Basketball
Basketball
Sunday, April 26, 2015
NFL teams average 96% attendance at capacity. NHL is at 95% and NBA is at 93%. Presumably, if there were more games, attendance rate would be lower. For example, if there were 51 home games instead of 41 home games, perhaps NBA games would be filled at 85% capacity instead of 93%. But they don't seem to want to do that because... well, maybe because of the toll it takes on the body. But the top players do play every game. In the NHL for example, you get 2-3 players per team who play every game. If the NHL season was 100 games instead of 82, perhaps top players would get rested occasionally, so they'd play 90-95 games instead of 100.
The idea of resting top players seems... wrong. You don't get that in the NHL, except for say some old timers in preparation for the playoffs. But, this seems to be accepted in MLB. You can count on one hand, literally, the number of players who play every game in an MLB season. What if an MLB season lasted 144 games instead of 162? Well, then you might get 2-3 players per team who play every game.
MLB attendance is at 70% capacity. If the season was 144 games, then attendance may be at 80% capacity? I don't know. But, clearly the leagues are balancing capacity level and human endurance.
If the idea is more-is-better, than why aren't the NHL and NBA seasons 100 games each. Attendance rates go down, stars-intentionally-sitting goes up, more games on TV... basically, the MLB model. Why don't they do this? Conversely, why doesn't MLB follow the NBA and NHL model?
Finally, would NFL fans tolerate the intentional sitting of Marshawn Lynch and Tom Brady for 1-2 games, if it means that the NFL season would last 20-22 games instead of 16?
Friday, March 27, 2015
?A terrific piece by Tim Graham. While it highlights the NHL Sabres, there's quotes from Mark Cuban and Fay Vincent.
One of the interesting points is that it's not the players that are intentionally losing, but management that's assembling players of limited talent. Furthermore, one of the speakers says that it's one thing for a club to assemble a bad team through incompetence, and another doing it through intelligent manipulation.
Which almost seems to suggest that if the Sabres had to be ethical in what they are doing, they should have signed the worst GM in NHL history. Allowing an incompetent person to assemble a terrible team sounds, based on the argument, acceptable.
Anyway, all this is fixed via the proper incentives. Imagine, during the NHL playoffs, there's a parallel "draft playoffs", made up of the 14 teams that did not make the playoffs. You have 13-game round-robin tournament. Here's the one little kicker: in the event of a tie game in regulation time, the tie-breaker goes to the lower-seeded team (from the regular season). Basically, the lower-seeded team starts the game with 1/2 a goal. Whoever wins the Draft Playoffs gets the #1 pick, and so on down the line.
Monday, March 16, 2015
?That's what I got from reading this:
Few are in a rush to get to their seats by first pitch. Concourses during games are clogged with fans milling around, completely oblivious to what’s happening on the field. And check out the exodus by the sixth and seventh innings, when the young kids in attendance — and their parents — are out of gas and making for their minivans.
Incredibly, this is NOT a problem according to all concerned! This is written as if it's not a problem.
I remember being at one hockey game, real close game, and I just had "to go". I really didn't want to leave my seat, but, well, nature and all. So, I ran as fast as I could, and the hall was empty, the washrooms were empty. I've never seen the halls of an arena, any arena, empty like that. And this was Le Forum. Basically, no one really leaves their seat whether it's a hockey game, or a soccer game, and I presume it's the same with a football game.
But for baseball, because of the between-inning breaks, it's extremely common to do so. So common, that leaving early on school nights then just becomes another natural thing to do.
Based on the description in the quote above, the game of baseball seems to be a bonus for simply people getting together.
Thursday, March 05, 2015
?NBA seems to offer the least restriction, as players can qualify after four years. I don't follow NBA, so I'd like to know in practice, what is the average age for a TOP player who elects free agency. Say, take the top 30 players in the last three years who elected free agency, what was their average age?
NHL offers seven years of service (where a year of service just needs more than 10 games played in a season), with a safety net of age 27. This is especially applicable to their non-North American players. Same question as above: what is the average age?
MLB goes with years of service of at least six years, with no safety net for the age, and service years goes by service days (max 172 days per year x 6 years).
MLS however looks like they go with the AND approach: years of service AND age. I don't know if MLS and their players use the same language that NHL uses (talking about both sides being "partners", which sounds great if you don't delve too deeply into it).
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
?I've occasionally thought what it would be like to be a private "data tutor" to an athlete. I can see for example MGL being a terrific tutor for an MLB pitcher. He's really smart, he thinks like a pitcher, and he understands the data he sees. He can cut through the b.s. At the same time, you really need a certain kind of player, one who won't go through "paralysis by analysis", and especially if he's getting conflicting advice from his coaches.
Sunday, March 01, 2015
?I created the Individualized Won-Loss Records for MLB. Here's my first stab for NBA. I know very little about basketball. Nonetheless, I'll give you the process for it, and you guys can take it from here. I'll use the data from 82games.com, but that's more for my convenience. Again, use whatever you want.
Step 1: there are 82 games, so we give each player his slice of those 82 games based on how much he's played. We'll call that his "game space". I don't remember if I made up that term. I think Bill James uses that term. Maybe someone else made it up, I don't remember any more. Anyway, in the 82games chart above, multiply the players "min" column by 82/5.01 (where 82 is the number of games, and 5.01 is the total in the min column). So, Duncan gets 9 Game Space, Parker is at 8.35 and so on. The total for all the players is 82.
Step 2: figure out each player's base Wins and base Losses. San Antonio had a 62-20 record (.756 win%), so we multiply each player's Game Space by .756 for his base Wins and .244 for his base Losses. For Duncan, that sets his base W at 6.8 and his base L at 2.2.
Step 3: figure out each player's value above the team. For Duncan, his "rating" (however that was calculated) is +4.2 points per game. The team average is +1.86 (not shown), so Duncan is +2.34 points per 48 minutes. If I'm interpreting that correctly. Again, if I'm doing all this correctly, Duncan is +105 points above team average.
Step 4: convert points to wins. I think we divide points by 40 to get to wins? Maybe 35? Again, you guys can step in. Anyway, if we divide by 40, Duncan is +2.6 wins above the team average.
Step 5: add Step 4 to Step 2. That sets Duncan's W at 6.8+2.6 = 9.4. That's his Individualized Wins or iW. His iL is -0.4 (that's negative 0.4 losses). Using the Bill James notation, that's 9.4+0.4.
And that's it. Do it for all the players, and we get 62-20. Anyway, you guys can double-check my assumptions, etc. And then, just apply it across the league
iW-iL Player
10+4 Ginobili
10+2 Leonard
9-0 Duncan
7-0 Green
7-0 Mills
6-2 Parker
5-3 Belinelli
5-3 Diaw
3-2 Splitter
1-1 Bonner
0-0 Jeffers
0-0 Daye
0-0 Thomas
0-1 DeColo
0-0 James
-1-1 Brown
0-4 Joseph
-1-3 Baynes
-2-5 Ayres
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Comments
• 2017/10/25
•
Basketball
Monday, February 23, 2015
?I can't really comment on any of it, so, you guys can feel free to chime in.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
?The requirements for creating one is embedded in this article, under the term Excitement Index. It would actually be beneficial to see one like I have for baseball and for hockey (win probability numbers on the left, and LI numbers on the right).
The one thing that I didn't do for hockey, but seems to have been done for basketball, is to consider additional game situations. For basketball, that means whether a FG shot was made (turnover automatic) or not, and whether a free throw was made (and whatever turnover rules are implied there). For hockey, this would have meant including whether the home team was on the PP, PK, or EV. I've always meant to include that, but never got around to it.
I don't know if Brian or the rest of the football guys do a leverage index for football, but I'd love to see that too.
Sunday, February 08, 2015
?Good stuff from the soccer world. I'd like to see this for the other sports.
You can even start with just total playing time by age.
Thursday, February 05, 2015
?In the 2013-14 season, West played East in 450 games, of which they won 63%. This means that the average West team against some overall .500 team has a .567 win%. And the average East team has a .433 win% against this same .500 team. (A .567 team facing a .433 team results in a .631 win %.)
A .500 team, playing the East 50 games and the West 32 games is expected to win 42.5 games (rather than 41 games). Basically, all the East teams, by having this unbalanced scheduled, have 1.5 more wins than we'd otherwise expect with a balanced schedule. And similarly, the West teams have 1.5 fewer wins. So, in order to balance the two conferences, you'd want to add 1.5 wins to each West team, and subtract 1.5 wins from the East teams.
Last year, the Eastern leading Pacers, with 56 wins would count as an adjusted 54 1/2 wins, while 4th and 5th place Rockets/TrailBlazers with 54 wins would count as 55 1/2 wins.
Where it got interesting is in the 16th / 17th place teams. The East Bobcats had 43 wins and the West TWolves had 40 wins. With the adjustment, they both come in at 41 1/2 wins.
I'd be happy if they just went with a straight unadjusted Wins total for the 16 team playoffs. In 2014, that would have meant 7 from the East and 9 from the West.
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Comments
• 2015/02/06
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Basketball
Saturday, January 17, 2015
?So, this is pretty interesting for the NBA. The real-time chart shows how much longer the 4Q takes in real-time.
He also offers the option of not starting the game at 50/50, but at whatever Vegas suggests.
And he also has a Leverage Index as well. IDEALLY, you calculate the leverage PRIOR to the event. But in his case, he establishes leverage on the idea that you know what the event was. I'm a small (not big) fan of that approach, as I can see its value, as well as the simplicity of it.
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Comments
• 2015/02/26
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Basketball
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Here's a nice little chart:
And the key point:
Longer games would be forgivable, even laudable, if there were 50 percent more of a game to watch. There isn’t.
So, there has to be some sort of tradeoff here. Is it actually enjoyable to be at the ballpark an hour more than in the olden days? Maybe.
When I used to play golf on Sundays, the regulars would hate on us, because we'd be 4 Sunday golfers, who all shot in the 80s-100s. And we'd be laughing, and yapping. To us, being at the golf course for five hours was great. The game itself was kind of incidental. If you are out all night, that's a good sign. The longer you are away, chances are, the more fun you had.
When I used to go to football games, we'd get to the parking lot 10-11AM for a 1PM game. Why? Tailgating. So, I'm out of the house before 10AM and I'm back home by 6PM. That's an 8 hour committment. The only unpleasantness is the traffic leaving the place. The pace before the game is great, and the pace of the game is good.
Is baseball like that? Is it more fun to simply spend four hours at the ballpark, hanging out with your buds? I dunno, maybe it is. If the game is close, sure. Though, those last three innings are really (really) tough if it's a 5+run game. At least in football, you'll see different strategies, the passing/running/kicking game is different.
On TV? No, I can't commit that time. Two hours is an easy commit. Two and a half, and I'm surfing during commercials, and I might miss a half inning here or there. In blow-outs, I leave. Three hours? And more? That's the kind of thing I reserve for The Godfather. And I've seen that movie dozens of times already.
***
The solution is fairly simple: no timeouts. Or at least, give each team a set number of timeouts. Can you imagine football, basketball or hockey with unlimited timeouts? That's ridiculous. So, why is it not ridiculous in baseball? If the batter wants to step out, for any reason (including injury) other than he just swung at a pitch, that's a timeout. Pitch clock on a pitcher, sure, why not. (And pickoffs do NOT reset the pitch clock. It only freezes it.)
That's all we're asking: penalize the PLAYERS for the dead time, rather than the fans. Unless Vin Scully is calling the game, then we'll accept all the dead time, and more.
***
Ok, reading the article:
Rather than wait for the established leagues to act so it could follow their lead, the Atlantic League blazed its own trail. It formed a Pace of Play Committee, chaired by ex-Houston Astros president Tal Smith, which solicited suggestions from fans and media as well as its own members. The league came up with a list of six measures, later trimmed to five, that it began implementing in games on Aug. 1, 2014. The measures were:
- Limiting teams to three “time-outs” a game for mound visits by managers, coaches or players, those time-outs limited to 45 seconds each. Pitching changes are not included, and an extra time-out is granted for the 10th inning and every third extra inning thereafter.
- Automatically awarding an intentional walk upon the signal of the manager or catcher, without the need to throw four wide.
- Limiting warm-up pitches at the start of an inning, or when a reliever enters, from eight to six.
- Directing umpires to apply and enforce Rule 6.02 (restricting batters “stepping out”) and Rule 8.04 (requiring the pitcher to throw within 12 seconds when bases are empty).
- Encouraging umpires to exercise their power to control the pace of play (and to call the book strike zone).
...
With many curious eyes observing, games in the Atlantic League promptly became brisker. In the first month under the new rules, average game time fell to 2:53, nine minutes quicker than in 2013. The proportion of regulation games lasting three hours or longer fell from 42 percent to 26, and regulation games lasting no more than 2:30 rose from eight to 22 percent. Major league baseball hasn’t seen that last level for a couple of decades.
Friday, December 26, 2014
I had this idea that I talked about for baseball, but I might have mentioned it for hockey as well. It went something like this: you play half a season with only your regional opponents. Say you'd have three conferences (Eastern, Central, Western) of 10 teams each, and in baseball you'd play each team nine games. In hockey, you'd play them 4, maybe 5 times.
Then in the second half, you have a realignment into two leagues of 15 teams, with the top 5 teams of each conference in the premier league (NL), and the rest into the second league (AL). And you'd send something like 10 teams from the NL into the playoffs and 2 from the AL. Something like that. You could get more fancy, but let's leave aside the particulars.
I only follow football in the playoffs, so I was interested to see some divisional issues there. The NFL is ripe for problems like divisional imbalance, and they are an even better potential for my idea here. You can have 4 conferences of 8 teams each. One game against each conference opponent (that's 7 games). You can then realign into three leagues (a premier 10 team leagues, a second 10 team league, and a third 12 team league). Every team plays once against their league opponents (maximum 9 games). Premier league will send 8 teams (with top 4 getting a bye in the first round of playoffs), the second league will send three teams, and the third league sends one. The 4 non-bye teams in the premier league are matched up with the other 4 teams.
Again, the particulars would have to be worked out. You want to make sure to send a representative group of teams from each conference. That could even be 9-2-1 instead of 8-3-1 for all I know.
But, there's no reason to have this divisional marriage forced on all teams, and have the playoffs set based on geography. It's arbitrary, biased, and capricious. That makes it terrible policy.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
?Dave goes on at length on a few things, including Wins Produced.
One day, and that day may never come, I'll be called upon to do a service, and try to do research and provide an opinion that gets us off this treadmill to nowhere. But until that day, accept that link for what it is.
Sunday, December 21, 2014
?According to one sports book, the (unvigged) lines of the top 8 MLB teams to win the World Series stands at 50%. This means that choosing the Dodgers, Redsox, Nats, Cubs, Tigers, Angels, and (two of) Giants/Mariners/Cards as a group is a flip-the-coin bet as choosing that the winner will come from the other group of 22.
How much parity do we want? In tennis for example, at the height of Federer/Nadal/Djokovic, the 50/50 odds would be to choose the top two of those guys as one group, and then choose the third seed that day and EVERY SINGLE OTHER PLAYER in the tournament for the other group. (Something like that.) Which I think is GREAT for tennis. Imagine tennis with no clear favorites? Ugh for a fan like me, but maybe it's great for a huge tennis fan?
I don't follow NCAA, but I presume the top 4 seeds end up winning something like 75% of the tournaments? Somebody can chime in here on that.
Anyway, so that's the question: how much parity do we want? In other words, how many top teams in group 1 would you want to match up against every other team in group 2, in order for it to be an even bet?
Monday, December 01, 2014
I have a pretty crazy memory system. I might forget something very recent, which explains why I haven't bought new light bulbs for two weeks already. But I also remember stuff I read from 30 years ago, which is why I can remember almost everything Bill wrote. It's embarrassing, but I remember his research more than my own, even my most recent stuff.
Anyway, one thing that Bill said was something like "don't multiply or divide A by B unless there's a gosh-darn good reason to do so". Not only multiplication, but also addition and subtraction.
Just last night, during the Grey Cup, I was handed a wonderfully compiled dataset from WAR-on-Ice. One of the stats that has taken hold among the hockey followers is "Corsi" and "Fenwick", which are silly names that simply means "Shot Differential" or "Shot Ratio". The distinction between the two is the kinds of shots that are included. But, all shots are treated the same. That is, all shots are added together, in an UNWEIGHTED fashion. This would be like coming up with a stat called "Batting Average", and making no distinction between a single and HR. Or coming up with a stat called "On Base Percentage", and making no distinction between a walk and HR. This is why Slugging Average is superior to Batting Average. And this is why Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) exists to be superior to all of them.
So, don't add numbers just because you can. Figure out WHY and HOW they need to be added. And since goals contain (much much) more information than non-goal shots, then clearly, we can't just go ahead an add goals to non-goals in an unweighted manner. Well, you CAN if all you care about is "possession time". That's (probably) a good way to do it. But, more important than possession time is QUALITY of possession time.
That's a basic lesson from Bill. MGL said something important as well, again paraphrasing: since no two things can possibly be exactly equal, then you have to figure out in which direction you have to move something to make them come close to being equal. It should be obvious that a goal and non-goal shot aren't EXACTLY equal. So, if you had to guess which of the two you would weight more than the other, which would it be? Would you weight the goal more or the non-goal shot more? Right, it's obvious, the goal has to get more weight. Once you accept that, the search is on.
The question that I always have, the question that guides me, and really the basis of all my research is: to what DEGREE is something true. I accept as a matter of fact that a clutch skill exists. Why? Because nothing is exactly truly random, when it comes to dealing with humans.? Heck, even with machines. But that is irrelevant. What we care about is the degree to which something exists and the degree to which is can be measured as having an impact. The clutch skill exists to the point where it can be an actionable item as a tie-breaker. That's pretty much all it is. If you have two hitters who are overall equal, but one is a LHH and the other is a RHH, the LHH can have the worst clutch skill and the RHH can be the king of clutch, but if a RHP is on the mound, it's the LHH that you send out. (Presuming normal hand-split skills for all concerned.)
So, the search is on for goals and non-goal-shots. And then within the subset of non-goal-shots, can we weight them differently? As a case for further advancement, we'd want to know how far from the net the non-goal shots were. Heck, even for the goals, we'd want to know that.
And the same applies for basketball. You have the same kind of events with basketball that you have with hockey. What correlates to future point differential, and to what degree do they correlate. What you do NOT want to do is correlate the stats to CURRENT point differential. That's because there's an inherent "x = x" kind of correlation to deal with. This is (probably) why something like Wins Produced gets slammed. In order to test a metric, you need to test it out of sample. But, I don't know enough about this particular metric to say anything more.
So, for you soccer and football (and basketball and hockey) researchers out there: I'd like to see your research along the lines I just did for hockey. What does predict future scoring differentials, and how much do you have to weight the various events? (And focus on teams, rather than players. Players will come next.)
Monday, November 24, 2014
Since Ben generously posted the source code for his Hall of Fame selector, Justin adapted it for basketball. This is the best part of the community, not only do we share, but we cross sports as well.
Just a matter of time for someone to adapt it for football and hockey. And then for someone, be it Ben or Justin or someone else, to start a website dedicated for the HOF Selectors. While I'm happy to host Ben's work, it deserves far more exposure that my little site can give.
?
Monday, November 03, 2014
The baseball strike cost MLB a bit over 40% of a season in 1994-1995. It took several years for MLB to recover, with a big thanks to the HR chase.
The NHL's lost 40% of its regular season in 1994-1995 due to lockout. The NHL recovered almost immediately, only so that ten years later it would lose an entire season. And it recovered almost immediately, only so that it would lose yet another 40% of its season 8 years later. And it recovered almost immediately. I don't follow the NBA, but it seems they also recovered almost immediately.
How would MLB fare today? Would its fanbase respond as the NHL and NBA fanbases have responded, treating the break as... well, a break? It's the same kind of break that The Sopranos fanbase was used to, or the kind of break that musicians would put its fanbase through. Heck, if Michael Keaton stops making movies, only to do a small role with Larry David, or a big one on his own, well, we love him for it. Basically, there is no guarantee of a schedule, but we love all of them when they finally show up.
But what about MLB? Would fans simply respond with their non-phony outrage of 1994-95 and actually stay away as a small segment did and continued to do? Or, will they give us a phony outrage, only to embrace MLB once it came back?
How do you think the fanbase looks today??
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Our buddy Dan is at it again, this time for basketball.?
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Comments
• 2014/11/05
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Basketball
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
We've talked about this in the past several times. The answer is "confrontations". The more confrontations you have, the more talent will overcome the noise from random variation. A sport like basketball has plenty of confrontations. This allows the talent to shine through more, and so, keeps random variation at bay. That is, don't expect many upsets. If however the NBA was limited to a 12-minute game, random variation would fly. The predictability would be severely reduced. And if you limit the season to a 32-game season as well, that would further allow random variation to take center stage.
The NBA is considering a 44-minute game. I love that they took the initiative. I don't think they'll get anything worth reporting on, especially based on one game. ?
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Comments
• 2014/10/15
•
Basketball
Recent comments
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