Wages of Wins on Wolves history/present

[drza]

There's an interesting article on the Wages of Wins site about the Wolves history, as well as where they are now. The title is provocative, but the information in it does a good job of debating the title question and pointing out the pros/cons each way.

http://dberri.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/is-minnesota-the-worst-nba-franchise-in-the-history-of-the-league/

Wages of wins is a numbers based site, based on a measure called 'wins produced' that Dave Berri came up with. I really like the stat, but leaving math aside it looks at a player's offensive and defensive efficiency and estimates how many wins that player is worth in a given year. It then adds up all the 'wins produced' by the different players on a roster, and uses that to estimate how many wins the team should have had. It does a pretty good job, too, as usually it is right within a couple of wins/losses in either direction.

Anyway, highlights of the article include:

*A numbers-based look at how bad the Wolves have historically been outside of KG (roughly a 22-win team on average without him, going back to 1989).

*A lot of support for the Love/Miller trade, suggesting it could be enough by itself to boost the Wolves by 10 - 15 wins.

*It putting numbers to intuitions that I would have already had (like that the Love/Miller trade should be a good unless Mayo explodes in the NBA, which is still a legit possibility) which always helps strengthen an argument, while conversely using numbers to challenge some of my own notions (that Foye/McCants could be a productive backcourt eventually...not according to Berri's numbers).

Worth a read.

[shrink]

Good article. I've always liked the work that the Wages of Wins people do, and while I question the appropriateness of using their stat to determine what the team would have done without Garnett simply by erasing his numbers, this type of stuff is always interesting to me. The WOW number is of much better use as a comparison between players, than an addition or subtraction number. For example, if you add LeBron James to the 70-win Chicago Bulls team, do they win 90 games a season? Of course not, because each player makes a relative contribution to each game, and to the overall record. I like the WOW stat because it demonstrates just how great Garnett had to be to pull up a pretty bad roster each year into play-off contention. However, no KG means huge additions of cap space and lottery picks that would make "what if we had no KG?" predictions difficult.

Thanks for posting the link drza

[deeney0]

For example, if you add LeBron James to the 70-win Chicago Bulls team, do they win 90 games a season?

idk, if you could wins by 80+ as "double wins," they might get up to 90.

[C.lupus]

I don't put a whole lot of stock into most of these player stats but this is interesting, following up on the Ricky Davis thread:

Mike Miller 07-08 Wins produced = 11.0, 07-08 salary = $8.3 m, 08-09 salary = $9.1 m
Ricky Davis 07-08 Wins produced = 2.1, 07-08 salary = $6 m, 08-09 salary = $2.3 m

Davis' new contract is much more in line with his actual production.

[SoSick]

Given this history, can we just pencil the T-Wolves in as a very bad team in 2008-09? The answer appears to be a re-sounding NO! On draft night McHale did something amazing. In the past McHale had a chance at Ray Allen, but he chose Stephen Marbury (68.9 career wins for Marbury vs. 113.1 career wins for Allen). He could have had Brandon Roy (17.2 wins in his first two season) but he chose Randy Foye (3.3 wins in his first two seasons). In each case McHale chose the flashy player over the solid player.

At least McHale did something different in this year's draft. He chose the solid player over the flashy player. We'll have to wait and see.

[shrink]

Given this history, can we just pencil the T-Wolves in as a very bad team in 2008-09? The answer appears to be a re-sounding NO! On draft night McHale did something amazing. In the past McHale had a chance at Ray Allen, but he chose Stephen Marbury (68.9 career wins for Marbury vs. 113.1 career wins for Allen). He could have had Brandon Roy (17.2 wins in his first two season) but he chose Randy Foye (3.3 wins in his first two seasons). In each case McHale chose the flashy player over the solid player.

At least McHale did something different in this year's draft. He chose the solid player over the flashy player. We'll have to wait and see.

I thought this was another lame part of the article.

It says "in each case" McHale chose the flashy player. What? "Both" cases? You look at this year, and he didn't -- is that some kind of giant change in strategy? Can we isolate the deciding factor when he only uses two examples? Could the pick have more to do with matching KG with a PG? Its kind of hard to tell when you base your argument on a pattern(?) of two years, and the third year doesn't fit the pattern. Moreover, even if KG always took the flashy player, its not even the wrong choice sometimes. KG was the "flashy player" when McHale chose him over Ed O'Bannon.

[stop-n-pop]

I think that the frustrating thing about the way national media/commentators view this year's pick is that it has been made very clear through local outlets that the way in which personnel decisions on this club are made has been massively altered in the year since KG left. This wasn't a McHale pick in the traditional sense that he gathered all the info and presented his take on it to Taylor. There was a nice article in the Strib about a month ago that made it pretty clear that McHale wasn't going to be the guy with the monopoly on information and I think that this has been evident in each and every decision they've made this year. This wasn't a typical McHale choice because it wasn't a McHale choice in the 1st place. He may have liked the guy and would have picked him all by himself, but the process is different and it's producing more consistent results.

[deeney0]

I was actually surprised by the amount of posative press trading Mayo received, albiet most of it was from Kevin Loveophiles.