108 thoughts on “The Four Horsemen of Negative Productivity in Toronto”

1. Ok, I agree with Dave generally about the whole general trend he notices that scoring is what earns you money and respect in the NBA. And I agrre with his premise that rebounding and effective scoring(high %) is what wins> My only issue is why aren’t the players who have higher shooting per centages taking more shots. What I mean is they won’t take a bad shot, somehow they intuitively know, are instinctually programmed, to not be wasteful. And hence the other guys, the low percentage guys, have to put it up so to speak.There is a 24 second clock. It has to be shot. I eman if Ben Wallace on the Pistons shot more he would be a very much less effective player. He can’t shoot. So WP per 48 would really drop if you gave him for instance, Ben Gordons shots. I don’t know if this makes any sense, its just a thought I had. Obviously one of the solutions is to pay for high volume shooters who can score effectively. What the Rockets did with Martin.I Know its early but the Rockets aint doing to good, probably because of Brooks I imagine> And I also realize its $ relative thing. Just a thought

2. you’ve got to be kidding me. This site goes so overboard giving all the credit to the players with rebounds. Have you watched a Raptors game? Nobody even covers Reggie Evans 8 feet from the basket and he’s still 5 for 21 from the field!!! Did you ever think that maybe the reason some of his teammates have poor assist rates is because they have a big stiff standing in front of the basket who can’t score? He has a lousy +-, lousy win shares, lousy PER, but only the WoW secretly knows that he’s a superstar! Just incredibly lucky to be saddled with a horrible supporting cast, if only he had average teammates Reggie Evans could headline a 50 win team! hahahahhaahahaha

3. I am willing to throw in the towel on Bargnani if he can’t even be as productive as the average SF. I see no reason to try to put together an unconventional team built around an unconventional below average player.

   It still think it’s kind of ironic that Bargnani plays a lot like Gallinari but Gallinari is the more highly regarded by some people because he’s two inches shorter and labeled a SF instead of a C when typically the extra height and length are considered a positive. I guess the fact that Bargs can’t cover SFs will always be a problem. It will still be interesting to compare these two Italians over time.

4. Notice that Seattle went from 52 wins to 35 wins when they traded Evans away midseason. And they dropped further to 31 wins the following season. The 76ers won 35 games before Evans, 40 and 41 games with Evans, and 27 games after trading him to Toronto (and letting Andre Miller walk).

   Right now, he’s averaging 21 rebounds/48 and he’s in the positive category for net possessions– which essentially mean’s he’s a productive player if he doesn’t chuck up tons of lousy shots. His FG% is negligible, as he’s only taking 3 shots per game. He’s also been the best player in the NBA over the last decade at FTA/FGA with a 5:6 ratio (for a comparison, Kevin Durant is one of the best NBA players at getting to the FT line, and he had a FTA/FGA ration of 2:5 last year), though he’s a terrible free throw shooter. He’s #1 in the NBA this season in rebound rate by a comfortable margin.

   Sounds like a good player to me.

5. One quick aside– the point of Wins Produced is to explain the correlation between box score statistics and team wins. It has approximately a .95 correlation, and has been a fantastic predictive metric for the past few years.

   The ability to limit your opponent’s possessions while maximizing your team’s possessions is EXTREMELY valuable. If your team can shoot 5 more shots in a game, your team is more likely to win. And that’s what Reggie Evans does (though he doesn’t get much help on this team).

6. Now lets compare Alvarez WP/48 with the same number, at Basketball Reference.com. Through 7 games.

   Johnson—-.206
   Andersen—-.123 (95 minutes)
   Weems——.111
   Jack———.088
   Bargnani—-.085
   Evans——–.058
   Calderon—-.044
   Barbosa—–.037
   DeRozan—–.027
   Klieza——– (.032)

   I think Alveraz needs to recheck his numbers, especially on Evans. Either that or the two WP/48 calculations by Alveraz and BasketballReference or at such a disparity that makes either one’s accuracy questionable.

7. Buddahfan,

   Apples and oranges. You’re looking at Win SCORE per 48 on basketball-reference.com–a similar metric in that it means to represent a player’s total contribution to wins, but calculated in a different manner, and not as highly correlated with team results.

   To my knowledge Dre is the only one out there posting Wins Produced.

8. Buddahfan,

   One is Wins Produced, one is Win shares. They are different measures by different people.

   There is also win score, which is often abbreviated as WS. That is also not Win shares, though.

9. Buddahfan,

   I don’t think Basketball Reference offers a player’s WP/48. You are confusing it with WS/48.

10. Joe’s right, of course; the WS/48 is Win SHARES per 48. Apparently I think Win Score even when I’m trying not to.:-)

11. Daniel,

    Why go to such lengths to defend Reggie Evans/WoW? You make it sound like his trade was the reason Seattle dropped from 52 to 35 wins. At the time of his trade, the 35 win year, they were 16-24 (their record that year was essentially unchanged with or without Evans). Did he have something to do with the positive couple of seasons in Philly? Maybe, although there were other moving parts and he was 7th/8th in terms of minutes played on the team. I’m not discounting the value of rebounding. What i am discounting is the WoW philosophy that its perfectly fine to essentially be a giant 0 offensively. Just watch a Raptors game – see how the defense doesn’t even need to guard him and its pretty obvious what a drawback that is for Toronto, essentially playing 4 on 5. His great rebounding might offset that, but i can promise you he is not the superstar that WoW /wins produced thinks he is. Also Daniel, i think you are being somewhat fooled by that 95% correlation to wins – there are team level adjustments going on that almost force the correlation to be very high with wins. The question is whether those wins are allocated properly among the players, and they almost certainly are not (obvious they are being over-allocated to the Reggie Evans’ of the world).

12. Jon,
    Can you explain these “team offsets” to me? Can you also tell me the level of predictability they have on the Wins Produced metric? Win Shares and PER use team and league factors, why aren’t they as good or predictable?

13. Jon,

    Are you one of the guys who thinks the jury’s still out on Bargnani? Or is it worse–do you think the fact that he can score means that draft pick wasn’t a complete waste? In short, are yet another of the yahoos who thinks a guy who can shoot–not even score, mind you, just shoot–is the key to a good team? Do you think the fact that he can get off a shot is one of those really valuable skills? He’s seven friggin’ feet tall! It would be a miracle if he COULDN’T launch a shot from that high up. The real miracle? He gets 32.4 minutes per game–and 4.3 rebounds. Guarding C’s and PF’s. Missed shots should hit him in the face more often than that. Per minute, Evans grabs over 3.3 times as many boards as the Raptors’ “shooter.” The fact that you’re willing to dismiss that contribution to wins says way more about YOU than it does Reggie Evans.

14. Miami Heat Index’s latest post is twice as entertaining in hindsight:

    “All of the analysts talking about the Miami Heat’s supposed weaknesses at point guard and center will be exposed as false prophets tonight after Heat’s home game against Deron Williams, Al Jefferson and the Utah Jazz.

    Based on the formula for determining a team’s probability of winning a single game, the Heat have a 98.7 percent chance of beating the Jazz when they visit Miami tonight.”

15. Gil,
    I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Crap happens. You grab the mike and you’ll make mistakes. Trick is to be right 50+.01% of the time. :-)

16. Thanks for having a sense of humor about it. Some dubious calls there, I’ll admit. But you know the rest of non-Heat nation was celebrating that Jazz win! Millsap was simply unbelievable.

17. Gil,

    To be fair, that prediction would have been accurate if Millsap hadn’t channeled his inner Reggie Miller ( a sentence I’d never even conceived of writing before tonight…).

18. Yes, you are right, that prediction would have been accurate if the Heat had won.

19. Gil,
    I want to stress that us Wages of Wins Analysts seem to hold great power. In terms of day to day predictions some players/teams seem to like being contrary to what we say (including the Heat). For instance I just posted Lawson was playing bad and that the Nuggets were a strong team. In response Lawson played well and we got blown out to Indiana!! So blame Mosi for posting, because if he hadn’t the Heat would be on their way to 75 wins :)

20. This is an article being critical of one dimensional players and an article championing Reggie Evans as our best all-around player? In the same article!?!?!? Evans makes Bargnani look as multi-faceted as a diamond.

    If Evans was willing to kick out his offensive rebounds instead of trying to unsuccessfully muscling them up every time ( he shoots 24% from the field ) and usually getting blocked, his rebounding numbers would be all the more impressive. All these extra possessions that should be falling into our laps due to these rebounds are being squandered… So seeing Reggie’s ‘Win’s’ skyrocket because of these doesn’t seem right.

    The ‘Wins’ formula has them at opposite ends of the spectrum… but +/- has them side by side; last and second to last with nobody else even that close ( the other 3 starters scores combined are not as bad as Reggies ).

21. jbrett – lol. did i say anything about bargnani? did i say that hoisting shots was the key to success? where do you come up with this nonsense? didn’t i say that i don’t discount the value of rebounding? ease off the kool-aid (or flavor-aid). and says more about Me than Reggie Evans??? so if i disagree with you/this site about the value of certain basketball players have on wins/losses, i have some deep personal flaw? you’ve got an interesting take and a vivid imagination

22. In fairness to Jon,
    He never said Bargnani was good, or that Reggie Evans was bad. I think everyone here knows that WP is not perfect, and thats why its fun to debate. I’ve seen it written countless times, and it seems obvious to me, that you must take ANY statistic, including WP, and use it in union with some more subjective reasoning. Otherwise, every team would have a computer for a GM.

    Reggie Evans may be a productive player, and WP shows that. However, its worth noting that he essentially has no offense. Just because he shoots less doesn’t mean he isn’t still hindering the offense. And believe me, as a Sixer fan I’m on the bandwagon of hating on Bargnani, he isn’t good. But just because Evans is his opposite doesn’t mean he’s a star.

    Though Jon probably could’ve used a better approach, theres some truth to what he wrote. Obviously he values your stat because he’s here reading your blog. But, I think you’re kidding yourself if you believe Evans is a superstar.

23. I am willing to concede that if you have a guy that gets 15 rebounds and substitute a guy that gets 5 rebounds the team might not lose all 10 rebounds.

    I am willing to concede that at the extremes of scoring the defensive adjustments made (either helping and doubling on prolific scorers or cheating off the terrible scorers) might have an impact on productivity of other players.

    But there’s no question that possessions are critical, rebounding is more important than generally perceived, and scoring less important than generally perceived because it’s way easier to replace shots of average efficiency than great rebounding.

    So maybe Reggie Evans isn’t really a .343 player. Maybe his rebounds only have a value of .8 or .9 and maybe his lack of scoring deserves some marginal discount, but I’d be willing to bet that the Raptors would be comically bad without him or someone else getting a lot of his rebounds. What he is doing is extremely valuable and productive.

24. Yes, perhaps I should have turned down the hyperbole. But we witnessed a miracle last night. It’s the NBA – where amazing happens!

    What are the odds of Millsap hitting 3 threes in a row AND the last second shot in regulation? About 1.3 percent? Sounds about right.

    Anyway – game recap & contrition coming tonight.

25. Matt and Stallion,

    Thanks for your input, sorry i was a bit over the top in my first post. I think Stallion makes 2 good points even though my feeling is that Evans’ lack of offense (and lack of threat of offense) is more of a hinderence than Stallion does. I of course don’t disagree with the belief that shooting/scoring has historically been overvalued by typical fans, and that rebounding was undervalued. I just think WoW takes it too far in the opposite direction.

26. Jon,
    I notice you may have missed my comment in the slew of replies to your good points. “There are team level adjustments going on that almost force the correlation to be very high with wins”
    You are making a very pointed statement there. My question is do you have any numbers to back up this claim? Also do you think any metric with team level adjustments are flawed? If so what is your take on PER and Win Shares?

27. Nerdnumbers,

    To your point, i made myself sound like much more of an expert than i am. I was relaying criticisms i have heard in other places, like this thread http://www.sonicscentral.com/apbrmetrics/viewtopic.php?t=877&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=210 (dont have time to search the thread for exact spot where i read that). I haven’t delved deep into the math myself. Its possible PER and Win Shares have the same problems, my point was just that correlations to wins alone doesn’t convince me that a particular measure is better or worse than another (when looking at a team level), because i don’t feel confident the wins have been properly allocated amongst the players (even though at the team level they look good – which could be b/c of the team level adjustments). There was one stat in particular that i read in that discussion that said that PER and Win Shares had much better correlations than Wins Produced when looking at players who have changed teams, in terms of the before and after seasons – to me that seems like it should be very important.

28. IMO, the problem with Miami is one of team construction.

    They brought together 3 guys that typically make a large contribution with efficient scoring. Between them they used to score 80 efficient points. But they can’t all shoot that much on the same team. So the value of each of them is being diminished relative to what they did on their previous teams.

    This is more or less the diminishing returns issue at an extreme.

    What each needs to do is get more involved in the possession stats. James and Bosh have to start hitting the offensive boards harder to get more possessions since they won’t be shooting as much and James needs to up his assists a real lot. James is such a great passer, he has to make the other players MORE efficient as scorers than they used to be.

    I think it’s a matter shuffling around the responsibilities a little because the talent is obviously there.

29. Jon,
    That thread was turned into an article that the authors couldn’t published. Although it wasn’t published, there was a response to the article in two published works (an article I published with JC Bradbury and in Stumbling on Wins). In a nutshell… it is not the case that adding a team adjustment to PERs allows PERs to explain wins as well as Wins Produced. There is another forthcoming chapter in an academic collection where I show that the year-to-year correlation for Win Shares is not as good as what you see from the WoW metrics.
    Perhaps more importantly, adjusted plus-minus does a terrible job of forecasting itself. So the plus-minus metric is simply not very good (thought I would throw that out there as well).

30. If someone has the data it might be an interesting exercise to track the shooting efficiency of all the Raptors when they play with Evans and when Evans is off the court to see is there is any change and how much.

31. Italian Stallion:

    LeBron is leading the team in assists and had 14 last night. As for offensive rebounding, I asked the same question on the Miami Heat Index blog, but I think the problem is that Spoelstra has instructed them not to crash the boards in favor of getting back on defense – which doesn’t really make sense because they’re so athletic they should be able to do both. But when I watch them play, the only players I see crashing the boards are Haslem and Wade occasionally. Everybody else gets back on defense.

    The real problem is that they get ahead and simply take their foot off the pedal. Before the Utah game, the average WP48 for Miami in the 4th quarter was 0.058. That’s the average WP48 for the Clippers. That’s inexcusable for a team where more than 90% of the minutes are being allocated to players with WP48 of 0.100 or higher.

    The other problem is that when the game gets tight on a rare occasion, Spoelstra doesn’t call a play for them to run that gets them an easy basket. LeBron/Wade just pound the ball into the floor and try to be Superman. And when they realize they can’t, for some inexplicable reason, the ball ends up in Eddie House’s hands. They simply have to stop coasting!

32. I’m just going to throw out a hodgepodge of observations/ responses:

    1. Evans collects 4.7 ORB a game; he attempts 3 shots. I would suggest he isn’t wasting EVERY possession he creates.
    2. If he’s missing on putbacks, that is adversely affecting his WP48–and it’s STILL over .300; imagine if he COULD shoot!
    3. It’s a whole seven games we’re sampling to draw all these conclusions. Evans has not, to my knowledge, been a .300 WP48 guy before, and he most likely won’t end up in that rare air this season either.
    4. Jon, I only asked the questions; I was prompted to ask by the line of your criticism of Evans, which appears to boil down to the fact that he can’t shoot, and is so bad at shooting that opponents don’t have to ever guard him. I’ve only watched him play one game this year, but I would be surprised if he has two non-putback attempts all season, and I’m willing to bet all of the others were contested. We can wish he was a better passer; if he were, he might approach a WP48 of .400, and then the debate would really heat up.
    5. What exactly is one supposed to do with an offensive rebound–move it further from the basket? More to the point–in the entirely of his career, he isn’t a BAD shooter; 47% is pretty damn average. Even if every make was a dunk, he’s not hurting you.
    6. I never meant to suggest that Evans was equal to Tim Duncan, or Gasol, or Odom; there aren’t many like them, and I’ll bet the end-of-season numbers reflect that. Could he end up similar to DeJuan Blair, maybe even Ben Wallace? I think so. His numbers, to this point, are undeniably Rodman-like (or Rodman-LITE, but still), and while there are many unwilling to put Dennis on the NBA Mt. Rushmore–including me–there is no doubt he was extremely productive, and very valuable to his teams.
    7. Until now, Evans has never averaged 24 minutes a game, he isn’t much more than 27 now, and he’s 30 years old; if anyone’s betting he’s the next cornerstone of a dynasty, I’ll throw my wallet on that bet. Maybe we don’t know what he is capable of, with more PT; I for one don’t care about his potential–I’ll take his actual production, right now. (‘I’ in the general sense; I’m not a big Raptors fan.)

33. Correction to #3, above: Evans in fact HAS been a WP.300 guy before; ’04-’05 with Seattle, WP.308 per Dre’s numbers. Incidentally (or not), this was the season he played the most minutes per game before the current one. A person MIGHT conclude that the more he plays, the more he produces; at a minimum, one can observe that he has produced more when he’s played more.

34. Reggie Evans is basically equivalent to Ben Wallace, in the sense that they provide nothing on the offensive side of the ball. They shoot efficiently, but that’s because they only take layups. If each were asked to shoulder the load their efficiency would plummet. So in a sense it’s not so much that they are ‘producing wins’ as it is that they are preventing losses. They aren’t hurting their teams. If they took more shots they would be hurting their teams, but somebody has to take the shots.

    It’s even possible that having players like Evans and Wallace on your team makes all of the other players less efficient, because that’s 1 out of 5 you know you don’t have to guard on the offensive end. Leaving them unguarded however makes it harder to find them to prevent offensive boards. So maybe it all balances out.

    There’s just something to be said about being able to shoot efficiently while taking a higher volume/higher difficulty shots that isn’t quite accounted for when judging players under this method. It looks at every shot as being equal when that’s not necessarily the case. Ben Wallace couldn’t make 2/10 jumpers unguarded, let alone with a hand in his face. Every shot has a consequence, but shots have to be taken in order to win a game. It penalizes players that have to take those shots, because guys like Evans and Wallace cannot take them.

35. Continuing from my above jibberish it’s like Evans and Wallace, and players like them, are passing the responsibility of winning the game on to other players. They are devoid of responsibility because they lack a the skill to score. Nobody expects them to win the game, or factor in on offense. Their task isn’t so much to produce wins as it is to prevent losses. It’s the rest of the team’s duty to actually win the game, if that makes any sense to anyone but me.

36. I agree with many of the comments posted here, but I’m not sure that the types of events everyone is here decrying don’t actually happen in the real game “behind” the metric. Of course Reggie Evans or Ben Wallace couldn’t shoot 10/20 every game; that is why they take three shots a game.

37. Did Billups, Hamilton, Prince and Rasheed suffer a loss of efficiency because Ben was a bricklayer? I’m not sure how we can know–except those guys kicked the crap out of a heavily-favored Laker team. If you’re suggesting that Toronto can’t afford the luxury of a Reggie Evans/ Ben Wallace type, I might counter that the Four Horsemen above are Toronto’s equivalent to using all your food stamps on a fine wine and discovering it’s gone over to vinegar.

38. I’m not saying those guys aren’t valuable, but here’s a funny fairy tale scenario. One team is a regular NBA team. The opponent has 1 god-like super defender that rejects and swats everything, and he grabs every rebound, but he can’t score, or he dies. Something like that. His 4 teammates are 2 feet tall gnome like creatures. Now it’s the gnomes task to figure out a way to score on the other team because god-like defender cannot do it. How do they win?

    It’s going into the 100th overtime….

    god-like defender: “seriously guys my legs are getting tired when are you going to score.”

    gnome: “what do you think we’ve been trying to do! you do something!”

    god-like defender: “what? what do you think i’ve been doing this whole time?! i’m the reason we haven’t lost this game yet!”

    gnome: “well, if you ever want to win your going to have to sacrifice yourself (WP).”

39. I think some of these criticisms are valid. For example if Reggie Evans grabbed 1 less rebound per game he would have gone from being more than twice as productive as the average player for his career to only slightly above average.

40. reservoirgod,

    I wasn’t commenting so much on last night’s game because it took a spectacular game from Milsap to beat them.

    I can tell you that Lebron’s scoring stats are down and his rebounds and assists haven’t risen to compensate.

    Bosh is down across the board. I don’t really understand why his rebounds are down so much, but I would have guessed his scoring would be down.

    Wade’s scoring is holding up and his rebounding is up, but his assists are down. Lebron handling the ball more is probably taking assists away from Wade but enabling him to keep scoring.

    I think the bottom line is that if you have 3 great scorers, there aren’t going to be enough shots to go around for all of them to keep their previous productivity level. So if they want to remain as productive, they have to do other things on offense. There’s not much else you can do besides get offensive rebounds or assists when someone else is doing some of the shooting you used to do.

41. Open question – When does someone post the article tying OKC’s disappointing start to Kevin Durant’s inefficient start, engendering all sorts of hate mail?

    0.013 WP48

42. IS,

    I think the idea was that the big 3 were going to be taking more efficient shots, or shots that produced a better chance of going in. The idea that each one of their shot attempts were going to fall was expected. It wasn’t so much an idea. If you look each one of their numbers the only one that has maintained his efficiency, or increased it, is D-Wade. Lebron and Bosh are both shooting what amounts to career lows if you take out their rookie seasons.

    What would explain their bad shooting? and why has Wade been able to improve upon his?

43. Also as evidenced by this article to some degree, Bosh’s rebounds should have been expected to take a fall. Maybe not this far. But playing next to Bargnani would leave more rebounds to be had – which we are seeing Evans grab in Toronto. Maybe Bosh wasn’t always that great of a rebounder, he just played next to someone with zero ability to rebound so he ended up with more than his game would dictate. I don’t know there are way too many conclusions to be drawn off of this small sample set.

44. If you’re comparing Bargnani, Kleiza, Barbosa, and DeRozan to gnomes whose only useful contribution to the team is putting the ball in the basket, even though they’re not very good at it…well, I think I’m okay with that.

    Let’s imagine your godlike defender won’t die if he shoots; instead perhaps he can’t catch the ball unless it clangs off a rim or backboard, and he can’t make anything but a dunk. Other teams know this, and they know to mug him around the basket. I can see him telling his gnomes, “Just keep slinging it toward the hoop; I’ll eventually get a putback, even if it kills me. In the meantime, I’ll do all the dirty work, on both ends, to keep us in the game.”

    If I’m running this team, I’m thinking very hard about its makeup. I’ve got a guy who guarantees we’ll have a chance every time we take the court; should I expect him to change the way he plays–or should I maybe try to find ONE guy I can play at one of the other four positions who can score? Seeing as that one change would guarantee us a win, every single time, should I try that–or should I squander the one resource that keeps us in every game?”

    And if I’m one of the gnomes, where do I get the stones to ever open my mouth? I’m not contributing one thing toward winning; I don’t have to play D, and it doesn’t matter if I ever grab a rebound–my deficiencies are obscured by my productive teammate. (I sure wish I knew how to italicize comments here; I’d light that last one up like a Christmas tree.) There are even people on blogs defending my abysmal shooting, saying that I HAVE to shoot, even if I literally can’t make a shot, because SOMEBODY has to shoot–essentially equating willingness with aptitude. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

45. Nice job. I just thought it was a great way to explain wins produced in a comical nutshell. god-like defender is basically the best player in the league, but he can’t win the game for you. It’s just a take on the ‘wins produced’ as a title, because god-like defender can only prevent losses. He can’t win games. His production is extremely valuable, and if anything it is saying that Evans and Wallace are extremely valuable players, but they need help. god-like defender would presumably have a wp/48 of .999 or even higher i’m not sure how high it can go, but he can’t actually ‘produce’ the win.

46. And the fairy tale scenario is also saying that the more shots you take the lower your WP is going to be. The gnome’s win produced would be obscenely low. Your sacrificing your WP to try to produce the win. In fact maybe a team should have the slogan – “The more a player tries to win the game, the more he is contributing to the loss”. or something like that, because scoring is equated with winning games. Players that try harder to win essentially hurt their teams because they are the ones taking the most shots. In the end I feel like I’ve defended wins produced, while that wasn’t my first intention.

47. Players that try harder to win essentially hurt their teams because they are the ones taking the most shots. In the end I feel like I’ve defended wins produced, while that wasn’t my first intention.

    From the comment above – interesting thought but i don’t see that as defending wins produced, perhaps i’m not following? I’m also intrigued by the idea that Bosh/Evans rebound totals become inflated from Bargnani’s disinterest in rebounds. There are several rebounds per game where the defensive team is guaranteed the rebound, its just a matter of which of the 3 or 4 players around the basket really makes the most effort (if X doesn’t, then the ball will fall to Y). In reality these rebounds do not contribute to the win – if certain players collect disproportionate amounts of these types of rebounds, then certainly their impact on the outcome is being overstated.

48. Ok here goes. I think. A player that never shoots can’t be hurt by missing shots. Every shot has a consequence, and shots have to fall over a certain threshold to be considered productive. The more a player shoots the lower his efficiency is going to be, because he’s taking forced shots, contested shots, etc. A missed shot hurts a team. I thought I defended Wins Produced because what it does is explains wins. So naturally Kobe is going to be hurt more by missed shots than Ben Wallace, because he takes more of them. If Ben Wallace took that many shots his WP would be abysmal.

    Like your Evans/Bosh rebounding scenario. Evans numbers might be inflated by effort rebounds that anyone can grab, but if he doesn’t grab them someone else will. Either way it’s not a net loss or gain on the team, it’s only a net loss or gain for the player. Evans should be rewarded for that effort, and WP does that. Evans/Wallace also don’t share the same responsibility to score that Kobe does. You could say even that Kobe is making the sacrifice to try to score, because he feels that’s what he has to do to produce the win. And because he’s making that sacrifice he’s also hurting his own WP, not that a player cares about that, but still.

49. Because it seems relevant to this discussion…

    Does anyone have a “sensitivity analysis” (for lack of a better term) for Wins Produced? By that, I mean some chart that indicates how a players WP would change if all of their stats but one were held constant while the other stat varied. For example, a player who is average in every category will have a WP48 of .100. What would this player’s WP48 be if he shot 0% from the field (still shot an average number of shots for his position, still grabbed an average number of rebounds for his position, etc.)? What would it be if he shot 100%? And how would this player’s WP48 change if we did the same analysis for every stat inlcuded in the WP48 calculation?

    I would think that this sort of information would make these discussions about whether a player hurts his team by never shooting a bit more grounded and/or productive.

50. team rebounding percentage while said player is in is more important than the actual individual rebounds since we cannot determine if the rebound is a result of actual rebounding prowess or not.

    You can create rebounds for teammates but these are not allocated properly in the WP metric. Or your individual defense might cause better rebounding opportunities for teammates. Again, this is not accounted for properly.

    Obviously Evans is a really good rebounder. But how many extra rebounds does he really contribute? And does he add these rebounds by raising the shooting percentage of the opponent (which would need us to denounce of of those extra rebounds).

    Holding all else equal would a center that is an average rebounder but a superb defender actually produce more team rebounds than a center that is a superb rebounder but an average defender?

    There in lies the question of real value.

51. fricktho,

    I also thought there was a good chance their efficiency would rise to partially offset the lower shot attempts, but other than Wade having a great year from the 3 point line (which could be random) I don’t see much evidence of it yet.

    I also thought “someone” (probably Lebron) would get a huge increase in assists. That’s how those other guys would become more efficient. The defense would double James and he’d find much better players like Wade and Bosh in much better situations than they could find previously. Hence all three would remain very productive.

52. IS, the problem is whether these players can play off the ball? As I’ve repeated numerous times on these blogs, it’s not just what your WP48 is, it’s how you get them.

    If all your players have high WP48 but achieve that WP48 doing the same thing, all you’re going to end up doing is reducing everyone’s WP48 and actually become a liability. You can’t win by having a team of 5 highly efficient 3 point shooters and expect to win. Balance matters.

    Until Bosh and Lebron learn how to play off the ball better, they’re going to have problems. Right now they both need the ball in their hands to produce efficiently. Wade’s game works both ways already so he’s less affected (and the 3 point thing isn’t hurting).

53. I think you guys “may” be missing a subtle point about the credit that is given for scoring.

    As long as your TS% is north of 50%, you are generating wins for the team with your shots. So the more shots you take above 50%, the more wins you will produce. It’s just that the higher the efficiency is above 50% the more credit you get for each point.

    It’s only shots you take below 50% that reduce wins.

    Of course you could argue that if player “X” takes a shot with a TS% of 51% even though he is helping the team win, he’s a bozo if another player had a shot available at a more average 54% on the same play.

54. Ha! Ok this will be my last comment on this topic but here’s another fictional take. Let’s say we’re in a league where pay is based solely on wins produced. Take the Pistons for example because they are my team, and they have the components to make this work.

    stuckey: “I’m on to you Ben Wallace. People don’t see it but I do. I’m sick your selfishness”

    ben: *scratches his head* “uh…ok?”

    stuckey: “Seriously, I’m sick of taking all your shots for you. I’m not a very good shooter either you know”

    ben: “nobody is forcing you to take those shots”

    stuckey: “Yes they are, you are! Well guess what? I’m done. For now on I’m not taking any shots and your going to have to take all of them”

    ben: “But I can’t shoot, how is that going to help the team?”

    stuckey: “Not my problem, it’s my contract year and I’m not letting you drag my wins produced through the mud because your too selfish to take a shot!”

55. >>IS, the problem is whether these players can play off the ball? As I’ve repeated numerous times on these blogs, it’s not just what your WP48 is, it’s how you get them.<<

    Agreed totally.

    I just pictured the team as Lebron being the point forward piling up assists by having a couple of extraordinary scorers to get the ball to and those guys benefiting from having an offensive juggernaut with great passing skills drawing doubles and getting them better shots.

56. IS – a problem with that analysis is it ignores “percentage busters.” Players sometimes have to take bad shots. The shot clock is about to expire or there’s 2 seconds left in the quarter. Some of these are 70 foot heaves.

    Of course some of these could be no fault of the players themselves (over-dribbling), but many of these plays are the result of the inability of the team, as a whole, to produce a quality shot until the have no choice to shoot.

    So then a player, say like Melo, ends up with the ball with 2 seconds left and he has to shoot. Now, perhaps he’s a 35% shooter in this scenario but no on the team is above 20%. By giving Melo the ball, the team is acting properly. And melo should shoot here. But WP says he’s “hurting” the team. In reality he’s giving them the best shot at winning. This stuff isn’t accounted for.

    People are right to bring up issues with the system because of these issues. At the team level, everything irons itself out for obvious reasons, but at the individual level the allocation of productivity is very much in question.

57. IS – teams don’t seem to be playing doubles on em so much. Rather, they’re using hedge zones to pack the paint and try to wall em off. Which makes sense until Mike Miller comes back. If we assume Wade hasn’t improved much from 3 point land, the starting unit is a god awful 3 point shooting team and the spacing isn’t there and they have no one who scores on post-ups. It’s a weird mix. Teams won’t have to double until this is addressed, they can just hedge zone em (well, crappy teams might be doubling, I’m not watching them wallop the wizards of the world).

    Lebron and Bosh seem confused when they’re not involved directly in the play on offense. The half-court looks weak right now and they’re fast-break offense is what’s carrying them on that end (and it’s unstoppable).

    Spoelstra has his work cut our for him.

58. OK one more on the Heat topic.

    Part of the problem also is that none of them are shooters. Having Lebron drive and dish to Wade does nothing, because Wade isn’t a shooter, so he’ll just end up driving himself. The players benefiting the most by this are guys like James Jones, and Mike Miller when he gets healthy. Wade can drive and dish to Lebron, but Lebron can’t shoot. Like some dude said it’s about having a good mix of personnel. Having all these ball handlers with low shooting ability doesn’t add much. Their games are predicated on driving, getting to the line, and taking higher percentage closer range shots.

    I also thought we would see a gigantic free throw disparity when teams played the Heat and that hasn’t been the case so much either.

59. Sam,

    Just use Win Score for that.

60. So no one thinks Miami’s going to end up 79-3 now? Spoelstra has gone from having a record-setting team to having his work cut out for him? I’m not arguing with all the analysis, just wondering if anyone claims to have made the same predictions in August, or even after the preseason? Most importantly–when they get their 10th or 11th loss, will Riley step in to ‘save’ them?

61. I’ve never believed they’d win 70+ games. Always thought they were a low to mid 60s team at best.

62. And now Lebron-less Cleveland (as predicted by some here) is not looking as bad as some who disparaged Lebron’s perceived lack of support while playing for the Cavs. For now.

63. some dude,

    You can check players’ efg% at 82games.com based on when during the shot clock they shoot, and how often they shoot. I’ve checked it before for a few players, and my impression is that end-of-shot-clock possessions make up a minor portion of player shots, and that they are only slightly lower than their typical efg%, less than 5% in my estimation based on checking out a few of the higher-usage players that disproportionately tend to end up with the ball in their hands. And heaves are a pretty negligible portion of shots.

    (Yes, I realize the problems of only looking at a few players, and of using efg% instead of ts%, but this is the best data I can find).

    The gist of it is that even if you factor out shots that players must shoot due to the shot clock/game clock, their shooting efficiency isn’t going to change that much. Stuckey isn’t a poor shooter because he has to take lots of last-second shots. He’s just a poor shooter.

    I’m still open to the idea that players who can’t shoot may cause issues for their teammates. But the idea that last-second shots are ruining players shooting percentages is bunk.

64. As note in Stumbling on Wins… there is no relationship between a player’s shooting efficiency and the shooting efficiency of his teammates.

65. “There is no relationship between a player’s shooting efficiency and the shooting efficiency of his teammates.”

    But there does seem to be some correlation of low FGA per min to higher shooting %. Taking a quick look at the 2009-10 season, the lowest quartile (least shooting) in FGA/min shot 47.6%, the next quartile 46.8%, then 45.4%, and then 45.9%.

    So it would seem strange that the “best” shooters are taking the least shots, but I must contend that those in that top quartile are actually the best shooters, despite their lower FG%. You would get yanked real quickly by any decent coach (insert joke about incompetent coaches here) if you weren’t a good shooter and you were taking a ton of shots. And looking at the FT%, which I think is one of the best indicators of shooting prowess, it bears out: the lowest shooting quartile shoots 66% from the stripe, then 72%, next 77%, and the high volume shooters are 80% FT shooters.

    I’m quite sure I haven’t addressed the original quoted comment at all, but this is more of an interesting sidebar that grew out of the comment and the ones before it.

66. I would say yes there is a correlation between shot attempts and FG%, but I don’t see why there would be a correlation between one player’s FG% and another player’s FG%. That doesn’t make sense.

67. @fricktho – but what is the relationship between one player’s number of shot attempts and his teammates’ shot attempts?

68. Philip – I never said it’s a huge portion. I am just stating about how it’s not completely accurate. When you add up a lot of small things they become meaningful.

    dberri – i don’t doubt that’s correct, however I wonder if at the extremes (specifically the low end) it doesn’t necessarily hold true. There are so very very few Ben Wallaces and Reggie Evans in the NBA that no set of data would be large enough to make a conclusion.

    And you are also running on the assumption that it only affects shooting. Perhaps it affects ability to get the FT line, turnovers, etc and leads to lower offensive efficiency?

    Reggie Evans last year on toronto gives some insight. The team scored at a 105 Orat when he was on the floor but a whopping 113 when he was off it, yet the efg% was identical in either case. So why the discrepancy? Oreb% was the same. Well, it’s quite simple. The team turned the ball over 2 more times and made 4 less FTs (with only 1 extra attempt) which is probably due to his 52% career FT% mark. So Evans inability to hit FTs and offensive flow (afg% goes up when he’s out too to coincide with the lower TO rate) hurts the overall offense while not actually hurting the shooting percentages of his teammates.

    In ’08 in Philly we saw a similar trend. Though efg% and orb% was also better with him off the court, we see the same issues. 2 more turnovers and less FTA at a lower FT% and a much lower ORat as a result when he’s in than when he’s out. Same in ’07 in Denver. More turnovers and less FTs leading to a lower ORating. Same with Denver in ’05. More turnovers and less FTs leading to a lower Orating.

    In 3 of those 4, efg% was also worse with him out there. Only in Philly in ’09 were things different. Orating was largely unchanged even though efg% was lower with him on the floor. Still had more turnovers but the team actually made more FTs with him out there partially due to his career best 60% season which he hasn’t been close to in recent years before or since.

    That’s not to say his defensive/rebounding contributions don’t outweigh his negative impact on offense. But over the past 5 seasons the teams seem to have an easier time putting points on the board when he’s off the floor and turnovers + FTA and FT% seems to be a large factor as to why. I think his inability to help space the floor better are why there are more turnovers, somewhat negating some of his ORebs as does his horrible FT% after getting fouled trying to go back up.

69. gil

    yeah I thought about that, but it depends on the type of shot attempts. i mean is a player that shoots fewer shots automatically going to take fewer jump shots? it’s hard to quantify. just because a player takes fewer attempts, there is no way to say whether those are fewer attempts of lower % shots or higher % shots. players that take fewer shots tend to be big men, so the data is most likely skewed to some degree.

    so say Ben Wallace decides he’s going to shoot more, well his efficiency would plummet. He’s stealing shots from his teammates, presumably Stuckey, who’s now getting fewer shots. since we said shot attempts correlate to efficiency Stuckey should therefore be more efficient – assumptions. well i don’t know, just because Stuckey gets fewer attempts it’s not like he made the commitment to never shoot a jumper again. he’s still taking the same shots. heck, maybe Wallace shooting more means they up the pace in an attempt to make up points from all of his misses and Stuckey’s attempts don’t miss a beat.

    in the end I still don’t think they correlate much if at all. WP is affected, but not efficiency. and those are two separate, but related, things.

70. I agree w/ Jbrett – I think they’re being over-analyzed. The problems are simple – LeBron’s above average in every category except rebounds & turnovers. He needs to stop waiting for outlet passes to start the break and go get it to start the break himself like Jason Kidd. Bosh’s problem is shooting & rebounding. He’s taking a lot of sh*t shots because they’re running a shell of an offense right now. They don’t have a problem w/ spacing or anything else – the starting lineup you’re criticizing has been blowing teams away in the third quarter. LeBron needs to stop turning the ball over & crash the boards. Bosh needs to take better shots & crash the boards. And Wade needs to stop missing FTs w/ 3.4 seconds left and stop passing the ball to Eddie House for last second shots when he hasn’t hit a 3-ptr IN A FREAKING WEEK! Sorry, lost my composure there at the end. Oh yeah, and it wouldn’t hurt if Spoelstra actually coached them on offense or the team pushed the pace. That’s going to be the greatest challenge – getting LeBron & Wade to speed the game up.

71. Outside of a great win against Orlando, they’ve beaten the nets twice, Sixers, and T-wolves. Sorry if I don’t really tip my hat off to those 4 victories.

    Against respectable teams, ones that can play some semblance of defense and put pressure on theirs, they’ve struggled. They’re 1-3 in those games so far. I’m sure they’ll turn that around, but for right now they’re having problems with legitimately dominant ball-handlers (rondo, CP3, D-will) combined with post presences (KG/Shaq, Okafor/West, Millsap). Their fast break points are really down in their 3 losses as well.

    Crashing the boards can also lead to more runouts and fouling. Not saying your wrong, but maybe they are doing the right thing by getting back since against bigger teams they’re not as likely to get those boards.

    That starting lineup has only been good in 1 of the 4 real games. Spacing is an issue. Nobody is going to care what they do to the Timberwolves. Two years ago Cleveland had won 66 games largely on the back of destroying horrible and mediocre teams, but their record and PD vs the elite teams in the league was actually bad and the Orlando series wasn’t a surprise to those who payed attention. Miami has to win the games that matter first, not the ones that don’t. Beating Boston tomorrow would be the a good step.

72. Some dude,

    Golden State Warriors: 6-2.

    Biedrins and Lee are 3rd and 12th in RP48 respectively (Lee’s averaging 4.3 OREBS a game!). I’ve watched every game so far and I’ve really been keeping an eye out for that “Lee abandons his man to steal rebounds from his teammates” thing you went on and on about. I haven’t yet seen it once. I think you made it up. His defense does suck terribly though.

    Still and all, 45 wins is beginning to look pretty plausible, don’t you think?

73. I believe I made that argument about Camby, not Lee. I said Lee is a doormat on defense, however. I did pose the question with regards to Lee as a generality, I think. It’s nice that Lee is averaging so many offensive boards, but the Warriors are towards the bottom of the pack in defensive rebounds. Lee is actually outside the top 20 in rebounding right now (rebound rate).

    6-2 is actually expected. Their PD is under 3 despite an easy schedule, which probably indicates something closer to a 40 win team rather than a 45 win team. They got to keep racking up these easier wins before the schedule turns on em. If they end up with under 7 losses before November ends, then we can start to look at them closer to 45 wins. December gets more brutal. Could easily be under .500 when the calendar year ends.

    Maybe Biedrens steals the rebounds? :P

    In all seriousness, Lee probably doesn’t cheat to get rebounds. He seems to be completely unaware of what he’s supposed to do defensively so wherever he ends up is probably by accident. I’ve seen him a bit this year (and all vs LAL) and his defense is about as bad as I’ve ever seen anyone ever play it. Explains his god awful Statistical +/- and low WP48.

74. I’ll try to same the same thing I already said. Bear with me :)
    Knowing when to shoot is a skill, and thus is part of a player’s productivity. The fact that Reggie Evans realizes he can’t shoot and Andre Bargnani doesn’t constitutes a definitive distinction between the two. It is fair to say that Evans is a better player on this count; he cannot be dismissed for only taking 3 shots a game, because Bargnani’s ability level is really consistent with a player who takes 3 shots a game, he simply decides to take 15-20 shots a game. Even Dr. Berri’s comment fits in here. Of course a player’s shooting % doesn’t affect his teammates’ shooting %s; players take the number of shots they do because of their perceived offensive skill set.

    In the spirit of this thread, I was thinking about another hypothetical situation yesterday. Say you had a team with all high-wp players but no “scorers,” something like this:
    PG – Rajon Rondo
    SG – Mike Miller (or maybe Brent Barry, is you want to bring him out of retirement)
    SF – Shane Battier
    PF – Ben Wallace
    C – Joel Pryzbilla (or Andris Biedrins)

    This should easily be a championship starting lineup, but none of these players can do anything with the ball by themselves. Since these guys take 3-10 shots a game, you can see that somewhere along the line it wont’s work. Starting lineups need to take more than 25 shots in a game. Players with these skill sets, however, depend on finding open space. Without any primary offensive players, they will all have to take more shots than they usually do. Some of these shots will end up being shots that these players do not make many of (e.g., Rondo shooting 3′s, Wallace and Pryzbilla shooting jumpers, Miller and Battier shooting shots with smothering defense on them). While this team would be quite good in many respects, they would not be as good together as WP would predict. This is not because they need someone to “create” shots, but because they someone who can take a lot of shots and still be efficient. What if we add a scorer to this team, someone like Brandon Roy or Joe Johnson? It will look like we are taking minutes away from Miller/Barry and Battier, but in fact adding such a player will allow the other players to return to taking shots with which they are more comfortable (no more Ben Wallace taking 15-ft. jumpers). In fact, adding such a player would actually allow Miller or Barry or Battier to do what they’re batter at – making smart decision with the ball, making open shots, contributing with rebounds, etc.

    To summarize, read Arturo’s “Gimme the Rock” series. A team needs one player in one of the top two levels, who can take a lot of shots efficiently.

75. It’s an interesting thought experiment MOS,
    Of course part of the issue with that team is you have four older/injury prone players listed in your starting five. Tell me their back ups and we’ll talk. I’d also question Shane Battier’s assignment to that roster, he’s been above average according to the WP metric but never been amazing.

    Now Wallace is odd. When I did the MVP list I was worried I’d have to prune out one dimensional players. However all >0.300 WP48 players almost have to be good at multi-aspects. In short I don’t buy if you together a roster of WP48 stars (0.200 > ) that you’d have that problem. Now when looking at extra players to get sure make sure you get people to fill your needs but it’s not like the WP48 metric says “Ignore basketball positions and stats!” it’s just a tool and the ironic thing is a common counter argument is “What if I don’t know how to use it and I’m a GM and I get 5 Dennis Roddman’s and we suck?”

76. Some Dude – good stuff, thanks for pulling those stats about Evans inhibiting his team’s offensive prowess to back up my original points (which were made more on intuition). sometimes we overthink these things. just think about playing playground ball, if you have 1 guy on your team who’s a zero offensively (even if a good defender/rebounder), it hurts your offense, unless your other 4 guys are so good that they can’t really be guarded. so stick an evans type on a great team (like rodman on the bulls) and he really does have alot more value than on a mediocre or bad team (just hypothesizing). of course evans is no rodman anyway

77. Not related to the course that this comment thread has taken, but very relevant to the actual topic of this post:

    “The Raptors could certainly use a new point guard, but if I were the Suns’ general manager, I’d want second-year shooting guard DeMar DeRozan in any deal. The Raptors would be foolish to give up their best young prospect for Nash, Canadian patriotism aside.” (http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2010/11/10/trading-steve-nash-its-complicated/)

    I don’t know where to begin.

78. This is a great thread.

    “Are you one of the guys who thinks the jury’s still out on Bargnani? Or is it worse–do you think the fact that he can score means that draft pick wasn’t a complete waste? In short, are yet another of the yahoos who thinks a guy who can shoot–not even score, mind you, just shoot–is the key to a good team? Do you think the fact that he can get off a shot is one of those really valuable skills? He’s seven friggin’ feet tall! It would be a miracle if he COULDN’T launch a shot from that high up. The real miracle? He gets 32.4 minutes per game–and 4.3 rebounds. Guarding C’s and PF’s. Missed shots should hit him in the face more often than that. Per minute, Evans grabs over 3.3 times as many boards as the Raptors’ “shooter.” The fact that you’re willing to dismiss that contribution to wins says way more about YOU than it does Reggie Evans.”

    Again, why so defensive?

    Someone who may disagree with you or your philosophies is not attacking your sense of self. Separate the logic from the person.

    Jon made a ton of great points in this thread and it makes me sad to see how he originally got attacked for most of his beliefs. Why? The only way to find truth is to be open-minded.

    “Until Bosh and Lebron learn how to play off the ball better, they’re going to have problems. Right now they both need the ball in their hands to produce efficiently. Wade’s game works both ways already so he’s less affected (and the 3 point thing isn’t hurting).”

    Absolutely!

    I’m of the mindset that the Heat need to run the offense through Bosh. That may be the best way to get him to be more aggressive and to force his teammates to play off the ball.

    Also, if neither Wade nor James become knock-down spot-up shooters from beyond the arc, I worry about the long-term viability of this team wrt championships. So far Wade has been great but obviously it’s a small sample size.

    “So then a player, say like Melo, ends up with the ball with 2 seconds left and he has to shoot. Now, perhaps he’s a 35% shooter in this scenario but no on the team is above 20%. By giving Melo the ball, the team is acting properly. And melo should shoot here. But WP says he’s “hurting” the team. In reality he’s giving them the best shot at winning. This stuff isn’t accounted for.”

    Agreed. I think the No. 1 way to analyze the game of basketball is to watch the games. I love NBA Playbook because it provides a lot of video to break down concepts. It seems to me that while many people on this site have a lot of knowledge and insight, they seem to rely on Wins Produced too much. And it’s not that I have anything against Wins Produced — why else would I be at this site? — but it leads to groupthink, which I think much of this thread demonstrated.

    “People are right to bring up issues with the system because of these issues. At the team level, everything irons itself out for obvious reasons, but at the individual level the allocation of productivity is very much in question.”

    Another good point!

    “The gist of it is that even if you factor out shots that players must shoot due to the shot clock/game clock, their shooting efficiency isn’t going to change that much. Stuckey isn’t a poor shooter because he has to take lots of last-second shots. He’s just a poor shooter.”

    What about over-dribbling? To me it seems a lot of immensely talented basketball players — and I would consider Stuckey in that group — tend to over-dribble primarily (and this is just my interpretation) due to lack of confidence in their teammates.

    They may be taught to hit the open man, but they are also human. If they are stuck on a bad team and continue to hit the open man, and the open man continues to fail, eventually (and quite soon for most NBA players it seems) they will become results-oriented and take things into their own hands. That “playground” mindset, so to speak.

    I think it’s true that Stuckey is likely a poor shooter but I do believe over-dribbling exacerbates shooting concerns. I think a lot of that has to do with coaching, however.

    I cannot sum up this point in a neat little package, but I feel it’s just a testament to how many moving parts basketball has. It seems to be virtually impossible to incorporate all of these into stats, and therefore they must be individually accounted for with our subjective biases. And I think that lack of subjective hedging is what really leads to the backlash against the sabermetric movement.

79. I have another point on this to clarify my thinking.

    I never thought that Wade, James, and Bosh would increase their TS% because of each others’ already high TS%.

    I thought it would rise because James is a great passer likely to get doubled more often than the typical PG and the TS% of assisted shots is generally higher than that of unassisted shots. So Bosh and Wade should benefit from that passing and a few more better looks over time.

    I also thought than when a teams has three great options like that, they would tend to divide the really horrible shots instead of carrying the entire load.

    I’m don’t think these things have a huge impact, but at the margin they should matter.

80. I think some of the system issues related to having a great scorer on a team are actually “team construction” issues.

    I think everyone concedes you can’t have a great team made up of the 5 best PGs or5 best Cs in the league. Similarly, you can’t have 5 guys whose primary contribution to productivity is “just” rebounding or “just” defense or “just” scoring etc…..

    The only thing I can add is that I don’t each player has to necessarily fit the stereotype of the position he is designated to.

    Lebron James is a forward. But he has such great passing and play making skills relative to the typical SF, IMO you don’t need a traditional PG on the team. You’d probably be better off with one of those undersized combo guards that is a deadly shooter but not as good a play maker as some of the better PGs in the league.

    Another example of that was Jordan.

    Jordan was a guard, but when he was young he was primarily an incredible slasher. So what you needed was an elite outside shooter to balance the back court and help space the floor, not a traditional PG. He had that during most of his career. (Kerr, Armstrong, and even Paxon)

81. “because Bargnani’s ability level is really consistent with a player who takes 3 shots a game, he simply decides to take 15-20 shots a game”

    This is just stupid. Look at his TS% and you will find it to be hovering around league average if not above league average for his career. He is a shitty player because he cannot rebound and has no clue what to do on defense (although he does get steals and 1 – 1.5 blocks a game) and not because he is an inefficient scorer.

82. These outlier events just keep happening to the Miami Heat! When will the odds start playing out and show them to be the all-world dominating team WP tells us they will be? They need a new coach, Bosh is underachieving, Lebron needs help! More sample size, please!

83. some dude,

    I agree small things add up. But what other small things are there? Because a slightly lower shooting percentage on a small percentage of a player’s shots will have a pretty negligible impact by itself.

    Adam C Madison,

    Even if you do account for all the end of shot clock/game clock shots, they have a very minor impact on a player’s scoring efficiency. We’re talking one missed shot every 4 games.

84. Gil,

    IMO the Heat are not going to become world beaters until they realize that because they can’t score 80 points per night between the 3 of them, in order to remain as productive as they were for their previous teams they are going to have to do other things on offense.

    For Lebron that means running the break and getting easy baskets for others, more play making, and attacking the offensive boards when he’s not shooting. He should be averaging 10 assists in “Showtime East” and at least 1 extra rebound.

    For Bosh that means 1 extra offensive rebound and slightly more efficient scoring.

    For Wade that means similar scoring at a slightly more efficient rate.

    If they don’t do that, they will still be an excellent team that has occasional match up issues, but they won’t be the word beater team that many predicted. They have to work out their “new” roles.

85. Ty Lawson, WP48 Stud, beats Kobe Bryant, overrated player!

86. IS

    I agree with your positional assessment to some degree. We should know what is good and what is bad by now having been fans of WP. Rebounds are good. Big men that don’t want to be big men are bad. It makes too much sense. Tall guys have to rebound, because if they don’t who will? You really expect your guards to make up for say Bargnani’s lack of rebounding? You want your guards going up against the other teams tall guys trying to fight for rebounds? Big men have to do big men things. I won’t waiver from that.

    However to say that the 1-3 positions can’t be multi-positional is a different story. This is where stereotypical position designation isn’t as important. I agree that between one of these three positions a team needs a primary ball handler/creator, but that player doesn’t have to be a traditional PG. The player does have to come from one of the perimeter positions though.

87. Philip, there are other small things.

    The way defense is split up evenly is one. Derek Fisher is assumed to contribute as much as Ron Artest and Adrew Bynum on D. Yeah, but no.

    A drive to the hoop which results in a missed shot but an easy putback for a teammate. It was the drive that drew the defender over that is credited negatively even though it was the actual reason for the play.

    hockey assists.

    uncontrolled rebounding tips (you don’t get a rebound for it but the fact that it leads to a rebound does not).

    charges. As far as I know, WP48 doesn’t include charges taken as a steal.

    Live ball vs dead ball turnovers. WP48 sees them equally, but they are not. One often leads to high percentage possessions (fast breaks).

    fouls drawn.

    Deflections. Solid screens. entry post passing, ball denial. etc.

    Lot of these things are individually small, but when added up they do matter. Again, the box score will be able to explain stuff on the team levels at a high correlation, but how those team stats are accumulated determines how the production should be split up. While WP48 gives a decent general sense of things, it certainly has its holes.

    Kind of why I keep begging for a WP48 differential. David Lee having a .2 WP48 doesn’t mean much if the guy across from him averages .25 WP48. If someone could get the dirty work done here, I think some newer things would come to light.

    the other thing I think would be more useful would be WP48 “units.” For instance, Big Baby might have a mediocre WP48 of .05, but perhaps when he plays with Rondo-Allen-Pierce-KG lineup, his WP48 is .15. I’d like to see the whole unit’s combined WP48 to see which lineups are best.

88. Some dude:

    For WP differential you can check out Courtside Analyst which uses Marginal Win Score or my blog which uses Win Score to estimate WP based on the opponent’s production at the position in each game and not league average.

    As for all the Heat talk… Yes, Bosh’s offensive rebounding is way down in Miami. No, I don’t think LeBron needs to average 10 assist/game for them to beat elite teams (it’d be nice) and he never would do that anyway unless speed up the pace of the game which they won’t do because Wade & LeBron don’t want to play at that fast a pace. No, the starting lineup isn’t their most productive lineup but it’s not that big a deal since Joel Anthony is still being more productive than his career avg would suggest. The “big” problems w/ the team are simple and there’s 3 of them:

    1. They haven’t been able to keep elite ballhandlers out of the paint (which is a problem for most of the NBA). It’s a significant problem for Miami because…

    2. They’re front-runners. They don’t handle adversity well. The defense looks fine until the unexpected happens, i.e. Chris Paul, Rondo or Deron Williams breaking down the D and getting into the paint. Then all hell breaks loose and everyone abandons their assignments to play hero, compromising the entire integrity of the defense. The offense works well enough until the opponent strings together a couple of stops. Then everybody wants to play hero and regress to the bad habits they established on their bad reg. season/playoff teams. Until they learn to trust each other more when the chips are down, the team will continue to struggle in tough spots. Fortunately, they’re so talented and just well-coached enough that it won’t be an issue against below average teams, enabling them to get a good seed for the playoffs.

    3. This experiment of the players running the show in a partnership w/ coaching & management may not be working. The team needs to play harder & faster to be great and I don’t think LeBron & Wade believe that or are very interested in it. They believe they can win playing their way and it hasn’t been working against tough competition. I don’t know how many beatdowns they’re gonna have to take to learn the lesson, but it has to be learned if they want to win the title.

89. To go back to the end of the shot clock/buzzer beating shot discussion,

    Even if those shots specifically are a very small portion of a players attempts (i.e. 1 every 4 games), the general point, I believe, was that someone needs to shoot. A primary scoring option may understand his teams limitations, so, at say 10 seconds left in the clock he’ll attempt a shot he can make 40% of the time rather than wait and attempt one at the buzzer he has a 25% chance of making.

    Obviously this isn’t a perfect example, but the point is that when teammates are limited offensively or the team has a failing system, certain players end up taking more ineffective shots. Theres no way around it. You could argue that they have no business taking poor shots with 10 seconds left, but I think we all know coaches would rather see Kobe or Melo attempting a pull up they feel comfortable with then, say, pass the ball to Fisher or Chris Andersen with 9 seconds left and no good opportunity to create.

90. I agree with the above. Somebody does have to shoot. There is a 24 second shot clock. At some point during those 24 seconds somebody has to get a shot off, and a shot is preferable to a shot clock violation. It could go in, or be offensively rebounded. If you consider a team that shoots 45% with a 25% offensive rebound rate you could say something like only 30% of shots result in a turnover (I doubt that math is right but it’s a generalization). Say Kobe misses the shot (he’s penalized), but Gasol throws down a rebound (he’s rewarded, twice). The result of the possession is positive, but one player is penalized even though it resulted in a positive possession. If Kobe never takes the shot Gasol can never rebound it and put it back. There is nothing wrong with looking at this at the aggregate team level though.

91. some dude,

    I meant small things related to a player’s scoring efficiency. I absolutely agree on everything you said regarding individual player’s non-box score contributions.

    I’d expect that tracking those things individually would be a lot more illustrative than any kind of plus/minus, how a player functions within a unit, etc. There’s just too much noise unless you’re accounting for several seasons. Though yeah, Lee’s defense is head-shakingly bad at times.

    Matt,
    Are players like Kobe or Melo less efficient scorers in those situations than in others? Are teams less efficient when they eat up a lot of shot clock? I honestly don’t know. It’s easy to check their scores individually, but from what I’ve looked at – and feel free to check 82games.com to see if you can find any patterns – other than the last 4 seconds of the shot clock (when everyone’s efficiency goes down) there’s a ton of variation as to when players are the most efficient scorers.

    10 seconds is a lot of time to make something happen in the NBA; it’s enough for most teams to run any iso or quick-hitter they want and still swing the ball if the defense collapses.

    If it’s the Jazz, they might not be able to run through all the screening action of the flex three times. But they can still get Al Jefferson iso’d in the post, or Deron Williams running the screen-roll, or whatever other discrete action they want. Most NBA shots come down to some kind of iso or 2-man game anyway, so I don’t think the shot clock is really significant at all to most teams. Heck, some teams – think Blazers and Spurs – prefer not to shoot until the final few seconds of the shot clock.

    Some players may feel that they “have to” shoot. But I don’t know if this is warranted; just how potent, exactly, are their powers of prognostication? Bill Walton once quipped that, “The triangle offense is Kobe shooting whenever he feels like it”. There’s occasionally verisimilitude to his ramblings.

92. @reservoirgod

    It is a pet peeve of mine to attach negative (or positive) personality traits to players in absolute terms based on their play on the court.

    “They’re front-runners. They don’t handle adversity well.”

    How do you know? Can you ever know anything in such certain terms?

    Even if they have been “front-runners” to this point, is it not more accurate to say, “They have been front-runners.”?

    As written it just makes you seem more biased in your analysis. It makes you seem like you have an axe to grind.

    “The defense looks fine until the unexpected happens, i.e. Chris Paul, Rondo or Deron Williams breaking down the D and getting into the paint. Then all hell breaks loose and everyone abandons their assignments to play hero, compromising the entire integrity of the defense. ”

    I wouldn’t agree with this assessment anyway. Is it really “the unexpected”? You do not think they know they have trouble against elite point guards? Heck, who doesn’t?

    And doesn’t “all hell break loose” most of the time when capable offensive players get into the point? By definition it means you’re playing 4-on-5 basketball for a while.

    The defensive integrity has therefore already been compromised. I don’t think it has to do with everyone abandoning their defensive assignments; on the contrary, the Heat, defensively, are quite disciplined.

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94. Adam Morrison:

    I am biased and I do have an axe to grind – I predicted them to win 75 games. I want them to be as great as I think they can be and it pisses me off to see them behave like front-runners. I’ve been watching & playing basketball for 25 years – I know what front-runners look like.

    As for their defensive integrity & discipline – you haven’t been paying attention, but since I’m biased I’ll quote someone else’s opinion on the subject:

    “Kevin Arnovitz, Heat Index: They’re making a mockery of their defensive system, giving up wide-open looks both inside and on the perimeter solely because of bad decision-making.”

    See http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?page=Roundup-Heat-101112

95. That’s why they rank 3rd in defensive efficiency.

    Must suck to be a bitter old man.

96. Billy Madison:

    Being a bitter old man has its benefits!

97. Adam Morrison:

    I repeat – you’re not paying attention to the Heat games. From Kevin Pelton, Basketball Prospectus:

    “there are some storylines worth
    keeping an eye on. One is that the Heat’s early
    strength–defense–has slipped in the last two
    games. Actually, Miami was strong through
    halftime of Tuesday’s game with Utah, allowing
    just 32 points. The Jazz
    exploded for 84 in the second half and overtime,
    followed by the Celtics–not exactly an offensive
    juggernaut–putting 112 on the board last night.
    For the first time since the Orlando win, the Heat
    ranks higher in terms of Offensive Rating (third)
    than Defensive Rating (fourth), granting that
    Miami is still better relative to league average on
    the defensive end. Time and again, the Heat’s
    defensive rotations broke down against the
    Celtics, allowing Boston open looks at the rim and
    leaving Ray Allen
    unattended beyond the three-point line. Needless
    to say, that’s a poor strategy, and Allen made
    Miami pay with seven triples in nine attempts.
    If the game against the Magic showed the Heat’s
    defensive upside, the last two games have
    demonstrated the work the team still has to do.
    Miami’s length on the perimeter can take away
    the first pass out of the post, but when the ball
    continues moving, eventually it becomes
    impossible for the Heat to keep up. It may not be
    a coincidence that the Jazz and the Celtics are
    the league’s two top teams in terms of assists per
    field goal, while the teams the Heat has torched
    (including Orlando, 25th) rank much lower in our
    best measure of ball movement.”

    http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1265

    And it must suck to be the Adam Morrison of the comments section. Keep firing & missing…

98. You keep proving my point.

    You are relying on subjective analysis. In this case you can’t really do much about subjective analysis except to agree to disagree.

    I’ve seen most of the Heat games as well. I’ve also actually *gasp* been paid to write about basketball. I would bet I currently play basketball at a higher level than you.

    But all those things are mostly irrelevent because it’s an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy. You’re good at those!

    Good logic stands on its own two. You can throw as many red herrings out as you would like but they do not affect me.

    Third in defensive efficiency speaks for itself. Hey, how about we make things interesting — would you like to take a bet that the Heat finish top-5 in defensive efficiency? Oh look, now they’re only sixth!

    But I doubt you will because most people talk big but act small.

    Did you even read what you pasted?

    “One is that the Heat’s early strength–defense–has slipped in the last two
    games.”

    No one was debating that. You said they were undisciplined.

    Show me how many undisciplined defensive teams have, well, an elite defense.

    Don’t worry, you’ll have ample opportunity to backpedal.

    And your measly attempts to insult me tell me more about you than they do me. The fact that you’re getting riled up and defensive about it just indicates I have a point (many points, in fact; I have been picking apart your illogical statements quite thoroughly in the past week) that you simply cannot refute through logical means. Therefore you feel your only option is to go on the attack.

    You should ask yourself why you feel so threatened. Furthermore, what are you going to do about it? Keep trying to insult me? No sweat off my back! It’s a fun challenge not to lower myself to your level of discourse!

    “Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.”

99. And if you wish this discussion past an avenue of “agree to disagree,” how would you define undisciplined?

    “The defense looks fine until the unexpected happens, i.e. Chris Paul, Rondo or Deron Williams breaking down the D and getting into the paint. Then all hell breaks loose and everyone abandons their assignments to play hero, compromising the entire integrity of the defense. ”

    I wouldn’t agree with this assessment anyway. Is it really “the unexpected”? You do not think they know they have trouble against elite point guards? Heck, who doesn’t?

    And doesn’t “all hell break loose” most of the time when capable offensive players get into the point? By definition it means you’re playing 4-on-5 basketball for a while.

    The defensive integrity has therefore already been compromised. I don’t think it has to do with everyone abandoning their defensive assignments; on the contrary, the Heat, defensively, are quite disciplined.

    You never directly responded to my points, either. You merely quoted two other analysts whom you presumably respect. (I like Kevin Arnovitz too!) But here’s what you said:

    “Then all hell breaks loose and everyone abandons their assignments to play hero…”

    How would you prove that statement?

    If quoting other writers’ words is your proof then there shall be no more further discussion on my end.

100. Adam Morrison:

     From: @IraHeatBeat
     Sent: Nov 13, 2010 5:56p

     The prime concern right now? “We need to grow defensively,” Erik Spoelstra said.

     sent via txt
     On Twitter: http://twitter.com/IraHeatBeat/status/3581936597467136

101. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

     Appeal to authority is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative. The most general structure of this argument is:

     1. Source A says that p is true.
     2. Source A is authoritative.
     3. Therefore, p is true.

102. And the links keep coming for Adam Morrison

     http://nbaplaybook.com/2010/11/12/miami-struggled-to-contain-ray-allen/

103. And like an invitation to Wizards training camp, the nail in the coffin for Adam Morrison…

     From: @johnschuhmann
     Sent: Nov 14, 2010 1:28p

     Heat defense allowed 87.5 pts. per 100 poss. in 1st 5 games. Has allowed 108.0 in last 5. Offensive numbers almost identical (109.3, 109.2).

     sent via TweetDeck
     On Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/3877029757845504

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105. I loved this discussion.

106. This post had one of the best titles this year

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