Author Archives: Devin Dignam

James Harden IS the 6th man of the year

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The other day the NBA announced that James Harden has won the 6th man of the year (6MOY) award. Like most NBA awards, the 6MOY is determined by a panel of sportswriters and various other media. But unlike most NBA awards (for instance: this year’s Most Improved Player), this award was given to the right player.

Take a look at the voting:

Player % of Max Voting PPG Team W% Team W% Rank WP48 Wins
James Harden 98.2% 16.8 71.2% 3 0.263 10.6
Lou Williams 38.8% 14.9 53.0% 16 0.102 3.6
Jason Terry 13.6% 15.1 54.5% 13 0.099 4.1
Al Harrington 7.1% 14.2 57.6% 11 -0.015 -0.5
Manu Ginobili 4.7% 12.9 75.8% 1 0.304 5.0
Taj Gibson 4.7% 7.7 75.8% 1 0.176 4.7
O.J. Mayo 3.0% 12.6 62.1% 6 0.072 2.7
Mo Williams 2.4% 13.2 60.6% 8 0.024 0.7
Thaddeus Young 1.7% 12.8 53.0% 16 0.133 4.8
Kyle Korver 0.7% 8.1 75.8% 1 0.163 5.0
Zach Randolph 0.5% 11.6 62.1% 6 0.152 2.3
C.J. Watson 0.5% 9.7 75.8% 1 0.027 0.6
Carl Landry 0.5% 12.5 31.8% 27 0.086 1.8
Jamal Crawford 0.5% 14 42.4% 20 0.021 0.7
Gary Neal 0.3% 9.9 75.8% 1 0.069 1.7
Mike Dunleavy 0.3% 12.3 47.0% 19 0.188 5.7
Tyler Hansbrough 0.3% 9.3 63.6% 5 0.047 1.4
J.R. Smith 0.2% 12.5 54.5% 13 0.108 2.2
George Hill 0.2% 9.6 63.6% 5 0.169 4.5
Andre Miller 0.2% 9.7 57.6% 11 0.096 3.6

As you can see, Harden ran away with the award, winning an emphatic 98.2% of the maximum points. And he deserved it: Harden finished the season with 10.6 wins, tops among players eligible for the award and 7th best among all players in the entire NBA. He also posted the second best per-minute efficiency of any bench player playing significant minutes, behind only Manu Ginobili, who missed most of the season with injuries. So the voters got it right!

But why did the voters get it right? It’s not because Harden had the highest win totals or was the most productive on a per-minute basis. It’s because Harden was the highest-scoring bench player and played on one of the top teams in the league. It’s incidental that Harden was also the player who was the most productive.

We know this because of the votes given to other players. If voters were voting based on productivity alone, the player with the second-most votes would have been Mike Dunleavy, Kyle Korver, Manu Ginobili, Thaddeus Young, or Taj Gibson. Filtering out players who played on losing teams would remove Dunleavy from contention. But take a look at the players who actually finished second through fourth (Lou Williams, Jason Terry, and Al Harrington). None of these three players — especially Harrington, who is terribly unproductive — deserved their placement. But Williams, Terry, and Harrington all played on winning teams and managed to hit 14.0 points per game or higher, which means that the voters gravitate toward them.

This trend isn’t limited to just this season, this is something that has been occurring since the inception of the 6MOY award. Take a look at the past 12 winners:

Season Player % of Vote Bench PPG Rank Team W% Rank Bench Wins Rank
2011-12 James Harden 98.2% 1 3 1
2010-11 Lamar Odom 87.7% 2 4 1
2009-10 Jamal Crawford 95.1% 1 6 9
2008-09 Jason Terry 95.2% 1 9 6
2007-08 Manu Ginobili 99.2% 1 4 2
2006-07 Leandro Barbosa 91.0% 1 2 4
2005-06 Mike Miller 81.5% 2 7 1
2004-05 Ben Gordon 82.1% 3 10 13
2003-04 Antawn Jamison 56.3% 1 7 1
2002-03 Bobby Jackson 61.4% 1 3 6
2001-02 Corliss Williamson 44.8% 1 6 8
2000-01 Aaron McKie 46.0% 8 2 2

The leading scorer off the bench has won this award eight times, and only once in the past 12 years has the award gone to a player who didn’t rank in the top three in terms of PPG. The leading win producer off the bench has won it four times; whenever the leading win producer wins the award, they’ve been either first or second in terms of bench PPG. Every player who won in the last 12 years has played on a team that finished with a top ten win-loss record; interestingly enough, the winner has never been on the team with the best record during these twelve years.

Harden’s award as sixth man of the year is well earned. Unfortunately, when we examine it and how the voters acted on other candidates, we can see not much has changed. To win this award is not about scoring efficiently or helping your team win. It’s about scoring lots of points on a team that is good but not the best. On the plus side, this arbitrary algorithm happened to pick the right player this year.

- Devin

Ryan Anderson is not the Most Improved Player of the Year

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The other day the NBA announced that Ryan Anderson has won the Most Improved Player (MIP) award. Like most NBA awards, the MIP is determined by a panel of sportswriters and various other media. Also like most NBA awards, this award was given to the wrong player.

Don’t get me wrong — Ryan Anderson is a good player. In fact, here at the Wages of Wins Network he’s ranked 12th in the entire NBA in terms of total wins for the regular season. The problem is that Anderson was also this good last year — he just didn’t get the same kind of playing time that he managed to get this season.

Take a look at the voting for the 2011-12 MIP:

Player Voting Points MPG Increase PPG Increase WP48 Increase Wins Increase*
Ryan Anderson 260 9.95 5.42 0.004 4.95
Ersan Ilyasova 159 2.50 3.52 0.146 7.51
Nikola Pekovic 104 13.25 8.33 0.322 9.45
Greg Monroe 96 3.77 5.99 -0.037 -0.26
Andrew Bynum 96 7.42 7.38 -0.073 2.51
Jeremy Lin 91 17.03 12.01 -0.026 2.33

The list above includes the top six players in the MIP vote. Wins for this season were pro-rated for an 82 game season in order to make it a fair comparison.

As I said, Anderson won the award — he ended up with 43% of the maximum available points. But other than having a large increase in the number of minutes per game he played, Anderson was nearly as efficient as he was last year, as demonstrated by his unchanging WP48. There were also three other players in the top six for this award — Greg Monroe, Andrew Bynum, and Jeremy Lin — who actually played better last season than they did this season! How could these players be in the running for MIP if they didn’t actually improve?

For my money, here are the real MIP candidates:

Player Voting Points MPG Increase PPG Increase WP48 Increase Wins Increase*
Nikola Pekovic 104 13.2 8.3 0.322 9.5
Brandan Wright 3 5.9 3.1 0.151 4.7
Ersan Ilyasova 159 2.5 3.5 0.146 7.5
Roy Hibbert 7 2.1 0.2 0.140 7.1
Jason Thompson 0 2.6 0.3 0.139 6.3
Goran Dragic 54 8.9 4.3 0.138 6.7
Spencer Hawes 0 3.7 2.4 0.128 3.0
Brandon Rush 0 0.2 0.7 0.111 5.7
James Harden 7 4.7 4.7 0.109 6.2

Nikola Pekovic ran away with the award this year, and it’s a shame that he didn’t win it. Last year he was a really bad player, and this year he was a really good player; he showed the most improvement on a per minute basis and in terms of win totals. His per minute improvement was twice as much as the player with the second largest improvement. If that isn’t the definition of most improved, I don’t know what is. The other eight players on this list were also far more deserving of the MIP than Anderson was, and only two of them — Ilyasova and Dragic — placed in the top seven in terms of voting.

We here at the Wages of Wins Network are not the only ones who have noted this mistake, and this is not the first time this mistake has happened. The MIP award usually goes to a player who simply gets more playing time than the year before. The extra playing time increases these player’s PPG, which is what the voters care about the most.

Season Player % of Vote WP48 Increase MPG Increase PPG Increase Wins Increase
2011–12 Ryan Anderson 43.0% 0.004 9.9 5.5 5.0
2010–11 Kevin Love 69.0% 0.094 7.2 6.2 9.7
2009–10 Aaron Brooks 65.5% 0.041 10.6 8.4 2.7
2008–09 Danny Granger 60.2% 0.009 0.2 6.2 -0.6
2007–08 Hedo Türkoğlu 60.8% 0.063 5.8 6.2 5.2
2006–07 Monta Ellis 54.6% 0.036 16.2 9.7 3.7
2005–06 Boris Diaw 78.9% 0.067 17.3 8.5 5.7
2004–05 Bobby Simmons 62.4% 0.013 12.7 8.6 4.0
2003–04 Zach Randolph 62.6% -0.107 21.0 11.7 -1.0
2002–03 Gilbert Arenas 48.8% -0.047 10.4 7.4 2.0
2001–02 Jermaine O’Neal 41.3% -0.030 5.0 6.1 -1.5
2000–01 Tracy McGrady 59.7% 0.055 8.9 11.4 4.8

After Kevin Love was selected last year, I had some hope that perhaps the voters had finally learned that improvement involves more than getting more playing time and scoring more points. But Anderson showed the smallest amount of improvement of any MIP winner since Zach Randolph in 2004, leaving me to believe that the media panel still has no clue about what it’s doing.

- Devin

Reggie Evans: the Regend continues

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Last night, with his team trailing the Grizzlies by a point in the final minute of the game, Chris Paul passed the ball to Reggie Evans. Evans made a layup, putting the Clippers up by one for the game’s final margin. It was, as Henry Abbott called it, a triumph of Team Ball over Hero Ball, with Chris Paul — the superstar — electing to pass the ball to Evans — the unheralded bench player — in crunch time, instead of forcing a tough shot for himself.

We shouldn’t be surprised about Chris Paul passing the ball in late game situations. But should he have passed to Reggie Evans, he of the 4.0 PPG career average?

With the exception of an injury-riddled 09-10 season (in which Evans was limited to 311 minutes), Reggie Evans has always been an above average player.

Table 1: Selected individual career statistics for Reggie Evans

Season WP48 Wins Net Poss/48 eFG% TS% Points!/48
02-03 SEA 0.216 6.1 15.1 47.1% 51.0% 7.5
03-04 SEA 0.154 4.1 14.9 40.6% 47.1% 8.1
04-05 SEA 0.248 9.7 17.6 47.6% 51.2% 9.9
05-06 SEA 0.196 3.2 15.8 50.9% 53.6% 14.7
05-06 DEN 0.133 1.7 15.7 45.3% 49.0% 10.7
06-07 DEN 0.234 5.5 17.4 54.4% 55.0% 13.8
07-08 PHI 0.145 5.7 15.0 44.1% 46.3% 10.9
08-09 PHI 0.132 3.1 14.0 44.4% 51.4% 11.0
09-10 TOR 0.091 0.6 15.0 49.3% 49.8% 14.7
10-11 TOR 0.269 4.5 20.2 40.8% 46.6% 8.0
11-12 LAC 0.192 3.1 16.1 47.2% 50.4% 6.5
Career 0.190 4.7 16.1 46.6% 50.1% 10.2
Average PF 0.099 3.1 10.0 49.3% 53.5% 19.9

Note: Net Possessions = Rebounds + Steals – Turnovers

Evans is a good player because of his exceptional ability to gain extra possessions, which is largely driven by his excellent rebounding. But as we can see, Evans doesn’t score many points and is not a good shooter. Luckily for his teams, Evans doesn’t take very many shots, which mitigates the impact his bad shooting has on his productivity. By focusing on his strengths and minimizing his weaknesses, Evans can be a very valuable part of a successful team.

Last season in Toronto, Evans was the Raptors’ fourth best player. Now it’s true that the Raptors weren’t a very good team — they finished the season ranked 14th in the Eastern Conference — but that was because some very bad players. Evans was also the fourth best player on the 76ers during the 07-08 season (finished 7th in the East), the second best player on the Nuggets during the 06-07 season (6th in the West), the best player on the Sonics during the 04-05 season (3rd in the West), and the third best player on the Sonics during the 02-03 season (10th in the West). All this despite the fact that Evans has never played big minutes — the most he’s totaled in a single season is 1881, during the 04-05 season, and his highest minutes per game was last year, at 26.6.

That being said, Evans is not necessarily a good option if you are looking for a bucket — regardless of the time or situation during the game. But if you watch the clip, Evans was pretty open, and the Grizzlies’ shot blocker, Marc Gasol, was out of the play. The only Grizzlies’ player who could have affected that shot was Zach Randolph, and although Randolph is a good rebounder, he is a historically bad shot blocker for a big man. I’m sure that Evans knew this — Evans is on that same list, and we all know that it takes one to know one (yes, this is tongue in cheek). There’s also the fact the Randolph is still recovering from a knee injury, which further inhibits his jumping ability, and that it’s unlikely that anyone was expecting Evans to take a shot in that situation. When you put it all together, there was a good chance that Evans was going to hit the shot. Credit Chris Paul for creating the play, and have some respect for Reggie Evans, one of the league’s most underrated players.

-Devin

The Kings have left the building

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We’ll have more on the playoffs shortly. Devin wanted to look at a team not in the playoffs that could really use some advice.

Sometimes it's just over.

It’s time to move on, Sacramento.

Now that it seems likely that the Sacramento Kings will be moving to another city in the near future, perhaps it’s time to reflect on how much the Kings have cost Sacramentans. Recently, Sacramento area journalist Dan Aiello did just that, starting with the circumstances surrounding the Kings’ arrival in Sacramento:

When Gregg Lukenbill and other investors bought the Kansas City Kings NBA franchise in the early 1980′s it wasn’t for the love of the game.

Lukenbill, a Sacramento developer who had purchased cheap flood plain acreage in the Natomas basin, wanted to develop his property in the same suburban sprawl fashion as East of the downtown. But Sacramento’s last citizen mayor, Anne Rudin, who believed in a strong downtown city core and despised the disjointed tract developments of Los Angeles and San Jose, had attained a majority of council members who agreed with her, that Natomas’ flood plain status precluded the area from development.

The majority of Sacramentans agreed with their mayor. This one was a no-brainer.  Afterall, on the map the area where Lukenbill owned land was called “The Natomas Basin.”  It didn’t get more obvious than that.

Enter the Kings.

Sacramentans have long resented their city’s second class status to the San Francisco Bay Area and were eager to gain a national sports franchise for years. Prior to the Kings arrival in 1983-84 for exhibition games and permanently for the 1985 season, there was much talk of building a baseball stadium in hopes of luring a national franchise like the Oakland A’s to the valley town.

Lukenbill shrewdly purchased the Kings in a thinly-veiled political maneuver to circumvent Rudin’s lock on the council, telling his fellow citizens of the Capitol City that he’d love to bring the Kings west, if only he could. You see, he spun, the only logical place for an arena was the Natomas basin and the council refused to let him build one.

Aiello goes on to talk about the recent attempt by the Maloofs to secure public money for their private business, in addition to how the development of the Natomas basin affected the city. You can get the rest of the article here; I recommend it.

It’s important to remember that, despite the investment of millions of public dollars, sports don’t help out local economies. The evidence is so clear that 85% of economists agree that local and state governments should not support professional sports. Residents of Sacramento should feel lucky enough that the Maloofs asked for so much public money that their city officials walked away from the bargaining table.

-Devin

Tanking used to work in the NBA

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We’ve been talking a lot about tanking in the NBA recently. Devin’s decided to go a completely opposite direction and instead, gives us a history lesson.

Recently I wrote about how tanking doesn’t work in the NBA. While the evidence supports this conclusion, it also supports another conclusion: once upon a time, tanking actually worked.

First, a recap. Since 1985:

  • After four years — the amount of time on rookie scale contracts — about 31% of teams with top three picks hadn’t made the playoffs even once.
  • Almost 26% of these teams’ best showing was only the first round.
  • A further 22% of these teams topped out in the second round.
  • Only 17% of these teams have managed to do better than the second round
  • Only two teams have managed to win an NBA championship within four years of drafting their top three pick (Tim Duncan and Darko Milicic, who barely played during that season
  • Only five players taken in the lottery have ever won a championship with the team that drafted them (Duncan, Milicic, David Robinson [11 years], Sean Elliott [9 years and after being traded away and reacquired], and Jason Kidd [16 years and after being traded away and reacquired])

But remember, this data is only for the lottery era — from 1985 until present. How did “lottery picks” — players taken within the top three picks — perform prior to 1985?

Table 1: Results within 4 years of drafting a top three pick (1966-1984)

Criteria Absolute Percentage
Total # of players: 57 100.00%
Teams missing playoffs: 8 14.04%
Teams losing in 1st round: 8 14.04%
Teams losing in 2nd round: 20 35.09%
Teams losing in Conf. Finals: 6 10.53%
Teams losing in NBA Finals: 9 15.79%
Teams winning Championship (1st 4 years): 6 10.53%
Teams winning Championship (career with team): 10 17.54%

Before 1966, the NBA had a territorial draft rule which allowed teams to take players within their catchment area. This makes data from before 1966 different enough that we can’t include it in our sample, as some years there was both a number one pick and a territorial selection. But the period from 1966-1984 had 57 top three picks, and the results are clear: these players made a difference. Only 14% of teams drafting in the top three missed the playoffs during each of their draftee’s first four seasons. Only 14% of these teams’ best showing was in the first round. And a full 35% of teams managed to hit the second round at least once during their draftee’s first four seasons. About 37% of these teams managed to do better than the second round, with about 11% of these teams winning an NBA championship during at least one season. Going even further, about 18% of these teams won an NBA championship with their top three draftee at some point during their player’s career.

Table 2: Results within 4 years of drafting a top three pick

Criteria Percentage (66-84) Percentage (85-2011)
Total # of players: 57 81
Teams missing playoffs: 14.0% 30.9%
Teams losing in 1st round: 14.0% 25.9%
Teams losing in 2nd round: 35.1% 22.2%
Teams losing in Conf. Finals: 10.5% 3.7%
Teams losing in NBA Finals: 15.8% 11.1%
Teams winning Championship (1st 4 years): 10.5% 2.5%
Teams winning Championship (career with team): 17.5% 6.2%

All this can only lead to one conclusion: from 1966-1984, a top three pick was more useful than it is today.

But why is that? There are several factors leading to this discrepancy:

  • On average, top three picks have been playing on worse teams in the lottery era than they did pre-lottery, which means they don’t advance as far into the playoffs
  • There are more teams in the NBA today than there were in the past
  • Players are entering the league at younger ages than in the past

Editor’s Note: We’ve definitely hit differences in the league over time and differences in the draft over time before.

The teams are worse
Before the lottery was instituted in 1985, draft order was determined with a coin flip. The worst team in each division would compete, with the winning team getting the first pick and the losing team getting the second pick. Because the teams that were participating in the coin toss were the worst teams in their respective divisions, it was possible for the team with the second-worst record to be shut-out if they played in the same division as the team with the worst record in the league. That means that this coin toss wasn’t really “fair”, in the sense that the worst teams weren’t always participating. For example, in the 1967-68 season, the four teams with the worst records in the league were the San Diego Rockets (15-67), the Seattle Supersonics (23-59), the Chicago Bulls (29-53), and the Baltimore Bullets (36-46). But because the Rockets, Sonics, and Bulls all played in the Western Division, the coin toss was between the Rockets and the Bullets. The Rockets won the toss and picked first, while the losing Bullets got to pick second, and the Sonics and the Bulls were left picking third and fourth, respectively. While this was relatively unfair, it would have been even more so had the Bullets won the 50-50 coin toss.

But the draft lottery changed this. Since 1985, all of the teams that miss the playoffs have a chance at winning picks one through three. Since 1990, this process has been weighted, which means that the worst teams have higher chances of winning picks one through three than the best non-playoff teams. This weighted system is much “fairer” than a coin toss — “fairer” in the sense that it is more likely that the worst teams will end up with the better picks (although the draft remains an inherently unfair process). This means that the top three picks are now more likely to end up on the worst teams than they were in the past.

There are more teams

In the 1965-66 season the league had eight teams; assuming that the teams were of equal quality (obviously wrong, but stay with me), that means that each team had a 50% chance of making the playoffs (4/8) and a 12.5% chance of winning the championship (1/8). Last season the NBA had 30 teams; assuming that the teams were of equal quality, that means that each team had a 53.3% chance of making the playoffs (16/30) and a 3.3% chance of winning the championship (1/30). That means that, while it’s now slightly easier to make the playoffs, it’s also much harder to win a championship. It also takes more wins to advance deep into the playoffs: in the 1965-65 season a team only had to win seven games to advance to the Finals and only eleven games to claim the title. Last season a team had to win twelve games to make it to the Finals and sixteen games to win it all. In the past, winning a championship was much more a factor of random chance due to the small sample size. Bad and mediocre teams had a much better chance of doing well in the playoffs than they do today, which means that draftees had a better chance of doing the same.

The players are younger

Today’s players enter the league at younger ages they did in the past. Prior to Spencer Haywood in 1971, potential draftees had to wait until four years after their high school graduation before they were eligible to join the league. Haywood famously challenged this in court, and from then on an increasing number of players have entered the league before their 22nd birthday. While the NBA re-instituted a higher minimum age in 2005, the best NCAA players still enter the NBA before they’ve graduated college, so players are still younger today than they were before the lottery was put in place. This can be both a blessing and a curse for today’s teams. It’s a curse because 18-20 year olds are about four to six years off their most productive years, meaning that the team that drafts these players may not get the full benefit of drafting these players. But before anyone uses this argument to support increasing the minimum age restriction, it’s also a blessing. Sometimes these players are very productive even before their prime seasons. In the past, these very productive seasons would be “lost” to the NBA, as the young players would be playing in the NCAA or somewhere else. But I’d much rather that these excellent players play in the NBA.

Summing up

Once upon a time, tanking actually worked in the NBA. Teams knew this, and one famous bout of tanking drove the league to create rules aimed at preventing tanking. It didn’t exactly work — teams still try to tank to this day — but at least tanking is no longer an effective strategy.

-Devin