The following our pages detail the stories I have told each of the past four summers.
For each team in the NBA, I would write a review of the prior season from the perspective of Wins Produced. By the time each summer was over (or at least, before the next NBA season began), one could see the Wins Produced and WP48 of every player in the Association. Obviously for some fans, they would have to wait until September or October before they could see their team’s evaluation.
Well, thanks to Andres Alvarez, the summer of 2010 will be different. Andres has managed to automate the Wins Produced calculation. And last night he launched a website with numbers for every team in 2009-10.
To view these numbers, you will need to have Microsoft Silverlight installed on your computer (it takes just a few moments to download this program, which I believe is similar to Adobe). Once you are able to access the numbers, you will see every player’s position (determined by looking at position designation, height, and Body Mass Index), Minutes, ADJ P48, WP48, Wins (i.e. Wins Produced), Wins per million dollars paid, and 2009-10 salary (for details on how ADJ P48, WP48, and Wins Produced are calculated, please see Calculating Wins Produced) The numbers are only for 2009-10. Older numbers will also be posted in the future. And of course, these numbers will be offered for the 2010-11 season.
Now that these numbers are available, team reviews can be written by actual fans of each team. And over the summer, that is what will be posted in this forum. Yes, I will still be writing. But for the most part, I am going to be working as editor of what other people have written.
The first post with these numbers should be up later today. And I am looking forward to many more posts with the numbers from Andres Alvarez (who we should all once again thank for all his hard work).
UPDATE: There is some confusion the how positions are designated. Just so everyone understands… positions are assigned via an algorithm (as it says above). The algorithm considers the position designations at Basketball-Reference. Then it looks at a player’s height and body mass index. So Andres is not assigning positions. The algorithm is doing this for him. If he does this by hand… well, you don’t get an automated version of Wins Produced and we are back where we started. If you don’t agree with where the algorithm puts a player, feel free to look at ADJ P48 and the position averages (which I think are listed in another post). You can then calculate WP48 according to whatever position you think is correct.
- DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
First of all, bravo! This is a fantastic accomplishment, and I’m grateful for the hard work that went into it.
Just glancing through things, though, it seems the positions are a bit off for some players.
Gerald Wallace, for example, is being shown as playing SG: 38% of the time, but from having watched most of Charlotte’s games (and from the numbers at 82games.com) I don’t think Wallace ever played at SG (SF/PF, mostly). Actually, looking at Stephen Jackson’s positional split, I wonder if some players got switched? (although that’s still not enough time at SG for Jackson) Similar issues appear with Josh Smith. Also, Marvin Williams is listed as 100% PF when he was mostly a SF, and Steph Curry is listed at 100% SG when he was mostly a PG.
Great! In principle. Err…
I tried accessing the site and discovered that it requires Microsoft Silverlight, a program that only works on certain computers and operating systems. I assume the intention wasn’t to try and get me to buy software from a particular company, but that’s basically what the website tells me to do right now.
Andres is freely donating his time and resources, so his preferences come first. But if there is interest in making the site more accessible I’m happy to help. Prof. Berri can access my address through this comment.
Lior, what do u mean buy?
Silverlight is basically Microsoft’s “answer” to Flash and as such – It’s free.
Nice, but I think some corrections need to be made. Somehow it’s showing Chuck Hayes playing SG 33% and SF %66.
He’s really a PF/C.
I’m also seeing Carl Landry @ 100% Center, Shane Battier @ 98% PF
Just looking at Toronto
Amir Johnson did not play 100% of his minutes at SF – he is a PF and played some minutes at C.
Hedo Turkoglu did not play 93% of his minutes at PF. He is predominantly a SF.
If Calderon played 19% of his minutes at SG, then Jarret Jack did not play 100% of his minutes at PG because both took the off guard role at various times when they were both on the floor.
Reggie Evans did not play 100% of his minutes at SF. That’s just crazy. He’s a PF.
Chris Bosh did not play 100% of his minutes at C. He’s regarded as a PF, and whenever he is on the floor with Bargnani, Bargnani plays C.
It’s cool that someone’s finally automated this, but the positions are pretty messed up, which highlights a problem with Wins Produced: how do you compare players if you don’t know their position or if NBA positions are so nebulous (particularly on offense)?
Won’t work on my older version Windows. An alternative would be of interest til I upgrade.
Andre,
Good work, and thanks. I’m mindful of your description as a work in progress, and I look forward to how it develops. I can only imagine the tribulations involved in assigning positions, so I’m grateful for the P48 column; with the position averages from the WoW All-Star post, I can make corrections manually where necessary.
I know you have a lot on your plate here, but I hope to see previous seasons soon; I’m looking forward to saying ‘I told you so’ to a great many people.
Andre,
Great work. I’ve already had some fun with the data. Love the WinsMillion. Look forward to hundreds of hours of joy from this :-)
I offered a quick update on the position assignments in the post. Hope that clears up some confusion.
Ah, thanks. I figured it was something like that. I appreciate the clarification.
http://dberri.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/the-wow-all-nba-team-and-the-jbrett-codes-again/
Position adjustments
Thank Robert. That should help.
Haha, just my luck.
My thinking…
“Hmmm…Let me go one by one and do correct position adjustments…What! The Wizards had 24 players! Ridiculous.”
I’m probably going to wait until at least after the draft to write a full post about the Wizards.
Dave, where do you get your information regarding how the average person at a given position produces. If I wanted to do a “Andray Blatche scores a lot but under-produces compared to the average PF” where would I find the average PF data?
Palamida: Silverlight in itself may not cost money, but it’s a loss leader — it only works if you pay Microsoft for an operating system first.
In any case it’s not the cost that matters; it’s the experience of being told “unless you use the hardware and operating system we like, this site is not for you”.
Since you mentioned flash, note that Adobe provides flash players at least for MS-Windows, Apple-MacOS, Sun-Solaris and Linux (and probably other operating systems as well). There are also flash players different from Adobe’s, which run on an even greater variety of computers and operating systems.
This is not to impugn Andres. It’s his free time that went into this, and he prefers to use Silverlight (else he’d have used something else). But I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t access the site because of this choice, so I wanted to point out the consequences and offer to help to improve the situation.
It seems like the numbers calculated differ from ones shown earlier. For example, LeBron James is shown to have a .401 WP48 according to the site, but has a .441 according to an earlier post (http://www.wagesofwins.com/Top152010.html).
The Adj_P48 numbers also seem to be off. For example, Joe Smith from Atlanta has a P48 of .270 while only posting a WP48 of .007
Andre,
thanks for making our lives easier, although my first post is going to be about the playoffs. will future data be available for playoff numbers?
Blake //
a. I think Andre’s algorithm is overstating the amount of time LeBron played PF this season, thus driving his WP48 down. 82games.com says that LeBron only played 9% of the available minutes at PF for the Cavs. The WP48 of .441 for LeBron James is probably more accurate.
b. To calculate Joe Smith’s WP48 you take his Adj_P48 of .270 subtract .371 (because he is a PF) and then add .099.
(.270 – .371 +.099 = -.002).
So you’re right. The numbers could be slightly off for Joe Smith. Unless the numbers I used are incorrect.
I’m in the same boat. Linux user that can’t use Silverlight :(
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hahahahahahah
The site isn’t loading for me, apparently it’s stuck in some sort of loop. Can anyone help? Thanks.
Jedaco,
Sorry about that. We have fixed the issue and the server should be back up, now with playoff data!