Basketball Statistics Blog

Friday Press Clippings:
Right Questions, Wrong Answers ~ A Review of “The Wages of Wins”

From philbirnbaum.com
By Phil Birnbaum
Download source here: ' Right Questions, Wrong Answers -- A Review of
“The Wages of Wins” ' by Phil Birnbaum

"... But an r-squared of .176 is a strong relationship between payroll and wins! The statement “payroll explains 18% of wins” is true only in a narrow, mathematical sense -- that the reduction of sums of squares from the regression line after adjusting for salaries is 18% of the total sums of squares from the mean before the adjustment. It doesn’t answer the relevant question, which is: what is the relationship between payroll and wins in the baseball context? ..."

"... In addition, adding more and more superstars has less and less effect on a team’s win totals, and therefore revenue. As a team gets better, there are fewer and fewer losses for it to turn into wins.

Derek Jeter might be worth five wins to an average team, but only, say, three wins to the 1998 Yankees. Again, this puts a natural limit on how much a wealthy team will be willing to spend on players, and, by extension, on competitive imbalance. ..."

"... It sounds plausible, but the problem is that it’s the rules of the particular sport that determine competitive balance. A simple thought experiment can show why this is true. Suppose that instead of basketball games being 48 minutes long, they were 480 minutes long.

With ten times the opportunity for luck to even out, the better team is much more likely to win the game – perhaps it becomes a .900 team instead of a .600 team. Or suppose the game is shortened to 4.8 minutes. In a game that short, even a markedly inferior team could win; perhaps it becomes a .450 team instead of a .300 team. ..."

"... Add up these factors, and it becomes evident why basketball has less competitive balance than baseball; the game is structured so that the team with the best players is much more likely to win. These are four powerful theoretical reasons why records should be more extreme in basketball even before considering demographics. ..."

"... Finally, the authors turn to players’ consistency. Using a percentile grading system, they find that only 12% of basketball players moved more than two grades (up or down) between seasons.

In MLB, 28% moved up or down two grades. But for NFL quarterbacks, the figure was 39%. The authors argue that quarterbacks are “consistently inconsistent,“ and the difference is caused by team factors such as the quality of the offensive line.

That’s probably a substantial part of the answer, but I suspect most of the difference is just luck. Quarterbacks have fewer opportunities than basketball players (and about the same as baseball players) – and the standard deviation of outcomes is very high. ... "

"... Some of the most difficult and interesting problems in the analysis of free-flowing sports is how the players affect each other in ways that are hard to measure.

For instance, suppose player A scores more assists than player B on another team. Is that because A is better at hitting his man near the basket, or is it because his teammates are better at getting open?

If player C is more successful than player D, is it because C is better at shooting, or because the opposing defense is concentrating on covering Michael Jordan, giving C more room to get to the basket?

If player E has a poor shooting percentage, is that because he’s not accurate, or because his team often gets him the ball with no time left on the 24-second clock, forcing him to take desperation shots? ..."

Read more articles in philbirnbaum.com.

To read today's 'Press Clippings' in Spanish,
click this week above on the 'Español' tab or afterwards click here:
' Análisis de las Estadísticas en Baloncesto ' by Ma. J. de la Rica Gonzalez.

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Friday Video Clippings:
So You Want to Work in Sports

So You Want to Work in Sports

Humorous look at the challenges of entering the sports industry.

To watch today's 'Video Clippings' in Spanish,
click this week above on the 'Español' tab or afterwards click here:
' A Fish that Smiled at Me ' by Jay Shih .

'Press and Video Clippings'
is a Series of Notes edited every Friday

To Read ALL the Clippings in this Series, click here: Categories > Contents Online

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