One of my favorite features at TrueHoop – the leading NBA blog in the world – is the daily bullet list.  This week, though, we only got two lists.  Henry Abbott says he is busy with other aspects of the blog, like writing actual stories on Yao Ming and LeBron James (which I think ESPN.com thinks is more important work).  So I have decided to pick up the slack.  Here are a few items I have seen recently that I think are interesting.

•  Benjamin Polk – at TrueHoop – has written a story on how minutes on the Minnesota Timberwolves have been allocated by Kurt Rambis.  The story calls upon the insights of David Thorpe, Wayne Winston, and some “stat savant” people here might have heard of before.  Ben says he will write more on this story at A Wolf Among Wolves.  When he does, I promised to offer a few more thoughts on the T-Wolves.
• Carl Bialik — at The Wall Street Journal – discusses Landry Fields.  Much of what he says I agree with (especially the part where I am quoted).  Not sure, though, that I agree with the following: It’s easier to score efficiently when not carrying an equal share of the load of taking shots.  The link between shot attempts and shooting efficiency has been very much exaggerated by some analysts.  One of my near-future posts will deal with this issue again (it is discussed in Stumbling on Wins).
• Lee Jenkins –at Sports Illustrated – has a very good article on Kevin Love in the latest issue. What I took from the article is the notion that rebounding takes effort and skill.  In other words, rebounds don’t just happen for a team (more on this below). 
• Alex – at Sport Skeptic – has an interesting observation on the important role consistent performance measures play in building a useful measure of player performance.  One key observation, rebounds are very consistent across time (more on this below as well).
• J.C. Bradbury tells us why he agrees and disagrees with Bill James.  J.C. comments on fifteen different ideas advanced by James.  Well worth reading for anyone interested in advanced statistical analysis and sports.
• Skip Sauer – at the Sports Economist – discusses why Psychology Matters in sports.  Skip comments rely on a paper forthcoming in the American Economic Review (the leading journal in economics).

And now for a quick trip around The Wages of Wins Network (where WoW basketball metrics – or WoW inspired metrics – are applied to the study of the NBA):

• The first stop on such a tour should be the automated Wins Produced numbers from Andres Alvarez.  I find that I look at these numbers every morning. 
• Think Win Score is all about rebounding?  Think Brandon Roy’s injury is the only reason the Blazers have struggled?  Ty Willihnganz recently addressed both issues (quick preview… the answers are “no” and “no”).
• Arturo Galletti always provides interesting insights.  One of his latest looks at the “Most Important Players for the Season so Far”.
• Andres Alvarez and Arturo are also part of the weekly podcast at Nerd Numbers. 
• Can the Pistons land Gerald Wallace?  Ben Gulker – at Pistons by the Numbers – explores the possibility. 

Let me close with a quick comment on post linked to above from the Sport Skeptic.  The result Alex reports with respect to the consistency of rebounds is still true when you adjust for position played.  The correlation coefficient for rebounds per-minute in the NBA is over 0.9.  When you adjust for position played, the coefficient is still 0.83.  Not only are rebounds consistent across time, it is also the case that rebounds vary across teams.  The coefficient of variation (for every NBA team from 1990-91 to 2009-10) for various statistics is as follows:

defensive rebounds: 0.039 

offensive rebounds: 0.106

offensive efficiency: 0.037

defensive efficiency: 0.035

So rebounds by the players are very consistent (and that is because — as noted above — some players, like Kevin Love, are good at rebounding; while other players, like Eddy Curry, are not good at rebounding).  Furthermore, some teams are better at this while others are worse.  That suggests that teams would do better with respect to rebounding by hiring better rebounders.  Yes, it is that simple.

By the way, I am working on a FAQ page that will address issues people have raised with respect to rebounding (like diminishing returns and how the value placed on rebounding impacts the Wins Produced rankings).  Much of this is in Stumbling on Wins, which I hear makes a great Christmas gift (at least, I think I have heard this).

Update: Missed an important link last night.  Ian Levy – at Indy Cornrows – offered a Wins Produced view of the Indiana Pacers.  The Pacers have done a bit better than expectations so far.  Ian walks us through who is responsible.

- DJ

After posting — Who pays attention to sports economists?  – on Sunday morning I decided that this story would make for a good Huffington Post column. So Sunday evening I re-wrote the story and posted “Should the House Democrats Have Changed Coaches?”.

The primary difference in the two posts is a thought that occurred to me on Sunday afternoon.   Essentially Mark Mellman argued that Nancy Pelosi should keep her leadership position with the House Democrats because – as the research of J.C. Bradbury, my co-authors, and I indicated – leaders don’t have much impact on outcomes.  Therefore Pelosi shouldn’t be blamed for the outcome of the midterm elections.  Although I agree that leaders are blamed too much for failures, it occurred to me that the reverse is also true.  Specifically, leaders shouldn’t get much credit for success.  And if that is the case, what is the argument that Pelosi should keep her leadership position?  Why not just rotate these positions among the available people in Congress? 

As I note, not sure I think rotating these posts is the best way these jobs should be assigned.  But I do think that leaders are given too much blame and credit for the outcomes we observe.

- DJ

Sometimes I am surprised at the answer to this question.  To illustrate, a few years ago I was asked by Steve Forbes (okay, actually someone who works for Forbes) if I could send an autographed copy of The Wages of Wins to one of his friends.  More specifically, a copy of The Wages of Wins was sent to me with an envelope and this request.   After complying with the request I never heard from Forbes, his representative, or his friend. And I am still surprised I ever heard from him in the first place.

A more recent example occurred this past week.  Mark Mellman – like Steve Forbes – is involved in politics (although Mellman comes from the opposite end of the political spectrum).  Recently Mellman wrote a column – at The Hill — detailing how the proposed changes to the leadership of the Democratic party would impact outcomes for the party.  Mellman’s argument…

Well, let’s first review the sports economics story.  Let’s start with a recent paper written by J.C. Bradbury.  In “Hired to be Fired: The Publicity Value of Free Agents”, Bradbury looks at how a baseball’s players performance is impacted by a change in managers. 

Of the 134 managers in the sample, the estimates for 25 managers are statistically significant at the ten-percent level for hitters.  21 managers are associated with improvement and four managers are associated with a decline. For pitchers, the estimates for 24 managers are statistically significant at the ten-percent level. 15 managers are associated with player improvement and nine managers are associated with a performance decline. Five managers are associated with improvement and decline for both groups; however, in all cases, the managers are associated with the opposite effect for the two groups of players. Thus, no manager is associated with improving performance for both offense and defense.

In the conclusion, J.C. notes the following:

The results do not mean that managers play no role on baseball clubs. To the contrary, no team could operate without the aid of a manager. Organizing players, settling disputes, and controlling the media are managerial duties that must be handled, and have the potential to be handled poorly. The results of this study indicate that managers who have served at the major-league level do not differ greatly from one another in their ability to handle these important responsibilities in a way that improves or dampens player performance.

Readers of Stumbling on Wins would note that Bradbury’s results for baseball are quite similar to what we reported for the NBA.  The study we review (which I co-authored with Mike Leeds, Eva Marikova Leeds, and Mike Mondello and published in the International Journal of Sport Finance) looked at 62 NBA coaches across thirty years of data.  Across this sample, only 14 coaches were found to have a statistically significant and positive impact on player performance.   So most NBA coaches – like most baseball managers — do not appear to make their players more productive.

Okay, two different studies in sports economics indicate that coaching doesn’t make much difference.  But does this apply beyond sports?

The problem beyond sports is that we don’t have data on worker productivity. So it is hard to see if managers actually make workers better (or worse) in non-sports industries.  Still, I suspect the impact of “leadership” is overstated (especially by leaders).

And Mellman appears to agree.  His column discusses the desire some Democrats have to remove Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from her leadership position in the house.  Mellman – via the arguments offered by J.C., my c0-authors, and I – disagrees.  Here is how the Mellman article concludes:

Fans are seduced by what psychologists call fundamental attribution error — the natural tendency to overweight the personal and underweight the situational in attributing causality. This psychological bias leads fans to believe the problem is the manager, just as experimental subjects believed a model train operator was unskilled when cars kept jumping the track, even after they were told the derailments resulted from a systemic cause — abrupt, random changes in the electrical current to the engine.

Changing managers (or leaders) may make some people feel better because they misunderstand the underlying dynamics, but it won’t cure the problems plaguing the Carolina Panthers, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the L.A. Clippers, the Wolverhampton Wanderers or House Democrats.

One should note that at the end of this article we learn that “Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982. Current clients include the majority leaders of both the House and Senate.”  So Mellman’s analysis might be a bit biased. 

But one suspects –given what we have learned from sports – that the impact of changing leaders is overstated.  In other words, the problems Democrats had in this last election was more about the economy and less about Pelosi.  And when the economy recovers, the opinions people offer about the leadership of Pelosi – and President Barack Obama – will change.

- DJ

The publisher of Stumbling on Wins – Financial Times Press – is making an offer this week that I don’t think many can refuse.  If you have Kindle, you can download Stumbling on Wins until November 27 for $0.00.  Yes, you read that correctly.  This week – if you have Kindle – Stumbling on Wins is free at Amazon.com.          

What if you don’t have Kindle?  The hardcover price is only $16.49.  At this price, I think this would make a great Christmas gift.  Well, not for me… I have already read this book :)

To give everyone a good idea of the many topics covered in Stumbling on Wins… this past semester I had my students in Sports Economics at Southern Utah University read Stumbling on Wins (for those interested… I didn’t make any money because of this book assignment).  I thought it would be interesting to pass along the questions I asked my students to answer after reading the book.  Again, these questions essentially outline the entire book.

Chapter One

1. Why is the sports industry an ideal place to study the ability of people to make decisions “rationally”?
2. How is a “rational decision-maker” described by Thorstein Veblen and Cass Sunstein/Richard Thaler?  What is “instrumental rationality”?         
3. According to George Miller, how many items can individuals track at one time?
4. What is the “wrath of randomness”?     
5. What is “at the heart of the Moneyball story”?
6. Jahn Hakes and Raymond Sauer asked the following “two” questions.  “…was the adjustment in returns to skill observed at the end of the period in our earlier paper robust? Are subsequent seasons consistent with mis-pricing or efficient pricing? Second, while Michael Lewis focuses his argument on the seasons around the turn of the century, how far back did the alleged mis-pricing extend? Provide the answers to these questions and detail how those answers were reached.

Chapter Two

1. What is the relationship between payroll and wins in the major North American sports?  How has that relationship changed in baseball over time? From chapter two and three of Stumbling on Wins… how is the payroll and wins relationship explained?
2.  Isiah Thomas was not very successful as general manager and head coach of the New York Knicks.  Review the argument that the size of the player budget given Isiah Thomas led to the failure of this team.
3. With respect to professional basketball, which productivity factors consistently explain player salary? 
4. With respect to professional basketball, which productivity factors explain the voting by the coaches for the All-Rookie team? How consistent is this voting record with various statements made by head coaches?

            Chapter Three

1. Why do sports teams track statistics for individual players?
2. According to J.C. Bradbury, what makes a player statistic “useful”?
3. How do we evaluate two competing player evaluation metrics?  Why do we not use the “residual” (in the fashion discussed in class) in testing a model?
4. Why is Earned Run Average not a good measure of a pitcher’s performance in baseball?  Answer the same question for batting average and hitters in baseball.
5. What is “DIPS”?  Discuss how and why this is calculated.
6. How consistent are player statistics in the National Football League?  Why do we observe this level of consistency and how does this impact decision-making in this sport?
7. What is the problem(s) with employing plus-minus as a measure of player performance in hockey and basketball?  According to Berri and Bradbury (2010), does adjusted plus-minus overcome this problem(s)?
8. Relative to the NFL, NHL, and MLB; how consistent are player performance measures in the NBA?  Why do we observe this level of consistency and how does this impact decision-making in this sport?
9. What is “the Most Important Position” in professional team sports?
10. Martin Brodeur is considered the greatest goalie in NHL history. 
    1. How does Brodeur’s performance compare to the performance of an average NHL goalie? 
    2. How does Magic Johnson’s performance (and Magic might be the greatest player in NBA history) compare to the performance of an average NBA player?  Note: One can answer this question with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird.
    3. Why are these comparisons different in hockey and basketball?
11. With respect to NHL goalies…
    1. How consistent are goalies from season-to-season?  from regular season to post-season? from post-season to post-season?
    2. What factors explain the current salary of a goalie? 
    3. What is the relationship between current performance and current salary of goalies?
12. In hockey, baseball, and football wins and losses are assigned to three positions. What are these three positions and why would we suspect that wins and losses are not just about these players?

from Chapter Four…

1. Why is racial integration a story of “innovation”?  In Major League Baseball, how did the performance of teams that integrated faster compare to those who were slower to add African-American players?
2. Prior to 1994, how many black quarterbacks had ever attempted 100 passes in a single season? How does the performance of the average black quarterback historically compare to the average white quarterback? 
3. Ten NFL quarterbacks who entered the league after 1969 were eventually enshrined in the Hall-of-Fame.  How does the story of Warren Moon differ from the nine other Hall-of-Fame quarterbacks?
4. According to Berri and Simmons (2009), what factors determine the pay of an NFL quarterback?  How does this story change for black and white quarterbacks?

from Chapter Five…

1. How (and when) was the NFL draft instituted?  Be sure to compare the justification of people in the NFL to the story told in the economics literature.
2. Should NFL teams want to pick first in the NFL draft?  Review the research of Cade Massey and Richard Thaler.
3. What is the relationship between where a quarterback is drafted and how the quarterback performs in the NFL?  Why should we examine this relationship with per-play statistics? What explains this relationship in the NFL?
4. What is the relationship between where a quarterback is drafted and how much he is paid?  How long does this relationship persist in a quarterback’s career?
5. What factors determine where a quarterback is selected in the NFL draft? What is the relationship between these factors and future NFL performance?

            from Chapter Six…

1. What is the “Pareto Principle” and how does this apply to the NBA?
2. According to Price et. al. (2010), do NBA teams “lose to win”?  Briefly explain this study?
3. With respect to the NBA draft…
   1. what is the relationship between draft position and future per-minute performance in the NBA?
   2. what factors explain where a player is drafted?  Discuss explicitly the choice of Gordan Hayward by the Utah Jazz in the 2010 NBA draft.
   3. what explanation is offered for the insignificance of rebounds?
   4. should decision-makers try and look at “everything”? Briefly explain your answer.
4. Major League Baseball look at four categories of players: pitchers, hitters, high school players, and college player.  According to Burger and Walters (2009), which groups generate the highest returns?  Which groups, though, tend to be chosen first in baseball?  Briefly explain this study.

from Chapter Seven…

1. What are the costs and benefits of stealing bases in Major League Baseball? When we look at the historical data, how do the benefits of stealing bases compare to the costs?
2. Rickey Henderson set the record for stolen bases and walks (the latter record was eventually broken).  Which record – in terms of wins in baseball – is the most impressive?  Briefly explain your answer.
3. According to David Romer (2006), what are the costs and benefits associated with the decision to “go for it” on fourth down in the NFL?  Discuss how often NFL teams “go for it” to how often the costs and benefits suggest teams should be “going for it”. 
4. Kickers in the NFL are typically responsible for kick-offs and kicking field goals.  Of these two activities…
   1. which has the largest impact on wins in the NFL?
   2. which factors has the largest impact on a kicker’s salary?
5. Is there a “hot hand” in the NBA?  Briefly discuss the research of Gilovich, T., R. Vallone, and A. Tversky (1985).
6. According to Huizinga and Weil (2009), do teams behave as if they believe in the “hot hand”?
7. Do sunk costs matter to NBA coaches?  Answer this question with respect to draft position and the allocation of minutes in the NBA.
8. What is the relationship between age and player performance in the NBA?  What is the relationship between age and minutes played?  Briefly explain each answer. 
9. What factors determine how many minutes a player will play in the NBA?  How does this result contradict the rhetoric of NBA coaches?

            from Chapter Eight and Nine

1.  Who is Adam Smith and how does something he said in 1776 relate to the evaluation of coaches in professional sports today?
2. Berri, Leeds, Leeds, and Mondello (2009) examined the impact of NBA coaches from 1977-78 to 2007-08.  Briefly explain how the study was conducted and the results reported.
3. Given the analysis of coaching reported in Berri, Leeds, Leeds, and Mondello (2009), can teams replace NBA coaches with “deck chairs” and achieve the same results?  Why or why not?
4. According to JC Bradbury, where does a baseball player’s performance peak?  Why would we expect a basketball player’s peak performance to occur at a younger age?
5. Do productive players like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, or Kevin Garnett make their teammates more productive?  Explain the relevant economic theory and empirical results.
6. Compare the view of coaching offered by Red Auerbach and the empirical evidence reported.
7. How did baseball teams ultimately learn about the relative merits of batting average and on-base percentage?  What does this story tell us about how information is adopted in a professional sports?
8. Economists traditionally assume that people are perfectly rational.  What does it mean to be “perfectly rational” and what does the study of sports tell us about this assumption?

Appendix A and B

1. Why won’t a regression of regular season wins upon points scored and points surrendered have an R-squared of one?
2. Define the following:
   1. Possessions Employed
   2. Possessions Acquired
   3. Offensive Efficiency
   4. Defensive Efficiency
   5. Efficiency Differential
3. List the steps in the Wins Produced calculation.  Be sure to define AdjP48 and WP48.
4. What are the basic lessons Wins Produced teaches about how wins are produced in the basketball?
5. Define NBA Efficiency, Game Score, and the Player Efficiency Rating.  Why are these models not highly correlated with team wins? Why are these models highly correlated with player salaries?
6. What are three objections to Wins Produced?  How are these objections answered?
7. What are three issues identified with the NFL’s quarterback rating?
8. How does one calculate for NFL Quarterbacks: Net Points,  Wins Produced, QB Score, and Relative Wins Produced.

My latest at Huffington Post reviews the results of research Martin Schmidt and I published in the American Economic Review (AER) in 2004.  Via some fairly sophisticated time-series analysis, Marty and I found that labor disputes do not statistically impact attendance in professional sports.  In other words, fans often threaten to leave when the players or owners walk.  But fans don’t follow through (in statistically significant numbers).

To the extent non-economists pay attention to my research, it is Wins Produced (or basketball research in general) that often gets the most attention.  My work on basketball, though, isn’t considered as significant to economists (to the extent that anyone in economics think what I do is significant) as this paper in the AER (the leading journal – of more than 400 journals — in economics).  And now that labor disputes are once again on the horizon I thought it might be a good idea to note the story this research is telling.

 - DJ