Originally this post was going to be all about the loss of Jonas Jerebko.  But as you will see, it has morphed into a post on how we can play with numbers to create a little bit of hope for fans of the Pistons (the team I follow).

Last year the Pistons only won 27 games.  Obviously, the level of success led Joe Dumars (the Pistons GM) to conclude that one shouldn’t “mess with success” (that was sarcasm).  Specifically, Dumars decided – despite such a miserable season – to bring back almost everyone from the 2009-10 season.  

Back in August it was argued that this was probably not the best move the Pistons could have made.  As the following table illustrates, of the team’s 27 wins, 16 could be traced to the production of Jonas Jerebko and Ben Wallace.  And that means the rest of this roster was worth only about 11 victories.

This past summer the Pistons added Tracy McGrady in free agency and Greg Monroe in the draft lottery (yes, that was about all they did).  With respect to the latter, Monroe’s numbers last season at Georgetown were essentially average for a player selected in the draft out of college.  So it doesn’t seem likely that Monroe will help much as a rookie (although since college numbers don’t forecast perfectly, we can still hope Monroe will contribute).  

What about McGrady?  T-Mac can play shooting guard or small forward.  But since the Pistons already have Richard Hamilton and Ben Gordon at shooting guard, one can expect T-Mac to play most of his minutes at small forward.  As the next table illustrates, T-Mac last posted a level of production (at small forward) that would push his WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] above 0.150 in 2006-07. And the last time his production eclipsed the 0.200 mark was in 2004-05. 

In sum, it seems unlikely the Pistons are going to be helped much by their two summer acquisitions.

So Detroit is going to rely on the players who are returning.  And one of these – Jonas Jerebko – just went down with a serious injury.  So is everything lost?

As a Pistons fan, I have some hope.  And here is how this hope was constructed.

If we focus strictly on last year, it looks somewhat bleak.  But Richard Hamilton, Charlie Villanueva, Ben Gordon, and T-Mac all played better in 2008-09.  If we assume (economists get to make assumptions) that this quartet will return to what we saw in 2008-09, then here is what we might see in 2010-11.

Starters

Rodney Stuckey: 28 minutes per game, 0.030 WP48, 1.4 Wins Produced

Richard Hamilton: 26 minutes per game, 0.071 WP48, 3.2 Wins Produced

Tayshaun Prince: 28 minutes per game, 0.151 WP48, 7.2 Wins Produced

Charlie Villanueva: 24 minutes per game, 0.104 WP48, 4.3 Wins Produced

Ben Wallace: 28 minutes per game, 0.241 WP48, 11.5 Wins Produced

Bench

Will Bynum: 20 minutes per game, 0.052 WP48, 1.8 Wins Produced

Ben Gordon: 22 minutes per game, 0.091 WP48, 3.7 Wins Produced

Tracy McGrady: 20 minutes per game, 0.111 WP48, 3.8 Wins Produced

Jason Maxiell: 24 minutes per game, 0.110 WP48, 4.5 Wins Produced

Greg Monroe: 20 minutes per game, 0.050 WP48, 1.7 Wins Produced

Add up the Wins Produced and we see a team winning 43 games.  Wow.  A 16 game improvement!!!

Before anyone gets too excited (and I can already see people saying “Economist (or stat-head, or something more derogatory) says Pistons will win 43 games!!”), let’s note a few dark clouds:

•  This is a forecast that assumes four players return to what we saw in 2008-09.  Seems unlikely that all four come back.
• This forecast ignores injuries.  One suspects Jerebko is not the last injury.
• Of the Pistons 43 wins, 11.5 are tied to the play of Ben Wallace.  Can Ben Wallace really keep producing?  And can he play 2,000 plus minutes?  That also seems unlikely.  And the drop-off after Big Ben in the frontcourt is huge.
• This forecast is also constructed by assuming DaJuan Summers and Chris Wilcox — two players who posted negative WP48 numbers last year — never play.  With Jerebko out, the odds of these players getting minutes just went up.  And Summers and Wilcox probably won’t help much (although Wilcox has produced some in the past, so maybe we can hope he can help).

So where will the Pistons finish?  I think what was said last August still holds.   Without Jerebko I still think this team can surpass the 30 win mark. But a post-season berth seems unlikely. 

But if everything goes right… well, maybe the Pistons can get to 40 wins. 

So there is some hope.  But I think about 40 wins is all we can hope for.

In other words, what Rodney Stuckey told Dime Magazine is quite unbelievable. In case you missed it, here is what Stuckey said a few weeks ago:

We all just have to stay healthy and the sky is the limit for us. On paper, we are the best team in the League. We are deep and athletic. All we have to do is play to our abilities. We don’t have the biggest roster, but if we share the ball, we’ll be alright.

Not sure what paper he is talking about.  But I would love to see a few sheets of it sometime.

- DJ

In economics we teach that success leads to imitation, or copying.  With that in mind….

 Henry Abbott and TrueHoop – as Wikio notes – has the number one basketball blog (and I think the margin of victory is quite large).  In an effort to close the gap, here is an “imitation” of what Henry had to say today (okay, I am just copying):

 Poor Kobe Bryant.

Even though he has proved himself to be the emotional and intelligent leader of the NBA’s best team over the last two seasons, and one with deep connections and good working relationships with the likes of Derek Fisher and Phil Jackson, Bryant’s evidently still an icon of selfishness and gunning.

In that context, he comes up in a fascinating essay about what’s wrong with Wall Street.

On The New York Times’ website, professor J.M. Bernstein explains that Wall Street bankers should be in favor of strong and smart regulation. Usually the regulators are seen as being obstacles to Wall Street’s freedom to profit. Citing philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel, Bernstein instead makes the case that good regulation is the precise thing that gives banking meaning and value.

To illustrate his point, Bernstein summons the image of a selfish Bryant, who plays the role of a greedy banker in this analogy.

Actions are elements of practices, and practices give individual actions their meaning. Without the game of basketball, there are just balls flying around with no purpose. The rules of the game give the action of putting the ball through the net the meaning of scoring, where scoring is something one does for the sake of the team. A star player can forget all this and pursue personal glory, his private self-interest. But if that star — say, Kobe Bryant — forgets his team in the process, he may, in the short term, get rich, but the team will lose. Only by playing his role on the team, by having an L.A. Laker interest as well as a Kobe Bryant interest, can he succeed. I guess in this analogy, Phil Jackson has the role of “the regulator.”
The series of events leading up to near economic collapse have shown Wall Street traders and bankers to be essentially knights of self-interest — bad Kobe Bryants.

Bernstein proposed regulation that would reward bankers for making good investments — no big bonuses for investments that lose money. I guess that’s a little like paying a player for wins, instead of points scored (which is still the biggest factor in determining NBA salaries). It’s a reform that sure seems to make sense for Wall Street, and maybe for basketball, too.

Carrying the analogy one step further… given the contracts that Rudy Gay and Joe Johnson received – and the contract that Carmelo Anthony is refusing to sign – basketball is still an “unregulated market.”  Players have an incentive to shoot as much as possible, even at the cost of team victories.  Perhaps if the coaches were better regulators…

- DJ

Wikio has sent me the following ranking of the Top Basketball Blogs.  As you can see, Henry Abbott and TrueHoop lead the way.  And the Blazers, Suns, and Cavaliers also have top blogs reporting on their teams.  After that… well, thanks everyone for reading. 

- DJ

Ranking made by Wikio

Kyle Weidie – at Truth About It – has taken issue with my discussion this past summer of John Wall. (you have to scroll down a bit to Weidie’s discussion of John Wall and stats):

It’s hard to talk about John Wall’s stats without mentioning Dave Berri. Berri, of The Wages of Wins Journal and the books “Wages of Wins” and “Stumbling On Wins”, is not a fan of Wall. Or rather, he’s not a fan of Wall’s stats and thus, he is overall indignantly unimpressed with the number one overall draft pick — so much so that Berri took the time this past summer to write a post, “Are We Allowed to Say that John Wall Has Yet to Produce?,” criticizing a Las Vegas Summer League recap I’d written about Wall for ESPN’s Daily Dime, essentially because I didn’t mention Wall’s faults until the ninth paragraph. Perhaps stats on other people’s writing are the new frontier. Either way … good one, Dave.

Weidie’s attack doesn’t get much better after this beginning.  And here is how it ends:

Mr. Berri really doesn’t have a calculator to stand on. But in this country, irrational outlandishness sells. And when someone combines intelligence with a pompous nature like Berri, he might as well be smugly selling snake oil.

In between these two points we see that Weidie essentially failed to understand the actual argument I was making in the following three posts:

Is John Wall the Obvious Number One Pick for the Wizards?

John Wall, Derrick Rose, and the State of the Wizards

Are We Allowed to Say that John Wall Has Yet to Produce?

Let me clarify by just repeating what I said last summer:

So at this point we can say this about Wall.  His physical skills suggest that he has a great deal of potential.  But so far, that potential hasn’t translated into actual production.  Wall was not particularly productive in college.  And he wasn’t productive in summer league.

Now it’s very important to emphasize what I am saying.  I am not saying – and I repeat, I am not saying – that Wall will never be a great basketball player.  What I am saying is that in college and summer league he was not a great basketball player (again, I am differentiating what Wall has done from what he might do in the future).

And I am trying to emphasize that ignoring missed shots and turnovers for eight paragraphs paints a misleading picture of Wall’s actual performance.  Missed shots and turnovers really matter in basketball.

The person who ignored Wall’s shortcomings for eight paragraphs was Weidie.  Again, I think this is a story that deserved a bit more coverage.  Wall is supposed to be a great basketball player. So far, though, he hasn’t been great.  Again – and I am saying this again (maybe Weidie can understand this point if I say it enough) – I am not arguing that Wall will never be a great player.  I am just arguing that so far he has not been as good as advertised. 

And launching personal attacks at me is not going to change this basic observation.

- DJ