A few days ago I noted that injuries are often “the excuse” for a team’s changing fortunes. As an example, the Hornets were clearly a worse team when Chris Paul and David West were taken out of the starting line-up. Although injuries can spell doom for an NBA team, it’s …
Once upon a time, Scottie Pippen was an amazing basketball paper. In seventeen seasons he produced 203.1 wins. His Wins Produced per 48 minutes [WP48] for his career was 0.237, which is well above the average mark of 0.100. In sum, he had a wonderful NBA career (emphasis on the …
Last summer the Chicago Bulls made the major free agent splash in the NBA, signing Ben Wallace away from the Detroit Pistons. The same day the Bulls traded Tyson Chandler, the team’s incumbent center, to the New Orleans-Okalahoma City Hornets. In essence, the Bulls replaced Chandler with Wallace. If we …
A few days ago I introduced PAWS, or Position Adjusted Win Score. This is not actually a new metric, just a new name for Win Score adjusted for position played. At the time, I also noted PAWSPERM, or PAWS per minute. As noted on Friday, PAWS-PERM also spells PAW-SPERM, hence …
With the 6th pick in the 2004 NBA draft the Atlanta Hawks selected Josh Childress. With the very next selection the Chicago Bulls selected Luol Deng, whose production of 7.1 wins in the first 41 games this season ranked third among all small forwards. With the 9th pick in 2004 …
While I was out of town for a couple of day, Rashad noted in the comments that PAWSPERM is not going to be read as PAWS-PERM, but PAW-SPERM. And of course that would be bad. So we need a new name for per minute PAWS (Position Adjusted Win Score). The …
The Junior All-Star game was not a very competitive affair. Looking at the teams beforehand, though, it did not look like this game had much chance to be competitive. The game played on Sunday, though, did not appear to be so lopsided. Yet, the West took an early lead and …
The All-Star weekend consists of a variety of shows and competitions, and two actual games (involving current NBA players). The first is the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge & Youth Jam, or the NBA’s Junior All-Star game between the “best” players from the rookie and sophomore players. The second game was the …
Now that the Colts have won the Super Bowl, the real interesting question can be debated: What is the effect of the Colts winning the Super Bowl on the local economy of Indianapolis? This debate started with a paper by Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys published in 2002 in the …
Today I wrote my third column for The New York Times. The latest was entitled, “Star Power Can Leave Home Fans With Empty Feeling.” The basic story should be familiar to readers of The Wages of Wins and the writing offered in this forum (especially those who read “On the …