A look at the "Wins Produced" stat

KB21 · June 21, 2007

I stumbled upon a blog by the guy who wrote the book Wages of Wins, and I started reading about this guy's ideas on the stat that he has come up with. That stat is called wins produced, and he sees it as a good measure of what the player is doing on the court. As with any stat that tries to tell you how good a player is, I feel this stat has it's flaws. For one, this stat will favor guys who are good rebounders, which are usually big men. The PER stat that John Hollinger came up with puts too much emphasis on offense, IMO, and not enough on defense. The NBA Efficiency rating doesn't really penalize high volume but low percentage shooters. I think the win score and wins produced stat is a better stat than both of these.

Dave Berri believes that the wins produced stat will predict within 95% accuracy how good a team will be, or something to that nature. His formula for the wins produced stat is apparently very complicated with some regression analysis thrown in for good measure. However, his belief is that if you add up the wins produced stats by all the players on a team, you will come very close to what that team's win total for the year is.

I decided to test his idea out.

Wins Score State

This is a link to the website that has the win score stats and the wins produced per 48 minutes stats. My analysis of the numbers is probably skewed because I used the WP/48 numbers and multiplied them by the # of games each player played. Some of the players have negative numbers, which means they actually cost the teams some games within this philosophy.

To get down to it, the Hawks won 30 games on the season. When I did all the multiplying and adding of every player that played for the Hawks this past season (even the guys that played only 5 and 6 games), the WP/48 * GP stat came out to 30 wins. I didn't do this for any other team to see if this was just a coincidence.

With that said, I decided to use these numbers to see how many games the Hawks would have won had Joe Johnson, Josh Childress, Josh Smith, Marvin Williams, Ty Lue, and Speedy Claxton not missed so much time. Using the same numbers, with the exception of using games missed instead of games played, I came up with 38 wins for the Hawks. Going by these statistics, the argument that the Hawks were close to being a playoff team if healthy is a valid argument. 38 wins would have put the Hawks 2 games behind Orlando for the last playoff spot.

Wages of Wins: Dave Berri's Blog

roezag · June 21, 2007

I just went through about 8 teams and it looks like it would be extremely beneficial for fantasy analysis. The top 5 guys on the teams I glanced at were Kidd, Camby, Marion, Nash, and Garnett. And when those guys are all healthy, that's pretty close to the top 5, although Kidd wouldn't be #1.

KB21 · June 21, 2007

It's interesting enough to me that I might buy the book just to read up on this guy's analysis and philosophy. I am by no means a stathead, but I do think stats have a place in the game. I'm always looking for better stats than just PPG, RPG, BPG, SPG and such.

I like this stat also because it shows the value a player like Josh Childress brings to the table.

drzachary · June 21, 2007

Quote:

It's interesting enough to me that I might buy the book just to read up on this guy's analysis and philosophy. I am by no means a stathead, but I do think stats have a place in the game. I'm always looking for better stats than just PPG, RPG, BPG, SPG and such.

I like this stat also because it shows the value a player like Josh Childress brings to the table.

I'm with you here.... especially in the neverending hunt to find a good defensive stat. SPG and BPG (especially the former) show how well you pad stats more than how well you defend.

KB21 · June 21, 2007

IMO, there will never be a good stat that tells you how good of a defensive player someone is. It's just like in baseball. I don't need a stat to tell me that someone is a good defender.

coachx · June 21, 2007

That is a pretty good read I bet.

Wonder if it was written before or after the 06-07 season. If JH thought of that before the season he may just be a genius. I bet he makes alot of money in Vegas !

If the book was written after the season it would of course be much easier for you to configure player ratings with the official wins and losses to help influence the statistical formula for the, already known, accurate results. Throw in a little (regression alysis) and tweak each player in your favor all the more for the given team.

Either way it would be an interesting study. Even if it was derived after the season and then continued for multiple seasons. It would be interesting to see how it played out through say, a 5 year span.

cyman3 · June 21, 2007

Quote:

Going by these statistics, the argument that the Hawks were close to being a playoff team if healthy is a valid argument. 38 wins would have put the Hawks 2 games behind Orlando for the last playoff spot.

thats very comforting.

but then again, you have to make the same tweaks for other teams. We werent the only team in the NBA suffering from injuries.

KB21 · June 21, 2007

We were the only team that had the best four players on the team miss a total of 90 games combined, and the guy who was to be the starting point guard missed 40 games. The Hawks starting line up missed a total of 140 player games.

Packfill · June 21, 2007

Quote:

We were the only team that had the best four players on the team miss a total of 90 games combined, and the guy who was to be the starting point guard missed 40 games. The Hawks starting line up missed a total of 140 player games.

Just FYI, teams like NO and Milwaukee had the same injury issues as the Hawks in that they never had their projected starting 5 on the floor together.

drzachary · June 21, 2007

Quote:

We were the only team that had the best four players on the team miss a total of 90 games combined, and the guy who was to be the starting point guard missed 40 games. The Hawks starting line up missed a total of 140 player games.

Just FYI, teams like NO and Milwaukee had the same injury issues as the Hawks in that they never had their projected starting 5 on the floor together.

Exactly, and the deep playoff runs NO and Milwaukee made prove to us that injuries cannot be used as an excuse!

Packfill · June 21, 2007

Quote:

We were the only team that had the best four players on the team miss a total of 90 games combined, and the guy who was to be the starting point guard missed 40 games. The Hawks starting line up missed a total of 140 player games.

Just FYI, teams like NO and Milwaukee had the same injury issues as the Hawks in that they never had their projected starting 5 on the floor together.

Exactly, and the deep playoff runs NO and Milwaukee made prove to us that injuries cannot be used as an excuse!

Not sure why you are bringing up the playoffs. I was only pointing out the fact that the Hawks were not the "only" team to suffer from injuries. Other teams had it worse.

NO played the entire season without Peja and each of Paul, West and Mason missed significant time. Similarly, Milwaukee was without their projected starting small forward for the entire season and had Bogut, Villaneuva, Redd and others miss significant time as well.

June 21, 2007

Quote:

I decided to use these numbers to see how many games the Hawks would have won had Joe Johnson, Josh Childress, Josh Smith, Marvin Williams, Ty Lue, and Speedy Claxton not missed so much time. Using the same numbers, with the exception of using games missed instead of games played, I came up with 38 wins for the Hawks. Going by these statistics, the argument that the Hawks were close to being a playoff team if healthy is a valid argument. 38 wins would have put the Hawks 2 games behind Orlando for the last playoff spot.

No team has all it's best players healthy each and every game of the year without fail. Do the same for every other team in the league and they average from 3-10 more wins a years also.

W

drzachary · June 21, 2007

Quote:

We were the only team that had the best four players on the team miss a total of 90 games combined, and the guy who was to be the starting point guard missed 40 games. The Hawks starting line up missed a total of 140 player games.

Just FYI, teams like NO and Milwaukee had the same injury issues as the Hawks in that they never had their projected starting 5 on the floor together.

Exactly, and the deep playoff runs NO and Milwaukee made prove to us that injuries cannot be used as an excuse!

Not sure why you are bringing up the playoffs. I was only pointing out the fact that the Hawks were not the "only" team to suffer from injuries. Other teams had it worse.

NO played the entire season without Peja and each of Paul, West and Mason missed significant time. Similarly, Milwaukee was without their projected starting small forward for the entire season and had Bogut, Villaneuva, Redd and others miss significant time as well.

Exactly.. those two teams had significant injury problems as well, and they did not have successful seasons, just like the Hawks!

Packfill · June 21, 2007

Quote:

We were the only team that had the best four players on the team miss a total of 90 games combined, and the guy who was to be the starting point guard missed 40 games. The Hawks starting line up missed a total of 140 player games.

Just FYI, teams like NO and Milwaukee had the same injury issues as the Hawks in that they never had their projected starting 5 on the floor together.

Exactly, and the deep playoff runs NO and Milwaukee made prove to us that injuries cannot be used as an excuse!

Not sure why you are bringing up the playoffs. I was only pointing out the fact that the Hawks were not the "only" team to suffer from injuries. Other teams had it worse.

NO played the entire season without Peja and each of Paul, West and Mason missed significant time. Similarly, Milwaukee was without their projected starting small forward for the entire season and had Bogut, Villaneuva, Redd and others miss significant time as well.

Exactly.. those two teams had significant injury problems as well, and they did not have successful seasons, just like the Hawks!

Correct, but I don't remember anyone in this thread arguing that any of those teams had successful seasons.

I gather from the stats KB looked at the Hawks would have won 38 games if everyone stayed completely healthy. Some people may consider that successful.

drzachary · June 21, 2007