Daily Archives: October 28, 2010

Using Math to Predict the 2010-11 Season and the NBA’s Math Doesn’t Add Up

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A number of people have made predictions for the upcoming season as part of The Wages of Wins Network 2011 Super Stat Geek Smackdown.  Andres Alvarez – at Nerd Numbers the Blog – has collected these predictions for both the Eastern and Western Conference.  These two collections are reposted below.  In addition, there was an excellent article by Kurt Badenhausen at Forbes on David Stern’s recent arguments concerning the NBA’s finances.  These arguments might mean that there won’t be a Smackdown before the 2011-12 season because that season might not be played.  So the Badenhausen article is certainly something each NBA fan should read. 

The Eastern Conference Selections

Various writers from the Wages of Wins Network got together for a friendly competition; Who could predict the regular season best? Arturo showed off a little by modeling the entire NBA! Below we go over how the Wages of Wins Network analysts (we need a short nick name, any suggestions?) predicted the Eastern Conference. This is followed by a discussion of the Western Conference.

Make sure to check out the actual picks here

Wages of Wins Network 2011 Stat Smackdown

I sent out an invitation to the Wages of Wins Network Stat Smackdown a week before the season started. This may seem like a very short period of time, but amazingly we had eight writers sign up! I’m very excited about this and I’ll be reporting on our progress through out the season. For those of you wondering my plan currently is to update the Automated Wins Produced Site once a week starting next Tuesday. As I mentioned the Stat Smackdown has indeed started (oddly with Boston proving Arturo right but by a larger margin than he expected). Anyway in the next few days I’ll give a run down of how the Wages of Wins Network thinks this season will shake down.

Again, let’s get the party started by looking over the Eastern Conference. 

Wages of Wins Network Eastern Conference Breakdown. Seeds and Records are average of all writers.

 

#1 Seed: Miami Heat

By unanimous decision Miami takes the East. No analyst has them out of 60 wins, although a certain Miami fan has them the greatest of all time.

 

#2 Seed: Orlando Magic

One of only three teams in the East all of the analysts have confidence to get 50 wins. They’re a pretty steep drop off from Miami and in a dog fight with the next team for their spot.

 

#3 Seed: Chicago Bulls

This team pretty much rated as an Orlando light. Some analysts don’t think they’ll crack the 50 win ceiling, but all of them think they’ll be in the top four seeds.

 

#4 Seed: Boston Celtics

Going by record predictions this team is slated to be as good as Orlando. Going by seed predictions they’re fighting with Chicago. Essentially all of the analysts think the East goes Miami with Boston, Chicago and Orlando fighting over second place.

 

#5 Seed: Atlanta Hawks

No one thinks they’ll repeat their 50 win season from just a season ago. In fact Atlanta just barely edges out Milwaukee for the distinction of “best team likely to exit in the first round”.

#6 Seed: Milwaukee Bucks

It was a coin flip between 5 and 6 for all the writers between Atlanta and Milwaukee. I was tempted to take the plunge and put them at 50 wins. I balked and it looks like I wasn’t the only one.

#7 Seed: Cleveland

Cleveland doesn’t even win this seed convincingly. Let’s be honest as well Cleveland wants the 8th seed and a chance to make Miami reenact Dallas’ debacle. Still as has been mentioned, life is not as dire in Cleveland as everyone thinks.

 

#8 Seed: Charlotte

Welcome to the East, all the analysts predict a losing record and yet Charlotte is still slated as a playoff team. Sadly all the momentum from last year seems to have come to a halt.

#9 Seed (tie): New Jersey Nets

They missed out on the free agent bonanza. However trading for Troy Murphy and some young players means this team could be fighting for a playoff spot. I hope they trade Murphy for Melo, but I suspect many of our predictors don’t.

#9 Seed (tie): New York Knicks

Well it’s a step forward right? I wonder what snake oil Walsh is going to sell the fans this year. In other fun news in their terrible years apparently New York was cheating by illegally scouting players. New York, where you can spend tons of money, cheat, have a superstar and still be terrible!

#11 Seed: Indiana Pacers

So begins a streak of teams slated to have wins records in the 20s. I don’t know what Larry had planned for this team but it sure isn’t winning.

 

#12 Seed (Tie): Detroit Pistons

“If we stay the course, we are dead! WE ARE ALL DEAD!“ – John Conner Terminator: Salvation

They stayed the course and the writers have spoken. Sorry DJ, maybe next year?

#12 Seed (Tie): Toronto Raptors

Without Lebron Cleveland is a playoff team (in the East). Without Bosh Toronto is better than Washington. At least they have a statistically sound fan base.

 

#14 Seed Philadelphia 76ers

I have a player crush on Andre Iguodala. It breaks my heart that when Philly had Iverson they got Mutombo and made a championship push but with Iguodala they’ve actively shipped any talent around him. If they trade Iguodala at least it would make for a fun experiment.

 

#15 Seed Washington Wizards

The most “optimistic” authors have Washington matching last season’s debacle. The most pessimistic have them as worst of all time. Sorry for any disrespect Ted.

Western Conference Selections

And here are the Western Conference Selections

Wages of Wins Network outlook of the Western Conference. Seeds and Records are the average of all analysts picks.

#1 Seed: Portland Trail Blazer

They barely edge out the Lakers as the favorites. They’ve won over 50 games the last two seasons while battling injuries. They have depth at every position. Even accounting for Oden being out this team should still be great. When they rock the NBA remember we said it! (And if they fail, feel free to forget)

#2 Seed: Los Angeles Lakers

They’re defending champs. They have three talented big men. They were weak at the small forward and point guard position. In the offseason they acquired a good small forward and point guard. This season looks a lot like last season, but the competition has gotten stronger.

 

#3 Seed: San Antonio Spurs

Ginobli and Duncan still have some life left in them. Tiago Splitter and Dujain Blair look poised to help push this team forward. They’re not as cut and dry among the analysts as the Lakers and Blazers but they’re still favored to keep the dynasty running another season.

 

#4 Seed: Oklahoma City Thunder

The good news is they’re slated to join the top half of the west. The bad news is that most analysts have them below 50 wins. We’ll see if Durant keeps up his great play and if the Thunder can find a way to plug the big hole at center.

 

#5 Seed: Dallas Maverick

Will this be Dirk’s year? Most analysts say no. They’re still slated to make the playoffs but they look like they’ll take a step back from next year. The plan looks like putting a bunch of hope in older and recovering players. We’ll see how that pans out, but the predictions aren’t great.

 

#6 Seed: Golden State Warriors

The Wins Produced metric has been a huge fan of David Lee for a while. Finally he’s moved to a good team (and more importantly one that isn’t intentionally tanking). If Stephen Curry keeps up his stellar play and Biedrins comes back then this team looks in great shape.

 

#7 Seed: New Orleans Hornets

A healthy Chris Paul is enough to help this team move forward. Many of the analysts have them back in the playoffs and one has them breaking the 50 win mark. It looks like Paul will go another year without a ring but at least he should return to the playoffs.

 

#8 Seed (Tie): Phoenix Suns

Let’s give them some credit for self control with letting Amare walk. Unfortunately the truth is they now are very weak in the middle. They also have Dallas’ problem of hoping older players in Nash and Hill can keep them running. The sun has probably set on their championship chances but hopefully they can give some one a battle in the first round.

 

#9 Seed (Tie): Denver Nuggets

Yipes, what happened? Well Billups has gotten older, Martin and Birdman are injured and Harrington will be taking important minutes from better players. I wanted to be upset by these predictions as a Nuggets fan but I can’t. What really upsets me is that Melo may actually get to leave town and convince people he was a big reason the Nuggets were good.

 

#10 Seed: Utah Jazz

They will really miss Carlos Boozer. People that think Jefferson is an acceptable replacement are kidding themselves. Add in the fact that their competition has improved and they look poised to fall off the top of the Northwest Mountain.

 

#11 Seed: Sacramento Kings

This may seem a little low but remember last season they only won 25 games. Sacramento looks in great shape with Tyreke Evans, Samuel Dalembert and a top prospect in Demarcus Cousins. This team will improve greatly this year and look great for the future.

 

#12 Seed: Houston Rockets

This team has a few issues. They don’t really have any superstars (no Yao doesn’t count). Also even though Yao is coming back he is not helping them as much as you’d think as the Rockets actually are pretty good in the front court. I really wish Yao could have won a ring with McGrady but at least he’ll go to another All-Star game this year.

 

#13 Seed: Memphis Grizzlies

What have they done to move forward from last year? Not much except tank their cap by signing one of the most overrated players to a long term contract. With most teams having two talented bigs would make me happy. Say hello to the exception.

 

#14 Seed: Minnesota Timberwolves

Kevin Love should keep a poster of Kevin Garnett in his locker to remind himself there is hope. A possibility is that Michael Beasley pulls a Chris Andersen and sees a huge jump in his performance playing clean. Even then the rest of the roster will keep this team from having any hope of improving.

 

#15 Seed: Los Angeles Clippers

Hoopsworld does not seem to agree with us. For those of you that haven’t checked the Wages of Wins analysts really like Blake Griffin. The rest of the Clippers are just that bad. Last year they won 29 games. You’d figure adding Blake Griffin would improve them. However they let Marcus Camby, Drew Gooden and Steve Blake (or their best players) go. As such don’t expect improvement from this team. Be happy if they hold serve from last year.

- Dre

And here is the article from Forbes on the NBA’s Math.

NBA Math Doesn’t Add Up

from Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes.com

NBA owners held a two-day Board of Governors meeting last week in New York and the message that came out of the meetings was that the league is doomed. Commissioner David Stern delivered the bad news which includes $370 million in losses last year for owners, an expected loss of $350 million this season and the contraction of teams on the table to help stem losses.

The owners’ collective bargaining agreement with the player is set to expire after the season which kicks off tonight. Some type of lockout seems like a foregone conclusion. Do NBA owners really have it that bad? Stern’s posturing on the issue deserves its own Saturday Night Live Weekend Update “Really!?”segment. With apologies to Seth and Amy, here goes.

Really, David Stern. You had buyers agree to pay record prices for two under-performing, dysfunctional franchises in the Wizards ($550 million) and Warriors ($450 million) over the past 6 months, but no one can make money owning an NBA team. Really? That is $1 billion for 2 teams that have lost 70% of their games the past two seasons. Really!

And NBA players salaries need to be cut by $750-$800 million because owners are losing so much money.  Really? Who offered these contracts to Rudy Gay ($84 million), Joe Johnson ($124 million), Drew Gooden ($32 million) and DarkoMilicic ($20 million). And that was just this summer. Don’t even get me started on past deals for Eddy Curry, Larry Hughes and dozens of others. Really.

NBA revenues last season topped $3.8 billion and player salaries are capped at 57% of revenues. Really? The 57% is based on basketball-related income which excludes 60% of arena signage and luxury suite revenues as well as 50% of naming rights revenue. So the NBA actually pays out around 54% of revenues to players. For the NBA to collectively lose money teams must spend more than $1.75 billion (or $59 million per team) on non-player costs. Really? Are trainers rubbing liquid gold on players?

Really, commissioner. Last summer you said that basketball-related income was expected to decline 5% during the 2009-10 season, but BRI actually rose 1%, a swing of $215 million. And teams still lost $370 million? Really!

And ratings for the NBA Finals on ABC this year were up 26% and the highest since 2004. Really! The season begins tonight with one of the most anticipated regular season games ever when the Boston Celtics face-off against the remade Miami Heat and their trio of stars: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. No money to be made here though. Really?

The league is hurting for sponsorship revenues right now. Really? This summer league sponsor Southwest Airlines did walk away from the NBA, yet the league added a new partner in banking giant BBVA. It also renewed agreements with long-time sponsors Anheuser-Busch, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola Kia Motor and Right Guard. Really!

There are 10 NBA teams owned by billionaires including the latest addition to the club Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov who is worth $13.4 billion. Really! How did these guys all get so rich? By buying money losing assets? Really!

- Kurt Badenhausen

So there you go.  You can see what might happen in 2010-11.  And we also can see that the arguments that might cancel 2011-12 are not very good.  Nevertheless, you might want to really enjoy this season.  There is a possibility that we won’t get another season as quickly as we might like.

- DJ

Hot Stove Economics and Other Baseball Thoughts

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Now that the NBA season is upon us, let’s talk a little baseball. 

Okay, maybe this isn’t what readers in this forum are look for.  Still, I have a few baseball thoughts I wish to share (my next post will offer a few basketball thoughts).

Hot Stove Economics

JC Bradbury – author of the Baseball Economist – has recently released his latest, Hot Stove Economics.  Here is what one person said about this book:

“During the summer and fall baseball fans live and die with the success and failures of their favorite teams. But the source of all this emotion – as J.C. Bradbury demonstrates in Hot Stove Economics – are the decisions made in the winter. Such decisions depend upon the information available to teams and how this is evaluated. Bradbury provides a guide to decision-making that will not only help the fan understand what their favorite team is doing, but also probably help more than a few teams do more to please their fans.”

Okay, that was my comment (which you can find on the book cover).  Here are two more comments:

“J.C. Bradbury is the preeminent analyst of baseball economics in the world.” Tyler Cowen, George Mason University and marginalrevolution.com

“There’s no more complaining that you can’t understand the economics of the game after this book. Bradbury’s clear and entertaining style makes the hardcore economics that drive the game accessible to someone like me, who can’t balance a checkbook!” Will Carroll, Senior Writer, Baseball Prospectus

Beyond these comments, let me just note that this book applies what we know about economics and sabermetrics to the decisions baseball teams make each offseason. So if you really pay attention to the moves baseball teams make in the winter, this book will help you evaluate the decisions you observe.

It is my hope to offer a few more comments on this book in the near future.

The Value of Derek Jeter

Last week I was a guest of Kathleen Hays on Bloomberg Radio. Kathleen and I were primarily discussing the economics of the World Series.  Towards the end of the conversation, though, we turned to the topic of Derek Jeter’s free agency.  And it was then I offered the observation that maybe Jeter wasn’t the best shortstop in the world anymore. One might suspect (if one was smarter than I) that making such a statement on a radio show based in New York was a bad idea.

Although my statement was probably ill-advised (even if I was probably right), it is not the only time I have recently commented on Derek Jeter.  Stephen Dubner – at the Freakonomics blog – recently hosted a Freakonomic Quorum that asked “What’s Derek Jeter Worth?”  More specifically, Maury Brown (founder and President the Business of Sports Network.), JC Bradbury, and I were asked to address the following question:

Given Jeter’s history with and value to the New York Yankees, his pending free agency (at age 36), and the public-relations cost of LeBron James’s very noisy departure from the Cleveland Cavaliers, what kind of deal would you suggest Jeter and the Yankees make?

For our answers, please click on over to Freakonomics.

Expanding Playoffs in the Baseball

Last night was the first game of the World Series.  As everyone expected, the last two teams standing are the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants. 

Okay, I find it hard to believe that any people thought before the season started that the Rangers and Giants would be in the World Series last April.  In fact, I doubt many people at the start of the postseason thought the Rangers (the team with the 8th best record in baseball) and Giants (the team with the 5th best record in baseball) would prevail in their respective league playoffs.

What this outcome demonstrates is that the playoffs in baseball have a large random element.  To see this point, let’s note that the team with the best regular season record in the NBA has won the title 15 times in the past 30 years (across all NBA history since 1946-47 the percentage is 48%).   So although the NBA invites 16 teams to the postseason party, the team with the best record still prevails half the time.

In baseball it is a very different story. Since 1995 – the first year eight teams made the playoffs – the following three teams took both the regular season title and the World Series:

  • The New York Yankees in 2009
  • The Boston Red Sox in 2007
  • The New York Yankees in 1998

So it has happened about 20% of the time.  When four teams made the playoffs (1969 to 1993), the best team won 25% of the time.  And I think I once looked and found that when two teams made the playoffs (before 1969), the team with best record won about 50% of the time.

Related to this point… As I have noted before, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our LivesThe Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow (a wonderful book), contains the following passage relevant to any discussion of predicting the winner in a best-of-seven playoff series.“…if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10.  And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups.  There is really no way for a sports league to change this.  In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you’d have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time.  And in the case of one team’s having only a 55-45 edge, the shortest significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned “world champion” is not a reliable indication that a team is actually the best one.” (p. 70-71).

With these thoughts in our head, let’s turn to the news that baseball is thinking about expanding its playoffs.   We have already seen that when the playoffs expand the best team had a harder time winning the title.  And with just eight teams in the playoffs, the best team is winning less than 20% of the time.  What if we move to 12 or 16 teams? 

To the extent that competitive balance matters (and this issue is over-emphasized by owners in sports), this move will enhance balance.  Even if the Yankees spending can actually buy regular season wins (and remember, payroll only explains about 20% of the variation in regular season wins), more playoff teams reduces the ability of the Yankees to “buy” a title.  And if baseball expands it far enough… well, the Yankees winning a title might not happen much anymore.

The Playoffs – for the players – is not about the money.

One last thought (and I think I have noted something similar before, but I like this story)…People often complain the modern athletes only care about money.  But the amount of money paid out to the players in the playoffs is relatively small.  A full post-season share for the New York Yankees in 2009 was only $365,052.73.  To put that in perspective, Alex Rodriguez was paid $33 million this past season, or about $240,000 for each of the 137 games he played.  In the playoffs the previous season, though, he only received about $24,000 for each game (or about 10% of his regular-season pay). 

So when you see these players trying hard in the post-season, remember these players are not just motivated by the money.  Many baseball players really like winning baseball games (and hopefully, that isn’t a shocking insight).

- DJ