Weekend Podcast with Links

If it’s the weekend, it’s time for another Wages of Wins Network podcast.

On Friday the cast was as follows:

Mosi Platt from the Miami Heat Index
Devin Dignam from Nbeh?
Arturo Galletti from Arturo’s Amazing Stats
and me (from this forum)

And here are the topics (and corresponding links) we discussed:

Small Markets vs. Super Teams

Dre Alvarez on the history behind such moves
David Stern seems okay with stars moving out of small markets (and I am not sure we disagreed)
For more on the competitive balance and the short supply of tall people, see The Wages of Wins [or this post from 2008].

March Madness and the NBA Draft

Ty Willihnganz had two great posts recently on the NBA Draft. First is a post on the weak correlation between scoring in college and the NBA. Then he looked back on the 2010 lottery picks. Both note how hard it is to forecast from college to the pros in the NBA (although not as hard as it appears to be in the NFL).
In addition, we discussed the benefit of trying to improve draft position by losing games (an issue discussed by Devin - in Champions and Drafted Players — and in this forum HERE).

Arturo has also written extensively on this topic. Here are some of his posts on the NBA Draft.

Value of a Draft Pick and Changing Value in the NBA draft
Ranking Thirty Years of Draft Picks
and the very important: Build me a Winner (rev. 1.1)

We also discussed the 2011 draft. DraftExpress reports each player’s Win Score. In evaluating these Win Score numbers, keep in mind the average performance at each position (average of player drafted out of college in recent seasons):

Point Guard: 7.40
Shooting Guard: 8.40
Small Forward: 9.95
Power Forward: 12.59
Center: 12.32

As one can see, Kenneth Faried is well above average (at whatever position he plays).

Our last topic of conversation was the NFL labor dispute.

This discussion began with an article written in the Washington Post (which quotes some professor from Southern Utah University). It is my hope to write more on this topic in the next few days.

- DJ

8 Responses to "Weekend Podcast with Links"

alvy says:

March 13, 2011 at 10:05 pm

Looking forward to the NFL post, and great podcast bros
Mark Wylie says:

March 14, 2011 at 1:27 am

I liked the bonus podcast but 3 guys agreeing isn’t as entertaining as the other discussions.
Gil Meriken says:

March 14, 2011 at 1:57 am

Here is something I want to understand about WP48:

If I go to basketball-reference.com and see Lebron James’ page, I can find that his Wp48 the last two seasons was .318 and .299.

This season, his WP48 is .235 about a 26 %and 21% drop from the previous two seasons’ marks.

So, we might both agree that 2010-11 Lebron is less productive on the Heat than 2009-10 Lebron on the Cavs.

That is fine and dandy.

But imagine if we were to argue who is the better player, 2010-11 Lebron or 2009-10 Lebron? This is where I feel we might differ. Because I would submit that 2010-11 Lebron is just about the same player as 2009-10 Lebron. In fact the 2010-11 Lebron is probably a better player, because of one more year of experience and one more year of practicing his jump shot. In terms of basketball skill set 2010-11 Lebron is most likely the same or better as 2009-10. It’s not like age is catching up to him, so he has somehow deteriorated. It doesn’t make sense that 2010-11 Lebron somehow got “worse” intrinsically as a player, as compared to a only a few months ago, in his 2009-10 incarnation.

And yet, I’ve seen on this board a comparison of one player’s higher WP48 as evidence of one players’ superiority over another. Especially if the names and teams were censored, and a .318 WP48 was presented vis-a-vis a .235, I think many on here would not hesitate to say the .318 guy was a superior player. But here, we have an example that makes that comparison seem almost absurd, because it is the same player, completely healthy, in the prime of his career, only separated by a few months time!

So it seems under WP48, it is entirely possible to have players whose productivity is separated by as much as 26%, and yet the players could be identical in skill set.

So my question is: who is the better player, 2009-10 Lebron or 2010-11 Lebron?
jimbo says:

March 14, 2011 at 10:12 am

Lets get those brackets up!!
Will says:

March 14, 2011 at 12:27 pm

I second Jimbo! Is Erich doing another pomeroy/sagarin bracket post?
Greyberger says:

March 14, 2011 at 1:49 pm

Reply to Gil: Basketball-reference.com doesn’t run Win Produced numbers. They have Win Shares there – abbreviated WS – a metric developed by (I think) Neil Paine based on the work of Bill James, sabermetrician, and Dean Oliver, patron saint of apebearmetrics. You can read about its construction here: http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html

Wins Produced ratings can be found here:

http://nerdnumbers.com/winsproduced2011.php

As for your question, it touches on one of the great labyrinths of basketball statistics. When we create metrics for players, to what extent are we measuring a player’s performance versus their talent or ability? At what point does “he shot well” become “he’s a good shooter”? These questions are seemingly tangential when comparing players as a fan but I bet they are pretty important to those in the business of making and using NBA statistics.
dberri says:

March 14, 2011 at 3:09 pm

Win Shares is from Justin Kubatko, not Neil Paine. And it is derived from the work of Dean Oliver. But it is not Dean Oliver’s model.
Gil Meriken says:

March 14, 2011 at 11:54 pm

My mistake. The same situation happens with wins produced, however. Last year Lebron was .441 WP48 , and this year (thanks for the link, greyberger) his is at .357, which is a 20% haircut from last year. Do I have that right?

Is it expected that he will eventually get back to that level while he was on the Cavs, and that it’s just a reflection of getting to know his teammates? Or is this the number he will settle into on this team?

Again, I agree that by this measure, he is less productive on the Heat than on the Cavs. But does that mean he is less of a player now? Or it is beyond the scope of WP to say who is “better”? Do you limit it only to “more productive given their situation”?

You have the same issue where if you censored the name of the player, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that people would take a look at the two WP48 scores and claim that player .441 is superior to player .357 . I don’t mean to imply that WP48 should never change, but this is an interesting example. This is not an issue of age or health, it seems the only factor is that he changed teams and his WP48 changed quite drastically (please confirm if 20% is a large change by WP48 standards). If we didn’t know he was the same player, we’d be arguing over choosing the guy with a 20% higher WP48 vs the lower one, but in fact, it’s the same player with the same skill set.

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