This morning – while mowing my lawn – I received a call from David Biderman of the Wall Street Journal.  David wished to know if LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh would actually be the most productive trio employed by a single team.  Obviously the question presumes that LeBron is going to Miami, which may or may not be true.  Regardless of LeBron’s final destination, though, Biderman’s question is an interesting thought experiment.

So I stopped mowing my lawn and went to my computer to see if I could provide an answer.  Stumbling on Wins already provides the productivity numbers of each team that won a title from 1978 to 2008.  All I needed was to update the analysis seen in the book.  Now if I was Arturo Galletti or Andres Alvarez, this task would have taken about 15 seconds (Arturo and Andres are amazing!!!).  However, it took me about an hour to provide David with an answer.  And you can see this answer in the following short story:

What If LeBron Went to Miami, Too?

Speaking of LeBron…on Thursday I am scheduled for the Hays Advantage (with Kathleen Hays) on Bloomberg Radio.  Kathleen and I are scheduled to talk at 1:30pm EST (and you can listen live on-line) about LeBron and what he means to the team that ultimately gets to employ him next season.

And finally… Jonathan Weiler – author of Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics – has written a column for Huffington Post examining the relative treatment of Amare Stoudemire and David Lee.   While we wait for LeBron, this post might be worth discussing.

- DJ

For more than a century, sports owners have

• complained that players cost too much money.
• volunteered to pay some players more money than they are worth.

The latest example of the latter is the money the Atlanta Hawks will be paying Joe Johnson.  Matthew Yglesias essentially captured the problem with the Johnson deal:

Johnson is a prototypical overrated NBA player. A perimeter scorer on a middling team who takes a lot of shots and therefore scores a lot without being notably efficient at it or notable good at any other aspect of the game. He’s not a bad player. In fact, he’s a good one. But he’s not great. And at his current age, the odds are that Atlanta is purchasing a declining asset. What’s odder is that nobody seems to deny this. Nobody thinks Johnson is going to improve. Nobody thinks Johnson is one of the top ten players in the game. Nobody thinks “Joe Johnson plus guys who are worse than Joe Johnson” sounds like a recipe for a championship.

Despite not being a “great” player, Johnson will be collecting $119 million across the next six seasons.  And given his age, and past performance, here is a prediction of the production this money is going to buy.

Across Johnson’s first nine seasons he was paid $74,989,401.  And as the above table indicates, he produced 56.1 wins.  In other words, he was paid $1,336,019 per win. 

Across Johnson’s next six seasons it is projected – given his age and productivity last season – 42.1 wins.  With a price tag of $119 million, this works out to $2,827,937 per win.  And if an entire 60 win team was paid this much per victory, it would cost the owner of the team $169,676,214 in payroll.

According to Patricia Bender, this is more than $100 million more than the Hawks paid their players last season.  And it is about $80 million more than the Lakers were paid in 2009-10.

In sum, the deal the Hawks are making with Johnson is not very wise. But it is important that the Hawks are volunteering to pay Johnson $119 million.  So as the NBA owners demand concessions from players, remember this deal. 

Obviously what the owners want is a world where the rules prevent them from making these deals.  Because – as the past century has made very obvious –many owners are incapable of stopping themselves.

- DJ

P.S. Do you like the shorter posts?  This was a topic discussed during the panel on sports and blogging at the Western Economic Association.  Justin Wolfers says the posts at Freakonomics are supposed to be 400 words or shorter.  I responded that I struggled with the 800 word limit at Huffington Post.  Although this is true, I am going to start trying to make whatever point I am trying to make (as if I am always trying to make a point) a bit quicker.  And one last note… I am now back in Cedar City.  So all the stuff I promised to post might appear soon.

There are a few submissions that I should edit.  And I want to say something about all that happened at the Western Economic Association meetings.  But how about we have a conversation about the Rob Parker story that the Nets are pursuing Joe Dumars.  

The decisions Dumars has made recently haven’t really worked out in Detroit.  And there isn’t an abundance of evidence that the Pistons have a real plan to get better in the near future.  Of course, can Detroit do better than Dumars?  I am not sure. 

- DJ

Here are some quick thoughts on the rumor that Amare Stoudemire is signing with the New York Knicks.

• Stoudemire is generally considered one of the very best players in the NBA.   Stoudemire has been selected to five all-star games and last year he ranked 10^th in the NBA in points score per game.  This suggests Stoudemire should be paid like one of the very best players in the league.
• When we look at Wins Produced, though, we see a somewhat different story.  Yes, Stoudemire is good.  But his production of 10.1 wins in 2009-10 only ranks 29^th in the league. Again, that’s quite good.  But relative to other top free agents (i.e. LeBron and Wade), Amare offers quite a bit less.
• Furthermore, Amare is relatively old.  As the following table indicates, Amare produced 63.4 wins across his first eight seasons.  Players, though, only generally improve up until their mid-twenties (Amare’s best season was at age 25).  Given how player performance declines with age – and how minutes change with age – we can also project what Amare’s production across the next five seasons might appear.  
• As one can see, Amare is only projected to produce 32.4 wins.  Yes, that is all this projection says the Knicks are going to get for all that money.  Part of this is due to a decline in per-minute production.  And part of this is due to the fact Amare has only played about 65 games per season.  Obviously if Amare can play more minutes he will produce a few more wins.  But it doesn’t look like Amare is going to produce enough to justify his contract.
• So the Knicks will be paying $100 million for an above average player, but not a player who is going to substantially change the team’s outcomes.   And that means fans of the Knicks might be disappointed.

One last note… I hope to offer some comments on the Western Economic Association meetings soon.  There are a few interesting stories to tell from our conference.

- DJ

For those thinking about the NBA free agent market, Arturo Galletti has created…

The 2010 NBA Free Agent Cheat Sheet

The sheet reports free agent status, age, and then performance in each of the past three seasons. 

Something to keep in mind as you view this data.  Performance before a player is 30 years of age is not tremendously impacted by age.  Yes, there are small declines after a player hits his mid-20s.  But the decline is very mild before the age of 30.  Once you pass the age of 30, the impact of age is more pronounced.  So if you sign a player who is already in his late 20s, you might anticipate production to decline noticeably towards the end of a multi-year contract. 

Like everyone, I want to thank Arturo for putting all this together.  This should help our discussion of free agent signings.

One last note… this morning we (at the Western Economic Association) are having our panel discussion on blogging about sports and economics.  Hopefully I can post some thoughts on this discussion later today.

- DJ