Staff Blog
More Sixer Talk: on Berri and Brand
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| photo via LA Times |
if you’re just checking in Dave Berri talks about Brand HERE and I respond HERE
Dave Berri just got back to me about my original question, and like I guessed his answer makes sense. Money quote:
The most productive players on the court — in absolute terms — are centers. Centers get the most rebounds, hit the highest percentage of their shots, and commit the fewest turnovers. So why not have a team of all centers? Because now these centers would be taking on the role of point guard. This means they would have to handle the ball, and that would likely to lead to many turnovers. Plus you would have centers moving farther from the basket. This would lead to longer shots and more misses. In sum, converting centers into point guards would cause these centers to become far less productive.
I think it may be a bit more complicated than that. Either way, my thoughts and more from Berri, ATJ
I guess what bothers me is that, unless I’m wrong, WoW does not seem to adjust for these differences. If centers are the most productive players on the floor, but a team needs a point guard, a shooting guard, etc., wouldn’t doesn’t that increase in the value of a PG in and of itself?
Berri argues that …
The WoW approach takes it as given that a team is comprised of a point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center. At all levels you see these roles. When we look at player performance in the NBA we see clear differences in the productivity of guards and big men. And in general, big men cannot become guards and guards cannot become big men. Given this reality of basketball, players have to be evaluated in terms of the role they are playing. If a player is at small forward, he needs to be compared to an average small forward. If you move that player to power forward, the point of reference becomes the 4 spot.
I’m hesitant to quibble with his system because it has been so accurate, but on an aesthetic level it seems inaccurate to conclude that a slightly above average center is more valuable than an elite point guard.
The counterpoint to this, of course, is that perhaps a slightly above average center is more valuable than an elite point guard, but since all five positions must be filled you need a to fill them all appropriately. The takeaway, then, would be that teams should focus their resources on finding, signing, and developing elite post players and fill the guard positions with role players. That seems at least plausible, and very interesting if so. It has some anecdotally background. As I’ve mentioned before, the NBA Champions are almost always built around an elite post presence. Even in the days of no-hand checks, and contact fouls on penetrating guards, a Kobe led team could not compete with a Garnett led team with the chips down.
I’m not sure if that is the answer, or if I am overthinking the process and merely cannot compare apples-to-oranges.
Either way, food for thought. I’ll try to continue this throughout the day.
