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Harsh words about rebounds [PERMALINK]This column enjoys a good whizzing match, and it's managed to land on the periphery of one online that's nice and nasty. It involves several factions of the sabermetric community, basketball division, arguing about the rating system found in the book "The Wages of Wins" by economists David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt and Stacey L. Brook.
Malcolm Gladwell, who fawned over the book in a New Yorker review, has even jumped in. This column, though the target of some of the whizzing because of some pre-match commentary, is keeping dry on the sidelines.
Twice I chided the book, in an aside in August and again in a full column in September, for its position that, on a per-minute basis, Dennis Rodman was a more valuable player than Michael Jordan on the record-setting 1995-96 Bulls.
After my initial joke, a reader pointed out a blog entry in which author Berri, using a clarification by American Prospect writer Matthew Yglesias as a proxy, denied ever writing that "Rodman was 'better' than Michael Jordan."
I pointed out that, alas and alackaday for Berri, when you write something in a book it stays writ and that the statement that Rodman was more valuable on a per-minute basis than Jordan -- that is, a better player who just didn't play as many minutes -- was on Page 144.
I also thought it was helpful of me to reproduce the quote: "Per 48 minutes played, Rodman's productivity even eclipsed Jordan. Rodman's WP48 of .0.415 was four times the production offered by an average player in the NBA, and even surpassed the 0.386 WP48 posted by Jordan."
WP is Wins Produced, the "Wages of Wins" stat that measures NBA players' total contribution to a team.
The full column arguing against Rodman as a Hall of Fame-caliber player came not so much in response to "The Wages of Wins" but to negative reader reaction to a fairly offhand statement I'd made before that while Terrell Owens' odd behavior sometimes resembled that of Rodman, Owens is "a much better football player than Rodman was a basketball player."
I made my case, mentioning the overstatement of rebounds in "The Wages of Wins," and retired from the field. This was before all the real whizzing began.
Berri offered a rebuttal to my criticism on his blog earlier this month, then wrote some more on the subject, though not about my criticism, a few days later.
Since then: Whiz! Here's a good overview at the Sabermetric Research blog.
Here's True Hoop describing Berri's criticism of ESPN analyst John Hollinger's older rival metric, PER, plus Gladwell's blog entry siding with Berri and Hollinger's response.
The main thing they're all arguing about is whether "The Wages of Wins" overvalues rebounds.
They're still arguing. Here's Berri's response to Hollinger's response.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or actually back in July, here's a critique of "The Wages of Wins" methodology by UNC-Greensboro economist Dan Rosenbaum, who has studied the NBA and now consults for the Cleveland Cavaliers. He keeps getting mentioned in the current arguing, and he weighs in on the whizzing match several times in this thread.
Rosenbaum takes pains to point out that there are a lot of good ideas in "The Wages of Wins" and the authors' blog, but he argues that Wins Produced runs into trouble in the way it measures shot attempts.
It's all really fun -- maybe just to me -- because it's a bunch of really smart people arguing about a really tough question, how best to measure the individual contributions of basketball players, given that basketball is such an interactive game. Almost everything that happens is dependent on the actions or inactions of others. It lacks the clear one-on-one combat of the batter-pitcher relationship in baseball.
And by really smart people I'm of course including Berri and his coauthors, though I disagree with their conclusions on basketball and I find their tone a bit condescending.
I'm going to stay dry. I don't have the math chops to engage in a statistical argument with a bunch of economists. But my observations, the wisdom of the crowd, and the opinions of enough people who do have the math chops to debate a bunch of economists all make me pretty comfortable with my position that Dennis Rodman was not, on a per-minute or any other basis, better, more valuable or more productive than Michael Jordan, and that any metric that describes him thusly is flawed.
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NFL Week 13, Part 1 [PERMALINK]
The lonely pick of one game will be a regular feature of Thursday columns for the next four weeks. Winner in caps.
BALTIMORE (9-2) at Cincinnati (6-5): "I'm not convinced it'll help much." That's what I wrote when Ravens head coach Brian Billick took over as offensive coordinator. Since then, the Ravens are 5-0. I know the Bengals are flying after that 30-0 shellacking of Cleveland, but that was Cleveland.
Buster's pick: Baltimore (coin)
Previous column: London's Olympic boondoggle
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com or visit his MySpace page.
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