Interview with authors of Stumbling on Wins

I recently had the chance to get my hands on a copy of Stumbling on Wins: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports. It does for the rest of sports what Moneyball did for baseball. The authors, David J. Berri and Martin B. Schmidt, take on the decision-making process in sports. It’s really an eye-opening work, because it forces you to re-think the way we’ve always thought about and understood sports. ** I also forgot to say, check out David’s blog at dberri.wordpress.com **

They argue that LeBron wasn’t the MVP in 2008-09. Chris Paul was. They also defend Isiah Thomas’ decisions as the GM of the New York Knicks, and answer questions you didn’t even think to ask. One of the most fascinating parts of the book was the “hot hand” theory. We’ve all seen it, or think we’ve seen it. A basketball player hits a couple of shots, and everyone thinks he’s gotten hot. Even commentators talk about a player being streaky. According to the authors, this simply isn’t the case. (Scroll down more for our conversation about the book).

Other questions the book tackles:
• Do better coaches really win more? Phil Jackson versus everyone else
• How old is too old? Are teams playing too many athletes who are past their prime?
• Are black quarterbacks underpaid? The curious cases of Donovan McNabb and Brett Favre

Over a few e-mails, I asked David J. Berri (DJB) some questions that I encountered while reading the book. Among the topics: Former players as NBA head coaches, the NBA and NFL draft system, and why basketball players are never really “in the zone.” Great interview, and if you like what he say to say, then you definitely need to read the whole book.

Brian: You talk about evaluating NBA head coaches. Why do you think NBA players are hired so frequently to become NBA head coaches? It’s not something you see as often in other sports. And why are not so good coaches given so many chances. It’s like, after a couple of years, everyone forgets how awful they did.

DJB: This is an interesting question. Is it the case that the NBA is more likely to hire former players (relative to other sports)? I haven’t seen this studied, but a casual glance at who the coaches are suggests that might be true. So why would the NBA hire players and re-cycle the same names? Again, I haven’t explicitly studied this question but I think I can offer some informed speculation.

In the book we discuss the impact coaches have on player performance in the NBA. Across 30 years of data we find that most coaches do not have a statistically significant impact on player productivity. This result is actually captured in the following quote by Red Auerbach (who obviously never saw our study):

“These guys today want you to believe that what they’re doing is some kind of science. Coaching is simple: you need good players who are good people. You have that, you win. You don’t have that, you can be the greatest coach who ever lived and you aren’t going to win.”

If coaches are not hired to change the productivity of their players, what is their role? In football coaches are often hired because of their ability to implement schemes and call plays. In the NBA, though, one suspects that often a team’s opponent knows your team’s plays better than your team’s own players.

Okay, if coaches can’t alter player performance and they are not necessarily hired to call brilliant plays, what is the role of an NBA coach? Players in the NBA are not equal. Most wins are produced by a minority of the players (a point we make in the book). Consequently, for teams to win it must hire – and retain – some of the few players who can be productive. This suggests that the primary role of a coach is to make the “star” players happy. This means you probably want a head coach who is a former player. And if a coach has demonstrated an ability to get along with players in the past – even if his team didn’t win (because he didn’t have enough good players) – that coach will get another chance.