Notes on Game 5

The Mavericks won Game 5 of the Finals last night, giving them a chance to take the championship with just one win in Miami. Of course, Detroit in 1988, New York in 1994, and Boston in 2010 were in similar situations, up 3-2, but could not break the serve of their opponent in the road arena. Dallas will need to work even harder than they did tonight (the Mavs' effort was exemplified by Brian Cardinal, who repeatedly put himself in a good-faith position to receive charging calls against driving Miami players) to win a fourth game in this series. If they relent just slightly, Miami will quickly win two games and celebrate next Tuesday.

During the past two games, Dallas has missed Brendan Haywood (hip). DeShawn Stevenson had his knee drained after Game 4. Since January, they have been without erstwhile starting SF Caron Butler (knee). Dirk Nowitzki has a busted finger and is recovering from a sinus infection. Their three-guard rotation has an average height of 6'1". Yet they still took two of three games from the Heat in Miami. Dallas's coach Rick Carlisle has expertly managed his players' minutes while still ending each game with his best lineup of Kidd, Terry, Chandler, Marion, and Nowitzki. Marion's once-receding hairline and his unorthodox low-post game seem to have returned to their formerly robust condition circa 2003. What technological assistance Marion received for these two miracles, I do not know.

Dallas was out-assisted tonight, 25-23, and out-rebounded 36-26. Dallas only snared 26 boards, worse than the average of the worst regular-season team! FG attempts and FT attempts were roughly equal; the difference in the game, if we are to focus only on math, was the Mavs' 13-19 performance on three-pointers, against Miami's 8-of-20 night from beyond the line.

ABC's Jeff Van Gundy criticized young Ian Mahinmi for giving up a couple easy baskets to Chris Bosh. Weak defensive play is not surprising for an inexperienced player appearing for only the fifth time ever in the NBA playoffs (including one game with the Spurs last spring). However, Mahinmi grabbed a couple fierce rebounds and loose balls and generally did not embarrass himself while on the floor.

Dallas closed the game on a 17-4 run starting at the 4:22 mark, after Miami found several holes in Dallas's defense midway through the fourth quarter, punctuated by a James-to-Haslem dish and dunk. Down 96-95, Rick Carlisle called a timeout. Following the break, Dallas showed great ball movement on their next few offensive sets, as Jason Terry delivered the ball to Dirk Nowitzki for a dunk and to Jason Kidd for a game-clinching three-pointer. On defense, Dallas used the strength of Jason Kidd (who, as I noted on this blog earlier, was able to defend Kevin Durant in the previous series) to slow Lebron James from slipping loose for too much havoc.

Throughout the game, J.J. Barea took several ill-advised three-point shots while decently guarded, but still managed to sink 4 of 5 from that distance, matching the contribution of his counterpart Mario Chalmers. Chalmers, who made his reputation as a big shooter back in college and has done nothing to sully it in these Finals, made a mildly ridiculous shot at the end of the first quarter, throwing in a one-hander on the run from half-court while falling sideways. With Mike Bibby averaging 3.8 points and 1.0 assist in five Finals games, it is unclear why coach Erik Spoelstra continues to put him on the court to start games.

I predict Miami will win two very tight games down in Florida. Dallas has played great so far, but the Heat are very hard to beat at home. Without a 15-point Mavs comeback in Game 2, the Heat would be undefeated at home for the playoffs. (And add a couple more lucky breaks in Game 4, and the Heat could have swept the series.) Much credit is due to Dallas for finding a way to grab three wins. But I do not believe they will win another.

Game 2 Notes

As the late Ralph Wiley once put it, the NBA Finals is the highest level of hoop. Sure, talented individuals like Rose, Durant, Bryant, Howard, Paul, Griffin, Love are not represented here, but this is a team game and stats alone don't yield wins. If stats gave wins, Mitch Richmond would have more than one ring.

We must keep this in mind when contemplating Dallas's two-point victory in Game 2 last night, 95-93. How could a 38-year-old point guard, a 6'2" shooting guard, a center that a center-less team refused to take, a 7'0" shooting guard, and a guy on his fourth team in four seasons beat the most talented and athletic group of guys in the league?

Excellent coaching strategy helps, but the confidence of veterans is yet more important. As I noted in April, teams with no prior playoff series wins never win the NBA title in any given year. It is also hard to expect a Chris Bosh to suddenly thrive in the NBA Finals, after never winning one playoff series in Toronto from 2003-04 through '09-10. Jason Kidd has never been known for fancy dribbling, but his pedestrian handle almost never loses control of the game.

Again and again last night, I watched Miami's defense force turnovers from Dallas's suite of small guards. Barea and Terry (and even Kidd, a bit) had their ball poked loose, or saw their shot blocked or altered, too many times to keep coach Carlisle tranquil. In all, Miami notched 15 steals and 8 blocks for the night; seven of Miami's eight players logged at least one steal. These numbers don't do enough to convey the swarming intensity of Miami's defense (for the first 42 minutes of the game, that is); Dallas repeatedly had trouble initiating basic offensive sets or using ball movement to create space. Meanwhile, Miami used these turnovers and possession changes to launch quick strikes to the other side of the court, slamming through numerous crowd-charging dunks. But late in the game, when Dallas learned to flummox the defense with better-executed screens (or double screens), the Mavs were able to begin the offensive show they displayed against Los Angeles and OKC.

With 3:11 left, Jason Terry to hit a jumper to cut the deficit to 4 points, and Miami knew they were troubled. Immediately after a Miami timeout, Chris Bosh dribbled the ball out of bounds for no reason, leading to a quick Nowitzki jumper that made things a single-basket game. After a few missed baskets, Shawn Marion led a fast break down the court and wisely flipped the ball to Nowitzki to evade a defender. Nowitzki laid in the ball, tying the game. After another Miami timeout, Dirk Nowitzki hit a three-pointer. Finally [after a tying bucket by Mario Chalmers], Nowitzki drove the ball one-on-one against Chris Bosh and hit the winning layup with his left hand at 0:04. LeBron James, guarding Jason Terry in the corner, couldn't decide whether to help against the Nowitzki parry or to stay with his man. James simply stood as a spectator and watched Nowitzki easily streak to the basket. Bosh also failed to commit his team's "foul to give" when Nowitzki began to dash free. [In the postgame press conference, Bosh admitted to poor defense on the final play against Nowitzki, but I did not hear James cop to anything similar.]

Bosh and James didn't know what to do, or were not able to make the right decisions in the required time frame. Nowitzki, Kidd, Marion, and Terry barely needed to think.

At this point I sincerely cannot say who will the series. Miami is slightly better, but Dallas has 3 of the 5 remaining home games. I recall a couple recent playoff Game 2s where a last-second game-winning shot gave an undeserved win to an apparently inferior team that had lost Game 1. Recall Kobe Bryant tying up the Pistons (sending the game to OT, to be eventually won by LA) with a three-pointer in 2004's Game 2, or LeBron James defeating Orlando the same way in 2009's Game 2. Folks thought that "momentum" in the series had turned. But the better team usually wins out; Bryant and James both lost their respective series, in the event. An inferior team can eke out an upset once, but four times? Can't happen.

[My comparison may strike some as inapt because prior to those series, folks thought that the Lakers and Cavaliers were the better teams. But the eyeball test eventually revealed the opposite. No one argues that the Lakers-with-injured-Malone or the Cavs were the better team compared to the Pistons and Orlando in those series.]

So, Miami could still win this one. Heck, they could have won Game 2 with just one or two luckier breaks: a miss by Nowitzki, perhaps a swish by Dwyane Wade on his last-second prayer. But right now Dallas looks like the hungrier AND smarter team.

Game 1 Notes

A few thoughts after Tuesday night's 92-84 Miami victory in Game 1 of the NBA Finals:

Peja Stojakovic looked lost on defense every time he took the floor. Against Los Angeles or Oklahoma City, Stojakovic could be assigned to guard Ron Artest, Matt Barnes, Lamar Odom, Nick Collison, or Thabo Sefolosha: relatively slow men who are not primary ball-handlers. Against Miami, which plays Lebron James and Dwyane Wade together for nearly 48 minutes straight, Stojakovic is forced to cover an All-NBA wing every trip down the floor. He shot 0 of 3 last night; if he keeps up that desultory record, coach Carlisle may be forced to yank him for Corey Brewer, who at least plays adequate defense. I wonder, too, whether the half-healed Caron Butler might be useful in 5-minute bursts.

Dallas missed a lot of open shots: J.J. Barea missed several of the Nash-like layups he usually writhes into the hoop, and Jason Terry missed a few open 3s. Including Stojakovic and Brendan Haywood, the Mavs' bench combined to shoot for 4 for 22. They will surely improve that rate next time and will score more points. Miami's whole roster shot only 39%, but their three stars still delivered 65 points; it is not obvious that Miami can find more scoring.

Miami has four seven-foot centers bound to the bench: Dexter Pittman, Jamaal Magloire, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Erick Dampier. Coach Spoelstra chose to employ 6'8" Udonis Haslem (30 minutes) as his backup center behind 6'9" Joel Anthony (18 minutes). Spoelstra further used 6'10" Juwan Howard for 8 minutes to spell Chris Bosh at power forward. Dallas is the only playoff team with two starting-caliber centers (non-playoff Sacramento could make the same boast; Boston could say the same if Shaquille O'Neal were healthy, as could Portland with a healthy Greg Oden), but Spoelstra chose to combat them with long-limbed agile men. Like the Atlanta Hawks (except better), Miami's typical five-man squad is not a "big lineup", as they play no 7-footers, but not a "small lineup" either, as Lebron James and Mike Miller are oversized for their respective positions. If Miami insists on eschewing its tallest guys, Dallas must find a way to exploit the Heat's short stature. I saw Dallas using a Stevenson-Barea-Terry alignment in the fourth quarter last night; if going small does not work, why not go big? Try bringing in 6'11" F-C Ian Mahinmi, who played 56 games in the regular season, to play with Dirk Nowitzki and Tyson Chandler when Lebron James leaves the game.

My suggestions to play Butler, Brewer, or Mahinmi could be easily ridiculed as desperation. Perhaps Dallas should not mess with the nine-player rotation that destroyed the Lakers and Thunder. But Miami is very, very good.

Why Two For One?

A few weeks ago we addressed the somewhat specious platitude that finishing a quarter strongly is particularly important. We neglected, though, to address another end-of-quarter oddity. When a team takes possession of the ball with, say, between 48 and 35 seconds remaining in a quarter (save the fourth), coaches sometimes advise their charges to quickly put up a shot so that the opposing team gets it with no less than, say, 30 seconds left. This way, the first team will get the ball back with no less than, say, 6 seconds left, and can try for one more shot. The strategy is called "Two For One". The idea is to get two possessions before the quarter ends.

There are a couple concerns here.

First, if the first team gives the second team the ball back with a bit more than 35 seconds left, then the second team can try its own Two-For-One strategy. Thus, the first team must manage its initial possession to make a shot quickly, but not too quickly.

Second, are two low-probability shots better than one high-probability possession? Assume a frenzied drive at the 0:40 mark, without first setting up holes in the defensive alignment, has a 30% chance of success, and then a desperate 3-point heave at the 0:03 mark has a 10% chance of success. By my calculation, the expected points scored there is 0.45. Meanwhile, your opponent gets a full shot clock to work a set play sandwiched between your two possessions; perhaps the opponent has a 45% chance of scoring, with expected points scored of 0.9. So your expected +/- for that Two-For-One sequence is -0.45. On the other hand, if you took possession at 0:40 and worked the shot clock to the fullest, you have a 0.45 chance of success, with expected points scored of 0.9. Your opponent takes possession at 0:16 and, with somewhat less time to work with, has only a 0.3 chance of scoring, with expected points scored of 0.6. Your expected +/- for that sequence is thus +0.3.

Obviously my mathematical assumptions can be tweaked to make the Two-For-One strategy seem a bit more favorable, but you get the idea.

Finishing Arbitrary Divisions Of Game Time

TNT’s Doug Collins, whom we discussed yesterday, is fond of emphasizing the importance of finishing quarters strongly. To be sure, there may be a temptation to slacken effort when a break looms; that is not unusual in any professional setting. (Most government offices that I have seen feature "Friday afternoon happy hour" that starts around 2:00.) So sure, it is important to resist this temptation in the final two minutes of a game. On the other hand, a "finish strong" ethos common among athletes could result in increased, not reduced, effort towards the end of quarters. I am not sure which way the tendency cuts, overall. However, in any case, we should not regard developments in those segments of time as different from the rest of the game.

Score gains or score losses against your opponent in the first two minutes of a quarter count for just as much as gains/losses in the final two minutes of a quarter. The same can be said for the second two minutes, the third two minutes, the fourth two minutes, and the fifth two minutes. Towards the end of quarters, Collins often says things like: "The team now leading by 12 should be careful: if they don't play hard, that lead could be down to 4 by the end of the quarter." True, but the potential to allow a "run" of several baskets by your opponent exists at any time during the game. Is it worse if this happens at the end of a quarter? A basketball game consists of 48 minutes. Why is the point differential after the 12th, 24th, and 36th minute any more significant than the differential after the 5th, 19th, or 40th minute?

In one sense, the division of the game into four 12-minute blocks is arbitrary. Indeed, the rest time during TV breaks within quarters can be just as long as the rest time between quarters. Given that everyone psychologically regards quarters and halves as some heuristically convenient way to tote up partial performance, perhaps nebulous entities like motivation, confidence, strategic planning, and "momentum" are more affected by the score at the end of quarters compared to the score at any randomly selected moment within a quarter — hence Doug Collins's special concern. But surely a slam dunk "with no regard for human life!" or a dagger three-pointer to cap a run can energize a crowd and provoke some navel-gazing, even it occurs three minutes into the third.

It is a close call, but I do believe that Collins's concern with finishing quarters is overblown.

Dueling Banjos in First Quarters

Watching the first quarter of the Phoenix-Portland Game 5 on Monday night, I noticed a true tale of two cities: Portland smashed the Suns in the first six minutes, while Phoenix dominated the latter six. The Blazers jumped out to a 23-9 lead early, but Phoenix registered an 18-5 burst to bring the score back to 28-27 by the first intermission.

Anecdotally, I feel like I've seen many games where two teams exchange dueling first-quarter runs. We rarely see dueling third-quarter runs, for example. A lead in the third quarter is more likely to "stick" (focusing only within the third quarter, not on future developments) than a lead in the first quarter is likely to stick (focusing only within the first quarter, not on future developments). What's more, on a subjective emotional level, players and observers don't take a first-quarter lead very seriously.

Sadly, I do not have the data to evaluate whether my anecdotal impressions are spot on. Still, assuming I'm not entirely delusional, here are some explanations I can think of to explain this phenomenon.

1) Teams in the first quarter are physically fresher, so better able to execute a "run".
2) Teams in the first quarter haven't yet figured each other out defensively.
3) Related to (2), a team in the first quarter may actually encourage the opposing side to go all-out offensively, so that the defensive team can see what's in the offensive team's bag of tricks. Imagine the feeling-out process between two boxers.
4) Teams in the first quarter aren't trying as hard defensively, because they figure they have the whole game ahead of them to erase any deficit.
5) The home crowd may have more energy in the first quarter. (But this doesn't explain how the road team is able to execute a run in the first quarter.)

Which of these possibilities is the most salient?

The Best Is Yet To Come

Towards the end of Game 1 of the World Series a couple nights ago, commentator Tim McCarver noted that the Phillies had augmented a 2-0 lead to 6-0, with two runs in the top half of the eighth inning and two more runs in the top of the ninth. McCarver suggested that "Teams lose a lot of games because of tack-on runs." I found this analysis a bit quizzical. Sure, teams lose a lot of games by allowing runs late. But teams also lose games by allowing runs early. And allowing runs in the fifth inning ain't so good for ya, either. Apparently a baseball purist is to believe that no team worth its salt should be allowing runs late in games; perhaps the presence of an all-fastball-hurling relief pitcher like Mariano Rivera, who didn't even get on the mound that night, means that average runs-per-inning decreases later in the game. [I have looked on Google but cannot find statistics on average runs per inning in each of the 9 innings, aggregating all MLB games.] But why are these late runs by a leading team deemed so embarrassing or so illegitimate?

Presumably offensive players in baseball are slightly less motivated with a lead than they are while playing from behind; defensive players are more motivated when their team is behind. (But if the gap in the score is huge, offensive players and defensive players playing from behind could be demoralized and reduce their effort.) Perhaps we should be critical of the Yankees for allowing those late runs, but it hardly means that their performance was grossly negligent. The same dynamics likely govern in basketball, also.

Back in the NBA, one game I consider archetypal is Game 7 of the Orlando-Boston second-round series from last May. The Magic led by only five points after three quarters, and the whole Garden crowd was totally jacked to see the home side pound Orlando in the fourth quarter for a thrilling comeback. Instead, Orlando scored 11 unanswered points in the first two minutes of the fourth, and then their stifling defense convinced Boston that the decision was locked. Now, can we say that Boston lost because they got lackadaisacal for those two minutes? Were those 11 points equivalent to McCarver's "tack-on runs"? Alternatively, we might say that Orlando proved in those two minutes that they are the better team. Sometimes teams prove their superiority in the first quarter; Orlando proved it in the fourth. (Objectively, it would have been surprising if the Celtics, missing their defensive leader Garnett, had taken the series.) Additionally, let us consider the season debut of the Timberwolves on Wednesday night. The Timberwolves overcame a 16-point deficit with under 7 minutes to play, eventually edging New Jersey 95-93 with a emergency shot at the buzzer by Damien Wilkins. Predictably, Nets-oriented bloggers called the outcome a "punch in the gut". The Nets choked, in the usual vernacular. But it's more likely that this burst of performance from Minnesota evinced their superiority to New Jersey (at least on that night); perhaps New Jersey's ability to mount a 16-point edge was the real fluke.

Straight, No Chaser

Towards the end of overtime in last night's Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Lakers took the ball with about 27 seconds left and a 3-point lead. ABC's Jeff Van Gundy (or was it Mark Jackson?) argued that Orlando should foul immediately. I thought this was bad advice. If you foul an 80% free-throw shooter, then there's a 64% chance that he'll make both shots and you'll be down by 5 points, and a 32% chance that he'll make only 1 shot and you'll be down by 4 points. There's only a 4% chance that he'll miss both shots and you'll have a chance to tie the game! My advice would be to try for a defensive stop and get the ball back. Granted, as Van Gundy observed, if the Lakers simply held the ball for 24 seconds, they would leave Orlando with only 3 seconds remaining to put a shot together. But they probably would not do that; rather, they would try for a score to augment their lead. This gives Orlando opportunity to either get a steal or a stop well before 24 seconds elapsed. It might not work, but the probability of success would probably be over 4 percent.

In the event, Orlando adopted perhaps a compromise strategy between my advice and Van Gundy's: they trapped the Lakers on the inbound pass (which was in the backcourt) and tried to effect either a steal or an 8-second violation. When this failed and the Lakers successfully advanced the ball across the half-court line, Orlando immediately fouled with 22 seconds left. They smartly chose to foul Lamar Odom, who is only a 62.3% free throw shooter (thus, a 14% chance that he would miss both, but an 86% chance that he would make at least one shot and make it a two-possession game). In the event, Odom made two free throws, Redick and Lewis missed three-pointers, and the ballgame ended as Jack Nicholson rose to congratulate the Magic's stars. A Coach Bhel would have handled things differently.

I May Not Get There With You

During last night’s Suns-Blazers tilt, TNT announcer Doug Collins described Suns guard Jason Richardson as a “volume shooter” who needs to take a lot of shots to be “effective”. This is a common locution in pro basketball analysis, but I’ve never fully understood what it means. Is this is a backhanded way of saying that a player like Richardson plays no defense, grabs no boards, and is not much of a passer – so his only contribution to the team would be by scoring? But then the effect in toto of having him on the floor, considering all his negative contributions, would not be very good. Or is it a way of saying that J-Rich is an insecure and quirky guy who needs to develop a “rhythm”, or perhaps feel that he will be getting a lot of shot opportunities that day, in order for his shots to go in?

To try to further unpack some of these notions, we here at JPO did some simple statistical analysis and uploaded our data to public Google Docs spreadsheets. We considered J-Rich’s stats for the current season with Phoenix (though the data is a bit abbreviated, as he has only played about 50 games with the team after being traded from Charlotte) and his 2007-08 stats with Charlotte, during which he played in all 82 games.

In both seasons, we calculated some simple correlations between various offensive performance metrics. Some of the correlations are obvious: if a guy scores more points or makes more buckets, then his team probably tends to score more points, and is more likely to win, so we expect a positive correlation. In evaluating the question of whether J-Rich’s taking more shots helps his team win, we focused in particular on the simple correlation between his FG ATT and his team’s win or loss outcome.

We found a weak 7% correlation in both seasons. Of course, causality is hard to interpret. This could mean that the team thrives when J-Rich shoulders relatively more of the scoring responsibility, freeing guys like Okafor or Steve Nash to do their thing. On the other hand (particularly with Phoenix) it could simply mean that the team thrives playing a faster pace, and more FG ATT by J-Rich is indicative of more FG ATT by all players on the team, and thus a higher chance of winning. These calculations would be easy, though we did not explore them due to lack of interest in gathering the data.

We also calculated the correlation between J-Rich’s field goal attempts and his field goal percentage in any given game. We found a 31% positive correlation with Charlotte, and a 17% positive correlation in his Phoenix tenure. So there is some evidence there that he is more accurate when he shoots more. On the other hand, this evidence could mean that his teammates are passing him the ball more because his initial shots on a given night were relatively accurate and they perceived he had a ‘hot hand’. Again, we could track this more precisely by gathering intra-game shot cart data and measuring accuracy over time within one game, but we really didn't feel like it.

We also computed J-Rich’s average FG attempts in wins and his average FG attempts in losses, and performed a two-tailed t-test based on a null hypothesis that the two averages are the same. Similarly, we computed J-Rich’s average points in wins and his average points in losses, and performed a two-tailed t-test for the null hypothesis that the two averages are equal. Basically, the difference was not significant at any reasonable level. Richardson’s points output shows a statistically significant difference (at a 10% level) in his teams’ wins vs. his teams’ losses, but we kind of expected that, as discussed above.

So in sum, I still have no idea what is meant by “he needs a lot of shots to be effective”. If he can’t do much other than score, why keep him on the roster? Someone more scrappy who can score less but do more other good stuff would be more valuable. J-Rich has by far the worst net plus-minus rating of any of Phoenix’s stars. Perhaps the secret of his “effectiveness” is more economic: fans come to see fireworks, not box-outs and extra passes.

One Jump Ahead of the Breadline

The NY Times had a very good piece last week about the phenomenon of offensive players grunting, moaning, yelling, or otherwise vocalizing when they put up a shot near the basket. This is apparently the offensive counterpart to flopping. Presumably, players do this because it works (or at least, they think it works): it increases their probability of receiving a favorable foul call, effectuating the beloved “and one” scenario.

I am slightly saddened (though I shouldn’t be) that referees are apparently so easily swayed by these antics. Whether you call this bounded rationality or cue awareness or sensory limitation, it’s obvious that referees, as humans, cannot shut out their various biases when calling fouls. That includes biases as to the reputations of individual players, biases as to the appropriateness of fouls in various game situations (hence the original “Jordan pushed off” problem), and biases as to the propriety of a big man slamming a small. Perhaps some of these biases are normatively desirable as a way of guiding refs to a decision that is likelier to be correct, in a setting where no human could possibly follow all the action occuring at close range between world-class athletes at breakneck speeds. It reminds me of some recent unfortunate luck when I was forced to sit in the front-most row of a packed theater to watch the latest James Bond film. When Daniel Craig stood in one place, I could follow the scene, but the chases across the rooftops of Haiti were a bit much for my eyeballs.

I would like to quickly think through the league-wide implications of this yelling strategy.

I. Let’s assume first that making these perorations is costless: that is, it is neither painful nor tiring nor shot-altering to yell out a cry of pain as you release the ball. If that’s the case, and screaming increases your chance of getting a foul call, we would expect everyone to do it. … But if that is so, referees presumably would recognize that they are getting “played” by cheap talk; I assume that referees have some ability to deliberately and consciously counteract their biases. Ultimately propensities of foul calls would be exactly the same as if nobody was doing it. That is not a very interesting equilibrium. On the other hand, if referees were differentially affected by the screams of different players — probably they would be more sympathetic to little guys — then we might see more fouls called for the benefit of little men and fewer fouls called for the benefit of bigs. And if that were the case, we might then see little guys with the temerity to drive to the hole even more than before; and, perhaps, we might see some bigs with shooting touch slightly more willing to put up a J from the perimeter, which might reduce referees’ propensity or willingness to blow their whistle for the little guys. You can’t be blowing your whistle on every play. That, in turn, could bring the equilibrium back somewhat closer to the no-whining scenario, though we might still see more drives by little guys and more fouls called for their benefit.

(I should note that I’m assuming that referees want to keep the total number of fouls called in a game fairly constant, so as not to slow the game down and cause more foul-out disqualifications. I would be curious to see data on how the average number of fouls per game has varied over time. Retrospective accounts hold that the 1990s NBA of Jackson’s Bulls, Riley’s Knicks, and Riley’s Heat was particularly thuggish and slow, but was that really so?)

II. Let’s assume next that yelling has a cost. Let us first assume that yelling is equally costly for everyone. If that is so, then if the cost is low enough, the benefit of yelling could exceed the cost, and everyone would do it, as in the above discussion. If the cost is too high, nobody would do it.

What if there is a differential cost of yelling across different players? I will assume that yelling is more difficult for big men than for little men: Big men have bigger lungs to fill to produce those exhortations, and big men typically have poorer long-run stamina than little guys. A regular habit of screaming during every shot attempt would be more deleterious to power players than to wiry guards.

There are a few possibilities under that broad rubric. First, it could be that even with the differential cost, the costs are just generally too high for everyone to justify doing it; thus, nobody would do it. Second, it could be that the costs for everyone are so still low that everyone wants to do it, so everyone increases their frequency of going hard to the hoop. This would resemble my discussion in I. above, but now little guys would be more emboldened (relative to bigs) to drive and cry out, compared to the scenario described in I. If refs are equally affected viscerally by the cries of bigs and smalls, and they are able to notice that smalls are whining more than bigs are, they might consciously call fouls for the benefit of little guys with lower propensity, so as to maintain the overall number of fouls called. Thus, the whining of a Wade or Iverson would be counterproductive. (It could even reduce the value of whining for munchkins so much that in the equilibrium, smalls would whine with equal frequency to bigs.)

Third, we could have a scenario where the cost of grunting was so high for big men (compared to the perceived benefit) that they chose not to do it, but low enough for smalls that they find it worthwhile. Then only smalls would be grunting, and the smalls would, at least at first, find themselves receiving beneficial foul calls with higher propensity than before. Referees could adjust to this by consciously reducing their propensity of foul calls equally, regardless of height of the beneficiary (in which case big men would receive fewer foul calls in the equilibrium, compared to the world without whining); or perhaps they might realize that smalls are causing the uptick in fouls with their whining, and decide to be less kind to the little guys.


There’s a lot of moving parts in this analysis and I know there are issues that I’ve not thought carefully about, but that’s my first cut.

Epic Fail

How is it possible to blow such an easy win? Last night, a Phoenix team at nearly full strength (minus Barbosa), featuring 4 former first-team all-NBA players, lost to a Jazz team featuring CJ Miles, Jarron Collins, Ronnie Price, and Ronnie Brewer in the starting lineup. After a good first quarter, Phoenix got outscored the rest of the way by 21. PHX clearly underestimated the fight in their opponents. All the other West contenders including Utah must be pleased upon seeing Phoenix's lackadaisacal attitude. To be fair, it's not always easy to put forth your best effort every night when you have 82 games plus several more in the playoffs to look forward to. One might hope that huge salaries would provide sufficient reason to stiffen a player's work ethic and give the fans their money's worth, but the impulse to slack is fairly universal. Why was the CEO of Bear Stearns golfing, playing bridge, and smoking pot back in the summer of ’07 while his company was going to hell?


Perhaps it helps that Utah has a guy of Greek descent on their team. One of the greatest upsets in basketball history was surely the 2006 semifinal match at the FIBA World Championship, in which a US team full of superstars could barely stop some big dude with the dimensions of Oliver Miller. Famously, the US coach was so poorly prepared that he didn't know the Greek players’ names. (He can hardly use the excuse that their names were too hard to pronounce, when his own name is a phonetic Rubik's Cube!) So another reason to underperform against an inferior opponent is not just laziness, but perhaps hubris, or even contempt for your adversary. Contempt might make you want to destroy your opponent on one side of the court, but you are less likely to get back on D if you don't take their ability and resolve seriously.

Fans of the NFL love the phrase "Any Given Sunday", suggesting that random shizz can lead to unexpected results. The Patriots were not supposed to win in the 2002 Super Bowl, and they were not supposed to lose in the 2008 Super Bowl. That's just as true in the NBA, but we tend to notice anomalous outcomes less when there's 81 other games in the season, compared to 16 total games in the NFL. It's much more likely in hoops that the best teams will end up with the best records. In future posts I will further explore these issues of sample size. Yet sometimes the conventional wisdom is wrong. If Tyson fought Douglas 9 more times, would Tyson take all 9 bouts? Well, if Douglas figured out how to avoid Tyson's knockout blows, probably not. Maybe Tyson was simply overhyped. During his first reign, he never fought Holyfield, after all.

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UPDATE: John Hollinger suggests that Phoenix lost not due to the above, but because Shaq was tired.