Here is a quick table to think about before tonight’s game.
The story being told is that Kobe is doing everything he can to win a title but his teammates aren’t helping. The Wins Produced story is almost the same. Except the story would be “Pau Gasol and Kobe are doing everything they can to win a title, but their teammates aren’t helping.” And by the way, Gasol is doing slightly more than Kobe.
That last point is hard to see if you focus on points scored per game — or metrics dominated by points scored (i.e. the Player Efficiency Rating). Kobe has taken 120 field goal attempts for the Lakers. That mark doubles the number of shots Gasol has attempted from the field. Consequently, Kobe has scored many more point than Gasol. But is this the best allocation of shot attempts for the Lakers? Currently Gasol, Lamar Odom, and Andrew Bynum have all posted a higher True Shooting Percentage in the NBA Finals. Given this observation, maybe Kobe could think about passing the ball a bit more often tonight.
One last point about the above table: The calculations of Wins Produced employ ADJP48 and all the steps noted in Stumbling on Wins (and at Stumblingonwins.com). As one can see, the series has been very close. Of the 5 wins in the series, 2.54 have been produced by the Celtics and 2.41 by the Lakers.
Hope everyone enjoys the game tonight. If there is a need for a Game 7 I might update this analysis.
- DJ
P.S. The data used for the above calculations came from NBA.com, a site that reports the statistics for each round of the playoffs.
If you look at standard deviations can an argument be made that Kobe is out performing Pau?
Yes. As a shooting guard, Kobe is 2.9 standard deviations above average. Gasol is only 2.6 standard deviations above average as a PF. As a center, Gasol is 1.9 standard deviations above average.
Are the Lakers flawed in the same way, albeit to a lesser extent, as were the Phoenix fun-and-gun teams? Lots of regular season success, but at the mercy of playoff officiating when faced with a more physical opponent? Is Orlando the only contender they could have beaten last year?
(I won’t even begin to debate the merits of playoff officiating; the ‘playoffs are a different game’ mentality is too ingrained in the culture for lil’ ol’ me to impact.)
Kobe is probably not the player I want out performing Pau, but with the Lakers playing back in LA, hopefully Pau gets back on track of his first two performances.
Thanks D. Berri, if the Lakers win, I will be looking forward to the follow-up.
Simple series analysis using wins produced from Arturo’s finals table,
Positional battles:
LA has won the SG battle 4-1
Boston has won the SF battle 4-0
Boston has won the PG battle 4-0
Boston has won the C battle 3-2
Boston has won the PF battle 2-1
Surprises:
LA is not winning the battle at C. Ray Allen’s awful shooting. Big Baby’s game 4.
Simple Narratives:
Game 1: LA: Kobe won it, BOS: Ray Allen lost it.
Game 2: LA: Artest ruins Gasols great game, BOS: Rondo won it.
Game 3: LA: Kobe won it (again), BOS: Ray Allen lost it (again).
Game 4: LA: Kobe needs help, BOS: Big Baby won it.
Game 5: LA: Kobe needs help, BOS: Pierce duels Kobe to a standstill, but ultimately Rondo is the difference.
Notable trends:
When Ray Allen has played poorly or better, the Celtics have won. When he has been truly awful, they have lost.
Neither Rondo nor Kobe have had a bad game.
Love those definitive Pau moments. Sasha misses the open shot, and Gasol comes sprinting to out-rebound KG and for the lay-up.
How ideal. We’ve been discussing Kobe being overrated and rebounds being overrated. Kobe just won a game getting lots of rebounds. So was this win super overrated?
Once again, Kobe Bryant just leeching off of Pau Gasol’s excellence.
Awesome win!
Gil,
I dunno if you’re being sarcastic, but when it comes to Kobe and WoW, that probably isn’t the case:
Kobe – [(26+11+4+.5(3)-19-2-.5(2+7))/40]*48
Gasol – [(17+13+1+.5(9+3)-14-2-.5(2+6))/41]*48
you can do the math, I’m not very good at it.
Alvy,
Too many parentheses. Yes, I am exaggerating.
Pau was excellent tonight. Having Perkins out of the game probably contributed to some of that.
Amazing how much home court can affect role players, I still don’t think I truly understand it. Maybe I missed the study, since there seems to have been studies on everything from hot hand to the effects of coaching.
Gil,
I don’t understand it either, but I know how encouragement feels like, so maybe it works like that, I don’t know, but I believe in role players after Big Baby’s game four and so forth.
I have .585 WP48 for Kobe and .428 for Pau. Both played really well. If Kobe plays well in game 7 I think it’ll certainly be fair to give him the finals MVP. (Although he still won’t be better than Magic Johnson :-P)
I only check in here once in awhile but it seems that everytime i do, the prof is bashing kobe. if every one that defends kobe here is an apologist, then everyone here that bashes him is a hater. he may not be as good as jordan and others statistically but all he does is seem to win. and paus numbers are benefitting from kobes play since we all know how dominate he was before coming to the lakers. all those playoff wins he had pre-lakers. it doesnt matter at this point if they win game 7 or not (even though i expect them to on the back of kobe) his legacy is solidified no matter what prof hate says about his numbers. and yes, i truly believe the professors statistical analysis is a great TOOL for evaluating player performance. but it is not the end all be all of basketball. ask the guys who actually play. the ones who face him say he is the best in the game today. those same players he has played every series including this one. i will end this with a quote from doc rivers (a great nba coach and evaluator of talent): “Kobe is the best”. end quote.
Dwayne,
1. I think if you look back you would find that this blog has almost always noted Kobe as being a very good player. We’ve just all had a problem with him being compared to Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan (which he is on a daily basis).
2. Kobe without Shaq and pre-Pau is no playoffs, out first round, out first round. So I don’t think you’re being very fair to Pau here. The Lakers need them both playing at a high level to be successful.
3. What other players think of him is an incredibly worthless point. NBA players, even the great ones, have proven to be inconsistent at best and very very poor at worst in evaluating talent. How have Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas, Kevin McHale, Larry Bird, as well as others done in terms of building successful basketball teams?
Robbie,
1. You may have noted he is a very good player but i have seen MANY here say that according to the profs stats, X player is WAY better than Kobe when player X and his team have had very little success compared to Kobe and the Lakers. And it isnt his fault that others compare him to magic and jordan.
2.I’m not being unfair to pau, i love him as a laker. no pau = no ring. but A LOT of people here have stated he is the best player on the lakers due to his stats which is absurd. he is benefitting from the system and the attention kobe draws. and where is the bashing of pau after game 5? had that been kobe, the prof and his students on this site would have at least mentioned it (100 times). Kobe was brilliant in spite of his team (including pau) not showing up.
3.Other PLAYERS (meaning the guys playing the game today) say is the best after trying to stop him. yes those ex players have sucked at the player evaluation thing. but im not talking about evaluating new talent. im talking about the guys playing at a high level right now who face him nightly. they ALL say he is the best right now. they should know. they are on the court with him. so i dont think its an incredibly worthless point. i will ask the plumber which of his peers is the best at plumbing, not the electrician who watches the plumber work but has never done so himself.
Obviously Kobe has risen the level of play of his supporting cast.
@ Dwayne
1. Not way “better”, better is a qualitative term that’s hard to measure. I think the term is productive. And team success requires the team to be productive, not just one person, in this case your X. So X can be more productive than Kobe, but if Kobe’s team is more productive than X’s team, then it should follow that Kobe’s team will have more success than X’s team.
2. Actually Pau’s been a productive player even as a Grizzlies, I don’t have the numbers but I doubt if his WP48 numbers these last couple of years with the Lakers is significantly different from his years with the Grizzlies. As for bashing Pau, what’s the point? No one’s saying he’s better than Shaq or Kareem.
3. I don’t see how a plumber would know who’s the best among his peers unless he’s had the chance to actually examine the body of work the other plumbers do. And I don’t think plumbers go around examining the plumbing of all his peers, instead he might say, I think Plumber Kobe is the best plumber because I saw one rather complicated plumbing he was able to develop despite the obvious difficulty of the project.
Who would know? I agree, not the electrician, but suppose there’s a group of people who wants to determine who the best plumber is, I imagine they’d try to define what “best” means, maybe in this case, cost-efficiency, use of appropriate materials, and durability, then evaluate their work accordingly, giving grades, testing to see if it fact they are able to measure what they set out to measure and if using the model they have predict who will produce the better outcome given a certain work. It is at this point that they evaluate Plumber Kobe to see if the complicated piece of plumbing he did is as useful as it seemed.
@marc: If he has, I don’t know why he waited 14 years to do so.
Maybe i was being too dry. :-)
I unapologetically hate the Lakers. The reason why I hate the Lakers are because I consider their “fans” to be insufferable.
Here’s my Laker fan of the night story.
Lakers up 25 with 6 minutes to go. There’s still one guy in my full bar screaming and pounding the bar going crazy(Lakers fan who’s not from California).
Me:Why are you screaming the games over
Him: Kobe!!!(literally)
Me: Did you stay to watch the end of game 6 in 08′?
This is what must be stopped. When the Lakers are losing that guys gone before the game is over. I hate having to listen to that guy trying to justify why he’s acting like he’s at a New Kids on The Block concert.
I am a fan of basketball and debating. These guys ruin that for me. Kobe must be stopped. The Lakers winning would be my personal armageddon.
Dwayne,
Are you seriously trying to imply that players get worse at recognizing talent as time goes on?
That sounds like you’re just trying not to lose an argument instead of making a good point.
Anecdotally, I’m pretty sure that the players would have chosen the 2004 olympic team, when the prof’s numbers could have chosen a much more competitive team(even consider the holdouts who refused to play).
I appreciate the way in which this blog as well as statistics improve our ability to comprehend the game of basketball. That being said, so many of the posts and quite frankly, the worldview espoused on this blog, is often times sorely myopic. While statistics is a useful tool, to insinuate that Kobe is merely a “very good player” or that Pau is somehow accountable for more wins is truly absurd. They are both great players, and I’ll be the first to admit that without Pau, we’d be stuck somewhere in the middle of the playoffs, but your calculations fail to account for several aspects of the game:
1) ball movement: kobe is the catalyst that gets this club going; he spaces the floor, quarterbacks the offense, “activates” the ball as Phil would say, and often makes the pass that leads to the assist (a hockey assist), which (correct me if I’m wrong), isn’t factored in to your work.
2) You imply that the Lakers would be more successful if Kobe passed to players like Bynum, Pau, and Odom more often because their true shooting percentage is higher (note – this same argument could be used, for example, with a player like Andres Biedrins); again, correct me if I’m wrong, but no tools exist to make this type of extrapolative conclusion — Kobe often takes shots because either a) other players pass them up (a guy like Pau gets touches, he may just get rid of the ball before shooting) or b) he has to shoot it because it’s late in the shot clock and a bad shot from him is better than a bad shot from someone else. And again, I don’t see any reliable way to project someone’s shooting percentage with more shots, which is precisely what your conclusion assumes.
3) Momentum — Kobe often makes shots that stave of runs or set the tone (see first quarter of last night). That little run he had in the first quite simply won the game for them (or at least put them in position to win) because it forced the defense to adjust. Defenses get nervous when it appears that Kobe is hitting his stride – they might think of doubling or switching players on him, but at the very least, it can make a defense tentative, thus making life easier for everyone else on offense.
I’m not one of those that claims he is on MJ’s level, but Kobe is undoubtedly better than “very good.”
Obviously this is a function of participating in the finals, but Rondo’s assist total in these playoffs (assuming he logs more than 4 tomorrow to surpass Stockton) will exceed every past playoff performance except Magic’s (multiple years). Great big men get to the finals with few exceptions. Great scorers get to the finals with regularity. Why don’t great passers get there (not win, but get there)? And when they do, where does their passing go?
Stockton made the finals twice, but never logged 200 assists in those postseasons (Rondo has 213 right now). Walton, LeBron, and Iverson have each had one postseason where they accumulated the most assists. Just as often as Mark Jackson. Kidd only led two postseasons – his trip to the finals. You don’t see fluke years with guards leading the postseason in rebounds.
Found it interesting anyway.
Marparker,
You know going over data I discover as a basketball player I am more and more OK with Kobe. He has consistently been above average and has even risen above the norm a few times in the playoffs (none of the years with Shaq, but hey). Obviously as a role model, well the whole sexual assault thing and him saying “I understand if she took it the wrong way” kind of takes him out of the picture.
I would hope a lot of analysts are talking out of boredom or making a story but I do agree they clearly have a disconnect with reality. This morning I heard a guy on ESPN say something like “So Kobe had the game in control. First play of the game was a jumper that he missed but clearly he was showing he was going to be aggressive”. . .
And of course the defense being “winning teams” or “awards” well Robert Horry has more rings and awards are voted on by the same people that say he’s great. So obviously both can be annoying as defense. On the plus side I do love a game 7 finals and the only way it would have been sweeter would have been a Phoenix vs. Orlando finals.
marparker,
Have you never encountered a frontrunning Boston fan (of any sport)? Say what you will of Lakers fans, but Boston fans are far, far worse.
Also, am I the only one that thinks that any system that has Sasha Vujacic as the 3rd most valuable Laker is seriously flawed?
Mo,
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don’t, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
-Jessamyn West
That said, remember this data is only over 5 games, which is a tremendously small period of time. Without even looking at the data you can come up with plenty of stories that sound plausible. For example, Sasha only plays against Boston’s bench. Or Sasha loves clam chowder and it works on him akin to spinach on Popeye.
I started with a quote, I’ll end with a slightly self deprecating one.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
-Laurence J. Peter
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this series is LA’s bigs vs Boston’s perimeter players as far as strengths and weaknesses go. If you buy into that line of thinking it doesn’t make sense for Bryant to shoot as often as he has. He’s taking 22 shots a game and Gasol/Odom/Bynum a combined 27.
This blog is always so bad. I’d encourage readers who are new to basketball metrics to learn about more respected statistics like adjusted +/- http://basketballvalue.com/topplayers.php?year=2009-2010&mode=summary&sortnumber=94&sortorder=DESC
The work of berri with his box score line fitting is not respected in the industry because it tells people “if the only time you shoot is on tip ins or when you have great position in the low post you should get the ball everytime” regardless of the fact that a player whose offensive game is based on tip ins or great position in the low post has to wait for these things to be set up. And, can’t reliably generate offense for their team.
Other terrible factors include how bad berri’s work is at factoring in defense.
[1] Joe
[2] Tom
[3] Bill?
“if the only time you shoot is on tip ins or when you have great position in the low post you should get the ball everytime”
Who are you quoting? That is how an idiot or a troll would misrepresent things. What the model actually says is that player A is more or less productive at A’s position than player B is at B’s position. Regarding this series, Gasol doesn’t fit your strawman so giving him more touches increases the likelihood of a Lakers victory.
Dre,
He also only played 33 minutes over 6 games. That’s 5.5 mpg. It’s hard for me to believe that in those 33 minutes he’s had a more positive effect on the Lakers’ win totals than Andrew Bynum or Derrick Fisher. Especially considering the goosing his number are getting due to 2 garbage time free throws in a game that was essentially won, plus the extra burn he had against the likes of Marquis Daniels in yesterday’s game.
The thing is, I could understand why Sasha would have a better average score. However, based on the situations and the role, he had relatively little impact on the outcome of the games.
Flowers,
one of the huge problems with wp48 is it’s easy for a player to increase his rating while hurting his team simply by passing the ball off (or not asking for it) if he doesn’t have great position. That’s what gasol does and the lakers do not play much better with him on the floor than off.
Dberri:
When you calculated wp48 & wins produced for the Finals, did you just use the Finals numbers for “league” averages required in the MATE48 & ADJ P48 formulas? Is that why your numbers sum closer to 5 games than Arturo’s?
Arturo didn’t use the actual weights or any team data in his calculations. I used each team’s data in my calculations.
And I realize that Tom is essentially a troll (who leaves similar comments every few weeks), but I thought I would note that those who wish to learn about adjusted plus-minus should probably read the following.
http://dberri.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/john-hollinger-dean-oliver-and-some-other-people-comment-on-plusminus/
One could also read Stumbling on Wins or the article I published with JC Bradbury earlier in the year.
Dre,
“And of course the defense being “winning teams” or “awards” well Robert Horry has more rings and awards are voted on by the same people that say he’s great.”
I think this idea should be discussed further because IMO the argument against it assumes an almost literal argument in favor of it.
I think few would claim that the more rings you have the better the player you were, but they might correlate how many rings you won when you were the lead player on a contending team with how good you were.
They would evaluate Kobe that way, but not Fisher, Walton, Horry etc….
They would evaluate Jordan that way, but not when he had a horrible team the first couple of years.
They would evaluate Garnett that way, but only at Boston.
I think even the knuckleheads understand that great players need a very good supporting cast.
But if you have a good enough supporting cast to be considered a major contender for the title, many feel that it’s the best players that often drive the wins and losses in those critical close games that separate the champion from the runner up or semi final flame out. (or this year a quarter final flame out)
So Kobe (and Pau) will get the credit if LA wins and Lebron took all the heat for the Cavs loss.
Gopi;
1) Pau had a few hockey assists last night, as well as 9 actual assists, as a direct result of touching the ball often. Kobe either initiates the offense or stagnates it, eliminating both ball movement and player movement. Pau is in no way a ball-stopper, except maybe when he touches it for the first time in 18 minutes, when he is perhaps a bit anxious.
2) Kobe does not need to wait until late in the clock to take difficult shots; he makes an amazing number of them–and yet he is always middle of the pack in FG%. One would think those skills on tough shots would result in more makes on easy ones, but this does not seem to be the case. I see no indication that Pau is inclined to play hot potato late in the clock; I see him willing to hit the open man.
3) Missed shots do little to alter momentum, unless it is your own. Sometimes he answers with a big shot; sometimes he doesn’t; always it’s a gamble. And, among the people who DON’T think about doubling or switching players on him–who don’t let his scoring make them tentative, or let it open up the offense for his teammates? The Celtics. One would think it is a matter they have given some thought.
Kobe is a favorite of mine–but I’m not a nut. He’s really, really good; WP suggests he’s a ‘star’ many years, but not a ‘superstar’ as far as production–and I’m comfortable with that. He certainly is an ESPN-style superstar, and his skills either are, or appear to be, ideal for the playoffs–except when he throws up a total stinker, and there have been a few. The problem is he’s become a top dog because he LOOKS like one, not because he produces like one; the endless MJ comparisons have so inflated his perceived worth that he dominates his team to their detriment–unless that insane extension he just got is prep for a LeBron sign-and-trade. (Kobe and Ron to the Cavs for LBJ; let’s make this happen! Marparker, I’ll show you an insufferable Laker fan then!) He’d be perfect in Cleveland; they’re already built to abandon any attempt at running a real offense in crunch time, and the only better per-minute producers there are more suited to limited roles. They could rehire Mike Brown and keep the old ‘offense.’ And the Lakers could win 70 next year with ZERO other roster moves; the only risk is they might lose a close playoff game, and the talking heads and the Kobenatics w0uld have an I-told-you-so orgy of biblical proportions.
I agree that it is border line insane for the NBA promoters and fans to argue that Bryant is as good or even better than Magic Johnson. Based on stats, I think it’s obvious Johnson was the better player.
I might be misunderstanding WOW and the general consensus of the message board posters, but I get the feeling that the consensus is that shooting% is not negatively affected by having to take more shots. Kendrick Perkins is a 60% shooter. That’s over 10% above the fg% of the Suns, who had the highest team fg% during the 2009-2010 season. If Perkins could take 75 shots a game and not have his shooting % fall, the 2010-2011 Celtics could be the first NBA team to go undefeated. Am I the only one who finds that statement to be a little silly?
Does anyone have any theories on the huge discrepancy between Shelden Williams’ regular season WP48 and playoff WP48? What about why Bryant’s WP48 has gone up in the playoffs while Gasol and Odom’s have gone down (huge drop in Odom’s case)? Is it all do to the smaller sample size of the playoffs (lakers have played 22 playoff games)?
Marparker, you should be proud of yourself for not assaulting the Kobe fan in the bar. I’m sure it was tempting.
Russell,
the whole FG% and FGA thing has been discussed to death here, it seems. But, I think the argument, or the study, stated that a players’ FG% doesn’t decrease much if their FGA increases. Which makes sense if the player continues to shoot from where he’s most capable of shooting. For instance, andris biedrins’ FG% would probably plummet if he decided to shoot more jumpers from the perimeter as oppose to more dunks/layups/baby hooks.
I think the reason for the regular-season wp/48 and playoff wp/48 discrepancies are because of defense. Consider what tywill33 of Courtside Analyst said regarding team win score, a metric that is ultimately composed of individual winning contributions, or so I think:
“The final, and possibly most important, difference between the two Finals has been the Lakers [commitment] to defense . . . in 2008 the Celtics recorded a Team Win Score of 46.4, extremely high for an NBA Finals, while they held the Lakers to just 34.4. In these Finals the Lakers have matched the Celtics defensive intensity . . . each team is posting a Team Win Score of only 31.6. Thus its been a defensive struggle all the way, and the Lakers are standing toe-to-toe with the Celtics in that regard.”
marparker,
the Kobe fan or Lakers fan story, whatever, reminds me of a time when I stayed in San Francisco to visit some friends and decided to attend a Giants-Dodgers game before I went back home. Since I’m the only sports fan among my friends, I was lucky to be seated next to a few Dodgers fans as well. LA was beating SF, and the atmosphere was ripping. In fact, while I was cheering with other LA fans, there was an old, sore man in front of us who spewed a wave of curses. He was displeased that a visiting team and fans, much less from LA, were enjoying themselves more so than himself. Naturally, I let it slide, and had fun. The point of this story is: if an older man cursed at a 17-year-old, it would seem bad, but with the perspective of sports in hand, it seems less serious, and more innocuous. So, that “insufferable” fan is probably just enjoying himself, and probably isn’t trying to annoy you lol :P
Dberri:
It was interesting re-reading the post on plus/minus. My question is this: if all statheads agree that efficiency differential is a better predictor of future performance than point differential, then why is plus/minus so valuable when it’s just point differential? Is there an efficiency differential version of plus/minus out there? Otherwise, it seems like a step backwards instead of progress.
In my opinion, the match will be played on a few individuals since the start of the final I made a remark that is to say that when Ray Allen is shaped, Boston wins the match but when he did is not, it’s a disaster even if Pearce, Rondo and others play well, only three points are usually the difference. This will be an open game or ssere possible, both teams have a chance of winning the match.
In my opinion, the match will be played on a few individuals since the start of the final I made a remark that is to say that when Ray Allen is shaped, Boston wins the match but when he did is not, it’s a disaster even if Pearce, Rondo and others play well, only three points are usually the difference. This will be an open game and everything will be possible, both teams have the chance to win the game.
Well, I did see a huge male Lakers fan hit a small girl Celtics fan a couple of years ago. She was being obnoxious but not hit a girl obnoxious.
Now, adjust +/- guys are starting to get really annoying too. You guys refuse to understand that shooting can only be done if a player has the ball and is within 25 feet of his own basket. On the other hand rebounding can be accomplished on both ends of the floor anytime after shot has been taken. Also, great shooters have bad shooting nights. The same really can’t be said for rebounders.
ddddd
Is it really true that rebounders don’t have bad rebounding nights? I would think that rebounders would have good and bad games just like anyone else. Has anyone actually studied the game to game variability in rebounding rate and shooting percentage (and steals, blocks, etc.)?
Looks like a study needs to be commisioned
With this championship cup, is there any team in the NBA can beat the Lakers next season.Who will be your bet celtics again?
Bathmate:
I don’t think that question can be answered until the rosters are set for next season. You never know what will happen w/ free agency.