Yesterday the Minnesota Timberwolves fired their head coach, Dwane Casey. Currently Minnesota has a record of 20-20, which apparently is not what the general manager – Kevin McHale – expected. Before I get to the quality of this decision, let me just comment on the team Casey was charged with …
The myth of the prime-time performer is one of the stories we tell in The Wages of Wins. Specifically, we find that in the NBA, players do not systematically play better in the playoffs. This finding is based on a study of regular season and post-season per-minute Win Score. Our …
Who is the best team in the NBA? One could look at the standings, but this is too simple and frankly doesn’t offer much room for discussion. Various writers – such as Steve Kerr , Tony Mejia, and Marc Stein – offer team rankings that argue that various teams are …
Last summer the Indiana Pacers signed (via a sign-and-trade with the Hawks) Al Harrington to a four year, $35.3 million contract. At the time, a few people thought this would vault the Pacers into contention. Those who looked at Harrington’s career Wins Produced reached a different conclusion, which one can …
Yesterday Andrew Zimbalist (fellow sports economist), Russell Adams (sports writer for the Wall Street Journal) and I were guests on the Midmorning Show (hosted by Keri Miller) on Minnesota Public Radio. The topic of our conversation was “Coaches and Compensation” (if you follow the previous link you can listen). This …
The New York Knicks in 2005-06 were expensive failures. Given a very large budget, Isiah Thomas went into the market and purchased every scorer he could lay his hands upon. His team of expensive scorers, though, could not win [as previously noted HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE]. This …
On Labor Day I posted a column entitled “Labor Day Thoughts”, which focused on how the NCAA exploits college athletes. On November 16th – at the Sports Economist – I posted a column entitled “The Purpose of College Athletics” which questioned the argument NCAA president Myles Brand offered that the …
Note: This is re-posted from The Sports Economist: For Martin Luther King Day, Gregory Mankiw has published an excerpt from his textbook at his blog. The excerpt details research on the extent of discrimination in the NBA. Unfortunately, the latest study Mankiw lists comes from 1990. Last year The Handbook …
Growing up my favorite football players were the running backs. Earl Campbell, Tony Dorsett, and Walter Payton topped the list for me in the mid-1970s. And then – as a Lions fan — Billy Sims in the early 1980s and Barry Sanders in the latter part of that decade became …
Last September I noted the following quote from Richard Peddie [President and CEO of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment Ltd., which owns both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors]: “I’m a great believer in continuous learning. I do it mostly through reading. I devote at least an hour …