Dave Berri has a new post up at The Wages of Wins Journals prognosticating the Clippers as a vastly improved team in 2009-10.
Berri’s optimism is based on a number of factors:
- Blake Griffin’s monster collegiate numbers translate well to the pro game. Assume — and it’s quite an assumption — Griffin puts up numbers commensurate to Tim Duncan’s rookie season (19.5 wins produced), when you subtract that from Zach Randolph’s 3.5 wins produced in 2008-09, that would still leave the Clippers short of .500.
- Baron Davis (for various reasons discussed ad nauseam) and Chris Kaman (due to injury) had historically bad seasons — essentially outlier years. If Davis and Kaman can restore their games to anywhere close to their 2007-08 campaigns, the Clippers stand to pick up a not insignificant number of wins: “In 2007-08, Baron Davis produced 11.8 wins while Chris Kaman’s Wins Produced stood at 10.1. B. Davis never really produced for the Clippers. But after 481 minutes in 2008-09, Kaman’s WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] stood at 0.200. Kaman, though, was soon hurt and his production plummeted. If Kaman is healthy in 2008-09, and B. Davis returns from whatever caused his production to drop-off last season, the Clippers could have four players – Camby, Griffin, B. Davis, and Kaman – capable of producing more than ten wins.”
- If the Clippers can limit either the playing time or the lousiness of their unproductive players — both reasonable goals when you consider their offseason acquisitions — they can pick up a few more wins. According to Berri’s measurements, Al Thornton was the NBA’s least productive player last season, with Ricky Davis not far behind. In contrast, the Clippers’ new wing, Rasual Butler, chalked up a respectable 4.2 wins produced for New Orleans. A reduction in playing time for Thornton and Davis in lieu of Butler will logically give the Clippers’ win total a further bump.
Berri’s larger conclusion:
- if the Clippers could somehow get the negative players to be a bit less negative,
- if B. Davis and Kaman to return to form.
- if age doesn’t keep Camby off the floor or substantially reduce his production, and,
- if Griffin can produce as his college numbers suggest…
…then the Clippers might post an efficiency differential in excess of 2.0. And that means, the 2009-10 Clippers might be the best team in the history of this franchise.
Yes, those are a lot of ifs.
Berri’s numbers — like all metrics — should be taken with a grain of salt. Dan Rosenbaum has taken great issue with Berri’s methodology. If you have half an hour and a passionate interest in this stuff, you can watch a presentation by Rosenbaum from 2007 on some of his beefs. One of Rosenbaum’s primary complaints is that, “Wins Produced likely does a terrible job predicting team wins,” in large part because it fails to take into account shot creation (which might explain why a player like Al Thornton is devalued in Berri’s system).
Nevertheless, Berri has had success predicting team performance over the years, and it’s tough to argue with his general premises about the 2009-10 Clippers.
8 Responses
they should be better just because of this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHtqR2hW0hk
Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Clippers did a great job by acquiring Butler, Smith and Telfair. Now they have to do a far better job in trying to trade Kaman, Ricky and Thornton. They can fetch few more productive players in return.
Clippers are not going to re-sign above players. Then why not trade them now. They’ll fit in somewhere else.
Keeping Camby & Skinner makes no sense. They should keep Kareem Rush. Hopefully they’ll.
Addition of Griffin, Butler, Smith, Telfair and Rush would make this team competitive. And evolving Gordon and DeAndre will keep this team in good shape. But need to make a bold move to get rid of chemistry spoilers such as Kaman, Ricky and Thornton.
Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Thanks for posting this KA. I got a buddy that swears by berri, so i will be intrested to hear his take.
Watching these preseason games I am concerned that baron still doesnt seem to be like his GSW self. we need him to score as well as distribute the ball in order to make the playoffs. I also wonder if we will have Camby by the end of the season. Im sure he will have big trade value near the deadline. I’m not so concerned with the “negative” players, but staying healthy is a must. butler and smith have looked awesome. im very excited to have them in the mix. a lot of optimism here, and i cant wait for the season to start.
SamMays Reply:
October 20th, 2009 at 9:11 am
My big fear is that once the regular season starts, Baron will feel a need to score 20+ a game. I like what he’s doing now, distributing the ball and getting shots for others. The last thing I want to see is him jacking up 3′s at 33%, while Gordon, Butler and a few much better shooters are taking fewer 3′s… We have some guys who can score in Gordon, Griffin, Kaman, Butler, Thornton, Smith…
I think chemistry will be out problem, much more than scoring. Baron can help with that.
Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
IMO WOW is vastly overrated. Theoretically you could put under WOW 5 Camby’s on the floor together and the team would produce 50 wins. Which shows the fallacy of the system. Predicting single player “wins” in a game that takes 5 players playing together to win is impossible.
Ian Reply:
October 20th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I do, though, think that WOW could be a useful indicator if it accounted for more variables, the “Whys,” if you will. For Example: why was Camby so effective last year? Well, the defense allowed penetration on nearly every possession so a stop-gap/weak-side defender was hugely efficient statistically on this team. That very same defender would likely appear far less efficient on a team with a decent defense.
Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Another reason to take issue with his methodology is that some players are inherently less productive statistically on bad team (Thornton, arguably… although one cd also argue the exact opposite for him), some players are inherently more productive statistically on good teams (shooters who need some space, like Butler) and some players are more productive statistically on bad teams (Camby, who seemed to be an incredible defender last year because the defense was terrible — essentially, penetration led to his block & +/- numbers). I think the Clips can be decent, and i enjoy statistical analysis but am entirely skeptical of all Wages of Wins projections. Don’t like that site.
Posted on October 20th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Clippers look good in the preseason so hopefully that’ll translate into regular games.
Posted on October 25th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
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