMs in all sports persistently make many mistakes based on conventional wisdom.

I like to have the theories you cite in the back of my head when I read sports stories, so that I can question the conventional wisdom. Maybe it is okay that the Chicago Bears don’t have a first-round draft pick. Maybe the Chicago Blackhawks don’t need to spend big money on a goalie. Maybe the Chicago Bulls don’t need to spend big money on a coach. And maybe the Chicago Cubs and White Sox can improve their farm system by drafting more college players and position players, and fewer high schoolers and pitchers.

In Stumbling on Wins, your latest book, I like the way you link sports stories to the broader economy and even, perhaps, to broader theories of social and political science. Maybe people don’t act rationally, because they can’t compute all the variables and rely on conventional wisdom. Maybe they act irrationally repeatedly, decade after decade after decade. Maybe some of our heroes don’t deserve their fame, and some forgotten people should be remembered and given their due. If highly-paid experts make these mistakes in sports, a relatively-closed environment with many objective measurements of performance, how much more likely is it that we make such mistakes outside of the narrow world of sports?

I would have liked even more stories, and a more detailed discussion of sports like hockey and soccer. But I guess I’m just greedy.

I will say that having read this blog pretty regularly, there were some stories I recognized and already knew. However, in the books you do present the arguments more systematically and thoroughly, and there is much in the books that I do not remember from your blog. I also found some redundancy between the first book and the second, since you couldn’t assume that everyone was familiar with the first. But you put the more complex equations in the appendices, where I was free to skip or skim them.

Finally, I like your dry sense of humor, of which there are many examples in both books and in this blog. If anything, you undersell your theories. Some of them are pretty shocking, such as the possibility that black quarterbacks are systematically undervalued.

One nitpick: in most cases “use” can be substituted for “utilize.” In rare cases, “utilize” is more appropriate, that is, when you utilize an object for a purpose not originally intended, such as picking your teeth with your knife.

We look forward to seeing much more discussion of our book over the next few months.  And we encourage everyone to buy the book and participate. Or if you don’t want to participate, just buy the book :)

- DJ

The WoW Journal Comments Policy

The post “Kobe Makes Pau Gasol Unhappy” has apparently made fans of Kobe unhappy.  Such fans are quite interesting.  As many people have learned, any suggestion that Kobe is not the greatest basketball player in both this world and all future worlds is quickly met with a great deal of anger in the Internet.  And this anger is often part of a package that includes misspelled words and poorly constructed arguments (which readers such as Simon, jbrett, ilikeflowers, and others are doing a great job of adddressing). 

Unfortunately, I wish to tell another story today that involves Kobe. My story is actually focused on Clyde Drexler, but I think it’s a good idea to begin with a direct comparison of Clyde the Glide and Kobe. 

Table One: Comparing the Career Performances of Kobe Bryant and Clyde Drexler

As Table One reports, Drexler’s career averages top Kobe’s marks with respect to shooting efficiency, rebounds, steals, blocked shots, and assists.  And yet Kobe is considered by many to be the better player.

Why is Kobe Better?

There appear to be three explanations for why Kobe is thought to be the better player.  First – as Table One notes – Kobe is the more prolific scorer.  Of course, this is because Kobe leads Drexler in field goal attempts. 

Another issue is that Kobe spent his career with the Lakers while Drexler played for Portland and Houston.  In general, players for teams located in LA and New York tend to get more media exposure and therefore are thought of as better players.

And then there is the issue of championships won.  People tend to think players on championship teams are better than those who toil for teams that tend to lose in the playoffs.  It’s easy to point out the absurdity of such logic.  Teams win championships and one can pick up a ring just because you happen to have the right teammates.  After all, does anyone think Luc Longley (three titles) was a better center than Patrick Ewing (0 titles)? Or that Robert Horry (seven titles) was a better forward than Dominique Wilkins or Karl Malone (0 titles)?  Despite such obvious arguments, people will note that Kobe’s four titles must mean he’s a better guard than Drexler (1 title).

Drexler Second Best

Drexler did appear in the NBA Finals four times.  But his team came up “second-best” three times.  And that appears to be the story of Drexler’s career.  He often toiled for the “second-best” team.

Back in 1990, Drexler and the Portland Trail Blazers finished the season with league’s 4^th best efficiency differential (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency).  After defeating the Phoenix Suns – the team with the best differential – in the Western Conference Finals, the Blazers faced the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals.  The Pistons differential of 6.2 was only slighly better than the Blazers mark of 5.9.  But after seizing homecourt advantage in the series, Portland went on to lose three consecutive games at home.

The next season the Blazers were even better.  When the regular season ended the Blazers differential of 8.3 was only bested by the 9.2 differential posted by the Chicago Bulls.  But in the Western Conference Finals the Blazers were defeated by the LA Lakers.

In 1991-92 the Blazers again posted the best differential in the Western Conference.  Their mark of 7.0, though, lagged far behind Chicago’s 10.6 differential.  Hence it was not a surprise that the Blazers were defeated in the NBA Finals.

Across the next two seasons the Blazers slipped.  Then in 1994-95, Drexler was traded to the Houston Rockets.   And despite the fact the Rockets were underdogs in all four rounds in the playoffs, Houston managed to repeat as NBA champions. 

The next season the Rockets were swept in the second round of the playoffs, while the Chicago Bulls won 72 games and the NBA Title.  At this point it looked like Drexler was never going to contend for another NBA championship.

What Might Have Been in 1997

But then the Rockets made a move that looked to return this team to contending status.  In August of 1996 the Rockets traded for Charles Barkley.   This acquisition gave the Rockets an impressive trio of Hakeem Olajuwon, Drexler, and Barkley.  These three produced 45.2 wins in 1995-96, so it wouldn’t take much more for the Rockets to contend in 1996-97.

When we look at what the Rockets did that season, though, it seems like the “much more” never arrived.

Table Two: The Houston Rockets in 1996-97

As Table Two indicates, the Rockets won 58 games in 1996-97.  But the team’s efficiency differential – and corresponding Wins Produced – is more consistent with a 52 win team.  After the aforementioned trio, the Wins Produced of the rest of the roster was only 14.1. 

So there wasn’t much after Hakeem, Clyde the Glide, and Sir Charles.  Plus, Hakeem – who was 34 years old, saw his production decline.  Had he maintained what he did in 1995-96 the Rockets would have been five wins better.

Such an improvement, though, would not have been enough to catch the Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz.  There was a move made, though, that should have made a difference.  A month before the Rockets acquired Barkley, Houston signed Brent Price.  In 1995-96, Price produced 9.8 wins and posted a 0.230 WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] for the Washington Bullets.

As Price’s bio at NBA.com reveals, his 1996-97 season went off the tracks before it began:

Price was expected to step in as Houston’s regular point guard after he joined the Rockets as a veteran free agent, but a broken left humerus suffered in a preseason game on Oct. 24 ruined those plans. He did not make his debut until Dec. 28, and just when he seemed to be playing his way back into top form he suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in a game against the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 25. He was placed on the injured list on March 3, underwent surgery on March 15 and sat out the remainder of the regular season and postseason…Price was on a roll when he got hurt the second time. In the eight games prior to his torn ACL, Price had averaged 10.1 ppg and 4.9 apg while shooting .482 from the field and .462 from behind the arc…That spurt included a season-high 20 points on 8-for-11 shooting, plus a season-high six assists, in a 106-97 win over Vancouver on Feb. 11.

Because Price was hurt the Rockets had to turn to Matt Maloney.  An undrafted rookie out of the University of Pennsylvania, Maloney started every game in 1996-97 and produced 2.7 wins with a 0.053 WP48. Had Maloney’s minutes gone to the Price we saw in 1995-96 (and Maloney took Price’s 1996-97 minutes), the Rockets would have been 11.3 wins better.  Coupled with Olajuwon maintaining what we saw in 1995-96, the Rockets would then have been transformed into a team with 69.8 Wins Produced. 

This mark might have allowed the Rockets to challenge the Chicago Bulls (who won 69 games in 1996-97).  And it’s possible Drexler might have won a second title.

Of course, Drexler, Olajuwon, and Barkley would have still had to defeat Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen and company in the NBA Finals; and even with Price and Olajuwon performing as we saw in 1995-96 the Rockets were not really better than the Bulls.  So Drexler might have still finished second best to Jordan.

So even this “what-if” tale is consistent with the story of Drexler’s career. Even if the breaks did go his way, he was still not as good as Jordan.  But that really isn’t such a shame.  Second to MJ is still pretty good.

After all, Kobe Bryant – how is also pretty good — is also second to Jordan.   But Kobe is not – as the above table indicates – as good as Drexler (yes, I could have let it go but I didn’t). 

- 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.

Today’s guest post – and instant analysis of the 2010 NCAA Tournament (posted within hours of the brackets being announced) — is yet another excellent offering from Erich Doerr .  Erich first contacted me prior to the 2006 NBA Draft with a statistical preview in hand.  Each subsequent year has seen improvement in the depth and breadth of his analysis. Outside of his basketball writing, Erich does consulting work for major software products by day and has started a fledgling sports-themed Open Source software initiative by night.  

Sticking to what works, I’m here to share a statistical preview of the NCAA tournament.  The text may appear familiar, but the numbers are fully updated and relevant to the 2010 NCAA tournament.

Figure One: Bracket based on Pomeroy Numbers

Figure Two: Bracket based on Sagarin Numbers

Again in 2010, I am relying on the two strongest public NCAA metrics in the Sagarin Ratings and Ken Pomeroy‘s Pythagorean Ratings.  Statistics used by the Wages of Wins parallel Pomeroy’s approach, as both build off of offensive and defensive efficiency. 

Figure Three: Teams Probability Tables

 Since top seeds represent the best teams in the land, this approach will appear to heavily favor those teams due to their quality and favorable draw.  The final results here attempt to predict the statistically most probable brackets, which are not necessarily the picks most likely to win an office pool.

By the numbers, who has the right to gripe?  Well, both metrics agree that Kentucky has a difficult road ahead.   Besides being the weakest of the #1’s, they have a brutal bracket that reduces their Final Four chances by 5-10%.  The sweetest draw belongs to the Syracuse Orange. 

For those looking to call that historic upset, both Syracuse and Kentucky are about twice as likely to lose their first round matches as Kansas & Duke.

Stepping back, both the Sagarin & Pomeroy brackets come out with similar predictions, differing in 6 out of 64 matchups.  Nevertheless, both measures see Kansas & Duke in the championship game, with Sagarin’s Predictor preferring Kansas & Pomeroy’s Pythag backing Duke. 

The tables linked above also provide odds by conference, seed, and region.  Either the ACC and Big 12 win the title in 60% of all scenarios.  Adding in the Big Ten and Big East accounts for 90% of all championships, leaving all other conferences a 10% NCAA title chance, combined.  See the tables above and comment on your own favorite observation.

Finally, please note the Wages of Wins Journal does not condone gambling.  These picks should perform better than average overall, but typically variance rules these types of pools.  In general, an entry in a bracket pool has a 1/N chance of winning, where N = number of entries.  Due to the layout of the NCAA tournament, it is highly improbable that a good set of picks could raise the pre-ante odds to even 2/N.  Generally, there may be more gains to be had in shopping for the right office pool (i.e. the one containing the least informed participants) or game theory analysis if one was so interested in improving their office pool odds.  Always note that past returns do not guarantee future performance.

For readers that would like to run their own simulations, I have made the tool I use to generate these odds available at www.xlssports.com.  Feel free to download the Excel file and adjust any numbers as you see fit.  Furthermore, advanced users should be able to modify the tool for other statistical measures.   Enjoy the tournament, and best of luck.

- Erich Doerr 

Notes:
Sagarin & Pomeroy stats are as of March 14th
For simplicity I assumed Arkansas Pine Bluff would lose in the play-in game

No injury information is taken into account in this analysis. 

The WoW Journal Comments Policy