Quick Hitter: Maybe Your Problem Isn’t with Wins Produced

Yesterday, Tom Liston, of Raptors Republic, said a lot of things about Wins Produced, most of them critical. You can find his full comments here.

Most of his criticisms have been addressed repeteadly throughout the Wages of Wins Network. What follows isn’t necessarily a direct critique of Tom’s post, but that post was the provocation.

When people present counterarguments to Wins Produced like Tom does here, it makes me think that their problem isn’t with Wins Produced, but rather, with the way the game of basketball itself is actually designed.

It’s not that Wins Produced overvalues rebounds and/or efficient scoring and/or etc., etc. Wins Produced simply observes something that is true about the game of basketball: getting rebounds, making shots, stealing possession from the other team, all of those actions produce wins.

In other words, people who present these arguments don’t actually have a problem with Wins Produced; instead, they have a fundamental misunderstanding about what constitutes winning basketball. Instead of addressing that misunderstanding, they attack the metric that simply observes what’s true about the nature of the game.

Lawrence Frank is not the Answer

Back in June, I argued that John Kuester was not problem with the Detroit Pistons. Despite the fact that he handled plenty of things poorly, the roster that he inherited simply wasn’t strong enough to compete.

Nevertheless, Kuester was fired, a new coaching staff was hired, but little else changed. 

Unfortunately, Lawrence Frank has not been the answer Pistons fans have hoped for.

After losing to Boston tonight, the Pistons have lost three consecutive games by a combined total of 39 (!!) points. And frankly, that understates how poorly the team has performed. 

From here, things don’t get any easier. Of the Pistons next 19 games (through January, 2012), the Pistons are likely to be significant underdogs in all but 4 – Charlotte, Minnesota, and Milwaukee (twice) – and they will likely be slight underdogs in those games as well. 

It is very possible that the 2011-2012 could threaten Lawrence Frank’s own New Jersey Nets for the worst start in NBA history. 

There is little Lawrence Frank can do to avoid that. 

No discredit to Frank intended, however. He seems like a fine head coach who manages his players and himself very well. The problem with the Pistons is not that Frank and/or the rest of the coaching staff is insufficient.

The problem is that this collection of players simply doesn’t have what it takes to be a winning basketball team.

And nothing short of a wholesale roster overhaul is going to fix that. 

No hard feelings, Larry. I don’t think this is your fault at all.

 

Did Charlie Villanueva get it right? An early look at the Detroit Pistons.

	Player	Position	Minutes	WP48	Wins Produced	WS48	Win Shares	PER	Value Added	Estimated Wins Added
	Greg Monroe	5	2112	.200	8.8	.143	6.3	18.07	235.5	7.8
	Jonas Jerebko	3.5	1848	.150	5.8	.095	3.7	13.99	82.5	2.7
	Rodney Stuckey	1.5	1914	.100	4.0	.111	4.4	18.46	221.7	7.4
	Tayshaun Prince	3	1680	.060	2.1	.062	2.2	15.13	116.1	3.9
	Ben Wallace	5	784	.120	2.0	.072	1.2	12.29	19.8	0.7
	Austin Daye	2.5	1200	.075	1.9	.070	1.8	13.02	45.1	1.5
	Ben Gordon	2	1716	.050	1.8	.070	2.5	14.00	89.6	3.0
	Jason Maxiell	4.5	1070	.050	1.1	.050	1.1	13.00	24.0	.08
	Charlie Villanueva	4	1408	.050	1.5	.090	2.6	16.00	94.6	3.2
	Brandon Knight	1	1254	.000	0.0	.000	0.0	14.00	56.1	1.9
	Damien Wilkins	3	218.25	.100	0.5	.075	0.3	11.45	3.1	0.1
	Will Bynum	1	555.75	.020	0.2	.050	0.6	15.28	35.5	1.2
	Vernon Macklin	5	80	.000	0	.000	0	9	-3.0	-0.1
	Totals			WP	29.6	WS	26.6		EWA	34.0

In January, Charlie Villanueva said (via retweeting a fan) that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the result to change.”

After three consecutive losing seasons, the Detroit Pistons will return essentially the same group of players, a new coaching staff, and presumably, expect better results.

Is this insanity – extreme foolishness, folly, senselessness?**

As the table above reports, expecting anything but more of the same in Motown would seem to qualify.

The Detroit Pistons have not been a good basketball team. I have argued this is due to employing players who don’t do enough of what it takes to win basketball games. A quick look at the returning players, new additions, and departing players unfortunately will reveal that little is likely to change in the upcoming season.

Returning Players

There really isn’t much to say here. Of the players who were under contract coming into this season, most are known quantities.

Greg Monroe had a fantastic rookie season (primarily during the 2011 calendar year), and Piston fans should expect good production and hopefully, significant improvement. I don’t think Monroe is a legitimate star yet, but he possesses that potential.

Ben Wallace is a year older, likely to decline, and play fewer minutes.

Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva have played their worst basketball in Detroit. I am hopeful to see some improvement from both (as reflected in the projection above), but I don’t expect them to be anything other than the players they are. Here’s hoping one of them convinces Detroit management that they are deserving of the amnesty provision this season.

Will Bynum is a player I love to root for. And who wouldn’t? Anytime a sub six foot player can make plays like this– to say nothing of his persevering optimism – it’s hard not to. But Bynumite is the player he is, and I don’t expect much more than serviceable backup play that’s likely to be pushed out of the rotation by Knight and Stuckey.

Jason Maxiell will probably play more minutes than he should, due to our short supply of tall people and a hectic NBA schedule that will limit Ben Wallace’s minutes. Perhaps he will discover his inner Chris Wilcox and surprise everyone during a contract year.

Austin Daye may be the only exception to this rule. Daye had a promising rookie season, but followed that up with a disappointing sophomore campaign. Hopefully, Coach Frank’s commitment to play Austin Daye more on the perimeter will foster Daye’s development.

Three Pistons are returning this season after being inked to new contracts.

Rodney Stuckey is returning for three more years. Joe Dumars seems to be banking on Stuckey making more than the incremental progress he’s made thus far. I’m not holding my breath. Stuckey’s a fine player and would make a serviceable backup on a Playoff team. But he hasn’t demonstrated that he’s worth the money he’ll be making in his new contract, and it would take significant improvement in order to do so.

Tayshaun Prince is returning for four more years, and Dumars seems to be banking on Prince discovering the fountain of youth. Prince will be grandfather age in NBA years in the final year of his contract. A slow but consistent decline seems inevitable.

Jonas Jerebko’s new four-year contract is the only off-season acquisition I’m excited about. He’s a useful rotation player at both forward positions, he’s locked up for most of his prime years, he plays like a Piston, and he will be paid fairly for what he produces.

Departing Players

The Pistons lost two useful players in Chris Wilcox and Tracy McGrady. I do not anticipate any Piston guard replacing what was lost in McGrady’s departure, but Jerebko’s return from injury should mitigate the loss of Wilcox.

The key addition by subtraction is Richard Hamilton being bought out of his contract. Rip was one of my favorite players during the last decade of Pistons basketball, but his production and attitude fell of a cliff during the past two seasons. The Pistons are better off with Rip in a Bulls’ uniform (the Bulls might not be, interestingly enough).

New Additions

I would love for Brandon Knight to mimic Greg Monroe as a rookie by producing more as a pro than he did as a collegiate. But while Monroe was an “average” college player, Knight was not a productive player in college, posting numbers below average for his position in several key categories.

Undoubtedly, Knight is talented, he certainly passes the eyeball test, and he could  be a productive point guard eventually. It is likely that PER and EWA will like him a lot more than WP48/WS48 and WP/WS will, though, because he will score his fair share of points (by taking plenty of shots). Knight has a long way to go, and I don’t expect a significant contribution to wins this season.

I don’t expect much, if anything, from Vernon Macklin.

Damien Wilkins was a puzzling addition, given the plethora of perimeter players already employed, but he has posted respectable numbers over the past two seasons. Still, it’s hard to imagine him playing significant minutes, and even if he did, his contribution would be minimal.

Projecting the 2011-2012 Season

By necessity, I’ve done a little bit of educated guessing here with regards to minutes. With a new coach and a 66 game schedule, this obviously won’t be perfect. This year, I decided to branch out and include Win Shares and Estimated Wins Added in my projection.

With regards to production, I’ve allowed for improvement from young players (Monroe, Daye, Stuckey, Jerebko), declines for aging vets (Prince and Wallace), and returns to form for the younger veterans, Gordon and Villanueva across all three metrics.

Brandon Knight is a little harder to get right because he is so young, but based on his college performance, it would take drastic improvement for him to make a significant impact this season.

Unsurprisingly, the metrics disagree about which players will be responsible for the Pistons’ wins. Estimated Wins Added likes points, Wins Produced likes efficient scoring and possession creation, and Win Shares lands somewhere in between.

But they agree that the Pistons won’t be winning a whole lot. We are likely to be cheering this team on to a win total in the mid twenties.

And ultimately, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. A team doesn’t emerge from the lottery to playoff contention by doing the same thing over and over again, year after year.

That’s just crazy.

——————————————————

**Hopefully, the hyperbole is obvious. I don’t think that anyone in Pistons management is literally insane!

Rodman’s HOF Speech

Prince to Miami?

I am among those who thinks Joe Dumars should have traded Prince for Caron Butler and Dallas’ first round pick. Given that there was so little trade buzz about Prince at last year’s deadline, I was anxious to take whatever trade we could get.

Obviously, that did not happen, and it appears tas though Dumars will try for a sign and trade if Prince cannot be re-signed outright.

Color me skeptical.

What does any Playoff team have that it is willing to part with that we would want in return for Prince? I struggle to find an answer to that question. A sign and trade seems very unlikely to me.

Still, Prince is the type of player that one would expect to sign one last large-ish contract, given his age and injury history. Four-five years, $25-30 million with a Playoff team looking to add one more piece to bolster their rotation. Shawn Marion signed that type of contract with Dallas, as a recent and familiar example.

Recent reports suggest Miami might be that team for Tayshaun Prince.

I have no strong preferences about where Prince signs his next contract. I wish him well, as he’s certainly contributed a great deal to the franchise. But Mosi Platt of the Miami Heat Index does have some strong feelings about wthe King doesn’t need a Prince.

As always, it’s a great read from Mosi. And for those who might have thought that this season was Tay’s best season, well, Mosi offers a differing perspective.

Q&A with WoW Network Bloggers

I joined in with some fellow Wages of Wins bloggers for a quick Q&A. Interestingly, there were plenty of Pistons connections in addition to my contributions.

Check it out here.

A Wins Produced perspective on Lawrence Frank

It appears as though Joe Dumars and Tom Gores have found the next coach of the Detroit Pistons – Lawrence Frank.

Most recently, Frank is known for leading the New Jersey Nets to the worst start in NBA history. But before falling to such record-breaking lows, Lawrence Frank found significant success in New Jersey.

In what follows, I will briefly examine Frank’s five full seasons with the New Jersey Nets (leaving out the partial seasons of 03-04 and 09-10) through the lens of Wins Produced in hopes of revealing what he might accomplish in Detroit.

For those new to Wins Produced, feel free to check out the Required Reading page for an introduction. As always, we’re powered by Nerd Numbers.

First, some spreadsheets (also available via Google Docs here), then some commentary.

First, it’s pretty obvious that like all winning coaches, Frank’s success in New Jersey was driven by quality players. When Jefferson, Vinsanity, and Kidd were young, healthy, and productive, Frank looked like a pretty good coach. But when injuries and age started catching up with that core trio, New Jersey struggled to win basketball games.

The clearest example of quality players driving wins in New Jersey is the mid-season trade of Devin Harris for Jason Kidd. Subtract a productive veteran and replace with a middling upstart, and what do you get? Unfortunately for Lawrence Frank, you eventually get to start looking for a new job.

Frank’s story in New Jersey once again demonstrates that first and foremost, winning coaches are a product of winning players, not the other way around.

The obvious implication for Pistons fans is that we don’t have any true star power like Kidd or Carter (yet), so we shouldn’t expect Frank’s coaching prowess to propel us from cellar dweller status.

I make this second comment hesitantly, because work done by Dr. David Berri suggests that very few coach coaches are able to impact the statistical performance of their players significantly. With that necessary qualifier out of the way, Brook Lopez had his most productive season as a rookie under the tutelage of Lawrence Frank. He was a much better rebounder and much more efficient offensive player while being coached by Frank than he has been since.

I’ll be watching Greg Monroe’s stats closely from start to finish next season for this reason.

Finally, and most importantly, Frank has done a pretty good job of playing his most  productive players. Yes, there are some exceptions – Boone and Diop probably deserved more minutes from Frank, and Jianlian’s minutes scare me a bit given that Charlie Villanueva is on the roster – but overall, Frank let his best players carry the bulk of the weight.

Finding a way to accomplish the same thing in Detroit while juggling personalities (and bloated contracts) would be a significant accomplishment in year one of his tenure.

This quick look at Frank’s tenure in Jersey doesn’t reveal anything new or groundbreaking. Coaches that have and play good players tend to win, and as a result, they tend to look like good coaches. Unfortunately, the Pistons aren’t stacked with talent right now, so we shouldn’t expect an immediate run at the playoffs.

However, Frank seems to have an eye for productive talent, and establishing a consistent rotation made up of its best players is something the fans and the franchise sorely need.

Here’s hoping our new coach can make that happen.