Still, I suspect someone might want to see a discussion of these numbers. But since everyone has these numbers, that discussion doesn’t have to be led by me anymore. So here is what I propose. TrueHoop now has a network of blogs that cover each team. I suspect we could do something similar here as well. Specifically, I think we could have people who follow each specific team write posts throughout the season. These posts would review the Wins Produced numbers and then offer some additional analysis. In other words, these posts would be similar to what I have done the past few seasons. These posts, though, could be much better since the author of the column would be someone who really cared about the subject matter.
If you are interested in being one of these writers, please let me know. I would like to set up a roster of people before the next season starts. In fact, we could even start posting such analysis during the off-season.
Yesterday I received an e-mail from Brian Guerra of sportsnickel.com. Brian noted that he came across stumblingonwins.com after reading the review of Stumbling on Wins at Forbes.com (did I mention… a great review with a wonderful slide show). Brian noted that stumblingonwins.com was not a very good website. He then offered to re-do the website in exchange for a free copy of Stumbling on Wins.
Obviously such an offer was too good to pass up. And this morning (yes, Brian works fast) we have a new stumblingonwins.com. For those who saw the old version, this is a huge improvement. The old version was designed by me, and to get an idea of the difference in our skill sets one only has to look at wagesofwins.com.
Marty and I wish to thank Brian for his efforts. I should note that this is not the first time my website design was so bad that someone volunteered to do better (this also happened for my original website at Cal-State Bakersfield). In the future I think I will stick to writing and leave website design to others.
As for writing… I need to write posts on the All-Rookie team and the All-NBA selections. I also promised another post on the drafting of quarterbacks. All of this, though, is going to be delayed.
Two years ago Stacey Brook, Aju Fenn, and I submitted a paper to a journal. The journal then asked for some fairly minor revisions. Unfortunately the writing of Stumbling on Wins delayed the work on these revisions. Yesterday, though, I spoke to the editor and promised I would re-submit the paper by Monday. I still might take a break to post something today. Then again, I might not. While everyone waits, though, you can look at the new stumblingonwins.com (and did you see that slide show at Forbes.com?).
One of the frustrations readers have with this forum is how the Wins Produced analysis is presented. Across the regular season, one can only see the Wins Produced of a team’s players when I choose to present this information (a choice that depends upon how much time I have). Consequently, fans of most teams only get to see this information once or twice during the season (and for fans of the Pacers and Clippers…well, I hope to say something this summer).
The infrequent offerings are a reflection of the how Wins Produced is calculated. To analyze a team I have to download player and team data. Then I have to follow all the steps reported in various articles, The Wages of Wins, Stumbling on Wins (and at Calculating Wins Produced).
Many of these steps could be automated. But as people who have asked about this have discovered, complete automation runs into two significant roadblocks.
First of all, the measurement of a player’s productivity requires that one consider such issues as team defense, team rebounds, and team turnovers. These calculations – described in the above writings – are somewhat complex (although I don’t think that difficult to follow).
Perhaps more important is the issue of position played. The Wins Produced calculation requires that all players be compared to the average at their position. And this requires that all players be allocated to the five positions of basketball (i.e. center, power forward, small forward, shooting guard, and point guard). In the various discussion of how Wins Produced is calculated, it was emphasized that the assignment of positions required some judgement calls. These judgement calls seemed to cause a difficult barrier to overcome for those interested in completely automating the calculation.
Across the years, various people have tried to tackle this problem. So far, though, none has succeeded to automate the Wins Produced calculations. At least, that was true until Andres Alvarez took on the challenge. As was reported in the comments section a few days ago, Andres – or Dre from the comments section – has managed to create an automatic Wins Produced calculation.
To explain the process, Andres has prepared the following YouTube presentation:
As Andres explains, his process allocates players across positions according to position identification, player height, and assists. To illustrate, imagine a team with an abundance of centers. The method Andres developed is to move the shorter centers into the power forward position (or the taller power forwards into the center position). This process is also utilized when looking at small forwards and power forwards. Turning to guards, Andres takes into account assists. Specifically, guards with more assists are moved into the point guard slot.
This entire process is driven by the measurements Andres is able to download. In other words, no judgement calls are made. And that means – as Andres observes — this process is not perfect. But Andres notes he can evaluate the entire league in less than four minutes. To put that in perspective, I can’t evaluate one team in four minutes. So what Andres has done is extremely important for people who wish to see a Wins Produced calculation for their favorite NBA players as the season unfolds.
There may be one downside to all of this. Once Andres gets his work hosted (he is working on this), then it appears I will no longer be needed during the regular season. Instead of waiting for me to analyze each and every team, Andres will be presenting all the teams all the time.
And that means maybe I do a bit less blogging and a bit more research (or take up skiing).
Regardless of what I am doing, I hope everyone appreciates what Andres has done. And it looks like the Wages of Wins coverage of the 2010-11 season is going to be much more timely – and much better – for everyone.
I was born in Detroit (in 1969) and my family lived there until 1981. For those who remember the 1970s (and that excludes many of my students, who seem to be mostly born after 1990), it was a time when you followed your favorite baseball team primarily via the radio. There was no Internet or ESPN. And for my family, no television (we didn’t have a TV for much of the 1970s). So we also missed the few games broadcast on network television.
But we did have the radio. And that meant we had Ernie Harwell. I can still remember spending summer night listening to Harwell call a baseball game. On most of these nights you would hear catch phrases like “he sat there like the house by the side of the road” (for a called third strike) or “a fan from (insert a place in Michigan or from wherever Harwell was calling a game) will be taking that ball home today” (something Harwell said when a foul ball went into the stands).
Harwell didn’t just impact sports fans. Each of my siblings – who I don’t think follow sports anymore — have contacted me over the past day or so expressing their sadness and memories of Harwell.
Beyond hearing these sentiments, I was also amazed to see the impact Harwell had beyond the state of Michigan. My home today is in Cedar City, Utah and our local paper is the Spectrum. In today’s paper is a lengthy story — Harwell’s Impact — written by Tom Zulewski. This story details Zulewski’s memories of one of the greatest people to ever call a baseball game. Zulewski’s story certainly made my morning. And if you are a fan of the Tigers who finds themselves far from Detroit, I think you will find it to be worth reading.
Van Riper’s article covers much more than the notion that Chris Paul was the MPP of 2008-09 (and LeBron finished second). He also reviews many of the stories we tell in Stumbling on Wins.