Wages of Wins Videocast: Chris Yeh defends the Magic?

Chris Yeh (@chrisyeh) of Adventures in Capitalism is back to talk more about the NBA. I’m sure Kobe Bryant will come up at least once.

-Dre

17 Responses to "Wages of Wins Videocast: Chris Yeh defends the Magic?"

Mr. Clutch says:

August 31, 2012 at 6:00 am

Dang, Chris is a smart cat. Loved his insight and analysis. Possible for y’all to do an Andre, Arturo, and Chris video-cast? Avg. IQ would be off the charts with that all-star lineup.
SunshinePacker says:

August 31, 2012 at 8:22 am

Your contention against Kobe being a championship centerpiece is to bring up the years that he played with the following starters: Smush Parker, Chucky Atkins, Caron Butler (one of two good players during this time), Lamar Odom (the other good player), Chris Mihm, Kwame Brown, Brian Cook and the immortal Luke Walton….Lebron wasn’t able to win a title until he had Wade and Bosh on his team. I just don’t get what he was supposed to have done with those line ups? Keep in mind the West at that time was VERY good. Contending that those teams were built around Kobe and that was his chance to prove he could be a centerpiece is like saying Lebron should have won every year he was in Cleveland (give him a pass his rookie year) and since he didn’t he’s a complementary piece (yes, i purposefully went overboard on the example to make a point).
Chris Yeh says:

August 31, 2012 at 9:10 am

Thanks Mr. Clutch! I’m just privileged that Dre & Co. allow me to hang around.
Hasani Davis says:

August 31, 2012 at 11:33 am

I would love to chip in and help out on podcast and the site content if I can, being that im a journalist and all =/

Good podcast!
Hasani Davis says:

August 31, 2012 at 11:39 am

I am 100% against the softcap now after getting into the dollars and cents of the nba.
I am leaning towards saying hardcap, but I 100% believe in bird rights. but bird rights should only hold for players that YOU draft, claim off waivers or call up. it shouldnt count when you get traded.

so now you have raided the free agency market, but because of a trade you can be insanely over the salary cap and have a stronger team. this throws off competitive ballance. hockey has it right
Chris Yeh says:

August 31, 2012 at 11:44 am

Sunshine Packer,

I’m a big Kobe fan (that’s actually what I named my dog), but the most wins he’s ever produced in a single season is 14.1. During 2005, 2006, and 2007, he produced 8.5, 10.0, and 12.1 wins.

Aside from his rookie season, the fewest wins LeBron has ever produced is 13.8. In 2009, flanked by the immortal Mo Williams, LeBron produced 23 wins, and led the team to the NBA’s best record.

Even Dre, a dyed-in-wool Kobe hater, agrees that Kobe is the best non-Jordan SG of the modern era. But he’s simply not nearly as productive as LeBron, even if you compare them at their respective peaks.
joshweil says:

September 1, 2012 at 11:33 am

@chrisyeh

Why do you think Kobe is a better shooting guard than Dwyane Wade? Wade has performed at a higher level.

http://joshweil.blogspot.com/2012/09/kobe-v-wade.html
Chris Yeh says:

September 1, 2012 at 10:23 pm

Wade has been better on average, but longevity counts. Kobe has played longer, and has produced considerably more wins. Wade might catch him, but he has to stay healthy to do so.
joshweil says:

September 2, 2012 at 1:45 pm

Longevity matters, but we can’t just use wins produced to determine greatness. That would imply an average player who had a sufficiently long career would be the best player of all time.

I think we would need to compare the players on a WinsProfit (Wins Produced – Opportunity Cost of Wins Produced) basis, and the NBA Geek goes back to 2000 so unfortunately I can’t produce that figure.

I have a hunch Ray Allen is also up there.
Charles Connaughton says:

September 2, 2012 at 6:02 pm

I think you’re overlooking how great of a career Clyde Drexler had. Sure, he was perpetually the 2nd-best 2-guard his entire career, living in the huge shadow cast by Jordan – but that doesn’t diminish the fact that he put up very good numbers for a long time.

I will give you that Kobe is the *3rd* best 2-guard of the modern era without argument, but you’re going to have to sell me hard on Kobe being better than Drexler.

Sure, Drexler was the 2nd best 2-guard behind Jordan his entire career, but Kobe has been the 3rd or 4th best 2-guard his entire career – behind a rotating cast of very high performing guards with short careers and injury problems (Dwayne Wade, Tracy McGrady). Yes, Kobe has never had a truly dominant season, but his longevity is truly remarkable. I can’t find another player who delivered a star-quality performance year in, year out for well over a decade despite never reaching never superstar levels.
jbrett says:

September 3, 2012 at 1:40 am

Charles, I’m with you on Clyde as #2, and hands down over Kobe. I’m also inclined to prefer Wade, even if more of his career is in the unknown future, Ginobili, in spite of some injury issues, and Moncrief, who really only had 7 years, but they were 7 AWESOME years.

I’ll go even further: Steve Nash became a Laker 16 years too late. If The Logo drafts Nash instead of Kobe, he keeps Eddie Jones at SG–whose level of production is similar to Kobe until 2008. Nash also doesn’t run Shaq out of town while he can still play, and pulls teams together rather than tearing them apart. It would have been addition by subtraction, as well as just plain addition.
Ari Caroline says:

September 3, 2012 at 8:31 am

Josh, do you have any more on what you mean by “Opportunity Cost of WP”? I’ve been thinking about this concept a bit. The basic WP model addresses it a bit by doing an “over-replacement” calculation for each position.

However, that still leaves significant opportunity cost in terms of minutes played over best available current replacement on the bench (as demonstrated by the Harrington-Faried trade-off that Dre and I discussed). You could extend this further if you look over the course of a couple of seasons and consider the opportunity cost of players not acquired.

Any of these seem calculable with the right data set and a good linear programming model.
Jon C says:

September 3, 2012 at 8:03 pm

Off Topic: I love the Groupon reference at the end. A business model based on 50% for the service receiver, 25% for Groupon the business, and only 25% left over for the service provider. Guess what, not too many service providers are going to keep coming back to that business.

I think the relationship between Kobe, Nash and Howard is going to be the most interesting story of next season. It is not immediately clear to me that Nash and Howard are just going to defer to Kobe, especially not if Kobe continues to shoot around 43%. Nash is probably smart enough to realize that shooting like that doesn’t win games and Howard has both a significant ego, fantastic physical skills and the potential to be an MVP candidate every year during his prime. Howard isn’t going to want to defer touches (and thereby his legacy) to SG shooting 43%. And he might not just accept it like Bynum and Gasol did.
joshweil says:

September 3, 2012 at 10:19 pm

@Ari

You are right. When a player contributes wins, he prevents other players on the bench from contributing wins. In the wins produced model, players use up minutes to produce wins. Minutes are a scare resource.

If we’re measure overall greatness, we should probably assign all players an average replacement. The player’s win profit would be his wins less the wins he prevented an average player from contributing. Kobe playing a season at .100 WP48 wouldn’t increase his win profit.

If we consider actual backups, we can see how much a player helped or hurt his team. Al Harrington really cost the Nuggets because a lot of his minutes would have gone to Faried.

If we had the data set we could easily calculate this.
Chris Yeh says:

September 4, 2012 at 12:09 pm

@Charles,

Alas! Both Dre and I overlooked Clyde (as many people seem to do). You’re absolutely right. If you look back at this post:

http://wagesofwins.com/2011/06/30/just-desserts-100-greatest-wins-produced-players-since-1978/

Jordan is the #1 SG, followed by Clyde, followed by Kobe. After that, we find Reggie Miller and Ray Allen. Wade will certainly move up the list, but I don’t think age and injuries will allow him to catch Kobe or Clyde.
George Buurman says:

September 4, 2012 at 4:48 pm

I’d like to see an article on the greatest 2 guards ever. I think giving Kobe number 2 or 3 maybe too high. In a comparison of WP48 between Kobe, Ginobi and Wade, Kobe’s best season is 16th. http://www.thenbageek.com/players/compare?career=1&direction=desc&player_ids%5B%5D=167&player_ids%5B%5D=137&player_ids%5B%5D=304&sort=%22WP48%22&utf8=%E2%9C%93.
Hasani Davis says:

September 5, 2012 at 10:39 am

I dont agree that we can gaugue greatness on longevity.
remember the NBA is a business. if fans like you, you stick around longer. example no reason latrell spreewell should be out of the game but he is, no reason jawon howard should be around but he still was.
Allen iverson, was a TORRID wins produced person, but fans wanted to see him because he was exciting and a good story (small man in a big mans league) so this is why he got to shoot 39% from the floor and go 7-27 every game and fans in philly STILL cheer when they see him.
how long you play in the nba has more to do with your sneaker deal and yoru rating on NBA like 2k than your actual effectiveness on the floor.

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