Anyone following The Sport Count’s musings over the past weeks might have formed the opinion that we think only a single sex plays basketball. This is simply untrue. While we acknowledge a, ahem, large bias towards news from the male game, we’d also like to point out that no bigger fans of Australia’s World Champion Opals exist anywhere.

We love them, and have spent the last few days feverishly cheering as they beat down inferior opposition in the hunt for Olympic gold.

Let this not be mistaken for tokenistic, condescending male support. The Count’s preferred style of basketball includes endless dunks, brutal swagger, broken ankles and fall-away jumpers, which the women’s game doesn’t provide in the same way as the NBA can. The moment it does, The Count’s collective dream of Lauren Jackson draining shots in the face of a cocky D-Wade will be one step closer.

No, our love for the Opals is genuine, and is based on one of The Sport Count’s Basic Principles: we love The Best. This is why we like Kobe, but not Doleac; why we like Beasley, and not Gallinari; and why we cannot, for the life of us, understand how Isiah Thomas was ever allowed to even stand near Madison Square Garden.

And being fans of pure excellence, The Count is tonight looking forward to our World Champion Opals thoroughly embarrassing the representatives of the host nation. Even with star forward Penny Taylor likely to be out injured, and Captain Jackson battling through chronic ankle pain that requires constant injections, our girls should put the Chinese away like a cheap set of tupperware. And then it’s onto you, America, where you get paid back for what you did to our boys.

Posted by: Alex

Following the news that league superstars Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Carlos Boozer won’t rule out signing with a European team after their NBA contracts are up, another big name has said he too is open to any big money foreign offers.

Doleac: 'I'd consider $50m'.

On the phone from his San Antonio home, Michael Doleac said ‘you’d be crazy not to consider these offers. It’s a whole new ballgame now. If a Russian club comes to me with 50-million dollars tax free, I’d have to at least consider it. Who wouldn’t?’

Like other superstars toying with a move across the Atlantic, the Minnesota Timberwolves centre worries the transition might be difficult. ‘It’d be tough, yeah. I mean, over here I’m a third-string centre, with career averages of less than five points, and nearly four rebounds. But over there, I’d be a God. It would be difficult becoming the focus of the team… or the whole country. That’s a lot of pressure. That’s a lot of eyes on you.’

‘I respect Josh [Childress] for actually doing it,’ Doleac continued, eating ’super spicy hot’ salami sticks and playing Call Of Duty 4 on his newly-purchased PlayStation 3. ‘The money is nice, but actually making the move? That takes guts. I’m definitely open to offers.’

Would the language barrier trouble him? Doleac laughs. ‘Let’s just say I’ve bought myself a dictionary this week,’ he said. ‘A Russian dictionary.’

Posted By: Anton

Ένα από τα θετικά όταν αποσύρεσαι από το ΝΒΑ είναι ότι δεν έχει καμία απολύτως σημασία αν ήσουν higflyer All-Star ή κάποιος τυχαίος λευκός με 1.3 ppg και κάρφωναν στα μούτρα σου σε κάθε παιχνίδι.

Γιατί;

Διότι είναι σίγουρο ότι όπου κι αν βρεθείς κάποιες “τυχαίες γκόμενες” θα θελήσουν να βγουν φωτογραφία μαζί σου και ποιος ξέρει τι άλλο… Επειδή φυσικά στο Buzzer Beater επαληθεύουμε με δημοσιογραφικό υλικό τις θεωρίες μας, σας το αποδεικνύουμε:

• Θυμάστε τον επικό center της προηγούμενης 10ετίας Felton Spencer;

• Ποιος μπορεί να ξεχάσει τον Dwyane Schintzius; Πέρασε από πολλές ομάδες χωρίς να καταφέρει τίποτα…

• Άλλος ένας θρυλικός λευκός center… Scott Pollard.

• Ο Calvin Booth θεωρητικά δεν έχει αποσυρθεί ακόμα, αλλά ουσιαστικά δεν έχει αξία στο ΝΒΑ. Εκτός όμως…
• Michael Doleac. Λευκός και Center φυσικά. Ακόμα θυμάμαι… πέρυσι ένα σχόλιο των εκφωνητών όταν έβαλε το πρώτο του καλάθι σε ένα αγώνα: “Διπλασίασε το μέσο όρο του”.
• Στους 5 άσχετους centers, ένα καλό SG δώρο. Ron Harper!

Για μερικές φωτογραφίες ακόμα —-> εδώ.

The Simmons Draft Diary: always a pleasure to read Simmons in his element.

Wendi Nix interviews new Knicks GM Donnie Walsh, one of those guys you find yourself staring at and trying to figure out how many cigarettes he has smoked over the past 40 years. (My guess: 85,450.) He’s like a cross between Johnny Sack and Joe Pesci.

David Thorpe gets dubious in his first Rookie Watch: Derrick Rose is apparently the fifth-best rookie, right after two untested Spaniards (Thorpe compares Rudy Fernandez to Juan Carlos Navarro: compliment or not?). An odd bout of Eurofetishism from ESPN.

If you’re going to read one ‘Grading The Draft’ feature — and I guarantee you will — it may as well be the one about to go up on the Count. But if you’re going to read two, the other should be Kelly Dwyer’s judgements over at Ball Don’t Lie.

Quick question about Dwyer: Is he Australian? Because you get a lot of ‘bloody’ in his work.

Rod Benson goes to the Miami mini-camp: If Benson doesn’t end up on an NBA roster this year, could there be any justification? Even if Benson spent his game time sitting on the end of the bench blogging on a MacBook, at least he’d generate some publicity. Can’t say that about Michael Doleac.

Why didn’t the Heat add Benson last year during their old, wrecked, busted and useless period (yes, that period lasted all season)? It would’ve been one of two positive moves made by the Heat last season (the other was giving DJ Quall’s 12-year old brother the starting point guard job). Rod isn’t all internet-based Boom Tho; he averaged 13 and 12 with the Dakota Wizards.

Basketbawful answers a nagging question: ‘Yes, the WNBA is the only sport you’ll spend more time reading more about in piss-taking blogs than actually watching on ESPN.’

Just quietly: I’d love to see Klosterman back at Page 2.

Posted By: Anton

Note: Since this post was published, the Winshares formula has undergone some revisions of some substantive import, as well as a renaming. To see the most current iteration and accurate tables and graphs, please see the BoxScores page.

This post is a lengthy discussion of the theory and methodology behind the Winshares player value metric. If you are already familiar enough with Winshares, or are impatient, read the “In brief” section just below, and then you might want to skip ahead to the payoff graphics at the very end of this post. As always, comments and criticisms are encouraged!

In brief

Winshares are a statistic developed to estimate a player’s value in terms of wins. Combining individual statistics with team performance, Winshares allocate credit for team wins according to each team member’s contributions to team total production. As of the end of the 2007-08 regular season, Winshares are calculated as follows:

winshr = (val / team val) * team wins

val = pts – fgx*0.5603802 – ftx*0.9345311 + as*0.7697530 + or*0.8709732 + dr*0.7111727 + st*0.9190908 + bk*0.9495596 – to*0.8473544 – pf*0.7729732

Motivation

Why create yet another statistic that attempts to reduce all of player value to one number? Especially when there are so many other good and widely accepted measures already in use? Because the theory is sound, the operationalization is elegant, and the results appear valid.

Why use boxscore stats, ignoring plus/minus and everything that modern science now knows about possessions and efficiency, especially since defense is so poorly captured and other statistics, like assists, are arbitrary? Because boxscore stats go back to the beginning of professional basketball. Plus/minus is extremely data-intensive to calculate, and we have no way of getting that kind of data for most historical games. I’m ignoring possessions, and not emphasizing defense, because it is my belief that comparing one player’s boxscore stats to those of his team gives a reasonable estimate of player contributions–sometimes overestimating, other times underestimating, but on average, getting it approximately right. Mostly, though, calculating Winshares is possible as long as the same stats are tracked for all players on a team, and we know how many times the team won–meaning it can be applied very generally.

Why even try to use statistics to measure player value? You can’t capture that with a number! There is much to be said on both sides of this issue. I am of the opinion that statistics ought to be considered within a larger context of other data, qualitative and quantitative. However, I do feel strongly that numbers have a lot to tell us–they allow us the hope of greater objectivity, and therefore possibly less subjective, more accurate assessments. When applied identically to all players, Winshares will adjudicate “fairly,” paying no attention to max contracts, shoe endorsements, nicknames, or “intangibles.” Intangibles are tricky–they may indeed be part of player value, but they are also, by definition immeasurable, and may therefore expand to fill the role required of them? Was your favorite player not voted league MVP? Certainly they failed to consider his intangibles, which would have easily put him over the top…

Why are Winshares measured in that specific way? Don’t you know that linear weights are no good, or that assists are worth much more than you give them credit for? Read on…

Theory

Imagine a cooperative grocery store, owned by those who work there. At the end of one year, the store’s revenues exceed its expenditures by a large margin, and the workers are to be paid out of this surplus. One concept of fairness might dictate that a worker who worked p% of the total man-hours for that year ought to receive p% of the surplus. Arguably, he contributed p% of whatever effort determined whether or not the store would succeed, and should be rewarded accordingly. A worker working a large number of hours could be said to have contributed more to the store’s success or failure than another who only worked one shift a month–if the store profits by a large margin, that employee should receive a larger share of the windfall, just as if the store loses money, that employee should be held culpable for a larger share of the deficit.

Now imagine another similar store competing in the same market. Its surplus at the end of the year is twice that of the first store. Is it possible to compare the value, in terms of surplus, of employees from the two different stores? I would argue that it is possible: if pay is allocated in the same manner in both stores, with worker i in store j receiving payment in proportion to his labor contribution, the worker who receives the highest paycheck is the most valuable. That is, if pay is equal to worker man-hours over store total man-hours times store surplus, we can compare employees across any two firms in the same market.

But wait–what if some employees are more efficient workers than others? What if Alice can generate three times the revenue that Bob can generate in the same number of hours? Doesn’t our payment formula then overpay Bob and under-reward Alice, and doesn’t this complicate yet again the comparison across firms? Yes it does, and so we might try to find better measures of worker contributions to the surplus. Perhaps we could keep statistics on the number of cans shelved, or the number of transactions tendered, or the number of smiles flashed–if we could figure out even just the relative value of each of these things (that is, not necessarily how they each translate into surplus, but whether one smile is worth two cans shelved, etc.), then we are back on track. It doesn’t matter whether or not we can measure exactly how much revenue is brought in by each additional shelve stocked (although this would be interesting and useful), but if we know that it’s worth more (by some scalar factor) to clean the bathroom than it is to check receipts at the door, we can still estimate each workers contribution to the total amount of valuable work being done at the store.

This analogy carries over very well to sports, and specifically here, to basketball. A player who plays fully 1/5th of total team minutes played (that is 48 minutes per game for 82 games) ought to be credited with approximately 1/5th of his team’s success or failure–both of which can be measured in terms of wins. Using minutes to assess contributions runs into the same problem as in the stores above–they say nothing about efficiency–and as such, it is useful to find other statistics that more accurately estimate contributions to team success. The statistics employed in Winshares are boxscore stats, such as points, rebounds, assists, missed shots, etc. These are imperfect measures, but to the extent their relative value can be assessed, they may be useful in estimating each player’s contribution.

Calculation

Unfortunately, this relative evaluation is very difficult. It is often claimed by more “sophisticated” observers of the game that most fans fail to look past point-per-game numbers, giving infinitely more weight to scoring than to any other contributions. Yet, it is exceedingly difficult to identify just what the appropriate weights might be. Multiple regression analysis yields somewhat unsatisfactory results when applied in a straightforward manner–typically finding, for example, that offensive rebounds are actually detrimental to team success. Other work, including that done by Berri and Hollinger, is much more thorough, but leaves something to be desired (a topic which has been covered better elsewhere than can be possibly done by this author in this exposition).

As for Winshares, it would be disingenuous to claim that the ideal and true set of values has been found, but it is my belief that the reasoning is sound, and the results pass the “laugh test,” that is, given a subjective assessment of the sport, the relative importance of each boxscore statistic seems to be, at the very least, in the right order.

To identify the weights used, we may begin with a simple but strong assumption: the most valuable “good things” are those that opponents are most resistant to allowing, and thus are relatively rare, while the most detrimental “bad things” are those that a player is most trying to avoid, and thus are similarly relatively rare. With this in mind, I present counting sums for each of 8? boxscore counting stats from 1979-80 through 2007-08 (which I call the Modern era, characterized by the introduction of the three point shot to NBA play):

* field goals missed and free throws missed

Dividing each of these totals by the sum of the totals (17,008,507), we arrive at the following frequencies:

Normalizing these frequencies to that of points, we get:

Then, subtract each of the above from 1, so we are placing more weight on the rarer occurances, and set the points coefficient to 1, because the ultimate aim of all defense is to prevent scoring, and the ultimate aim of all offense is to score:

Assign positivity and negativity according to whether each is helpful or deleterious to team success, and we arrive at a set of scalars for estimating valuable contributions (often abbreviated val):

val = pts – fgx*0.5603802 – ftx*0.9345311 + as*0.7697530 + or*0.8709732 + dr*0.7111727 + st*0.9190908 + bk*0.9495596 – to*0.8473544 – pf*0.7729732

Any player’s val less than zero is then set to zero, but val is rarely a large negative number. Compared to the difficulty of valuable contribution assessment, the final steps in Winshare calculation are extremely simple: merely find each player’s percent contribution to his team’s total sum of valuable contributions from all players, and multiply this by team wins:

winshr = (val / team val) * team wins

We are left with an estimate of individual player value that combines individual contributions and team success, and allocates the most credit to those players who did the most to win the most. There is just one adjustment made to allow comparisons across all NBA seasons: for seasons prior to the official distinction between offensive and defensive rebounds, the formula is adjusted to incorporate total rebounds in their stead.

Discussion

The first thing to note is that as we apply the formula increasingly further back in time, we might become somewhat less certain of its absolute accuracy as the boxscore statistics on which it is based drop from the official record. Thus, for the very earliest years of the BAA, we might not be as confident in our estimate as for most years since, but the results are still very compelling, and seem to hold up to scrutiny despite the relative dearth of data. One of the merits of Winshares as a measure is that it is relatively flexible across a variety of situations, relying as it does on player percent contributions, which can almost always be measured in some manner.

Another caveat is to bear in mind that Winshares is a season-cumulative statistic, and so the ceiling varies by the number of games played in a season. Winshares for the strike-shortened season of 1998-99 are much lower than other contemporary seasons, due to the fact that all teams won fewer games than they normally would have. Adjustments can easily be made, however, by finding per-game or per-minute Winshare rates, and making comparisons at that level. This helps, too, in determining the impact of an injured player, given that he has played fewer games. However, the initial impetus for constructing Winshares was to estimate player value in terms of wins, and this is best done on a season-cumulative scale.

One thing done relatively poorly by Winshares in its current iteration is measurement of the value of players traded during the season. To do this completely accurately, it would be useful to isolate only the games the player appeared in for each of his several teams, looking at individual statistics and team wins within those sub-season units. However, this sort of analysis requires data not generally available in convenient form, and truly, the logical extension of this idea is fairly well captured by the plus/minus statistic. As it stands, Winshares still does a relatively good job (subjectively assessed) in measuring traded players’ value, but it is something worth noting.

Winshares in application

Often understanding is best achieved through application, and so I present

The Top 1,000 Winshare Seasons

covering the NBA, ABA, and BAA from 1946-2008. Keep in mind the above caveats about data availability, especially for seasons prior to 1951-52. In a similar vein, here is a list of

The Top 100 Winshare Careers

again, this is cumulative across the entirety of each player’s career, and so players with longevity are advantaged. I have included games played in this listing, to allow the reader to make his or her own adjustments.

Finally, every player, every team played for, 2007-08 season.

Geometric representation

One of the more useful ways to conceptualize Winshares is as player percent valuable contributions * team success. This has a particularly interesting expression in geometric terms, where Winshares can be thought of as the area of the rectangle created by multiplying valpct by team wins. The following series of visualizations depicts Winshares as a geometric comparison of player value. The color scheme is based on playing style–more detail on this classification may be found here.

2007-08 NBA: Chris Paul edges out Kobe Bryant as most valuable player according to Winshares, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce turn in stellar seasons for the Celtics, and LeBron James carries a huge load for his team, and is rewarded in terms of Winshares, if not in post-season success.

1986-87 NBA: A season featuring more all-time greats than perhaps any other (as noted here), we see Larry Bird and Magic Johnson at the height of their rivalry, Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon coming into their own, and too many other star players to even mention.

1971-72 NBA & ABA (combined): Classic Lakers and Celtics teams, a young Dr. J, Kareem’s greatest year, an almost-as-great year from Artis Gilmore, and countless other NBA past greats.

Sacramento Kings Franchise History: This storied franchise didn’t quite make the playoffs in a very competitive 2007-08 Western Conference, but its history is littered with greats such as Oscar Robertson and Chris Webber.