Comments on: Berri on Brand, cont.

By: James Beale

James Beale — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:17:54 +0000

Tim – the one response that I would have to your point would be that, according to Berri, big men do in fact produce more wins.

I know I’m repeating an example, according to the WoW scores last year Joel Przybilla produced 9 wins, which was more than Tony Parker, Kevin Martin, Ray Allen, Joe Johnson, etc.

This wasn’t because Przybilla was secretly an elite center – he wasn’t, Berri ranked him 15th – it seemed to be because big men tend to produce more wins.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:03:05 +0000

The problem, also, is that there are so few great or even good big men. That makes them all the more valuable when you find them. It’s not necessarily that they produce more wins than the guards, it’s that they produce way more wins than the stiffs playing center on the other teams. Guards are easier to replace with at least an adequate substitute.

By: James Beale

James Beale — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:20:16 +0000

Geoffrey, I hear you with VBD, where it would seem silly to compare a quarterback to a tight end, but I would argue that in the grand scheme of football most would agree that a quarterback is inherently more valuable than a tight end.

While there would presumably be times when an excellent tight end would be preferable to a mediocre quarterback, it seems as though a football team’s time and resources would be best spent finding, training, and developing quarterbacks because, more often than not, they control more of the game than a tight end does.

I’d prefer Antonio Gates to Tavaris Jackson, but I might rather have Jake Delhomme than Gates, and I would certainly rather have a top QB like Brady or Manning.

Likewise, it seems to me that Professor Berri’s stats suggest that big men, because they produce more wins, are like quarterbacks while shooting guards are more like auxiliary role players. No one would want to pick someone like Samuel Dalembert over Kobe, but perhaps Dwight Howard does have more value.

By: Geoffrey Hamilton

Geoffrey Hamilton — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:00:25 +0000

This whole deal of center vs point guard is similar to the value of quarterbacks vs tight ends in fantasy football drafts.. It’s all relative to other players at the position, hence Value-Based-Drafting (VBD) was invented. So, a center should be compared to the average of all centers, point guard to the average of all point guards etc

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:42:35 +0000

Hi, I’m a regular reader of Dave Berri’s journal. I’m not pretending to understand his calculations, but I do read all his columns. What I take from it, in short, is that pure scoring (as opposed to scoring efficiency) is overvalued by anyone interested in wins, although it is rightly valued by players interested only in getting paid. A team following Berri’s principles would look very much like the Celtics last year, when everyone agreed that the scoring would come naturally and they should focus on just about everything but scoring.

In some ways Michael Jordan was bad for the NBA, I judge, because he was a scorer and a champion. He really may have been the best ever — although Berri has made a case for Magic Johnson. But Jordan needed Pippen and Grant and Rodman, who are players Berri would rank more highly than most experts. And Jordan is, I believe, still the only player to lead the NBA in scoring and win a championship in the same season.

Since Jordan retired, everyone has been looking for the next Jordan. GMs should be looking for the next Jordan if they can find him, of course, but they have a better chance finding the next Pippen or Grant or Rodman, because those players will be undervalued. And coaches should do everything they can to reward more than just scoring.

Kevin Durant was voted rookie of the year last year. Under Berri’s system, he wouldn’t even be in the running, although his college stats were phenomenal. For whatever reason, Durant has focused on scoring while ignoring other parts of the game, including scoring efficiency. And he seems to be getting rewarded for his efforts, in every way except wins.

The problem with Camby, by the way, is that he has often been injured, and now is getting old. If he stays healthy playing starter minutes for an entire season he can be great, but that’s a big if.