The 2011 NBA Finals can be thought of as a re-run from a show we saw in 2006.  In 2006, the Miami Heat faced the Dallas Mavericks for the NBA Championship.   This match-up was interesting because it was the first time since 1978 that the NBA title was a contest between two cities that had never seen their team win an NBA title.  And that meant we were guaranteed to have a city win a championship for the first time.

Why is this interesting?  Currently 29 cities are hosting an NBA team.  Of these 29 cities, 15 have never hosted an NBA champion.  So it is nice when a city has a chance to join this exclusive fraternity.

In 2006, the Mavericks won the first two games of the Finals.  At that point it seemed clear that Dallas was about to host an NBA Champion.  But when the Heat took the last four, it was Miami that got to host the parade (and Dallas got to be very disappointed).

When we look back on this contest from 2006, it appears that Miami’s victory was an upset.  Dallas won 60 games in 2005-06 with a 6.64 efficiency differential (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency).  The Heat only won 52 games.  And the Heat’s differential of 4.10 suggests Dallas – who had home court advantage – should have been a clear favorite.

When we look at each team’s playoff rosters, though, the Mavericks’ advantage diminishes.  The following two tables report how many games Dallas and Miami would be expected to win across an 82 game season, given per-minute performance in 2005-06 and the minutes and position played in the 2006 playoffs.

As one can see, given the rosters employed in 2006, these teams were essentially equal.  The Heat’s roster was led by Dwyane Wade, but Miami also had five additional above average players (average WP48 – Wins Produced per 48 minutes – is 0.100).  And that roster would be expected to win about 60 games.

The Mavericks were also expected to win about 60 games, with a roster led by Dirk Nowitzki and seven above average performers.

Nowitzki was 27 years old in 2005-06.  When we look at the Mavericks today – reported in the table below – we see that Nowtizki is now 32 years of age. And not surprising – and contrary to what we hear about Nowitzki today – his productivity has declined.

But as the above table indicates, Nowitzki’s teammates – relative to what we saw in 2005-06 – have improved.  Five years ago Nowitzki only had only teammate in the Mavericks’ rotation who was producing beyond the 0.200 mark.  Today he has three teammates – Tyson Chandler, Jason Kidd, and Shawn Marion – who were beyond the 0.200 mark.

Unfortunately, Nowitzki is not the only player in the Finals with better teammates.

Dwyane Wade’s teammates – relative to what we saw in 2006 – are also much better.  LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Mike Miller are clearly the key additions.  And those additions suggest that the story line we saw five years ago is about to repeat.  Yes, it appears that Wade and the Heat will once again deny Nowitzki a title.   Which means Miami gets to host another championship parade, and the fraternity of cities that have hosted such events will not get any bigger.

That being said, upsets do happen. So it is possible the Mavericks will prevail.  But the performance of these players in 2010-11 indicates that Wade, James, and Bosh will win the title they expected to win last summer.

Let me close by noting that the quirks of the NBA schedule has left us without basketball until Tuesday night.  While you wait, you might be interested (or you might not) in what was said in this forum the last time the Mavericks and Heat met in the Finals.  Back in 2006, The Wages of Wins Journal had only existed for a couple of months.  And The Wages of Wins had just been published.  As one can see, the posts from 2006 are rather familiar (apparently, scoring is overvalued in the NBA).   In other words, the final participants are not the only story-line that has repeated since 2006.

- DJ

Mosi Platt and I spent Friday afternoon recording another podcast (which we hope everyone will enjoy).  Before we get to the podcast and a discussion of what Mosi and I discussed (see below), let me offer some quick comments on how the Chicago Bulls have once again made me unhappy. 

With three minutes to go in Game Five of the Eastern Conference Finals, the Chicago Bulls had scored four more points than the Miami Heat in the series.  Yes, up until that point, the Bulls had at least played as well as the Heat.  After that point, though, the Bulls collapsed (again) and the Heat won the series in five games.

Normally this would make me somewhat happy.  As a fan of the Detroit Pistons, I am not a fan of the Chicago Bulls.  But in the TrueHoopSmackdown, I had picked the Bulls to advance to the NBA Finals.  Here is how I justified this pick:

“The problem for the Heat is that Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem are really not available (and both are more productive than the non-Supermen who are playing). So I guess I am stuck with the Bulls. Perhaps, though, this is a good thing. My sense is that most people will like the Heat. And I need to have one pick that is different than most people if I am going to have any hope of moving up.”

So my reasoning was

• without Miller and Haslem, the Heat were really not a better team than the Bulls (who also had homecourt advantage).
• and by picking the Bulls, I had a chance to win this contest.

The second point was detailed at Skeptical Sports by Ben Morris (one of the other participants in this contest).  As one can see from Ben’s illustrations, had the Bulls won there was a good chance that I could be in the lead (or very close to the lead) heading into the NBA Finals.

After the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals, my strategy looked very good.  With Miller and Haslem barely leaving the bench, the Bulls won by 21 points.  At that point in the playoffs, Miller had played less than 40 total minutes and Haslem had played less than 10.  With these players unavailable, I really liked my chances.

But then in Game Two of the series, both players suddenly were available.  And with Miller and Haslem combining for about 40 minutes of playing times (close to what each had played the entire post-season), the Heat tied the series.

The Heat – again with Miller and Haslem playing about 36 combined minutes – also took Game Three.  At that point – as I noted last Monday – I was not feeling good about Chicago’s chances.

In Game Four, though, the Bulls certainly had their chances.  And had they prevailed –either before the game got to overtime or in overtime – the series would have been tied with two of the last three games in Chicago.  But the Heat dominated overtime and the series went back to Chicago with the Heat clearly in command.

Still, I had some hope on Thursday night.  Again, with the Bulls were up by 12 with three minutes to go, it looked like we were going to have a Game Six.  But Chicago collapsed and now I have gone from a chance to win to being only ahead of Henry’s Mom in this contest.

After the Heat advanced, Arturo Galletti sent me the Wins Produced numbers for the Heat in the playoffs.   As one can see, the Heat’s wins in the playoffs have almost entirely come from James, Wade, and Bosh.  After these three – of the players who played at least 20 minutes — only Miller and Jones has been above average (Haslem – who is probably still recovering from injury – hasn’t really helped).

One should note that Miller — on a per-minute basis – has been more productive than Bosh (and this is not entirely surprising given Miller’s career).  So adding Miller appears to have helped the Heat.  And consequently, ended my hopes of another TrueHoop Smackdown title.

Before we move on to the podcast, let me note the wisdom of Andres Alvarez.  Dre had the following to say about evaluating incorrect forecasts.

1.) Beware the narrative (at least when doing science). There is an element of luck and chance to this. Trying to overanalyze it too much may not work.

2.) Judge yourself based on what you did at the time, not how it turned out (as Dan Ariely has noted). When you made your pick the data supported your claim. You did not outsmart yourself because information you didn’t know or have come out after the fact.

3.) Sample size! We’ve had fewer than 40 title teams with the data to do proper analysis. Not only that, due to the short supply of tall people we’ve generally only had a few teams each year that can be a contender and they tend to stay the same. In this case I’d be careful about going to granular; and even more so, some of the trends may be coincidence as opposed to hard fast rules at this point.

Conclusion – Don’t overanalyze it :) 

Okay, enough on the TrueHoop Smackdown.  This is discussed on the podcast, but as one can see from the notes Mosi has assembled, we did discuss much more.

WoW Network Podcast: 5/27/11

Mosi and Dave — from the Wages of Wins Network — discussed the Mavs and Heat in the NBA Finals, whether Dirk Nowitzki is one of the 10-best players in NBA history, Scottie Pippen’s comparison of Michael Jordan and LeBron James and the impact unhappiness could have on the LA Lakers next season on the weekend podcast.

You can listen to the podcast one of several ways:

• At ustream.tv,
• By downloading it,
• Subscribing to the RSS feed or
• Going to iTunes.

The Cast

• Dave Berri
• Mosi Platt from the Miami Heat Index

The Synopsis

The podcast is an interesting, hour-long discussion that covers the topics outlined below.

• The Mavericks-Heat rematch in the NBA Finals. Who ya got? The newest blog in the WoW Network, Shut Up and Jam, gave a few reasons to root for the Mavericks from the “Wins Produced” perspective.

Dirk Nowitzki, Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

• NBA writers and analysts have changed their stories about Dirk but has his play given them a reason to do that?
• Pippen said Jordan was a better scorer but LeBron may be a better player. Is he right? Let’s compare their production at age 25: LeBron vs. Jordan.
• On Friday’s episode of The Dan LeBatard Show, Ric Bucher said Pippen has an axe to grind against Jordan. A lot of Jordan’s teammates had some bad experiences with him (here is more on the relationship between Jordan and Bill Cartwright).
• As a side note, Dave notes he was The Dan LeBatard Show about five years. The topic of conversation was Allen Iverson, a conversation motivated by The Wages of Wins and Malcolm Gladwell’s review of The Wages of Wins (which appeared on May 29, 2006 – or almost exactly five years ago).  The Iverson discussion — as Dave recalled — led Michael Wilbon to suggest Dave should be fired.
• Mosi offered some insight into why players are great rebounders.

• Suddenly, the conversation took a turn to the dark side – and the immense power of the dark side — as Dave discussed how a bad book review pushed him there once.
• We noted how the dark side impacts very impressive people.  We discussed both Tom Brady and Michael Jordan. And we also discussed Paul Krugman – who despite an impressive reputation (see this poll for evidence) – seems to obsess on comments (see HERE and HERE and HERE for recent examples in just the past few months).  One issue to remember…negative reactions tend to impact us more than positive reactions.

Mike Brown, Kobe Bryant, the Lakers and the Impact of Happiness on Productivity. NBA writers and analysts have questioned whether Brown is a good enough tactician to coach the Lakers, but his biggest job may be keeping the players happy.

• Kobe said he would’ve been comfortable with assistant coach Brian Shaw,
• Pau Gasol may or may not be happy playing with the husband of Vanessa Bryant,
• Andrew Bynum seems like he won’t be happy unless he takes more shots.
• Seems like some, if not all, of these players will be unhappy next season. How does unhappiness affect people’s productivity? Here’s some insight on that subject:
  • Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
  • Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

- Mosi and DJ

The following is from Andres (Dre) Alvarez

There’s no doubt that Dirk has had a big impact for the Mavs this playoffs.  But the most productive player on the team has been Jason Kidd (check out Arturo’s blog for more on this topic). And when we look at Kidd’s career, this should not be surprising.

Table 1: 2011 Dallas Mavericks through Western Conference Finals

The greatest point guards of the turnover era (1978 to present) are usually listed as Magic Johnson and John Stockton. It’s hard for many people to put Jason Kidd at the same level as those two. I’ll agree that Magic Johnson was on another level that will likely never be touched. That said, let’s compare Jason Kidd to John Stockton.

Table 2: Jason Kidd and John Stockton Career Numbers

Table 3: Jason Kidd and John Stockton Playing Time

In the regular season Jason Kidd has played just slightly below John Stockton. Arturo has offered an explanation that the altitude in Denver and Utah can inflate players’ numbers slightly (by the way, in the playoffs, Jason Kidd has played just above John Stockton).

John Stockton’s edge in career numbers over Jason Kidd is primarily due to time. John Stockton played at a top level until he was 40. Kidd has to play another two years to match total career years, and another three to match total age. That said the two are virtually neck and neck.

Table 4: Jason Kidd and John Stockton’s Career per 36 Minute Stats.

When we compare Kidd and Stockton to average point guards we should keep two stats in mind: Assists and Rebounds. The average point guard gets around 6.8 assists and 3.5 rebounds per 36 minutes. Stockton clearly wins at assists compared to Kidd, whereas Kidd clearly wins at rebounds compared to Stockton.

The issue is how these factors impact perceptions. Stockton averaged over 10 assists a game and got 75% more assists per game than an average point guard. Kidd has averaged over 6 rebounds a game and gets around 80% more rebounds per game than an average point guard. However by virtue of his stellar stat Stockton ends his career averaging a double-double. While people will acknowledge Kidd’s rebounding as amazing, it is doubtful his 6.5 boards a game stick in people’s minds as well as Stockton’s 10.5 assists.

Okay, let’s turn to each player’s overall production.  By using Wins Produced we can agree with conventional wisdom that John Stockton was a better player than Jason Kidd. The argument being advanced here, though, is that Stockton was not much more productive than Kidd.  By being excellent at rebounding, passing and not fouling; Jason Kidd has done about as much in his career to help his team win as John Stockton did by scoring efficiently and passing well.

The point of this article is not to tear down John Stockton, who is a top 10 all time player. Rather it is to point out how underrated Jason Kidd is. People will regularly compare Kobe to Michael Jordan but I suspect would scoff at comparing Kidd to Stockton. So with that in mind, let’s end this post with an amazing stat these two players share.

Table 5: Jason Kidd and John Stockton PG Rank in Wins Produced by Year

Except for his rookie year, Stockton was a top ten point-guard his entire career — in other words, for a time span lasting eighteen years (this is a record both for total top ten seasons and consecutive top ten seasons in the turnover era)! Jason Kidd has been a top ten point-guard his entire career, which as of this season has been seventeen years. This season Jason Kidd will get to overtake John Stockton for total championships attended (they tie — so far — with respect to actual titles won). If he can last another two years at similar levels, Kidd may overtake John Stockton’s amazing record of consecutive top ten seasons. My only hope is that Jason Kidd gets some of the recognition he deserves, as his play easily puts him as a candidate for top ten all time.

-Dre

* The Wins Produced numbers used are Dave’s hand crafted numbers. In some of my other work I have Kidd listed higher. This is in part because the automated approach sometimes placed Kidd as a SG or SF (due to his height). That said, for this article I compared Kidd and Stockton strictly as point guards.

Some owners tend to fire coaches quickly and keep general managers around for years, even if the team doesn’t have success (see Bryan Colangelo for the latest example of this behavior). The Portland Trail Blazers, though, take the opposite approach. 

Andres (Dre) Alvarez (who is co-authoring this post) made the following observation: An odd note on Portland. They’ve changed GMs 3 times in the last several years but basically kept the same coach. It’s possible Paul Allen (the owner) understands that the coach isn’t as important as the person making the personnel choices. That said I don’t know if he’s properly handling the GM position.

The latest victim of Paul Allen’s approach to Portland’s GM position is Rich Cho.  Allen hired Cho last summer.  And before the playoffs are over in 2011, Cho has been fired. 

According to Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated “…Allen said he made the decision because he failed to establish a personal connection with Cho. That explanation was affirmed by the Blazers’ news release, which described a relationship that simply didn’t work out.”

From the perspective of the fan, the primary job of a GM is to pick the players (not get along with the owner).  And although Cho was only in Portland for about 10 months, we did get a chance to see some of his decision-making (and fortunately for us, Basketball-Reference.com reports the moves made by each GM).

Here is what we see for Cho (with Dre offering comments on each move):

• July 21, 2010: Signed Wesley Matthews as a free agent.
• Wesley Matthews is young and has been slightly below average in his first two seasons. At around $6 million a season he’s worth the money. He’s not a steal but he was a good value (and he turned out to be above average this year).
• October 23, 2010: Traded Jerryd Bayless to the New Orleans Hornets for a future 1st round draft pick.
• Bayless is a former first round pick for the Blazers and has not been a productive NBA player.  So Cho rerolled on this with another pick.
• October 25, 2010: Signed Fabricio Oberto as a free agent.
• One year deal, less than a mill and doing it to deal with the knee fairy. Not a great move but not like free agent cheap bigs grow on trees.
• November 6, 2010: Signed Sean Marks as a free agent.
• Not a great pick up but he was cheap and. . . . 
• January 24, 2011: Signed Chris Johnson to a 10-day contract.
• 10 day contract is not exactly a back breaker. Also young unknown.
• February 24, 2011: Traded Dante Cunningham, Sean Marks, Joel Przybilla, cash, a 2011 1st round draft pick and a 2013 1st round draft pick to the Charlotte Bobcats for Gerald Wallace.
• Traded some garbage and injured player and some picks (that will likely never be as good as Wallace) for a very productive forward. A+
• March 1, 2011: Signed Jarron Collins to the first of two 10-day contracts.
• Not a great move but pretty much just needed a warm body. Again not a back breaker
• March 14, 2011: Signed Chris Johnson to a contract for the rest of the season.
• Hasn’t been playing hot but BR lists his season pay as $27 thousand. Low risk cost.

Here is how Andres summarizes all these moves.

So in less than a year, Cho managed to

• grab a borderline star for some picks
• flip a failed draft pick into another pick a
• and sign a slightly below average player for cost
• and used some ten day contracts to put warm bodies on the court.

In short, from a personnel handling decision he did exactly what he was supposed to. Also a lot of the lows of this season (Oden and Roy injuries) were outside of his control. This looks like another case of appearance (looks good as a GM, think Colangelo I guess) trumping actual performance (he made good roster moves and his team made the playoffs). 

The numbers support Dre’s assessment.   First, here is the productivity of the Blazers’ players this year; as well as what we would expect from the veteran players given what they did in 2009-10.

As one can see, the Blazers – given what the veterans did last year – could have expected to win 57 games in 2010-11.  The team’s Wins Produced this year, though, was only consistent with a team that won 45 games.  When we look at the individual players, we see that much of the team’s decline can be linked to the play of Brandon Roy and Nicolas Batum. 

The moves by Cho appear to be a reaction to these problems.  Roy was hurt in 2009-10, and given Roy’s production, it was unlikely that Blazers could easily replace Roy’s value if the injury problem persisted in 2010-11.  But Mathews could be thought as a reasonable insurance policy (and again, Mathews did turn out to be slightly above average).

The decline of Batum was probably something that couldn’t be easily predicted.  But the trade for Wallace –who has been a very productive NBA player – could be considered a reaction to Batum’s decline.

When we look at the roster employed in the playoffs we can see that these moves might have paid off.  Here is what the Blazers’ playoff roster would have been expected to do across an 82 game season, given the minutes and positions played in the playoffs, and the per-minute performance with the Blazers in the regular season.

To put this in perspective, the same exercise for the NBA’s Final Four reveals (i.e. teams in the Eastern Conference Finals and teams in the Western Conference Finals) – prior to the Conference Finals – the following projections for each team (again, projection based on minutes and position played in the playoffs and per-minute performance in the regular season).

• Chicago Bulls: 67.0
• Miami Heat: 64.9  (74.8 if we consider rosters in Games 2 and 3 of Finals)
• Dallas Mavericks: 62.5
• Oklahoma City Thunder: 62.4

So Portland’s playoff roster compares favorably to the top playoff teams.  And remember, the Blazers suffered some issues (injuries to Oden and Roy, decline in Batum’s production) that Cho could not have prevented.

All of this suggests – from the fan’s perspective – Cho was not a bad GM.

From the owner’s perspective, though, a different conclusion was reached.  And that highlights an aspect of NBA management that I think many fans don’t consider.  To be a successful coach or general manager, you don’t just have to make good decisions.  You also – and this is probably more important – have to get along with other people.  This list of other people includes the players, other coaches, other people in the front office, and of course the owner.  If you can’t do that – as Cho discovered — you are not going to stay in your job.   And if you can do that – as Bryan Colangelo has apparently discovered – you can keep your job even if you don’t do a very good job of building a playoff team.

So if you are dreaming of working in the NBA someday, you might want to spend less time thinking about how to build a team and more time on your interpersonal communication skills.  Those skills will probably be more important than anything you know (or don’t know) about basketball.

- Dre and DJ

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Wages of Wins Podcast

• Brought to you by “Small Sample Sizes”. They don’t prove anything but are a lot of fun if you want to make bold assumptions that can’t be verified.

Super Stat Team Assemble!

• Andres Alvarez of NerdNumbers.com
• David Berri of the Wages of Wins Journal
• Mosi Platt of the Miami Heat Index
• with a last second addition of Arturo of Arturo’s Silly Little Stats

Listen to us at Several Convenient Internet Locations Near You

• Super Stat Team Podcast – 05/17/2011 – Direct Download
• Our RSS Feed
• Find us in iTunes

Smackdown

• Dave Berri is an active participant in the Truehoop Stat Smackdown. He’s put his money on Chicago winning and his fate as a stat expert is tied to this.
• Mosi Platt in the Wages of Wins Smackdown has put his money on Miami and Oklahoma.

The Miami Heat

• Mosi Platt predicted 75 Wins for this Team. Dave Berri says that with their current playoff line up, that wouldn’t have been far off.
• Turns out Miller and Haslem matter!
• Arturo actually said Miller mattered way back.

The following table illustrates how good the Heat would have been in 2010-11 had they played the players we have seen in Games 2 and 3.  As one can see, with Miller and Haslem playing, the Heat are a 75 win team (and clearly the favorites to win the NBA title).

The Chicago Bulls

• Charles Barkley calls the Chicago Defense great. Mosi points out this isn’t exactly true.
• Dave talks how in terms of players they’ve signed the Bulls look good for a while. Andres and Mosi question if the team will keep the right pieces.

Scoring, Role Players and “Playoff Mode”

• Dave’s pointed out that losing your top scorer is not always the end of the world. The fine folks at Basketball-Reference agree (based on your interpretation)
• Does a good playoff series make you the greatest of all time?
• Kobe’s had some bad playoff games. Although the one Mosi brought up didn’t look so terrible (well at least if you just look at Kobe)

Management and Optimism for Next Season

• Can anyone in Toronto really be optimistic?
• Has management in Memphis improved? And do they actually know what they’re doing?
• Mosi says Abbott’s said management doesn’t like listening to their medical staff. A shame OKC decided to.
• Dave tries to be optimistic for Detroit. A good point he makes is that it is really hard in the NBA for a team to get rid of bad players. Even an amnesty clause would likely not stop bad management.
• Arturo tried to be optimistic for Boston. Dave brings up some evidence why that may not be easy to do.
• Mosi said Boston is trying to get more athletic. Ty at the Courtside Analyst explains what that really means.

Kareem

• Despite claims to the contrary, I am actually a big Kareem fan.
• “On the Shoulders of Giants” is a great film by Kareem that is available if you have Netflix.

Enjoy!

-Dre