Monthly Archives: August 2010

More of the Same in Houston?

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Greg Steele is a graduate student at Abilene Christian University. He has been married for two years and likes to read. He used to play basketball, and got into the blog while looking for ways to better describe what happens during NBA games.

Last year the Houston Rockets went 42-40, finishing in the unenviable position of being the final team to pick in the lottery section of the draft (and playing well enough to be the best team not to make the playoffs). Their absence from the playoffs was primarily due to the loss of Yao Ming to injury, which prevented him from playing a single minute during the season.

The Ming story, though, was not the only interesting story-line in Houston.  The Rockets also made a splash by completing a three-team trade with Sacramento and New York, dumping the expiring contract of oft-injured shooting guard Tracy McGrady. In what follows, I will offer what I hope to be a conservative estimate of how the Rockets should perform next season, based mostly on their performance last season and their recent injury history.  This review will examine each position on the team, listing not only the players I think the team will employ, but also the number of wins each position can be expected to produce.

The Center Position

Our examination begins in the pivot.  In the previous 4 seasons (2005-08), Yao Ming has averaged 9.5 Wins Produced per season. He was able to accomplish such results despite averaging only 59.3 games a season due to injury. After sustaining such significant damage over such an extended period of time, it is probably unrealistic to project the Rockets to receive the benefit of Yao’s services for a full 82 games (fortunately for Houston, Yao has bounced back well from his previous injuries — although he has been re-injured each year).

For the projections for next year’s Rockets, we will have to start with Yao’s injury-year average as a guess. If Yao only plays 59 games, the Rockets will have to play 23 games with a starting center other than Yao. To redress this need, the Rockets signed aging center Brad Miller to an expensive three-year contract. Although Miller has been above average throughout his career, last year his WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] plummeted to -.015. With that level of productivity across a projected 1,600 minutes (59 games * 15 mpg with Yao, 23 games * 30 mpg without Yao), Miller should cost the Rockets about half of a win. Additionally, the undersized Chuck Hayes – who spent some time at center last year — will probably play around 414 minutes (15 mpg without Yao), during which time he should add about one win (his WP48 last year was 0.099). Taking all centers into consideration (assuming Yao’s WP48 is what it was before he got hurt), Houston should accumulate 8.8 wins produced from the pivot this year.

The Power Forward Position

Last year the Rockets employed both Luis Scola and Carl Landry at this position, both of whom have been quite productive. Late in the season, Landry began to struggle, and the Rockets leveraged him in their three-way trade with New York and Sacramento (primarily engineered to get something in return for Tracy McGrady’s expiring contract). In the trade, the Rockets acquired Jordan Hill and Jared Jeffries. Hill was a rookie who surprisingly produced 1.4 wins in only 372 minutes for the Rockets last year.  Jeffries, though, has been below average throughout his NBA career and this continued in Houston.

With these players on board, the Rockets will have four players at the 4 spot.  Scola will start.  Since he has averaged 7.2 wins across his first three seasons – in nearly 2,400 minutes — we can expect him to be productive again (and since he should only play PF, his production should be even higher).  Off the bench we see Hayes, Hill, and Jeffries. If these three players split the minutes after Scola the team will see 11.0 wins from this position.  Of course, if Hayes and Hill play more than Jeffries the team will do even better.

The Small Forward Position

The Rockets acquired Trevor Ariza last year, and his WP48 then plummeted from the .250-.300 range to .081, prompting a firestorm of debate on this blog about usage statistics. Shane Battier began the year in the starting lineup, but moved into the sixth man role with the arrival of Kevin Martin. With the Rockets just recently giving away Ariza in a multi-team trade, Battier should return to the starting small forward spot. Battier has been somewhat above average throughout his career, and so projecting his production from last year across 2700 minutes yields 5.6 wins produced (if he produces as he did last year). With the arrival of Courtney Lee in the Ariza trade, it would seem that the Rockets are fully stocked at shooting guard, and thus sophomore wing Chase Budinger should spend most of his minutes at small forward. Budinger, a rare above-average rookie last season (.111 WP48), would produce 3.1 wins during 1,000 minutes of playing time if he produces next year like he did last year. All told, Houston should expect about 10.0 wins produced from their small forwards this coming season.

The Shooting Guard Position

The big news at shooting guard was the departure of Tracy McGrady, a former superstar who has been repeatedly injured during the last four seasons. In the three-team trade that sent McGrady to New York, the Rockets acquired Kevin Martin, another frequently injured — although potentially quite productive–  shooting guard. During the seasons since his rookie year, Kevin Martin has averaged 6.9 wins produced in 62 games (2,105 minutes).

If Martin meets those averages next season, Courtney Lee should play somewhere around 1,700 minutes. Lee, who posted a .075 WP48 last season, would probably produce 2.7 wins during that time. Jermaine Taylor, an unproductive rookie last season [0.018 WP48], is unlikely to play a significant amount while Martin is healthy (although he may play a bit if Martin gets injured). Since his WP48 was significantly below average but still above zero, his net effect on the Rockets’ estimated wins produced for shooting guard should be minimal. He won’t contribute much, but he won’t cost the Rockets any wins.

If Martin is at something like his average level of fitness and productivity, Houston should receive the benefit of 7.3 wins from their shooting guards. Of all the estimates, however, this one is the shakiest. Martin may well miss significant time on account of injury, or his productivity may be significantly hampered by past injuries.

The Point Guard Position

The Most Improved Player in the NBA in 2009-10 (at least according to the league award) was Rockets point guard Aaron Brooks. During his 2,919 minutes, Brooks produced 2.3 wins (.049 WP48). Fortunately for Houston, Brooks’ backup, Kyle Lowry, shined. Splitting minutes between the two backcourt spots as a combo guard, Lowry produced 6.5 wins in 1,651 minutes (.188 WP48). Although the Rockets could improve their performance dramatically simply by swapping the number of minutes allocated to these two players, they seem unlikely to do so, since Brooks is regarded as a rising star. As it stands, the Rockets should get about 6.2 wins from the two point guards (with Lowry only getting minutes at the point).

Putting it All Together

Okay, let’s put the entire picture together.  The following picture summarizes what I just said about each position:

And as this picture indicates, it seems that a reasonable estimate for the Houston Rockets in 2010-11 would be a 43 wins produced, or a record of 43-39. Such a record would not have qualified Houston for the playoffs last season. It is worth noting, however, that the Rockets could expect nearly five more wins from Yao and Martin if both played a full slate (as unlikely as that seems). If Yao and Martin happen to both be healthy and productive at season’s end, though, Houston would pose a difficult first-round matchup for a stronger team.

Shawn Ryan and Dave Berri have given better reviews of the Houston-NewYork-Sacramento trade than I can here. In the end, Houston traded Carl Landry, Joey Dorsey, and Tracy McGrady (along with his expiring contract) in return for Kevin Martin, Jordan Hill, Jared Jeffries, and two possible lottery picks from the New York Knicks. If the Knicks continue to perform poorly, Houston may have made a fairly good deal on the whole. For the present, they will miss Landry and will have to hope that Kevin Martin stays healthy (essentially the same situation they have been in the last several years with Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady). Houston missed the playoffs last year, with Yao missing the entire season. This season, if Yao is able to play about as many games as he usually does, the Rockets may sneak into the bottom of the Western Conference playoffs. If Yao Ming and Kevin Martin are healthy, they might go even higher.

Although the McGrady trade didn’t hurt the Rockets (and may have helped quite a bit), the more recent trade, however, is profoundly less defensible. From Houston’s perspective, the Rockets traded Trevor Ariza for Courtney Lee. Although other teams were involved, this was the total outcome of the swap for Houston. While the deal will save them cap space, it seems inadvisable to give away a player who has consistently produced WP48s well in excess of .200 in return for a below-average performer.

Despite their personnel changes, the Rockets are right where they were at the beginning of last season — and in fact at the beginning of the last several seasons – hoping that their oft-injured star players will be healthy and productive. If Yao and Martin produce at full capacity, the Rockets have the supporting cast to the push them closer to the top of the Western Conference. Unfortunately, this is basically the same prognosis one might have offered in any of the last four seasons, with the team merely replacing Kevin Martin with Tracy McGrady. After so many changes near the end of last season and during the offseason, it looks like more of the same in Houston this season.

- Greg Steele

Talking About the Pirates Again and Again

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This weekend I was a guest on NPR’s All Things Considered to discuss the recent revelation that the Pirates – despite years of losing – are still able to earn a profit.

As I have noted in the past, a radio or television interview is similar to taking a test.  Except unlike the exams my students face, your answers must begin the moment the question is asked and many people (instead of just one professor) are going to judge your answer.  

This interview was actually a bit harder than the other radio interviews I have done in the past. Normally I do interviews in my office.  And while I am talking to the reporter, I am able to look up information as I talk (which makes taking the test easier).  NPR, though, wanted me in a radio studio; and Cedar City didn’t have anything that could connect to NPR’s studio in Washington D.C.  But they did find a studio that would work in St. George.  Although going to St. George wasn’t difficult, it did mean I was going to do the interview without a net.   Consequently, I had to spend extra time studying.

In my time studying I learned that Pirates story is hardly new.  Consider the following quote from John Henry of the Red Sox, which came out last December:

Last December, Red Sox owner John Henry said in an e-mail to the Boston Globe that the current system for revenue sharing needed to be overhauled.

“Change is needed and that is reflected by the fact that over a billion dollars has been paid to seven chronically uncompetitive teams, five of whom have had baseball’s highest operating profits,” the Globe quoted Henry as saying. “Who, except these teams, can think this is a good idea?”

And then there is the financial data from Forbes.com, which revealed before the leak that the Pirates were indeed making a profit.  The Forbes data, though, has been frequently dismissed by observers.  And that dismissal — as Dave Zirin at Huffington Post notes – has allowed owners to secure even more funding from politicians.

Zirin’s story receives an assist from Jeff Passan (at Yahoo) and Neil deMause (editor of fieldofschemes.org).  Here is excerpt:

But the worst story to emerge from the documents is that of the Florida Marlins, owned by multimillionaire art dealer Jeffrey Loria. The Marlins have secured funding for a new 400-million dollar, publicly-funded stadium, all while lying about their bottom line to max out their corporate welfare potential. As Yahoo sportswriter Jeff Passan wrote:

The team fought to conceal the $48.9 million in profits over the last two years because the revelation would have prompted county commissioners to insist the team provide more funding. Loria, an art dealer with a net worth of hundreds of millions, wouldn’t stand for that. He wanted as much public funding as possible — money that could’ve gone toward education or to save some of the 1,200 jobs the county is cutting this year.

As politicians begin to rev up their shock and outrage, it’s worth asking why this is a story at all. As with Afghanistan, where for years independent, unembedded media has been raising critical questions about the US military intervention, it should hardly shock us that public funding of stadiums is a sham, and the owners of teams simply lie their way to the bank.

Neil deMause, editor of www.fieldofschemes.org, wrote to me:

The remarkable thing to me about the leaked MLB documents is how much of this we already knew: Forbes has been reporting for years that franchises like the Marlins and Pirates were turning profits despite dismal teams, and the leaked documents show that their estimates were generally right on target. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that if you’re eligible for a cut of league revenue and don’t spend anything on payroll, you’re going to make money — does anyone really think it costs that much to paint in the batter’s box every day?

He’s absolutely correct. The numbers have been there for years but politicians simply took owners at their word that Forbes was simply wrong. Politicians now either look incredibly naive or utterly complicit. They were dupes or participants in what has been a Ponzi scheme of lies and organized theft. Passan was absolutely correct in writing, “The swindlers who run the Florida Marlins got exposed Monday. They are as bad as anyone on Wall Street, scheming, misleading and ultimately sticking taxpayers with a multibillion-dollar tab. Corporate fraud is alive and well in Major League Baseball.”

The words of Zirin, Passan, and deMause suggest this story is about more than just baseball.

But for those interested in just the baseball story, I wanted to close with one more observation.  People have suggested that the Pirates did the right thing by not spending all the money baseball was giving the team.  I think this is true.  The Pirates are clearly responding to their incentives.  And along the way, they are essentially confirming an observation we made in both The Wages of Wins and Stumbling on Wins.

In both books we observed that payroll and wins in baseball do not have a strong correlation.  Specifically, a team’s payroll only explains about 20% of a team’s wins.  This means that it takes more than dollars to win in baseball.  And this means that simply taking money from the rich teams and giving it to the poor teams is not going to transform baseball’s lower classes into winners.  The Pirates appear to be agreeing with this observation.  Rather than spend all the revenue sharing money – which may or may not lead to many more wins – the Pirates have decided to just keep part of this money as profits.  

Of course, all this leads one to ask, why should baseball’s upper classes subsidize the Pirates?  After all, isn’t it enough that taxpayers are willing to give this team money?

- DJ

Kevin Durant & Team USA: A Less Dominant Road To Redemption

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Mosi Platt – of “Miami Heat Index” – has offered a fascinating look at Team USA at Bleacher Report.  It is fascinating because

  • it uses Wins Produced (always great)
  • it has a slide show (also, always great)

In all seriousness, everyone should take a look at Kevin Durant & Team USA: A Less Dominant Road To Redemption.  Mosi – or Reservoir God – has done some excellent work.

The Departure of Rajon Rondo from Team USA is a Familiar Basketball Story

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Ben Gulker is a Program Director for a statewide AmeriCorps program in his home state of Michigan, where he was born and raised. He’s a lifelong Pistons fan that grew up during the Bad Boy era, suffered through the “Teal” era, and spends his current fan time reading up on top 10 draft picks, thanks to the recent demise of his beloved team. If you ever want to talk Pistons, you can find him among other Piston die-hards over at Detroit Bad Boys.

Late on the night of August 24th, Rajon Rondo withdrew his name from consideration for a roster spot on Team USA. Had he not withdrawn, it appears that he would have been cut from the team after a receiving a Did Not Play – Coach’s Decision on August 22nd.

His departure leaves Team USA with the following guard rotation, which includes each player’s WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] and Wins Produced from the 2009-2010 NBA season:

Starters

  • Derrick Rose: 5.9 Wins Produced, 0.099 WP48
  • Chauncey Billups: 10.1 Wins Produced, 0.194 WP48

Reserves

  • Russell Westbrook: 8.8 Wins Produced, 0.150 WP48
  • Stephen Curry: 8.8 Wins Produced, 0.146 WP48
  • Eric Gordon: 1.9 Wins Produced, 0.040 WP48

Rajon Rondo produced 17.2 Wins Produced with a 0.278 WP48.  So through the lens of Wins Produced, Rajon Rondo was clearly the most productive player in this group, and frankly, it wasn’t close. Yet, Coach Mike Krzyzewski – widely regarded as one of the greatest NCAA men’s basketball coaches of all time – had this to say about Rondo,

“It’s not so much what Rajon has to show, it’s what our team needs.  We’ve found a good lineup, and the international game is so different from the NBA game, you can ask any of these guys […] Part of it is to make sure that we try not to have two nonshooters out on the court, and there’s the physicality, too.”

In sum, Rondo doesn’t fit a team need relative to the international game, and he’s not a good enough shooter.

No disrespect to Coach K. (for the record, I’m a huge Coach K. fan), I couldn’t disagree more. While it certainly is true that Rondo is not know for his jump shooting prowess, Rondo would be an excellent fit, given the rest of the roster.

When we turn to the complete roster for Team USA, we see something all too familiar – the overwhelming majority of players that have been selected take a lot of shots, and as a result, these players score a lot of points. The following table indicates the number of field goal attempts and points per 48 minutes for each member of Team USA in 2009-2010:

Coach K. indicated that the international game is different from the NBA, and that may very well be true. I’ve never been involved in international basketball other than as a casual observer, so I have to plead ignorance. But, international basketball is still basketball. It stands to reason that the things that lead to wins in the NBA – avoiding turnovers, grabbing rebounds, using possessions efficiently, etc. – should translate from the NBA to the international game. Perhaps the strategies and tactics that would produce these outcomes would vary based on different rules or different styles of play, but even if they do, there’s still only one basketball, and there is a finite number of possessions in any given basketball game.

The implications of those facts for Team USA seem almost too obvious: several players won’t get to take as many shots as they’re accustomed to, and as a result won’t score as many points. Given that several of these players rely heavily on scoring to contribute, they will either have to step up their production in other facets of the game or be relatively unproductive.

By contrast, Rajon Rondo is a remarkably productive player precisely because he does much more than score. Thanks to basketball-reference.com, we can easily compare Rondo to the players who will likely log minutes at point guard for Team USA. Although Rondo did score the fewest points per game of these four players, he led the quartet in assists and steals and was second in rebounding. And in spite of his reputation for being a poor jump shooter, his true shooting percentage is second only to Billups.

In November of last year, Rondo signed a five-year extension with the Celtics worth at least $55 million. At the time, the following observation was made  by Dave Berri:

“If Rondo averaged about 15 points per game – which he could if he simply took about three more shots per game (or less than one per quarter) – then Rondo’s pay would match what he should get according to the logic of the NBA’s free agent market […]Rondo will continue to produce more than he is paid. Because he does not rely on scoring to produce wins, the NBA player market will continue to undervalue Rondo’s services.”

Given the surplus of scorers on Team USA, it would seem that a highly productive, non-scoring point guard – who has demonstrated his ability to facilitate an offense with the Big Three in Boston for several years – would be the perfect fit for this team. Unfortunately for Rondo – and in my opinion for Team USA as well – scoring has once again dominated player evaluation, and as a result, Rondo will be watching from the sidelines with the rest of us.

- Ben Gulker

The Problem with Baseball’s Participation Trophy

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This is the title of my latest at the Huffington Post, a column that discusses the recent revelation that the Pittsburgh Pirates – a team that has been a loser for 18 consecutive years – is still earning a profit.

Alan Robinson – of the Associated Press – contacted me about this story a few days ago.  From what I understand, someone who works in baseball leaked the Pirates’ financial documents to Robinson.  One can speculate that this person was unhappy that a team that spent little on its players — and failed to win on the field — was taking some of the money baseball shared with the team and keeping it in the form of profits.  And as I noted in my column, because the Pirates can earn a profit without being successful on the field, there is a problem with incentives in Major League Baseball.

Beyond that point, I wanted to offer a few more thoughts on this story.

  • In the story I noted that the Pirates are taking baseball’s revenue sharing and keeping it as profits.  There is another way of looking at the money MLB is giving the Pirates.  In 2007 and 2008 the Pirates spent nearly $102 million on player salaries and another 44.4 million on player development.  Put all these figures together and we see that the Pirates – across these two seasons – received enough money from MLB (as the article notes, the team received about $133 million) to cover all but $12.7 million of their player costs.   So although the Pirates do relatively poorly at the gate – not surprising for a team that loses year after year – the Pirates are still able to turn a profit because the other teams are picking up most of their player expenses. 
  • Why are the other teams willing to give the Pirates money?  The issue is competitive balance.  Teams probably believe that it would be easier to sell tickets when the Pirates came to town if the Pirates were a better team.  Certainly the Pirates – because they are very bad – are not quite as good a draw as the Phillies. When other teams see the Pirates keep part of the money – rather than spend it on players – it must make them wonder why the money is being given to Pittsburgh in the first place.
  • When we think about this reported profit we also have to keep in mind baseball’s accounting history.  In Pay Dirt – a book by James Quirk and Rodney Fort – the authors note that NFL owners were found to be paying themselves a salary.  In other words, rather than report a profit, they took a salary and inflated their costs.  And NFL teams are not the only teams that play with their cost data.  In Baseball and Billions, Andrew Zimbalist offers the following quote from Paul Beeston (a former executive with the Blue Jays): “Anyone who quotes profits of a baseball club is missing the point.  Under generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss and get every national accounting firm to agree with me.”  All of this means we have to be cautious in looking at profit data from teams. Teams have an incentive to minimize how much profit they are making (after all, they want to tell players in negotiations that it is hard to make money in sports).  So we expect – as Quirk and Fort note – that profit data provided by teams probably doesn’t over-estimate how much money they are making.
  • We should also note that historically, baseball teams have argued that they are losing money.  Back in 2000, baseball’s Blue Ribbon Panel argued that from 1995 to 1999, only three teams – the Cleveland, Colorado, and New York – were making a profit.  Clearly baseball can’t make this claim any more.
  • Making money from a losing team is not restricted to baseball.  Joe Lacob – the new owner of the Golden State Warriors – was asked if he expected to make money as owner of the Warriors.  Here is his response to that question: This is an incredible business opportunity. Turning this into a winner No. 1 and running this business better in certain ways… Look, sports franchises appreciate 10% a year on average over three decades, the last three decades. There’s no reason to think this won’t appreciate in value. So that is the least of my worries. We will make money on this team in appreciation of value. The Warriors are similar to the Pittsburgh Pirates.  But despite buying a team that hasn’t won, Lacob still expects to make money with this team.  And note, he didn’t say “well, if we win we can be successful.” No, he is saying that making money is almost guaranteed (he also comments on statistical analysis and notes that rebounding guards are valuable, a point we might come back to in a future post).
  • One last note on this story. It appears that baseball – and the other major professional sports leagues – want to have a system where profits can be made even if a team makes poor decisions.  With that thought in mind, I encourage everyone to read a comment Henry Abbott offered on an interview Michael Heisley – owner of the Memphis Grizzlies – recently gave.  In this interview Heisley revealed that his knowledge of the NBA was not quite as extensive as one might expect.  Certainly there were basic things about the NBA he has not always known.  As Abbott notes, people tend to think the owners know their business.  But as Heisley demonstrated, this is not always the case.   What sports leagues seem to want, though, is a system where even if you don’t really understand your business, you can still make a profit.

- DJ