Michael Schwartz – from Valley of the Suns – recently sent me a series of questions focused on Stumbling on Wins and the Phoenix Suns.  The first part of my answers — 1 on 1 with David Berri: Part 1 – were posted today.  Michael tells me that the second part should be posted tomorrow.

Today’s questions focus on

• the ability of an economist to serve as an NBA team’s general manager
• the status of the statistical movement in the NBA
• the ability of the Suns to get more wins from their money than other teams (a point made by Arturo Galletti)
• the factors one should focus upon in evaluating a player
• and the “amazing chemistry” of the Phoenix Suns.  

I would like to thank Michael for sending these questions along.  When the second part is on-line I will post a link.

NBA Team Reviews and Analysis

The discussion of team chemistry led me to offer a review of the Phoenix Suns in 2009-10.  This review will serve as the Wages of Wins Journal team review for the Suns.  With this review in hand, eleven team reviews of the 2009-10 season have been posted in this forum.  These reviews have been collected on a page I constructed today. 

NBA Analysis: 2006 to the Present is a collection of every team review posted across the past five summers.  In addition, this page also presents both the league analysis and NBA draft studies presented across the past few years. 

I should note that Arturo was scheduled to offer the review of the Phoenix Suns.  Arturo, though, seems to have his hands full offering brilliant posts like the following: A Half Baked Notion about the difference between the Regular Season and the Playoffs. 

Arturo claims he is going to be writing a post everyday (365 posts in 365 days).  So make sure to check in each day to see the latest that Arturo has to say.

One last note… Mosi Platt – AKA “reservoirgod” – offered an analysis of the Team USA scrimmage from this past weekend that is well worth checking out.

- DJ

Andres Perezchica grew up in California and was at UC Berkeley during the Warriors’ We Believe era. He then studied a master’s program in Finance in Monterrey, Mexico, where he became intrigued by the growing field of Sports Economics. He is currently living back in California.

During the 2009-10 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors tied a league record for call-ups from the NBA D-League with five. These five players combined to produce 0.81 wins (numbers taken from the Wins Produced site of Andres Alvarez). Over the course of their time on the team, they earned a combined $1.164 million.

However, last year the Warriors employed three other players that had gone undrafted and got their start in the D-League. These eight players produced 9.6 wins and were paid $6.07 million. This comes out to 1.58 wins per million dollars.

This Warriors team is a very good example of how useful the D-League can be to an NBA team.  One wonders, can this possibly be a cheaper alternative to drafting players late in the first round, where their contracts are guaranteed?

In Table 1, the Warriors are split between players drafted late in the first round and players who started in the D-League. Each player’s Wins Produced [WP], WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] and WP per million are also shown.  Devean George was the only Warrior on the team last season that was drafted late in the first round (outside of the lottery). George produced 1.36 wins and earned a salary of $1.6 (for a WP/mill mark of 0.85).

Although this is a very small sample, I wanted to see if it was an indication of a trend that spanned the NBA. If this is a trend and not an aberration, it would lead one to wonder if an organization would be better off employing players from the D-League rather than drafting a player late in the first round. Using Andres Alvarez’s data on Wins Produced, I looked at each player that went undrafted and was called up to the NBA from the D-League.  This group of players was then compared to each player that went drafted from picks fifteen through thirty of the first round.  The results of this analysis are reported in Table 2.

Just to review the table…. over the last five years, 77 different players were called up from to the NBA from the D-League. These players combined to play 40,619 minutes in the NBA. In these minutes, they combined to produce 77.9 wins. Their average wp48 comes out to 0.092, a mark that is essentially average. Combined, these players earned a salary of $42.029 million over this time.  So this group of D-Leaguers produced 1.853 wins per million.  Meanwhile, there have been 80 players that were drafted with picks 15-30 of the first round across the last five years. These 80 players combined for 237,812 minutes of playing time and produced 359.36 wins. This translates into a WP48 mark of 0.070, which is slightly below average.  These late-first round picks were paid $293.521 million; and given the Wins Produced for these players, produced 1.224 wins per million dollars spent. 

While there are roughly the same number of players that are called up from the D-League as players that are drafted in the latter half of the first round, the drafted players played almost six times the minutes given to the D-Leaguers. This may be largely due to the guaranteed three-year contract all first-round picks receive (editor’s note: published research – as noted in Stumbling on Wins – argues that there is a link between draft position and minutes played in the NBA). It is likely that teams play their first-round picks more minutes because of this, even if the players prove to be ineffective.

For further evidence of this is bias, of the 77 players called up from the D-League over the last five years, 27 never played in the NBA or were out of the league after their first season. In contrast, there are only five players who were drafted in the latter half of the first round who never played in the NBA.

In the minutes they have been given, though, the D-League call-ups have produced slightly more than the late-first round selections.  They have a higher wp48 mark, posting a number that is just a shade below average. And the D-leaguers have also produced 0.629 more wins for every million dollars they were paid.

While the D-Leaguers out-produced the latter first rounders in these respects, it is a small sample size and it is unknown whether these players would maintain their level of production if their minutes increased to match the draft picks’ minutes.  That being said… if the production of the D-Leaguers remained stable with an increase in minutes, it appears that an NBA organization may be wiser to trade away draft picks in the latter first round and search the D-League for players to fill out their roster. In this case, the team would be able to follow a player’s development without being forced into a three-year contract. In addition to potentially seeing more on-court production, an average salary earned by a D-Leaguer is under $0.5 million, while a player drafted from picks 15-30 earned an average of just under $1.5 million. 

In sum — and this surprising result bears repeating  – avoiding drafting a player outside of the lottery in the first round could potentially save an organization about one million dollars for each employee.  And again, this savings may come with an even higher level of on-court production.

- Andres Perezchica

My latest at Huffington Post – LeBron James is doing for himself what Jerry Krause did for Jordan – examines MJ’s recent criticism of LeBron.  More specifically, the post attacks the notion that Jordan managed to win titles all by himself. 

In addition to shamelessly drawing attention to my work, I would also like to draw attention to some of the wonderful work that has recently been posted on the “Wages of Wins network.”

• Arturo Galletti – at Arturo Silly Little Stats – has offered three excellent posts analyzing the history of the NBA draft.
  • Ranking Thirty Years of Draft Picks
  • Fan Service, More Draft Fun and 1st Year Impact Rookies
  • Value of a Draft Pick and Changing Value in the NBA draft
• Ty Willihnganz – at Courtside Analyst — seems to produce one great post after another.  Here are three of his latest examining the media’s coverage of John Wall, the prospects for the Bulls in 2010-11, and the performance of the 1988 U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team.
  • Which bud showed off his scoring skills?
  • Chicago Bulls should win around 52 games
  • Was the Original Dream Team even necessary?
• Andres Alverez – at Nerd Numbers the Blog – has some very interesting analysis of role players in the NBA. Unlike Arturo – who promises to post every day – Andres promises to only post on Thursdays. So keep that schedule in mind going forward.
• Robbie O’Malley – at Roblog – has two fantastic posts on Chris Paul’s recent demand to depart New Orleans. Each of these posts offers and evaluates a number of different trade scenarios.
  • Chris Paul Wants Out
  • Playing Fantasy GM

So there you go.  If you have not been following the Wages of Wins Network, you now have nine posts to read.  And I didn’t even link to everything that has been written. 

Let me close by noting that there is even more that will soon be posted here.  Andres Perezchica has offered some interesting analysis of D-League players.  And Burzin Daruwala has written a review of the Portland Trail Blazers that I think everyone will enjoy reading.  Look for the posts from Andres and Burzin to appear in the next few couple of days.

- DJ

Patrick Minton was born and raised in Minnesota.  After graduating with a degree in Psychology, he travelled abroad in Germany.  In Germany he did a number of odd jobs to pay the bills, including coaching basketball at all levels.  He says he has always been a numbers freak, going so far as to enlist friends to score-keep the games he coached, keep shot charts, track turnovers, rebounds and assists.  In his late twenties, he finally turned one of his hobbies into a ‘career’ and became a software engineer at Amazon, where he worked for quite a while before taking a gig at Microsoft.  In 2007, he did an MBA at the University of Washington and discovered a love for economics.  Scouring the internet for economics blogs, he came across the Wages of Wins Journal.  He says he always had a coaching philosophy similar to the tenets of the WoW story (scoring totals don’t matter much, rebounds and turnovers are really important, etc), but this was the first time he had seen someone quantify this philosophy.

Wednesday on Truehoop.com, Henry Abbott posted an interesting article called Team USA: The Undeserving Favorites.  The central crux of the article appears to be that since there are not many superstars on Team USA, the team should not be so heavily favored to win. 

From the article:

The players still in the mix for the national team include Kevin Durant, who is a virtual lock to be the team’s high scorer. Others in the mix include Chauncey Billups, Rajon Rondo, Brook Lopez, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry, Andre Iguodala, Derrick Rose, Kevin Love, Gerald Wallace and Russell Westbrook.

The article goes on to mention that LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony won’t be with the team, and further says:

M. Haubs of the Painted Area finds that shocking, and actually thinks the U.S. should be considered underdogs to Spain. In a quick analysis of past U.S. rosters, he finds U.S. teams with as few superstars as this one have almost never won international tournaments.

One wonders, of course, how Mr. Haubs defined “superstars”, so I visited the article.  It appears that Mr. Haubs defined “superstar” by counting the inclusions to NBA 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd- All-NBA teams, as well as All-Star appearances. Those familiar with Wins Produced, though, are aware that factors that are not particularly well correlated with winning (such as the beloved points-per-game metric) tend to far outweigh other factors (such as rebounding, shooting efficiency, and not turning the ball over) in determining the inclusion into the traditional All-Star ranks.

What does Wins Produced say about Team USA?  Let’s assume that all of the above players make the list.  Here are those players’ wins-produced per-48 minutes stats in the NBA 2009-2010 regular season:

When using the Wins Produced metric, it’s common to define a player with a WP48 of .200 or higher as a “star” player (average WP48 is .100, and a team full of such players would be expected to win 41 games); and .300 or higher is commonly used as the bar for “superstars” (a .300 player produces 3 times as many wins as an average player per 48 minutes).

According to Wins Produced, the above list of Team USA players does appear a bit short on superstars, with only two Kevin Love and Gerald Wallace (and interestingly enough, these are likely not the players Mr. Haubs would categorize as this team’s “superstars”), although Rajon Rondo and Kevin Durant (the more likely candidate for Mr. Haubs attention as a superstar) both come close.

I’ve expounded on the virtues of Kevin Love before:  he’s the NBA’s (and therefore, arguably, the world’s) best rebounder, is an above-average passer, gets to the free-throw line relatively often (and shoots well when he gets there) and commits fewer fouls than most power-forwards.  Wallace had an equally amazing season last year.  His 11.7 rebounds per-48 minutes was nothing short of spectacular for a small forward (it’s what power forwards average), he was an effective shot-blocker, was above average in steals and personal fouls, and he shot very efficiently from the field.

The virtues of Rajon Rondo as a hyper-efficient passer, rebounder, and general net-possession-generating machine are well-known (but under-appreciated) and Kevin Durant’s virtues are perhaps best known of all these players (but few appreciate his excellent rebounding or the fact that he still turns the ball over a bit too much, and concentrate rather on his prolific scoring).

Clearly, the loss of players of the caliber of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard, and Chris Paul are not easily offset.  But should this team truly be considered “undeserving” of a favorite?   Clearly a team whose “average” player has a WP48 of .200 should be expected to win every game (5 such players on the court would produce 1.0 win per 48 minutes).  How can such a team not be the deserving favorite?  Mr. Haubs argues that Spain should be the clear favorite. Spain, though, will not have the services of Pau Gasol (a “superstar” who posted a 0.310 WP48 last season).  They will have March Gasol [WP48 of .178], Rudy Fernandez [WP48 of 0.131], and Jose Calderon [WP48 of 0.145].  The remainder of the roster, though, was not in the NBA last year and it is hard to believe that a roster of non-NBA players would average the level of win production we see from the NBA players currently on Team USA.

Let us also not forget that this post does not even consider Carlos Boozer (.293 WP48), Tyson Chandler (.246 WP48 in his last healthy season), or Lamar Odom (.249 WP48), all players that are associated with this team and verge on “superstardom”. 

To be fair, though, it also doesn’t consider some below-average players that Team USA’s coaching staff is likely to overvalue, such as Rudy Gay (.050), O.J. Mayo (.065), LaMarcus Aldridge (.077), Eric Gordon (.027), and Jeff Green (.022).  All of these players are in Las Vegas as well.  And if many of those players make the roster and receive significant playing time, then Team USA will indeed be more likely to disappoint.  But that won’t be because Team USA didn’t have “stars” to employ. It is because the “stars” that could have played were left on the bench.

- Patrick Minton

Devin Dignam grew up in small town about 45 minutes north-west of Toronto, before moving to Ottawa (you know, the capital of Canada?), where he completed a B.Sc in Human Kinetics and a B.Ed. Devin is getting tired of tolerating the constant hockey coverage in Canada, and wishes for Canada’s lone remaining NBA team to one day re-attain the splendour [Canadian spelling] of a 45 win season in order to kick hockey off of the front page for at least a couple of days.

Last year the Toronto Raptors didn’t exactly have a season to remember; they finished the 2009-2010 season with a 40-42 record and missed out on the last playoff spot in the Eastern conference.

Furthermore, as expected, Chris Bosh left the team as a free agent this off-season. Without Bosh, where does that leave the Raptors for the 2010-2011 season?  To answer this question, let’s look at what the Raptors had last year (numbers taken from the wonderful website of Andres Alvarez).

Okay: it doesn’t look so good for the Raptors. Last season Bosh led the Raptors in wins (with 11.84) and was second on the team in terms of WP48 (at 0.225, trailing only Amir Johnson). Now that Chris Bosh is gone, the remaining 2009-2010 Raptors stand to win somewhere near 30 games and would comfortably miss the playoffs again next season.

But even without considering Bosh, next year’s team will be different from what we saw last year.

In the wake of the Bosh departure, the team’s GM, Bryan Colangelo, has tried to change up the roster, sending the “disappointing” Hedo Turkoglu to the Phoenix Suns for Leandro Barbosa and Dwayne Jones. Last year, Turkoglu produced 1.04 wins for the Raptors, whereas Barbosa produced -0.52 wins for the Suns. Fortunately, even including last years’ data (when he was injured), Barbosa has averaged just over 3 wins a season over the past 5 seasons, and seems to alternate between bad and good years. So given that last year was a bad year, we can hope that his next will be better and that he will be an small improvement over the Turkish Delight (it shouldn’t be too difficult). Throw-in Dwayne Jones has played limited minutes and may even be waived by the Raptors in the coming weeks, so he should not have much of an impact. 

Perhaps a bigger move for the Raptors has been reported in the past few days.  It is possible (although there is some doubt about this move today) that the Raptors are going to come to terms with free agent Matt Barnes. This would be a very good signing. Over the past four seasons, Barnes has averaged 5.37 wins and has not dropped below a WP of 0.100, which is the mark achieved by an average player.  So adding Barnes could help Toronto overcome some of the loss from Bosh’s departure.

Unfortunately, signing Barnes might not be the last move Toronto makes.  There have also been rumblings that the Raptors are going to trade Jose Calderon. To do so would be a big mistake. Although Calderon underperformed (by his standards) last year, over the past three seasons, Calderon has produced the following numbers:

• 2009-10: 5.8 WP, 0.154 WP48
• 2008-09: 11.91 WP, 0.245 WP48
• 2007-08: 15.68 WP, 0.303 WP48

If Calderon returns to the Calderon of 2008-2009 next year, he stands to increase his win total by about 6 wins. If Calderon returns to the Calderon of 2007-2008, he stands to increase his win total by about 10 wins. A return to form for Calderon will not completely make up for the loss of Bosh, but certainly a player who has contributed an average of about 9 wins a season over the past 5 seasons is a good asset.

Using wins produced, is there anything else that can help give Raptor fans a more optimistic outlook for next year?

Three of the four least productive Raptors (Antoine Wright, Patrick O’Bryant, and Rasho Nesterovic) are unrestricted free agents and are unlikely to be re-signed. These players combined to produce -2.0 wins last year, so improving on their production should not be difficult.

The Raptors also managed to add Joey Dorsey and rookie Ed Davis during the off-season. Coming out of the 2008 NBA draft, Erich Doerr was highly optimistic about Dorsey’s NBA career, but Dorsey has only managed to play 112 NBA minutes over two seasons. Hopefully the Raptors give him a chance to prove himself this upcoming season. Ed Davis was a very good college player who projects to have an excellent chance of being a very good NBA player.

As of the writing of this article, the Raptors, as currently constructed, project to win around 35-45 games. This projection is based on past performance (WP48) and an educated guess on the number of minutes played. Barring any injuries, additional trades, or a superb rookie season from Ed Davis, it looks like the Raptors will be fighting for the last playoff spot in the East.  In other words, the loss of Bosh might leave the Raptors right where they were.

Let me close by suggesting that Mr. Colangelo should consider moving a few players: For example, Toronto could move Andrea Bargnani and Andrea Bargnani (yes, that was indeed intentional). Bargnani has a reputation that exceeds his actual value and should be relatively easy to trade. The Raptors also have a large trade exception from the Bosh sign-and-trade deal with Miami. I’d like to suggest some players for the Raptors to pursue through trade or free agency: Troy Murphy, Samuel Dalembert, Andrei Kirilenko, and Brian Zoubek.  Losing Bargnani and adding another productive player might be enough (assuming Barnes comes and Calderon returns to form) to return the Raptors to the playoffs.  And just maybe, put the Raptors on the front page in Canada (at least, for a few days).

- Devin Dignam