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Saturday, October 29, 2011

NBA Lockout: Three Ds

I have already explained The Real Deal About the NBA Lockout: my February prediction that there would be a long NBA lockout has proven to be prescient and I am confident that my other February prediction--that the lockout will not end until the players accept the reality that the NBA's broken business model must be fundamentally changed--will also prove to be prescient.

It is funny to do an internet search pertaining to the lockout and see how many so-called experts have wrongly predicted over the past few months that the lockout was about to end--but it is a bit disturbing to read/hear some of the nonsense that has been spewed about the causes, effects and ultimate resolution of the lockout; the media spin about the lockout could make even the most levelheaded, balanced person dizzier than Charlie Sheen on a bender. NBAPA President Derek Fisher boldly said that the NBA owners are lying and Dwyane Wade allegedly told Commissioner David Stern not to point at him: the players sound like whiny kindergartners ("liar, liar pants on fire"; "stop pointing at me") and yet the media full court press--blithely ignoring how broken the NBA's business model is--is mainly focused on attacking the owners, culminating in Bryant Gumbel's ludicrous, poorly thought-out (and antisemitic) rant against Stern: comparing Stern to a "plantation overseer" is offensive, a falsehood that simultaneously diminishes the true suffering of Black slaves in the American South while also slurring a Commissioner whose league has consistently been at the forefront in terms of hiring Black executives and coaches. Gumbel's attack against Stern comes straight out of the Louis Farrakhan playbook--portraying Jews as exploiters of Blacks--and Gumbel's consistent track record of expressing such bigoted attitudes would have terminated his career a long time ago if his chosen target were any group other than Jews (just imagine a White commentator speaking similarly about a Black person or anyone saying anything remotely derogatory regarding homosexuals).

Commissioner Stern just announced the cancellation of another two week block of games, meaning that the lockout has now wiped out not only the entire preseason but also the first month of the regular season. The only question now is how long it will take for the players to accept the reality that there will be no NBA games until they cooperate with the owners to fix the league's broken business model.

While we all wait for the players to come to their senses, the current situation can be summarized by looking at three Ds: a dream, a delusion and a diversion.

The dream is the players' apparent belief that they will ever recoup the money that they have already lost as a result of the cancelled games; the cold water that will eventually strike their collective faces is the reality that the deal they will eventually sign will be proportionately worse than whatever the NBA's best offer was before any games were cancelled: the players, not the owners, will ultimately "pay" for the lockout. Also, most of the owners will be able to regain their losses eventually over a period of years after the league's business model is fixed but most of the players will not be in the league long enough to make up the wages they are currently losing; the average NBA career lasts less than five years, so instead of applauding Wade's alleged toughness, the league's rank and file players should be pointing their fingers at Wade for all of the money he has helped take out of their pockets. There is much talk about the rift between big market and small market owners but the untold lockout story is that this labor dispute--like the previous one in 1998-99--is in many ways being driven by a few star players (such as Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Kevin Garnett--guys who are insisting that the players not accept less than 52% of the league's basketball related income) and their high-powered agents. It is the stars, not the majority of players, who would benefit most if the league had no salary cap. The 1998 lockout was precipitated by the massive contract received by Kevin Garnett, a deal that was a tipping point for the league much like LeBron James' "Decision" (followed up by the Carmelo Anthony and and Deron Williams sagas) was a tipping point last season; during the 1998-99 negotiations, Michael Jordan--who felt that he was underpaid for most of his career--told then-Washington owner Abe Pollin that he should sell his team if he could not afford to keep up with the inflated salary structure being demanded by Jordan and his cohorts (it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the current negotiations to hear what Jordan, who is now a team owner in a small market, is saying).

The delusion is that the players can create and successfully run their own league. This pipe dream is being propagated by David Berri, a "stat guru" who has long stated that NBA owners are incompetent and that coaching does not matter; if owners are stupid and coaches are mere window dressing then why shouldn't players be able to run a league, coach themselves and play? Just reread that last sentence again to soak in the full depth of Berri's foolishness.

Reputable and responsible "stat gurus" realize that so-called "advanced basketball statistics" don't work--in no small part because, while baseball largely consists of a series of discrete and measurable actions, basketball largely consists of complex and simultaneous actions conducted by various players--and even those who put some stock in "advanced basketball statistics" have heavily criticized Berri's methods and conclusions. Berri further betrayed his ignorance with this quote in a recent ESPN the Magazine article: "Even in the ABA, which had Dr. J and George Gervin, most of the players were nobodies. But the best players could be in this new league." Knowledgeable basketball fans know that the first part of Berri's statement is false and the second part is asinine. In addition to Julius Erving and George Gervin, the ABA featured Hall of Fame players Rick Barry, Billy Cunningham, Artis Gilmore, Connie Hawkins, Dan Issel and Moses Malone, plus many other high caliber performers who deserve Hall of Fame consideration (including the vastly underrated Mel Daniels and Roger Brown). In 1976-77--the first year after the NBA-ABA merger--the 10 member All-NBA squad featured four former ABA players, seven of the 14 players who received MVP votes previously played in the ABA, 10 of the league's 24 All-Stars were ABA veterans and four of the 10 starters for the two NBA Finalists began their careers in the ABA. This was not a one season fluke, either; ABA players Erving and Malone claimed four of the next six regular season MVPs and ABA players continued to figure prominently on All-NBA, All-Star and championship team rosters well into the 1980s.

As for the second part of Berri's quote, the implosion of the so-called World All-Star Classic graphically demonstrates that the NBA's stars cannot even put together a series of exhibition games, much less organize an entire league from the ground up. Furthermore, the proposal touted in the ESPN the Magazine article--a league consisting of 100 of the top NBA players--simply proves that the real divide is not between big market/small market owners but rather between star players and the rank and file players. Even if the World All-Star Classic had been a success, what good would it have done for the several hundred NBA players who did not participate or make any money from it? Even if the top 100 NBA players could build a new league from scratch, where would that leave the other 300-plus NBA players? When Commissioner Stern said that the "agents" are preventing NBPA Executive Director Billy Hunter from agreeing to a deal he is referring to a handful of high powered people who represent the league's top players; those agents and their players are the ones who are forcing the lockout to continue, much like what happened in 1998-99 until Commissioner Stern threatened to not only cancel the whole season but start over again with new players: it is much more likely that we will see a "new" NBA with players who are willing to try to get by with the deal that the league is offering than that we will see Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and friends build a league of their own with Dave Berri as the Commissioner and Henry Abbott as P.R. director. Abbott claims to link to the best basketball writing regardless of its source but even a cursory examination of what he links to--and, just as significantly, what he doesn't--shows that claim to be false. It is puzzling and bizarre that ESPN's chief basketball blogger has been so consistently and stubbornly determined to elevate the status of Berri, an otherwise obscure associate economics professor/"stat guru."

The diversion consists of various puff pieces about which teams and/or players are most damaged by an extended lockout. Naturally, this is yet another way to continue the "great debate" regarding Kobe Bryant versus LeBron James (which actually is not much of a debate anymore: the younger, more athletic James is a more productive regular season player than Bryant at this point but James' postseason resume is a few lines--or perhaps a few paragraphs--less complete than Bryant's postseason resume). It should be obvious that the lockout is potentially much more damaging to James' legacy than to Bryant's: Bryant is a "made man" in NBA lore, a five-time champion whose place in history is quite secure--but James is a stat-sheet stuffer who has yet to win a championship. Bryant is past his prime and his Lakers are not likely to be championship favorites if/when the season begins but James is in the heart of his prime and his Heat have a limited window before either they decline and/or younger stars/teams rise to the forefront. Look at it this way: would a hypothetical 1990-91 NBA lockout have been potentially more damaging to five-time champion Magic Johnson or the then-ringless Michael Jordan?

Forget most of what you have read or heard about the NBA lockout; here is the bottom line: the lockout will last until the players agree to fundamentally restructure the NBA's failing business model, many basketball "stat gurus"--particularly David Berri--understand even less about the league's economic model than they do about evaluating players and it is baffling/infuriating that so many media outlets continue to employ writers/commentators who do not understand the basic issues that they arrogantly pontificate about. Henry Abbott cites Berri as if Berri is a basketball Yoda and Chris Sheridan is quoted/interviewed all over the place even though most of what Abbott and Sheridan have said/predicted about the lockout has consistently been proven false--and then Bryant Gumbel chimes in with a bigoted rant that should have ended his HBO career.

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posted by David Friedman @ 1:52 PM

29 comments

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Wages of Wins Weighs in on the MVP Race

I have always believed that statistics are a very powerful tool that can be used to help us understand basketball (and many other things as well)--but statistics are a tool, not a perfect, all-knowing force, and a tool is only useful if it is the right one for a given job and if it is wielded skillfully by a knowledgeable person; a construction worker using a jackhammer would not do a good job detailing a car. In the past few years a dichotomy has developed between a group of people who believe that numbers tell us all we need to know about sports (a trend that started in baseball with Bill James and "sabermetrics" and has since spread to other sports) and a group of people who primarily trust what they learn from firsthand observation of players. I believe that statistics are most helpful when they are utilized by an informed observer who has actually seen the players/teams in question play. Players are not robots and they are not accumulating statistics in isolation; a play that results in a slam dunk may have involved multiples screens, passes and defensive switches but the boxscore only records a made shot and possibly an assist. There is a big difference in quality between a player who beat his defender off of the dribble, soared over a rotating defender and dunked and a player who was wide open because his team's superstar was double-teamed, enabling him to catch an easy pass and dunk all by himself. Yes, a season's worth of statistics evens out some of these discrepancies but the bottom line is that proper player evaluation cannot be done entirely with a spreadsheet. As Indiana Pacers scout Kevin Mackey told me, statistics are important but the "eyeball is number one."

David Berri and his Wages of Wins partners produce some interesting work but I fundamentally object to one of their basic premises, namely that basketball and other sports can be understood at a deep level without even watching the game. In fact, they believe that watchers are inherently biased, unable to differentiate between flashy, memorable plays and solid, unspectacular plays that are just as effective; they fail to consider that statistics and the methods to evaluate them are the products of human minds and thus also contain biases and imperfections. A knowledgeable basketball observer certainly can utilize statistics effectively but the kind of detachment from the world of sports that Berri and his group propose does not lead to greater objectivity; rather, it leads to bizarre conclusions such as performance-enhancing drugs don't enhance performance or--regarding the 1996 Chicago Bulls--"Per 48 minutes played, Rodman's productivity even eclipsed Jordan." The truth about PEDs--and why there is erroneous information about their effectiveness--can be found here. I trust that most serious NBA fans realize that although Rodman was a great player only a statistical system that vastly overrates rebounding would suggest that he was more productive than Jordan. Rodman was a very valuable member of five championship teams for two different franchises but you could not build a team solely around his talents.

Berri and company recently weighed in on the MVP debate. Since they are much more interested in crunching certain numbers than considering the totality of what happens on the court, they are oblivious to the fact that the MVP race is likely going to come down not to Kobe Bryant and LeBron James--as they suggest--but rather Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul. James is probably going to be "disqualified" by virtue of his team not winning 50 games, much like Bryant was "disqualified" the past two years (I disagree with this kind of "disqualification" but that is another story). Starting with the faulty Bryant/James premise, WoW eventually concludes that Bryant should not get this year's MVP for three reasons:

- Yes, Kobe is a great player. He just isn’t the most productive player in the NBA.

-The Lakers improvement this year is not about Kobe.

- Kobe, who has not been voted MVP in the past, is actually not much different from what he was in the past. He just has better teammates.

You can click on the above link to read the arguments that they use to support those three points. My response to those three points is simple:

1) Measuring the "productivity" of a basketball player is not an exact science. For one thing, statistics do not capture everything that happens on the court. Second, per-minute numbers make assumptions about how productive a player would be if he played more minutes but those assumptions cannot be proven. Third, "productivity" is interactive: a player who draws double-teams can make weaker players seem more productive, while four weaker players surrounding a great player can make the great player seem less productive. Bryant is a more skillful player than LeBron James and Bryant has fewer weaknesses. James is not a good free throw shooter or three point shooter and his defense, although improving, is not as good as Bryant's. The Spurs capitalized on James' inability to shoot outside by constructing a wall and keeping him out of the paint in the NBA Finals. Granted, not too many teams have the mindset and personnel to carry out such a plan but that showed that James, as great as he is--and I rank him as the second best player in the league--still has weaknesses.

As for the second and third points, here is a comment that I posted at WoW:

Someone else already pointed out the fallacy in comparing Kobe this year to Kobe in previous years, namely that this year’s MVP should be the most valuable player of this season; Kobe’s performance in other seasons is not relevant and does not disqualify him from winning the award this season if he is the most qualified candidate.

Here are three relevant issues that the author failed to consider:

1) When looking at the Lakers’ record with various player combinations (with Bynum, with Gasol, etc.) did you factor in the home/road balance of those various schedules and the quality of the opponents that the Lakers faced? As I pointed out in my article about the Lakers’ "three seasons" (Breaking Down L.A.'s Three Seasons), their schedule without Bynum and Gasol has been heavily slanted toward road games and/or games against good teams. Their 11-9 record with Kobe and without either Bynum or Gasol is very impressive considering that fact, even with the two recent losses to poor teams (Fisher has come up lame now as well).

2) The author claims that Kobe should not be the MVP because most of the team’s improvement has come from the other players but he fails to consider how much of that “improvement” is the result of playing with Kobe. For instance, the Lakers have spot up shooters who get wide open shots because Kobe must be double-teamed; Kobe’s presence gets them open opportunities whether or not Kobe is credited with an assist on those shots. Kobe is the victim of a form of “double jeopardy”: when those players failed to make those shots the past two seasons he was “disqualified” for MVP consideration because his team did not win enough games; this year they are making those shots and he is being “disqualified” because he supposedly has such a strong supporting cast. Nash’s supporting cast of Amare, Marion and others was not held against him, so why should the improvement of Kobe’s supporting cast be held against him?

3) Paul’s top two big men have been healthy and played together for the entire season. Kobe has played with Bynum, then without either big man, then with Gasol without Bynum and now has endured another stretch without either big man. Yet, despite all of this turmoil, Kobe’s team is right in the thick of the race with the Hornets. Last year, the Hornets and Lakers both had injury problems and the Lakers had two starters (Kwame and Smush) who would not have even played for any other playoff team, let alone being starters; Kobe guided his team to the playoffs, Paul did not. Yes, last season does not directly relate to this season but if we are going to compare Kobe this year to Kobe in previous years the above analysis is much more to the point and highlights the fact that Kobe consistently has done more with less talent around him than Paul has. Put Kobe with West and Chandler for a whole year and give Paul the proportions of Bynum, Gasol and Turiaf/Mbenga that Kobe has had this season and do you really believe that Paul would do as much with that group as Kobe has?

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posted by David Friedman @ 8:53 PM

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