Close game win%

[mopper8]

Back in march, Neil Paine wrote:

Although APBRmetrics teaches us that all teams' records in close games regress toward .500, at a certain point it becomes statistically unlikely that the Heat's "true" probability of winning those types of games is as good as a coin flip

I was interested in this, so I emailed him about, wanting to know more. He wrote back:

I can't find the original study I was thinking of when I wrote that (apparently the site is now defunct), but this one is probably better anyway:

http://basketballprospectus.com/article ... icleid=573

Basically, a team's wpct in close (margin <= 5) games is going to regress to something like:

true_close% = (1/3) + (1/3) * observed_close%

So an observed .400 team in close games is probably a true .467 team in future close games, etc.

The other component in the Pelton article is that year-to-year correlation is 0 -- there's no persistent ability across seasons for a team to outperform their expected record in close games. Everything eventually regresses toward the mean.

I find the Pelton article pretty interesting, but am looking for more discussion on this. Anyone seen anything else on this phenomenon? Have any thoughts?

To me it makes sense, since even very large Ortg/Drtg differentials lead to very small average margins in a limited possession game.

[floppymoose]

It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between winning close games and the experience level of the players on the court at crunch time. And I'm not even really meaning as a team stat, because the same team could have a different level of experience out on the floor in different close games. Rather as just a test of correlation between player experience and close game outcome.

[Paydro70]

I suppose you could try for that, you'd have to equalize out for the relative goodness of the players and what not. From what I've seen, in all sports close games are effectively random in their outcome, which is one of the primary reasons we use scoring margin instead of wins.

[turk3d]

What I'd be interested in seeing is overall team rankings which I believe would correlate to coaching effectiveness. I believe you'd find that the teams with the top coaches will have the best %s. I also believe that you'll probably find that some of the coaches on the best teams may not rank that high.

My guess is that they'd stack up something like this:

Jackson
Popovich
Thibodeau?
Rivers? (maybe)

Not sure how the rest stack up.

My guess is that Spoelstra wouldn''t be that that high (which is expected since he's so young in his career).

I also suspect that if you were to look at the numbers over the years for guys like Pop (SA), PJ (Lakers. Chicago), Riley (Lakers, Heat) and perhaps Sloan you'll find that they rank pretty high. My guess is they're significantly over 50%. I think that the close game win% is greatly impacted not just by the players, but the coach as well (in terms of drawing up plays and making the right substitutions down the stretch).