Wayne Winston (Father of Adjusted Plus Minus) thinks the Bulls will "stink" this year
"My prediction is that the Bulls are going to stink this year. Ben Gordon and Brad Miller were their best players. They let Ben Gordon go to the team they need to beat for the playoffs? Why'd they do that?
He wanted a lot of money.
Well, he's worth it.
Letting him go is just beyond stupid. It's ridiculous. And who'd they pick up to replace him? Jannero Pargo? I looked at their lineups, and I guess that they're expecting that Luol Deng can play his position. If he's healthy -- and I don't know if he's healthy."
Further reading here: http://waynewinston.com/wordpress/?p=144
"On Truehoop.com I was (correctly) quoted as saying the Bulls should not have let Ben Gordon go, especially to a bitter divisional rival (Detroit). Gordon’s performance has been erratic but last year was 18th in the league in our Adjusted +/- and he was 4th in Impact, which measure how you change the chance that your team wins. If you saw the Celtics-Bulls series you saw how his clutch shooting can change a game. In 2007-2008 Gordon had a negative impact, but this could be because the team was poor and many players mail it in when the games have no meaning. His offense held up in 2007-2008 but his defense was very poor, leading me to believe he might have mailed it in near the end of the season, In 2004-2005 Gordon had the the league’s 2nd best impact!. He plays over 30 minutes a game. While below average on defense, he is always an above average offensive player. The Bulls were at their best against the Celtics with Miller, Gordon, Hinrich and Rose on the court. They won by around a point a minute with these guys on the court. This 4 man combo cannot be used anymore. Is Ben a bad influence off the court? I have no idea. But on the court he will be missed.
Looking at his 2007-2008 season Hinrich began the season in a really bad shooting slump (he shot 33% in November) and Gordon’s offensive rating was poor(Gordon shot 37%), probably because the defense could lay off Hinrich. Gordon’s defensive rating was horrible after January 1, indicating that he may have mailed it in. If he is healthy and wants to play I believe he is worth $10 million a season."
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Yeah that was my first thought... the Bulls would suck. Lottery bound.
But I’m jumping on the Bulls will be good bandwagon until the circus trip.
Derreck Rose, you’ve gotta be flat-out kidding me. Double overtime! Triple overtime!- Chuck wack on crack
Just put your blinders on
and watch Rose and Noah. That’s what I’m going to do.
Everything I post is speculation. I have no insider information nor ideas deemed concrete enough by those who are self-elected to regulate post content.
I'm a Taj Gibson fan.
haha
Derreck Rose, you’ve gotta be flat-out kidding me. Double overtime! Triple overtime!- Chuck wack on crack
Then hopefully they'll pan to the bench a lot.
Everything I post is speculation. I have no insider information nor ideas deemed concrete enough by those who are self-elected to regulate post content.
You know what sucks?
We have to play BG 4 times a year. Thats going to be weird. You know he’s going to take it to the Bulls.
Derreck Rose, you’ve gotta be flat-out kidding me. Double overtime! Triple overtime!- Chuck wack on crack
agreed.
he’s gonna average 30 against us.
The poster formerly known as Freethefro.
by MPG on Oct 1, 2009 5:16 AM CDT up reply actions
He's gonna average $143,902 per game over the next five years against us too!
Chicago Bulls Blog and Forums. NBA Power Rankings.
gah!
Miller, Gordon, Hinrich and Rose
Tiny ball. This will only work when Glen Davis is playing PF.
12/31: Fire Vinny Del Negro.
Get ready for more tiny ball this year
Only with Pargo on the court in place of Gordon.
BG hasn't been replaced with Pargo
BG, Noc, and Gooden have been replaced by Miller and Salmons
by hlac on Sep 30, 2009 11:12 PM CDT reply actions 1 recs
I think Noc's role will be taken over, partially, by James Johnson as well.
Assuming JJ is worth a damn, Miller, Salmons, and JJ for BG, Noc, and Gooden is a pretty even swap I’d guess. BG is pretty superior to Salmons, Noc and JJ should be essentially a wash, and Brad is way superior to Gooden. However, it should be noted that the team with BG, Noc, Gooden, et. al. was on pace to win about 35-ish games before the trade. So simply breaking even on the deal isn’t good enough, and it looks as though that might be all they’ve done. Now, if they make that trade and retain Ben Gordon, suddenly things look a lot better.
1. Cut a hole in a box
2. Put your Kirk in that box
3. Make some team open that box
by fundamentallysound on Sep 30, 2009 11:25 PM CDT up reply actions
I'd rather have the combination of the best players.
Why does it have to be one or the other Jerry? WHHHHYYYYYYY?!??!
People should remember that while they have the right to their opinion, they are not entitled to be taken seriously. --Bruce Bartlett
Winston's adjusted plus minus sucked
Some of these quotes are awful:
last year was 18th in the league in our Adjusted +/-
The Bulls were at their best against the Celtics with Miller, Gordon, Hinrich and Rose on the court. They won by around a point a minute with these guys on the court.
His APM sucked because the sample sizes were too small, the standard errors too big. And now he’s using stats that again are from small sample sizes and have huge standard errors.
If you want to know the how the kind of work the Mavericks stat department (Winston’s in it) is pumping out, check this out. See that? Ben Gordon is the 27th best player in their rating! And Bassy Telfair is 22nd! Jarvis Hayes is 19th!
Bulls rock. Everything I’ve seen from this guy tells me he’s a loon.
Bassy Telfair was a +8.01 (crazy good) with a 4.22 SE by basketballvalue's 1-year adjusted plus minus numbers.
*Also, according to a post on the APBRmetrics board, Winston gave presentation at NESSIS and said he had a proprietary method for removing the effects of collinearity that cause the great noise in one year adjusted numbers. He didn’t say what it was (hence, the proprietary), but I’m not willing to just out of hand someone’s method is garbage because it provides results that I find somewhat strange. Also, this quote is pretty important from MCubes about the numbers you scoffingly cited:
One more point, these numbers don’t reflect necessarily the best players in the league, but what they do reflect is the players that are being best put in a position to succeed and are delivering.
When their teams have a need, they deliver. Thats why some names are not the biggest names. its also a reflection of their coaches. Some coaches don’t necessarily use their players in the
best lineups or matchups, which negatively impacts their ability to perform. Others are consistently good at it.
*And, I don’t think the Bulls necessarily rock. Most everything I’ve read from people whose opinions about the statistical side of the game I respect a lot has the Bulls experiencing a drop off this year.
*Also, Jarvis Hayes ranks so high, because his defensive numbers were absolutely crazy good. IF you really look at their numbers, he’s a negative on offense, but he’s contributing over 8 points on the offensive end (also of note, these were numbers at the AS Break, not full year). Jarvis Hayes posted a +6.76 adjusted plus minus by basketballvalue’s 1 year numbers, and consistent with Winston’s numbers, he did it all on the defensive end.
*You can think the one year numbers are crazy, but they are what they are and if he really does have a method for removing the noise without adding extra years (which I have my own misgivings about because it clouds the data), then his numbers don’t seem to be too far off.
*One more point about adjusted plus minus that I don’t think gets brought up enough. It’s often misused as an abstract player value metric, but what it really is, is a measure of how a player is performing in a given role. Hence, Jarvis Hayes could be really, really freakin’ excellent at doing what NJN’s coaching staff asked him to do, so he’s contributing very positively to their team. But I don’t think anyone would seriously contend that he’s a top 20 player. Top 20 for playing within his role? Maybe.
*Finally, I don’t think his point about Ben leaving is too crazy, because we’ve seen Ben in his role for the Bulls with this personnel grouping and he was wildly successful. Now there’s a gaping void and its expected to be filled by Pargo and Salmons (both of whom APM absolutely hates). I can see why he’d pick them for a fall.
1. Cut a hole in a box
2. Put your Kirk in that box
3. Make some team open that box
by fundamentallysound on Oct 1, 2009 12:59 AM CDT up reply actions
1 year APMs are worthless, and I'm as skeptical about this NESSIS thing as you are
The argument that Jarvis/Bassy were great in their roles doesn’t entirely work, because players who’ve had the same role for years (Ben Gordon, for example) have seen their 1-year APMs fluctuate wildly from year to year. Hayes had a +6.76 APM this year, but it came with a 3.99 error. That means there’s a 4.5% chance Hayes was below 0 last year. And since his box score numbers and past APMs don’t back up that +6.76, chances are he’s being overrated by noise.
I read Cuban’s justification for his stat, and I scoffed at it because of this line:
When their teams have a need, they deliver.
He published that stat midseason. How many times did the Nets have a need for Jarvis Hayes in half a season? No matter how need is defined, it results in a small sample size, and (as it did in that stat) will lead to headscratching results.
Not to argue against your entire point
(because I think APM is wildly overrated in a lot of ways) but Gordon didn’t necessarily have the exact same role on the team year-to-year. He was the designated scorer, yes, but he played in about 3 different systems so it’s tough to say if his role was the same.
That being said, I don’t think we should throw all of our eggs into the advanced stats basket, I like them more for the purpose of proving or disproving things that are observed on the court.
"This is not Vietnam, Smokey, there are rules here." - Walter Sobchak
by Rose Colored Goggles on Oct 1, 2009 12:51 PM CDT up reply actions
I think its ridiculous that he calls
Gordon, Hinrich, Rose and Miller our best line up given that it only has 4 players and the fact that playing extended minutes with 3 smallish guards is a recipe for disaster. This guy has let his crummy stats overwhelm common sense.
by Basketball Smurf on Oct 1, 2009 1:07 AM CDT up reply actions
Hinrich and Miller DOMINATED early on
I think Miller ended up +50 or something from the series. And it had nothing to do with Gordon/Hinrich/Rose/Miller being a great lineup, it had to do with Perkins and Allen/Pierce/Rondo being on the bench. When the Celtics subbed in House/Moore, we’d sub in Kirk/Miller and close the gap.
Exactly
I was going to point that out. Hinrich and Miller got to play against Boston’s second team, which was horrible. Remember House and Marbury? Remember how Powe, Moore, and Scalabrine played?
That’s not to say that Hinrich and Miller didn’t do a good job, but they appeared better because they played against terrible backups.
OMG
Talk about Stats Gone Wild. Jarvis Hayes is a bum! Sometimes you have to throw these stats out the window.
"I'm in the Hall already, on the wall already, I'm a work of art I'm a Warhol already"-Jay Z
I tried to take this seriously.
But this is the metric that said Jason Kidd was the 2nd best player in the NBA after LeBron James.
It’s also a metric Mark Cuban openly shared on his blog, while the rest of the NBA guards their advanced metrics like the Holy Grail. Maybe Cuban is just crazy, but I don’t really trust a stat that one team has made public knowledge, while the rest of the league keeps their mouths shut about methods of player evaluation outside of traditional scouting.
The 2009 White Sox....like a 40 degree day.
they made the results for a season (i.e., that Kidd ranking) public knowledge
but not the actual method, correct?
USE THE SOFTWARE. Actions-> Rec/Flag. Reply to comments with the reply button. Rec good fanposts/fanshots so the crud gets pushed down.
by your friendly BullsBlogger on Oct 1, 2009 9:40 AM CDT up reply actions
The methods of calcuation are not known, but Cuban does explain the general point of their +/-
The 2009 White Sox....like a 40 degree day.
by Ozzie Montana on Oct 1, 2009 11:57 AM CDT up reply actions
A lot of it is described in the new book Mathletics, which is currently getting coverage by TrueHoop
The Blazers use it, too.
"I think he can still play" - Kevin Pritchard on Juwan Howard
I'm also a little skeptical of anything Winston says
because he assumed they were going to have Deng or Pargo play Gordon’s position.
He didn’t do the slightest amount of research other than looking at his lineup sheets. We don’t know what Winston’s numbers would say about Salmons and Hinrich taking Gordon’s minutes, because he never bothered to find out himself.
This is just like hollinger
and his PER based arguments…both guys made up some groundbreaking stat and use that to make predictions more as re-assurance to thier egos that indeed they created something special. I agree with rosecoloredgoggles, these stats are good for proving something that can be observed on the court, but in terms of predicting something, i guess maybe one should use more than just one category of advance stats, and guys like hollinger and i guess this guy are basically just sticking to the stat they helped father…
Its pretty stubborn, and this guy comes off too confidently which makes me think of him as sort of an egotistical stat head more than anything…
On Behalf of Sue, Wjb, majoyenrac, Bullshooter and all the other Hinrich fans...Ill keep the Hinrich Hope coming...There will be light!
This Wayne Winston guy doesn't sound so bad
The 57 minutes when Ben Wallace played, and they didn’t have Joe Smith in there, they lost by 58 points.
Wow.
How could they let that happen? Ben Wallace didn’t have to play. He totally sucked. The rest of the series, the Cavaliers won by 43 points.
Didn’t you feel like Cleveland sunk into Lake Erie when the Cavaliers lost that series? It didn’t have to happen. The 57 minutes they lost by 58 points … you didn’t have to play Ben Wallace. They had Joe Smith. When Joe Smith played instead of Ben Wallace they did OK.
How could they not know that?
by Big D on Oct 1, 2009 9:07 PM CDT reply actions 1 recs
I think everyone who watched those games, other than Wallace and Mike Brown, could see how much he sucked
We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.
Ronald Reagan
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