via the account of flikr member sixersphotos

The recent addition of Elton Brand has seemingly everybody excited about the prospects for the Sixers’ upcoming season.  John Hollinger of ESPN says that the signing makes the Sixers players in the east, Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated says that the move makes the Sixers the big winners of free agency, CBS Sportsline has declared the Sixers the free agent champions as has Sean Deveney of Yahoo sports. The list goes on and on. 

However, I have cited expert predictions before, and as we have seen, the ‘experts’ are not always (or even usually) right.  Fortunately, Dave Berri of Wages of Wins, our favorite basketball-enthused econ professor, has recently tackled the subject. 

In his most recent post, The Brand Value, Berri looks at the addition of E.B. and concludes that it should, in fact, significantly improve the Sixers.  His answer as to why isn’t the standard one though.  What he said and more thoughts, ATJ

Berri:

[R]eplacing Evans with Brand – by itself – is not going to lead to that many more wins.

So how is Brand going to help the Sixers?  The key is changes in position played.

[snip]

With Brand on board, Philadelphia now has three quality big men (and its four if rookie Marreese Speights can be productive).  This means that Young can now play small forward, where he should be an above average performer.  And Iguodala can now take most of the minutes at shooting guard. 

Berri then concludes that the Sixers starting lineup will have effective players 1-5, something not exactly commonplace in the league these days.  Berri agrees that the Sixers should be significantly better this season, but doubts that sports media does or will fully understand why.

I have a couple responses.  First off, I’m inclined to agree with him.  Anecdotally it seems to me that replacing Willie Green with AI2 is a significant step up, and intellectually it is hard to argue with a man who has so often been right when others (and I include myself in this group) have so often been wrong. 

That said, one part of his analysis confuses me.  He seems to imply that players can be casually shifted around – Iguodala can play the two not because he is a two or because he plays the two competently, but rather because that would put the most effective group of players on the floor.  While that may be the case in this incident, following that logic why would a frontcourt of Dalembert, Brand and Evans not work? Taken further, according to Berri and WoW, would any group of five statistically effective players be able to succeed? 

I’ve played enough basketball to think I know it wouldn’t – having three players on the court at the same time who are unreliable (to be nice) shooters outside of 15 feet and aren’t exactly known for their handle seems crazy, and I certainly know that I feel more valuable playing off the ball than at the point, but conventional wisdom has been proven wrong before.  Sure, conventionally wisdom isn’t always correct, but it is going to be a hard for me to accept that different players value will not fluctuate according to what role they have on a team. 

Would Brand’s effectiveness not increase if he is surrounded by outside shooters? Isn’t Miller’s value determined in large part by the players he can give the ball to? Chris Paul just completed one of the most spectacular individual seasons I have ever witnessed, but does anyone doubt that if Tyson Chandler was replaced by someone without tremendous athleticism that several of Paul’s alleys wouldn’t have ooped?

I accept that Reggie Evans is an undervalued and above-average performer, but not that a team of five Reggie Evans could be competent in the league.

I’ve reached out to Berri to try to clear some of this up and I expect he’ll have a reasonable answer, but I’d love to hear some of your thoughts as well. 

What does this team need to move forward – a shooter (or whatever role player you believe they need), or just more talent?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Elton Brand, Sixers, Uncategorized, basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.