Last night at Staples Center, the Clippers lost their 20th game in 24 outings. There is no shortage of factors to explain just how miserable the Clippers have been over the past six weeks: The departure of Marcus Camby, nagging injuries to key players, an interim coach pacing the sidelines.
But one reason that players, coaches and management continue to cite is the unusual number of players on the roster with expiring contracts. After the Clippers’ 117-94 loss to Dallas, interim head coach Kim Hughes tried to account for his team’s careless play:
In late-season scenarios when you have as many free agents as we do, human nature takes effect sometimes. They look for points instead of the team first. That bothered me tonight. We had some guys looking for points too much. That should never occur, but it did occur. It’s not right, but it did happen. It’s not the way I like to play basketball, but when you have as many free agents as we do, I think it’s going to happen at times.
I don’t doubt the veracity of Hughes’ comments. Anyone who’s been unfortunate enough to spend a substantial portion of their life over the past two months watching Hughes’ team can affirm what he’s saying. There are a bunch of guys on the Clippers roster who, at times, have acted as personal mercenaries, throwing up shots without even pretending to survey the floor for other opportunities. The substance of what Hughes and others around the team are saying is correct, but the underlying premise is problematic. The implication here is that a guy should play a losing brand of basketball in order to advance his career.
Consider that for a second.
In an effort to secure more money in the free agency market, players are jacking up shots with impunity, presumably to tally more points, irrespective of how efficiently those points are scored. The Clippers, who resided comfortably among the Top 5 teams in assist rate for much of the season, have plummeted in that category over the past few weeks. Hughes says that human nature is driving players’ motivation to score points at the expense of team-oriented play. But in a rational universe, shouldn’t a team composed of players looking to get paid be more efficient? Shouldn’t human nature intuitively drive a player in search of a fat contract to show off the full breadth of his game to potential buyers?
Unfortunately, NBA free agency isn’t a very rational market. Points per game and scoring in general are still the gold standards when sizing up available players. With a few possible exceptions — those teams have been enumerated here at TrueHoop — those are the stats tossed out during negotiations between agents and management.
Until teams start utilizing smarter data to approximate a player’s value in free agency — things like efficiency stats, true shooting percentage, tools that measure defense — expect more unwatchable basketball from teams whose players have paydays as their primary motivations.
Let me add one observation… The Wages of Wins briefly made the Hughes free agents argument in 2006. Stumbling on Wins goes beyond the free agent market and emphasizes how scoring totals drive a number of other player evaluations (allocation of minutes, the NBA draft, voting for awards). So we can understand why players choose to fire up ill-advised shots. What Hughes is arguing, though, is that decision-makers in the NBA – the very decision-makers in the NBA who reward inefficient scoring – know the impact the over-valuation of scoring has on player behavior. So why can’t these very same decision-makers just stop themselves from over-valuing inefficient scoring? Clearly the players don’t think the decision-makers can stop themselves. Going forward it will be interesting to see when (or if) the valuation of NBA players changes.
By the way, I only wish Kevin would have posted this story before we finished our book. It’s really a story that belongs in Stumbling on Wins.
- DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
From the linked article:
“But in a rational universe, shouldn’t a team composed of players looking to get paid be more efficient?”
I don’t mean to miss the point of the article (which I think even non-WP people would embrace), but I thought one of the so called discoveries of the merging of psychology and economics was that one way to make a person worse at their job was to pay them more money. Because human beings are not robots, as it turns out.
You could also look at it from the view point of the GM/coaches. If they say allocate less minutes to the higher scoring but less efficient player, common perception (because the fans of teams are (obviously) not as good as observing skill/talent/production) would make that move seem like it i against the grain.
Now if we add that one of the best players in the team picks up a little injury, and the team goes on a losing streak that is within the standard deviation we would expect across 82 games, this could leave a coach out of a job.
I know an extreme case, but some of these things happen!
I’ll repeat this quote, because it is worth repeating. It explains so much.
“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
John Maynard Keynes
Part of the problem is the way the league is marketed. Slam-dunks, buzzer-beaters, blocks and steals are promoted because every franchise can’t put a winning squad together. We’re all guilty of perpetuating the problem when we tune in for highlights on Sports Center. How often does someone shoot 5/15, make a game-winning shot and end up on the highlights the next day? Why have we had to look at AI’s mug (nothing personal) for the last several years when there have been many more deserving players? The media plays a hand in it, but I think the fans know better; the prof’s work has shown that winning affects attendance and not much else.
It is interesting that the NBA players understand the correlation between scoring and salary and adjust accordingly.
How long till GM’s also learn?
I think you’ve addressed part of this issue. Star(aka scoring) players attract audiences while on the road. So an owner/GM may notice their gate goes up when say Melo/Kobe visits and thinks “If I get them here regularly then I will make more money.”, which of course is not true.
Another interesting quirk is with trading. A common notion is that you should not trade a star player to an in division team. However, as you play in division teams more often, doing this would raise your gate on more games than trading them to another conference.
Everyone’s made good points so far. We understand that scoring is highly correlated with pay. What GM metric is most highly correlated with their pay? My guess would be team points per game. But that is simply a guess.
Tim,
“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
Excellent quote.
In what seems like another life I was a computer programmer. Back in those days I would often see hardware and software that was clearly superior to similar IBM products. Yet the company I worked for and virtually all the competitors would buy the IBM products. Finally I asked my boss why he was buying an inferior product.
He said, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”.
I’ve also been arguing that the best coaches and GMs “actually do” understand the difference between efficient and inefficient scoring and the different value of each.
But this goes back to my other theory.
There simply aren’t enough highly skilled high usage efficient scorers to go around and coaches/GMs believe you can’t win with a lot of low skilled low usage efficient scorers.
So they bring in the best “scorers” they can find (usually overpay) and surround them with the less skilled low usage efficient guys as role players and hope for the best. It doesn’t work.
The only model that works being lucky enough to get a player like Lebron, Michael, Larry, Tim, Shaq, Dwyane, Magic, Kevin etc…
Two words: Ben Gordon
I won’t even bring up jellybean boy.
Only problem I have with this is a player’s WP48 tends to be at the highest point during their contract year. Which is sorta the opposite of what you’re arguing.