Archive for the 'Win Shares' Category

Here's a follow up to a post I made two years ago regarding the best Thanksgiving Day performances since 1987. I only looked at raw totals then, but this time around I think we should nerd it up with an overflowing cornucopia of advanced stats. Yum!

Hollinger Game Score

The most basic metric you might consider "advanced" is John Hollinger's Game Score. It's a simple linear weights formula based on his infinitely more complex Player Efficiency Rating, but the weights are a step up from something like TENDEX. Here are the best Thanksgiving games by game score since 1987:

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Here's a fun question: Which uniform number is the best in NBA history? As in, which number has seen the most production from the men wearing it?

For the answer, let's turn to our uniform number database and use Win Shares, which includes defense and does a good general job of separating out the good players from the bad ones. You may quibble with WS when it comes to individual players, but over huge samples of many different players, it's the perfect tool for a question like this.

Here are the most productive numbers in NBA history (not including 1950 or '51, since they didn't track minutes those years):

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It's that time of year again... Time to plug a ton of projected numbers into a computer, simulate the NBA schedule thousands of times, and see what kind of predictions it spits out. This year I ran three sets of 2,500 simulated seasons -- one based on statistical plus/minus (the raw version of which I posted here, but also adjusted for team using past franchise & coaching histories), one based on Win Shares (using the Simple Projection System method), and one based on a heavily regressed-to-the-mean version of last year's Simple Ratings (not so much for prediction purposes, but as an experiment to see how well the "dumbest" possible projections fare vs. complex methods). To see the individual minutes and ratings that went into these projections, click here.

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Lots of interesting material in the NBA's annual GM survey this week, but I want to focus on one particular item:

"Kevin Durant (56 percent) was voted as the top player GMs would sign to start an NBA franchise."

You can write this off as LeBron James backlash if you want (the GMs also predicted James wouldn't win the 2011 MVP -- though I actually happen to agree there), but 68% of GMs said James was the game's best small forward right now, so I don't think that's it.

Instead, they're essentially saying that LeBron is better now, but they would prefer the total value added by the rest of Durant's career (he's age 22 this season) over the value from the rest of LeBron's career (he'll be 26 this year). Is this the rational choice? Are those extra four years going to push KD's expected rest-of-career value over James', or should you side with LeBron because of his superior track record thus far (and, hence, greater expected peak production)?

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This is a quick hit-n-run/data dump post, but I was listening to Mike Pesca's trivia question on the Hang Up & Listen podcast, and I was curious about the NBA equivalent...

The question was: "Among NFL receivers with more than 12 TDs in a season, who has the biggest difference between their best seasonal TD total and their 2nd-best seasonal TD total?" The NFL answers are, according to the Hang Up Facebook page, Elroy Hirsch, Braylon Edwards (for now), and Patrick Jeffers.

My NBA equivalent would be: "Among NBA players with 10 Win Shares in a season, who has the biggest difference between their best season and their 2nd-best season?" The answer, after the jump...

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Hey, remember the Basketball League of Amazing Benchwarmers? If not, go back and check out these posts (I'll wait):

Basketball League of Amazing Benchwarmers (BLAB) Setup
Basketball League of Amazing Benchwarmers (BLAB): Regular Season, Stage 1
Basketball League of Amazing Benchwarmers (BLAB): Regular Season, Stage 2

Finished? Awesome. In short, the basic premise of BLAB came from a post about random Facebook groups devoted to 1980s-era journeymen, then one thing led to another, and next you know I'm putting together a sim league with teams comprised entirely of memorable but below-average players from the recent past. Now, after a quick 4-month hiatus, BLAB is back and ready to conclude its first (and, you gotta think, only) season.

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Last week I looked at the possibility of a LeBron James-Dwyane Wade "Big Two", as well as a James-Wade-Chris Bosh "Big Three", and now it looks like a Bosh-Wade combo is going to happen at the very least (whether it includes LeBron or not is still an open question). Wade & Bosh combined for 63.3 % of their teams' possessions last season, so let's look at other newly-formed Wing/Big combos from the past to see if they're the highest-usage inside-outside duo ever put together.

The rules:

• The combo must consist of 1 "Big" (C, PF) and 1 "Wing" (SG, SF).
• The combo had to play at least 500 minutes during both the season in question and the year before.
• The combo must include at least 1 player who wasn't on the team the year before.

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As I watched Byron Scott's introductory press conference as head coach of the Cavs, the spectre of LeBron James' free agency hung over the proceedings (and justifiably so). Scott is a fine coach and has been successful in New Jersey & New Orleans, but I wonder what he could possibly be getting himself into -- I mean, Brian Shaw was reportedly Cleveland's first choice, but in the end he couldn't commit to the team without knowing James would be back. That's looking like a smart move, because now the unenviable question facing Scott is this: if James is gone, can the Cavs even be close to competitive without The King?

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Led by Glen Davis (18 pts, 5 reb) and a superb relief performance by the bench in general, the Celtics scrapped their way to a 96-89 win in Game 4 of the Finals, drawing the championship series even at 2 games apiece. Just how good were the Boston reserve corps last night? Since 1991, here are the teams that received the biggest Win Share boosts from non-starters in a Finals game:

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Over at APBRmetrics, longtime BBR reader/commenter DSMok1 has been putting together a great thread about the expected value of a draft pick, expanding on a post Justin made last year. The graphs are really fascinating, especially with regard to the possible range of production you might get at each draft slot, as well as the odds of getting a good player by pick#, and the chart of the surplus values of each pick#. With the lottery being held last night and the draft quickly approaching, that thread is a must read.