Basketball: October 2007 Archives
Man. The sheer act of REMEMBERING to blog every day is hard. I rarely get as far as figuring out if I have anything interesting to say. So I'll do what every self-respecting blogger does and just link to somebody else!
Links of the day:
Links of the day:
NBA.com has some new statistics in their box score. There's +/-, which is cool. And then there is "BA." Bad attitude? Big altitude? Consulting with reigning TrueHoop Stat Geek Smackdown champion Justin Kubatko of Basketball-Reference.com reveals that is stands for "blocks against." I think they should change the name of the category to "facials." That's what that column is all about, right? Humilation! Jarrett Jack, by the way, leads the league with three BA's per game. "I'm not sure why a block is much worse than any other type of miss," Kubatko adds. "What they should really track is assisted field goals, as in: 'Kobe Bryant made twelve field goals, and four were assisted.'" That would be cool.
- More Right Brain/Schmight Brain madness.
- Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution on the Economics of Halloween. Today at MSFT, it's "bring your kids to trick or treat at work day", so there's candy everywhere on chairs outside offices. I saw a dentist running down the aisle screaming "NONONONONO!!!" with his hands over his ears.
- The Halloween theme led the Freakonomics guys to blog about pirates, which led me to one of the cooler Google Earth mashups I've seen.
- I installed Leopard yesterday and got a blue screen of death. My employers must feel just a tiny bit giddy.
In an interview the other day, the interviewer asked me what my dream job would be. I guessed that he meant "Among the jobs that you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting, what's your dream job?", and my answer is that at this stage I want to be a product manager for a technology product. When you're in the middle of an MBA and you can't really answer the question of which class you like the most, because they're all fascinating in different ways, product manager is a pretty appealing job: you get to wear the finance hat one day, don the researcher's coat the next day, take a place at the whiteboard and play lead developer the next. Do some marketing later on, maybe through in a dash of managerial accounting, and some strategy too. You get your fingers dirty.
But let's talk about the real dream job. This is easy; I want to manage an NBA team. I know, I know, we're all armchair quarterbacks and Monday-morning point guards. But here's the thing: the NBA is an investor's dream. It's an inefficient market in which the vast majority of investors haven't figured out where the inefficiencies are. We're talking baseball before Billy Beane came along and Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball. Or poker before forums like TwoPlusTwo came along (I know that both of those markets are still very inefficient, but baseball managers have learned to value OPS more highly than they did in 1998. Having guys like Theo Epstein manage the Sox has certainly driven up the market price for players who walk a lot, and the popularity of sabermetrics has decreased Beane's ability to rob all the other GMs blind. Similarly, even if you're a winning poker player today, don't tell me you wouldn't love to be back on Party Poker in 1999, before all the limit pros migrated to No Limit Hold'em).
Anyway, back to my dream job. See, the best part is, I don't have to crack this nut. Guys like David Berri, Martin Schmidt and Stacey Brooks have figured this market out. In The Wages of Wins, they pretty much give away the secret (hint: it's not how many points you score, it's how efficiently you score). But it looks like no one is listening. It's just like baseball, when journalists around the league (many of whom were ex-players) ridiculed Billy Bean for drafting chunky guys who hit .270 and walked a lot over beefy sprinters who hit .330. The mainstream press is still convinced that Kobe is better than Dirk because of those intangibles ("Kobe is a proven playoff closer", "Kobe isn't afraid to take over a game"), and they still blame Dirk for the Mavericks' loss to the warriors, even though the fact that Erick Dampier sat so damn much probably had a more to do with that (yes, that's right, he ranked 4th in wins produced for the Mavericks last season).
In the draft, they make similar mistakes. NBA pundits are in love with potential. Billy King gets praised for picking Thaddeus Young when he could have picked Al Thornton:
In other words, NBA managers, practically all ex-players, and the press, don't evaluate players efficiently. They tend to value scoring more than FG%, they weigh "intangibles" far too heavily (thinking that Kobe is better than Dirk or KG because he "has that killer instinct" is just silly), and they are in love with "potential". They also tend to believe that the things a player does is more important than the things they do NOT do: driving to the lane, stopping, turning and hitting a tough fade-away shot gets you a spot the highlight reel (yet none of the misses do), while playing within the team offense and avoiding low-percentage shots (helloooooooo Tim Duncan! How ya doin' KG?) doesn't. Getting a steal gets you a lot of praise, while not tuning the ball over pretty much just gets you yawns (and don't worry Gilbert, leading the league in TOs won't keep you from getting a max contract).
Thing is, NBA owners are businessmen. Most of them have MBAs. They know how valuable it is to figure out an inefficient market. I know some of them are more interested in making money than they are in winning. Why hasn't even one of them pounced on this? Why hasn't some person from the school of WoW approached pitched this to an owner? "I bet you could field a very competitive team for $10million less than the salary cap. That's $10 million you save, PLUS $10 million in luxury tax you get from all those teams over the cap!" Why hasn't anyone managed to convince one of the stingier owners to give them a shot? Believe me, I've sent letters. I'd do the job for $100k a year. Shockingly, my resume full of tech jobs and a brief stint coaching women's ball in Europe hasn't gotten me any return phone calls.
As food for thought, the top ten overpaid players, according to Dave Berri. And here are the top ten "exploited" players.
And here's a (free) tip for Danny Ainge. The market is currently undervaluing one player by a TON. You got lucky with James Posey. Now give Motumbo a job.
But let's talk about the real dream job. This is easy; I want to manage an NBA team. I know, I know, we're all armchair quarterbacks and Monday-morning point guards. But here's the thing: the NBA is an investor's dream. It's an inefficient market in which the vast majority of investors haven't figured out where the inefficiencies are. We're talking baseball before Billy Beane came along and Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball. Or poker before forums like TwoPlusTwo came along (I know that both of those markets are still very inefficient, but baseball managers have learned to value OPS more highly than they did in 1998. Having guys like Theo Epstein manage the Sox has certainly driven up the market price for players who walk a lot, and the popularity of sabermetrics has decreased Beane's ability to rob all the other GMs blind. Similarly, even if you're a winning poker player today, don't tell me you wouldn't love to be back on Party Poker in 1999, before all the limit pros migrated to No Limit Hold'em).
Anyway, back to my dream job. See, the best part is, I don't have to crack this nut. Guys like David Berri, Martin Schmidt and Stacey Brooks have figured this market out. In The Wages of Wins, they pretty much give away the secret (hint: it's not how many points you score, it's how efficiently you score). But it looks like no one is listening. It's just like baseball, when journalists around the league (many of whom were ex-players) ridiculed Billy Bean for drafting chunky guys who hit .270 and walked a lot over beefy sprinters who hit .330. The mainstream press is still convinced that Kobe is better than Dirk because of those intangibles ("Kobe is a proven playoff closer", "Kobe isn't afraid to take over a game"), and they still blame Dirk for the Mavericks' loss to the warriors, even though the fact that Erick Dampier sat so damn much probably had a more to do with that (yes, that's right, he ranked 4th in wins produced for the Mavericks last season).
In the draft, they make similar mistakes. NBA pundits are in love with potential. Billy King gets praised for picking Thaddeus Young when he could have picked Al Thornton:
There is no question Thornton should have a much better rookie year than Young, but the pick was made for the future. For what it's worth, Young has the chance to be a good NBA player, but it likely won't happen this year.This is a symptomatic thing. Young might not be a very good example, because he was a pretty good college player already; it's not like he's a pure "project". But the fact that Thornton was tearing up pre-season ball scoring 17ppg on 48% shooting and getting 5 boards a game should tell you that Thornton is practically a lock to be a success in the NBA. Given how hard it is to draft a successful pro, passing on Thornton for "potential" is a huge risk. And any finance guy should tell you that $1 today is better than $1 next year, unless you live in a deflationary economy. And since winning translates directly to dollars, and having good players leads to winning, having a good player now is better than having a player who might be good in three years, and might play for you when he starts to get good.
In other words, NBA managers, practically all ex-players, and the press, don't evaluate players efficiently. They tend to value scoring more than FG%, they weigh "intangibles" far too heavily (thinking that Kobe is better than Dirk or KG because he "has that killer instinct" is just silly), and they are in love with "potential". They also tend to believe that the things a player does is more important than the things they do NOT do: driving to the lane, stopping, turning and hitting a tough fade-away shot gets you a spot the highlight reel (yet none of the misses do), while playing within the team offense and avoiding low-percentage shots (helloooooooo Tim Duncan! How ya doin' KG?) doesn't. Getting a steal gets you a lot of praise, while not tuning the ball over pretty much just gets you yawns (and don't worry Gilbert, leading the league in TOs won't keep you from getting a max contract).
Thing is, NBA owners are businessmen. Most of them have MBAs. They know how valuable it is to figure out an inefficient market. I know some of them are more interested in making money than they are in winning. Why hasn't even one of them pounced on this? Why hasn't some person from the school of WoW approached pitched this to an owner? "I bet you could field a very competitive team for $10million less than the salary cap. That's $10 million you save, PLUS $10 million in luxury tax you get from all those teams over the cap!" Why hasn't anyone managed to convince one of the stingier owners to give them a shot? Believe me, I've sent letters. I'd do the job for $100k a year. Shockingly, my resume full of tech jobs and a brief stint coaching women's ball in Europe hasn't gotten me any return phone calls.
As food for thought, the top ten overpaid players, according to Dave Berri. And here are the top ten "exploited" players.
And here's a (free) tip for Danny Ainge. The market is currently undervaluing one player by a TON. You got lucky with James Posey. Now give Motumbo a job.
