Jeremy Britton, an SF Bay Area interaction designer at ZURB, fell in love with NBA basketball as a kid while watching Eric “Sleepy” Floyd drop 28 fourth quarter points on the Lakers in front of a bank of TVs at a Bay Area Price Club with dozens of Warrior faithful. The Warriors took that thrilling game, but dropped the series 4-1. From Don Nelson (part 1), to Run TMC, Chris Webber, Latrell Sprewell attacking PJ Carlesimo with a 2×4, and their amazing “We Believe” run three years ago, Jeremy has inexplicably remained a part of the Warrior faithful but rarely been rewarded.

I wrote Warriors Stumble On 50 Wins? before the season started, confidently stating this year’s edition was within striking distance of 50 wins (OK, I was even more rosy with my prediction). The naysayers came out of the woodwork, quieted down briefly during the Warriors’ 6-2 start, and now are back in full force. Today the Warriors have a losing 22-28 record and dim playoff hopes. So I’m like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin.

To put it lightly, I’m taking some heat for that little prediction. From my perspective this Warrior season really sucks; not because it didn’t turn out as I wanted–it rarely does–but for at least three distinct, more painful reasons:

• Low expectations appear justified (‘the Warriors are just losers’)
• The losing appears to validate prior assumptions, especially for David Lee’s naysayers
• It seems to create a red herring suggesting Wins Produced doesn’t work

This blog, sports economics in general, and behavioral economics at large, have established that savvy data analysis can tell us things our lying eyes can’t. Some people just refuse to believe these crazy insights because it runs contrary to the conventional wisdom they’re comfortable with. Often they don’t understand the analysis either.

Baseball management famously showed how judicious use of savvy data analysis can be exploited for tremendous advantage–most notably Billy Beane in Oakland. We have yet to see that applied in practice to professional basketball. Managers and fans prefer to bury their heads in the sand and rely on widely shared truisms (which by its nature cannot be exploited for advantage because everybody believes it).

Before we look at this year’s Warriors I want to reiterate two vital insights Wins Produced teaches us:

• Basketball is a game of possessions (just like baseball is a game of outs), yet people consistently ignore this. Players help you win games note just by scoring points, but by gaining possessions and not losing them.
• Individual scoring totals are vastly overrated. It matters how a player scores their points (i.e. how efficiently they use each possession to do so). This is an easy mistake to make because after all, how do teams win games? By scoring the most points. However, this is not true for individual player contributions.

With that rant behind me, let’s see what the data can tell us about this year’s Warrior team. I’m going to keep this simple by comparing what these players did last year–which is a terrific predictor for what they should do this year–against what they’ve actually done this year.

Cool, we see based on last year the Warriors should have about 30.2 wins, which would project out to about 49.5 wins on the season. Not quite 50, but very close. We even see three players doing better than last year–Monta Ellis, Stephen Curry and Vladimir Radmanovic–to the tune of 5.0 additional wins. That’s awesome.

So what went wrong? It’s clear this squad is only producing 20.3 wins (their actual total is 22 wins). A few disasters that explain this are obvious from the list:

• David Lee is playing the worst basketball of his pro career (5.2 fewer wins). His shooting percentage and defensive rebounding are at career lows. According to Hoopdata.com he is taking far fewer shots at the rim and his jump-shot has fallen apart. Why? Likely injury. Lee suffered a freak accident in New York getting Wilson Chandler’s tooth lodged in his elbow. He was hospitalized for days and continues to wear a large bandage.
• Dorell Wright is also having the worst season of his pro career (2.5 fewer wins). After signing a $12 million contract proclaiming the Warriors would be “a great situation for me to showcase my talent and show everybody what else I bring to the table other than being a spot-up shooter and defender,” Wright has wobbled. He’s continued to improve his three-point shooting, but his mid-range shooting has been terrible (44 of 162 from ten to 23 feet), his rebounding is at a career low, and his turnover rate ties a career high.  
• Reggie Williams hasn’t matched flashes we saw late last season (2.0 fewer wins). We only got 779 minutes of Williams in 2009-10, but his play was exciting and very productive for a rookie (.182 WP48 or Wins Produced per 48 minutes). His shooting is different–fewer shots at the rim, more threes–but the difference is a wash. It’s Williams lack of hustle on defense (half the steals) and rebounding (only 76% the defensive boards) that have knocked him down a couple of pegs to a below average producer.

Of the 9.9 expected wins that we have yet to see, 9.8 can be traced to the play of Lee, Wright, and Williams. 

Does the Warriors’ losing prove David Lee really wasn’t any good? Not at all. We haven’t even seen the real David Lee (except for flashes during the first eight games before he got hurt). As his elbow heals we should expect to see his shooting and rebounding bounce back.

Dorell Wright is scoring more points in total–no more than we should’ve expected when doubling his minutes on the floor–but is doing so less efficiently. Fans of Wright would point out what a great three point shooter he’s become–which is true–but overlook his less disciplined poor shooting inside the arc (27% on jumpers outside the key).

Reggie Williams may not have been that good after all (remember, his entire NBA career consisted of fewer than 1,000 minutes before this season), or he just needs coaching to remind him to hustle on defense and on the glass while attacking the rim for high percentage shots. He’s a wild card we’ll have to wait and see about.

All in all, the injury to Lee has been the biggest culprit holding the Warriors back this season, with undisciplined play by Wright and Williams adding insult to that injury. As Lee gets healthy, we should expect a late season surge reminiscent of a 50-win team (okay, how about a 40-win team?), but it may be too late to secure a playoff spot this year.

- Jeremy Britton

The Philadelphia 76ers declined from 41 wins in 2008-09 to 27 wins in 2009-10.  As Sam Cohen noted last June, given the departure of Andre Miller – and the failure to add any productive players – this decline was expected.

Sam went on to note that the primary trade the Sixers made last summer – a trade that sent Samuel Dalembert to the Sacramento Kings for Andres Nocioni and Spencer Hawes – was not likely to help.  After all, Dalembert produced 10.6 wins last season while Nocioni and Hawes posted WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] marks that were in the negative range.

Despite this negative assessment of Philadelphia’s future, after 50 games in 2010-11 the Sixers are clearly not awful.   The team has already won 23 games.  Furthermore, the team’s efficiency differential (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency) is 0.3; a mark consistent with a team that will win about 42 games across an entire season. 

Such modest success leads one to ask: How can a team trade away its second most productive player for – as Sam put it – “a bag of chips” and then improve?

To answer this question, let’s move from efficiency differential to Wins Produced. As the following table indicates, the Sixers in 2010-11 are receiving above average production (average WP48 is 0.100) from five different players.

The production of Andre Iguodala is hardly surprising.   Since entering the league in 2004-05, Iguodala has posted the following WP numbers:

• 2004-05: 14.1
• 2005-06: 13.5
• 2006-07: 12.5
• 2007-08: 11.7
• 2008-09: 13.1
• 2009-10: 14.4

Across these six seasons Iguodala has averaged 13.2 Wins Produced.  This season Iguodala has produced 7.2 wins after 50 games, and if he maintains his WP48 mark of 0.243, he will finish the season with… yes, 13.2 Wins Produced.  So Iguodala is essentially doing what he has always done.

The other veteran members who are posting above average marks, though, are not posting the same numbers we saw last year.  Elton Brand and Thaddeus Younger were in the negative range last season, while Jrue Holiday was below average.  Once again, though, each is above average this season.  And it is the improvement in the production of this trio that explains virtually the entire difference between what we are observing for this team and what we would have expected given these player’s performance last year.

Before we get to the play of this trio, we should emphasize that Sam’s analysis of last June’s trade was essentially correct.  In other words, Spencer Hawes – the player who is starting at center for the Sixers and who was probably the primary player the Sixers wanted for Dalembert – is still a very unproductive player.  So this trade (despite the improvement we see with respect to Nocioni) hasn’t appeared to help.

But the aforementioned trio has gotten better.  When we look at Brand – the player who has improved the most – the explanation seems pretty easy.  Brand was a very productive player when he was with the LA Clippers (and the Bulls before that).   And as will be shown in a moment, Brand has essentially returned to what we saw in 2006-07.  Yes, Brand appears to have recovered from his injury problems (and it only took three or four years).

The Holiday story also seems easy to explain.  Players initially improve with age, and Holiday is only twenty years old.

Age could also play a role with respect to Young.  After all, Young is only 22 and players tend to improve until their mid-twenties.  But the Young story seems more complicated than this. 

To see this point, let’s consider the specific stats generated by Brand and Young.  The following table compares Brand and Young – after 50 games this season – to what we saw from each player in the past. 

For Brand we are comparing this year’s performance to what we have seen across his career and during his last above average season (2006-07).  As one can see, across his entire career Brand has been an efficient scorer who is above average on the boards.  And that is what Brand is doing this year.  So once again, it appears Brand is now healthy (although older).

And again, the Young story is different.  Young entered the league in 2007-08 and posted above average numbers during that initial season.  But the past two years saw his production slip dramatically.  And now in 2010-11, his production has returned to what we saw three years ago.  So what happened?

At this point in the story we need to review something said in The Wages of Wins and reported in this forum in 2006:

One cannot end the analysis when one has measured the value of player performance. Knowing the value of each player is only the starting point of analysis. The next step is determining why the player is productive or unproductive. In our view, this is where coaching should begin. We think we can offer a reasonable measure of a player’s productivity. Although we have offered some insights into why players are productive, ultimately this question can only be answered by additional scrutiny into the construction of a team and the roles a player plays on the floor.

To summarize: Wins Produced tells us how productive a player has been.  To understand why, we need to look into the factors that determine player performance.  Given the consistency of NBA players across time (relative to what we see in football and baseball), the primary factor that determines a player’s success is the player’s individual talent.  And this is why, in general, player performance doesn’t change much over time.  Players like Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Dwight Howard are very productive season after season because they are very good players.  And players like Jason Kapono, Darius Songaila, and Spencer Hawes (all players currentlyemployed by the Sixers) are not very productive players season after season; and one suspects that is because they are not relatively talented (relative to other NBA players, not relative to you and I).

But although players tend to be consistent, when we observe a player like Thaddeus Young offering different levels of productivity we have to look beyond just the talents of the player in question.  And again, that is where coaching comes into the picture. At least, we need the insights of someone who has spent a fair amount of time watching the Sixers play.

As I noted in this week’s podcast, I watch about one NBA game every night.  But since there are 30 NBA teams, it is not often the Sixers are the game on TV in Utah.  It is a different story for Tom Sunnergren.  Tom writes for Philadunkia, and as someone who writes extensively about the Sixers, Tom seemed like a perfect person to ask about the changes in Young’s production.  And thankfully, Tom was gracious enough to send along some thoughts.

“…the Thaddeus Young resurgence is pretty fascinating. As are the Sixers themselves actually. I would venture to guess that they’re the NBA team that is most outpacing their preseason projections. They’ve been a pleasant surprise.

Thad’s success this season is, to my mind, driven by a few factors. He’s

• not shooting three-pointers anymore, which is excellent news because he was never very good at making them (Doug Collins told him explicitly to knock the three off and he complied)
• he’s rebounding better than he ever has
• he, like the rest of the team, simply doesn’t turn the ball over (this is widely attributed to Collins’ influence as well)
• he’s just finishing incredibly well. According to hoopdata, he’s got a 73 percent field goal percentage at the rim. According to my eyeballs, he ends every fast-break with a devastatingly awesome dunk.

Why has he improved in these areas? I understand that there’s not a lot in the data that suggests Doug Collins is a terribly effective coach, but he seems to have done great work with Thad. After a couple coaches (Mo Cheeks and Eddie Jordan) who encouraged him to develop an outside game, Collins has allowed him to get back to his game, one predicated on athleticism and attacking. The transformation isn’t total (he still takes more deep twos than I’m comfortable with), but after a couple years of jamming a square peg into a round hole, he looks (in the game and on the stat sheet) like a tool that’s again being used properly.

I also credit part of his rise to his reduced minutes. He looks faster at 25 minutes a night than he did at 35. Worth mentioning that in his encouraging rookie year he only played 21 a game. Thad, for his part, disagrees with this analysis.”

So there you have it.  According to Tom, it is possible Young was a victim of poor coaching the past two years; or at least, coaches who seemed determined to ask Young to do things he couldn’t do.  Collins has reversed this coaching focus and asked Young to go back to what he was as a rookie. Once again, I want to thank Tom for these insights. 

Let me close with some final thoughts on this team.  As Tom also noted, Young’s contract is up when the season ends.  That is also true of Spencer Hawes.  Of the two, it appears the Sixers should let Hawes go and re-sign Young.  For the Sixers to become title contenders, though, more has to be done.  One should expect Holiday and Evan Turner (the latter is above average as a rookie) to get better with age.   But even if Holiday and Turner do get better, the Sixers still have a problem at center.  So in the off-season, it is that position the team probably needs to address. 

If Philadelphia can find just an average center (average WP48 is 0.100), this team could become close to a 50-win team (even if Turner and Holiday don’t offer any more).   And if Holiday and Turner keep progressing, well, then the Sixers should be better than a 50-win team.

And that is all the Sixers need to become a lower-ranked contender in the East.  Just to summarize, to move from awful to contending status…

• Brand had to get healthy
• Young had to revert to what he was in the past (at the urging of his coach)
• Holiday (and eventually Turner) had  to improve with age
• and this team needs someone else besides Hawes in the middle

When all of these things have finally happened (and as noted, some already have), the Sixers will be back towards the top in the East.  Or at least, I think they will not be anywhere near awful.  

- DJ

Mosi Platt of the Miami Heat Index, Dre (Andres Alvarez) from Nerd Numbers, and I got together for a podcast this weekend.  Here is the link:

http://www.nerdnumbers.com/podcasts/STAT_02_05_2011.mp3

but of course – as Dre always notes — smart readers like you are using the RSS feed at:
http://www.nerdnumbers.com/podcasts/stat_feed.xml

(Advanced->Subscribe to Podcast in iTunes)

Both Dre and Mosi offered additional links at their website.  Here are the links Dre posted:

• http://tinyurl.com/5vxcg26 – Bird has the ball! Do turnovers matter?
• Dr. Berri and Mosi both wanted Ellis?
• http://tinyurl.com/5rnb7eh – Mosi  explains how the Spurs front office doesn’t’ deserve credit.
• http://tinyurl.com/67o3sme – Andersen’s Neck Tattoo.
• http://tinyurl.com/6gp2u4l - J.R. Smith’s neck tattoo.
• http://tinyurl.com/4pt29t6 – Mosi is helping LeBron take notes.
• http://tinyurl.com/4wcujlz – Internet Comments.
• http://tinyurl.com/49a6pe4 – Mosi did predict 75 wins for the Heat.
• http://tinyurl.com/4bc9g5f - Mike Miller’s injury may have hurt
• The Prof’s got some street ball cred!
• http://tinyurl.com/6y3vaot – Goalie’s Fighting!
• My dog decided to disagree on the hockey comments and my wife was trying to quiet him down. Good stuff.
• http://tinyurl.com/6e3gkgt – Does a top pick help aka. “Cleveland’s screwed”
• We talk a little Superbowl. Mosi had this followup “I should’ve mentioned that Dolphins beat GB & lost 2 PIT (on controversial TD)”

And here are Mosi’s extra links:

• David Aldridge’s nba.com column with selections for the All-Star reserves.
• My twitter debate with David Aldridge.
• I mention a story Bill Walton told about John Wooden not being concerned with turnovers. I believe this is what he was talking about. Looks like me or Bill Walton butchered the story.

Hope everyone enjoys listening and clicking on the links.

- DJ

Editor’s Note: The following was written by Andres (Dre) Alvarez and originally posted at Nerd Numbers.  In this post, Dre reviews the players who should have – and who should not have – been named to the All-Star game (according to Wins Produced).  In addition to Dre’s discussion of “All-Star Snubs”, I would like to let everyone know about the following:

• Devin Dignam – at NBAEh? – has written a great discussion of the Rookie-Sophomore game. In addition, Devin has also offered a discussion of Championships and the NBA Draft.  Finally, it should be noted tha Devin has created a “Required Readings” page that is well worth reading (it is required, after all).
• Arturo Galletti – from Arturo’s Amazing Stats – has been offering posts that allow on to visualize NBA player evaluations.
• Ty Willihnganz – at Courtside Analyst – has a series of posts evaluating all-time great NBA players (like Magic, MJ, Kareem, Sir Charles, etc…).  He also has a post looking at what happens when a star player departs a team.
• At the Miami Heat Index, Mosi Platt also offers a post examining all-time great NBA players.  More specifically, Mosi discusses the 50 greatest players in NBA history.
• For those who want a discussion of something more recent, Ian Levy – at Hickory High – has a recurring feature called “Last Night’s Numbers”. This feature reviews the numbers from each game played in the NBA (and you can’t get more recent than this).

All of this writing has been offered within the past 48 hours.  So hopefully a quick tour around the Wages of Wins Network is becoming a part of your daily routine.  If you miss a day or so, you will miss a great story (or two or three or four).

One last note before we get to Dre’s coverage of the All-Star selections.  As Dre notes, my actual job is reducing how much time I have for blogging.  Currently I am scheduled to write (by myself and with a number of co-authors), at least ten papers.  These all need to be finished by the end of June.  In addition, I am also teaching more than 200 undergraduates and graduate students this semester.  I don’t plan on giving up writing for this blog and Huffington Post, but I suspect the amount I write on-line has to decline. I do want to thank everyone for making this forum a part of their day.  And hope on days I don’t post you spend a bit more time looking around The Wages of Wins Network.

I don’t know if Dr. Berri has said this in any of his posts but he is actually quite busy with real professor work and as such has let some of us bench players fill in on some his posts. That topic seems rather valid today as the NBA announced the coaches’ picks for the reserve All-Stars. The starters are picked by the fans and they may use whichever metric they choose. The coaches are not allowed to vote for their own players and as such we’d expect they’d vote for the best talents rather than their favorites. So did the coaches pick the top talents in the league or were they swayed by other factors? Let’s take a look at how the final rosters shook out and if the coaches or fans left anybody deserving at home.

Table 1: Western Conference All-Stars. Players in bold are “suspect” picks. Rebounds, assists and points listed per 36 minutes.

Table 2: Eastern Conference All-Stars. Players in bold are “suspect” picks. Rebounds, assists and points listed per 36 minutes.

The players in bold did not make the top twenty in wins produced for their conference. We see that both out East and out West the fans picked one player that had no business starting in Amare and Carmelo. When it came to rectifying the fans mistakes the coaches actually did an alright job. With the exception of Dirk, Bosh and Johnson all of the replacements were sound. Out East they may have cheated a little and just picked all of the starting Celtics minus Shaq. Dirk is not even that terrible of a pick as he is a bit rusty and was in the top twenty before falling to injury. Chris Bosh is a tad iffy as a call but again he is not far removed from the top twenty. The real question mark however is Joe Johnson. Joe Johnson is playing above average, which is exactly the kind of positive language you want to use for a max contract guard. In returning to the Yay Points! Hypothesis we see his only major distinguishing characteristic is that he hit over 20.0 points per 36 minutes. It seems coaches can be fooled by points as well.

Having seen the All-Stars themselves we should take a look at the top players in each conference and see which players missed the cut and see if we can figure out why.

Table 3: Top 20 Players out West. Possible Snubs in Bold. Rebounds, Assists and Points in Per 36 Minutes.

Table 4: Top 20 Players out East. Possible Snubs in Bold. Rebounds, Assists and Points in Per 36 Minutes.

I was careful to say possible snubs in the table captions. A snub is a player that should have been picked instead of more deserving players. I’ll let you guys pick at the top twenty lists to agree or disagree with who should have gotten in. I would like to list a few players I think were snubbed.

Western Conference Snubs

• Kevin Love – Head and shoulders the best player in the league right now. He is scoring over 20 points a game on a TS% of 59.3%. He’s pulling down over 15 boards a game. I have no clue what the heck else the coaches want in a player. Epic failure by both the fans, who picked Melo over him and the coaches, who apparently are crazy.  Editor’s Note: Since Dre wrote this, Love was named to the team by David Stern as the replacement for Yao Ming.
• Zach Randolph – Another player snubbed for players on better teams. Zach Randolph is putting up amazing numbers and has Arturo Galletti (@ArturoGalletti) saying crazy things on twitter like that the Grizzlies may actually be contenders.
• Lamar Odom – This may inadvertently be the fault of the fans over the coaches. Lamar Odom could arguably have fit in as a small forward next to an amazing front court of Love, Griffin and Randolph. However, the fans picked two small forwards as their starters. Lamar is still a top four big out West though and definitely deserved a nod. He keeps up his streak of being underappreciated.
• Steve Nash – He just managed to go toe to toe with Love and Howard for the month of January. Chris Paul is the undisputed top point guard but Nash is hands down the second best guard out West. The confusing thing is his scoring and assist numbers are great. The fans get a reprieve as Chris Paul was the obvious starter at PG but the coaches fail here.

In the case of Love, Randolph and Nash the players seem to suffer from not having a strong enough team. In short, the coaches don’t realize how much they need to credit these players. The same is actually true in Odom’s case. The fans and coaches agree Kobe is important and probably Gasol as well, but they may not realize how much Odom contributes on that team.

Eastern Conference Snubs

Kris Humphries – A classic story of an underrated player good at getting boards. Part of his problem is that he is not getting enough minutes. Unfortunately both coaches and fans are swayed by per game numbers and Humphries is below 10 on both points and rebounds. Looking at his per 36 numbers shows how well he’s actually been playing.

Landry Fields – Dr. Berri said Landry Fields for the hall of fame on the podcast (he may have been being sarcastic) I love Landry Fields and he belongs in this game. While he did just get his points per game to above 10 his stat line doesn’t have the classic 15.0+ points or 10+ assists that coached tend to hope for in guards. He is an amazing talent that may be partially responsible for Amare starting.    Editor’s Note: I also said Landry Fields will never be in the Hall of Fame.  The “never” part of this statement was disputed.

Josh Smith or Andre Iguodala – I list this one as a tie. If the coaches wanted a guard-forward, then Andre Iguodala was a much better choice than Joe Johnson. If the coaches wanted a Hawk then Josh Smith was a much better option. Sure, they don’t hit 20 points per game but it turns out that the game involves other things and these two players are actually quite good at them.

Out East it looks like the snubs were more forgivable than out West. David Stern will be able to name a replacement for Yao and unfortunately I don’t think he’ll be able to right all wrongs with just one pick. The clear choice is of course Kevin Love, who sadly isn’t getting much love from the fans or the coaches. Out East all I can say is that Joe Johnson gets to be part of yet another bad choice made by NBA decision makers.

-Dre