Burzin Daruwala is an engineer at a Fortune 500 company in Oregon, and has been a fan of the Portland Trail Blazers from the moment he learned about the existence of the NBA. Twelve years ago when he arrived in the US as a student, one of his friends persuaded him to take time off and watch a game of basketball at the Rose Garden. That game was so magical that he became a fan of the game and the team, and has since followed the Blazers passionately, riding the highs of the 1999 and 2000 western conference finals appearances, the heartbreak of the loss to the Lakers (the infamous 15 minutes in franchise history), and the lows of the contentious off court issues, to the rebuilding of the team in its current form.

The Portland Trail Blazers have been viewed as an upcoming team filled with the talent necessary to go far in the playoffs.  And before the 2009-2010 season, the Blazers were picked by a stat geek champion to be THE team to watch out for in the west. While the team struggled to meet such lofty expectations last season due to injuries, there is skepticism in some corners that the team is not good enough to compete in the playoffs.

Citing its last two playoff series evictions from the first round (against Houston in 2009 and Phoenix in 2010) as evidence, some analysts have stated that the style of basketball the Blazers play could easily be overcome during the playoffs when teams pay more attention to strategies; and where overdependence on one player could cause offensive stagnation.

To see whether these criticisms have any validity, let’s use the Wages of Wins approach to compare the team’s production during the playoffs and regular season.

Let’s begin with regular season numbers from the 2009-2010 season:

As can be seen from the above table, the Blazers employed eight above average players during the season (an average player posts a WP48 – or Wins Produced per 48 minutes — of 0.100).  These eight players produced a 49.41 wins, which is pretty close to the team’s actual win total of 50 wins. One interesting thing to note from the table is that Portland seems to have defied the Pareto Principle (which states that 80% of the outcome can be linked to 20% of the people driving the outcome).  The team’s top 3 players – Brandon Roy, Andre Miller, LaMarcus Aldridge — only produced 44% of the win total (21.83 wins).

Another interesting factoid is that Portland employed two players who had a WP48 above 0.300 (Marcus Camby & Gred Oden), two other players who when healthy have shown WP48 above 0.200 in past seasons (Roy and Joel Przybilla), and a whole bunch of other above average players in Miller, Nicolas Batum, and Rudy Fernandez. Unfortunately, three of their most productive players play the same position (Camby, Oden and Przybilla), so some of the benefits of having them on the same team is diminished (unless the team finds a way to use them at different positions and still be productive).

Of course, productivity in the regular season is not all that matters.  What happens when we get to the playoffs?  Table Two reports the performance of Blazers during the 2010 post-season.  The story that immediately leaps out is that among players who played more than 50 minutes in the playoffs, everyone’s per-minute production declined relative to what we saw in the regular season.

While this could be explained in the case of Roy, since he was coming back from ankle injury — and from Batum, who hurt his shoulder during the playoffs – injuries do not explain what happened to the other players. 

Perhaps, though, we have a problem with sample size.  After all, the Blazers were only in the playoffs for six games in 2010.  So let’s take a look at the 2008-2009 regular season and the 2009 playoffs to see if we can see a similar pattern.

Again, looking at the WP48, we see a tremendous change in productivity for the top 3 players (Roy, Przybilla and Aldridge). Their combined WP48 has fallen by 36% as compared to their regular season performance. And they are not the only players who decline.  Except for Steve Blake, everyone else had lower WP48 numbers in the playoffs compared to their regular season performance.

Now, some might argue that this change could be attributed to the fact that Portland was a very young team and were in the playoffs for the first time in 2009, hence inexperience played a role. And, looking at another young team that made the playoffs this year, the Oklahoma City Thunder did indeed show a 21% drop in WP48 from their top 3 regular season Wins Produced leaders. So maybe there is some truth to that, although an examination of two teams does not a study make (but perhaps age and the playoffs is a good subject for future study).

Another argument – offered in The Wage of Wins — could be that most players would see their performance drop in the playoffs; primarily because the level of competition is higher than what we see in the regular season.  

For example, consider the LA Lakers. This team has won the title the past two seasons.  Across these two years, fifteen times a player – not named Kobe – played at least 100 minutes in the post-season.  And eleven times, the player posted lower per-minute numbers in the playoffs.  So even for teams that win a title, we still tend to see lower numbers in the playoffs.

Kobe Bryant, though, does appear to be the exception.  At least, he did post better numbers in the playoffs in 2009 and 2010.  Before we conclude, though, that Kobe has some special skill we need to look at his entire career.  Prior to 2009, Kobe played at least 100 minutes in the post-season eleven times.  And nine times, Kobe’s per-minute performance in the playoffs declined relative to what we saw in the corresponding regular season.  Yes, even Kobe — despite what we saw in 2009 and 2010 — tends to play worse in the playoffs.

Although that is interesting, this is not a Kobe post.  What we want to know is if the Blazers can take a talented roster and win a title.  What we have seen so far is that the Blazers tend to play worse in the post-season.  And although this is due to the nature of the playoffs – as well as the small sample of games and perhaps other factors (like injury and experience) – it would still make the fans of this team happier to see better play in the post-season.

Hopefully this team can be healthy in 2010-11.  And hopefully, this will lead to a better outcome in the playoffs.  Yes, hope is what we have at this point.  But given the regular season production on this roster, Portland fans can certainly be optimistic this summer. We can only hope we are just as optimistic next April.

- Burzin Daruwala

We have another member of The Wages of Wins Network.  Mosi Platt has started “Miami Heat Index”, a blog that will examine the Miami Heat from the Wins Produced perspective.   Mosi’s blog started yesterday, and he already has two columns posted:

The Bottom Three – For Love or Productivity?

The Three Kings and the Five Rings

With Mosi’s blog, we now have seven members in the network.

Of these seven, the following four are essentially devoted to a specific team (although Ty and Robbie often offer stories on subjects that are not specifically about their favorite teams):

Miami Heat: Miami Heat Index (Mosi Platt)

Milwaukee Bucks: Courtside Analyst (Ty Willihnganz)

New York Knicks: NYK Mistakes (Andrew Shookhoff)

Washington Wizards: Roblog (Robbie O’Malley)

And we have three blogs that are not team specific.

Arturo Silly Little Stats  (Arturo Galletti)

The NBA Anti-Expert (Shawn Ryan)

Nerd Numbers the Blog (Andres Alvarez)

With 30 NBA teams, it looks like we have 26 teams that still need a blog.  So if you ever thought about starting a blog – and you really like Wins Produced (and who wouldn’t?) – now is a good time to get started. 

By the way, if you didn’t want to start a blog – but still wanted to comment on your favorite team – we still need team reviews for 15 teams.  The NBA Analysis page has links to thirteen reviews from the 2009-10 season.  And the reviews for Portland and Detroit should appear by Monday.  The following teams, though, still need to be reviewed: Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, LA Clippers, LA Lakers, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, San Antonio, and Utah.  So if you are interested, please send along a review. 

- DJ

P.S. By the way, if you already wrote a review for one of these teams that I claim we are missing – and I posted this review – please let me know. When I created the NBA Analysis page I left off reviews by Sam Cohen and Mike Madden.  This omission wasn’t a statement about the quality of these reviews.  It was a clearly a statement about my ability to keep track of what is going on in this forum.

About a week ago, Patrick Minton offered a look at Team USA in 2010.  This examination noted that despite the loss of every player from Team USA 2008, a few “stars” remained. 

Now, though, we have even more information. Chris Sheridan reports that Team USA has cut Tyreke Evans, O.J. Mayo, Gerald Wallace, and Javale McGee.  Sheridan – at TrueHoop – then proceeded to list the players who he thinks will comprise the final roster.   Assuming Sheridan is correct, Team USA in 2010 will be as follows:

Back in 2007, I examined the performance of each Team USA from 1992 to 2008.  The average WP48 of each team was as follows:

• 1992: 0.317
• 1996: 0.277
• 2000: 0.189
• 2004: 0.165
• 2008:0.228

So if Sheridan is correct, Team USA in 2010 is fairly similar to what we saw in 2000.  And that suggests this team might struggle a bit this summer.  Certainly – and we may not need Wins Produced to see this – this team is not as good as the teams we saw in 1992, 1996, and 2008.    

By the way, keeping Gerald Wallace (in place of Rudy Gay) would have boosted the team’s average WP48 to 0.205.  Wallace, though, did not play well in the scrimmage.  And we know that one scrimmage should trump everything else we have seen about a player (okay, maybe not). 

- DJ

The second part of my Q&A with Michael Schwartz (of Valley of the Suns) has now been posted.  In part two, we discussed

• why the Suns were wise to allow Amare Stoudemire to depart.
• how the Suns might be able to overcome the loss of Stoudemire.

At the very end of the discussion, I note that Suns will probably make the playoffs in 2011 and Amare will probably be sitting at home.  Upon further review, I still think the Suns are a playoff contender.  But I am not sure about the Knicks.  At least, I think it is possible the Knicks can contend for a final playoff spot in the East.

Although our discussion focused on the Phoenix Suns – and one presumes that the readers at Valley of the Suns are interested in that topic – the comments seemed to focus on a different topic.  In discussing the value of Amare Stoudemire, I noted the Top 30 players according to Wins Produced in 2009-10.  This list – judging by the comments – made some people unhappy.  Specifically (and this was surprising since this was a website devoted to the Suns), people were unhappy that Kobe Bryant – who produced 9.9 wins and ranked 32^nd in the league last year – was not on the list of Top 30 players. 

Here is one comment that captures the general theme: “I don’t know what’s worse: saying Lamar Odom is better than Kobe or saying David Lee is the 11th best player in the league. C’mon Schwartz, if you’re going to do advanced stats, you might as well use the ones that make sense.” 

Although I prefer Wins Produced (for reasons I have stated many times in the past), one should note that Win Shares (at Basketball-Reference) lists David Lee as the 12^th most productive player in the league (ahead of Kobe).  Adjusted plus-minus (a model that I think has some significant problems) does place Kobe ahead of Lee and Odom.  But it also says Matt Bonner is the 12^th most productive player in the game (ahead of Tim Duncan). 

As I noted back in 2007, all of the “advanced” statistical models (well, maybe not the Player Efficiency Rating) create rankings of players that defy conventional wisdom.  That’s because conventional wisdom is driven by points scored.  And the “advanced models” are not driven by scoring (well, except for the Player Efficiency Rating).  So if you are an adherent to the conventional wisdom of the NBA, you are probably never going to like any of the advanced models.

And that means fans of the NBA have a choice.  They can simply follow the conventional wisdom.  That means you look at a player’s scoring and believe that Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, Rudy Gay, etc… are above average (if not absolutely great) players.  Of course, when your team gets these players you may not see as many wins as you like.  But then you can turn to the subject of chemistry (or fairy dust, astrology, etc…) and still remain pretty happy.

If that approach doesn’t work for you, there are a few advanced statistical models you can examine.  Of course, there is a problem with this approach.  More than one model has been offered.  How do you decide which model is the “best”? 

Well, the first step is to spend some time trying to figure out how each model is constructed.  That means you should spend some time reading Mathletics (by Wayne Winston, who explains adjusted plus-minus) and Basketball on Paper (by Dean Oliver, who provided the analysis that serves as the basis of Win Shares).  And for Wins Produced, you should spend some time reading Stumbling on Wins (and reviewing material at stumblingonwins.com and in this forum).

Once you understand how the models are constructed then you have to think about how models should be evaluated.  Some time ago I offered A Guide to Evaluating Models. There is also some discussion of model evaluation in Stumbling on Wins.  And I have a chapter in a forthcoming sports economics collection that comments on this subject.   Obviously I think each of these works will help.  But whether you agree or not, it is clear that you will have to do some thinking if you choose to look at “advanced” models.

So the advanced models can provide a better way to look at basketball (for whatever that’s worth).  But they do come with a cost (i.e. you have to do some thinking to appreciate how these models work).  And this is why I think we are unlikely to see a day when most NBA fans abandon the “conventional” wisdom.

- DJ

P.S.  Let me offer a pre-emptive comment. There are those who claim: “I don’t adhere to any model. I look at everything because all models are useful.”  I find this approach to be less than convincing. At the end of the day, you still need to have some criteria in evaluating any model.  If your criteria tells you that all models are useful, then I think you need to re-think your process.  Although I am not sure there is one “best” model (for example, Ty Willihnganz offers a very interesting variation on Wins Produced at Courtside Analyst), I do think there are models that are better than others.  And if you are looking at the models that are not as good, I am not sure you are making a good use of your time (again, for whatever that is worth).