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It Really Is All About the Players

Economists are often asked – and perhaps, just as often just volunteer – to make predictions. This is odd, since – as the old joke goes – economists only seem to exist to make meteorologists look good.  In other words, economists often get their guesses about the future wrong.

Given this tendency, I always like to note when I get a prediction right (and it has actually happened before).  And prior to the Olympics, I did predict that the U.S. would win the gold medal in men’s basketball.  And on Sunday, that prediction came true.

Okay, that wasn’t much of a prediction (did anyone predict that wouldn’t happen?).  And despite the lack of challenge with respect to this prediction, I also heavily qualified my original forecast. Nevertheless, I did make something that could be called a prediction.  And it was right.  So that means something!

Now that the games are over, I wanted to take the opportunity to update the relationship that motivated the original story from two weeks ago.

 

Olympic Year

Average

Win Produced per 48 Minutes

(data from NBA Season before games)

Margin of Victory

in Olympic Games

1992

0.247

43.8

1996

0.217

31.8

2000

0.146

21.6

2004

0.119

4.6

2008

0.186

27.9

2012

0.199

32.1

 

The above table reports the average Wins Produced per 48 minutes for each player on the U.S. Men’s Olympic team the NBA season before the Olympic games.  And it also reports the margin of victory in the Olympic games.   As reported before the 2012 games – and this was actually the point of the original post a few weeks ago — there appears to be a strong link between these two sets of numbers.  From 1992 to 2004, the average NBA performance of the Olympic teams declined.  And the margin of victory in the Olympics also declined.  In the past two Olympics, the productivity of the players sent to the game has increased, and the margin of victory has also increased.

The correlation between these two sets of numbers is 0.96 (about what I found before we saw the 2012 results).  That suggests that the quality of players taken to the games is largely dictating the results.

Again, this result contradicts the story told by Coach K. after the 2008 Olympics. Looking back at the failure in 2004, Coach K. argued the problem wasn’t the players, it was the “system”:

“It was easy to point fingers and blame this guy or that guy for the way he acted or didn’t act in 2004, but Jerry (Colangelo) and I both believed that it was our current system that was flawed, not the players.  This system was no longer conducive to winning.”

A similar point was actually made by Doug Collins during the broadcast of the 2012 gold medal game.  Both coaches seemed to ignore how the quality of players sent to the games changed over time and focus instead on issues of team chemistry, coaching, and systems.

Again, the data suggests that Coach Collins and Coach K. are not exactly right.  It really does look like the key to the success of Team USA is simply the productivity of the players on the team.

With that in mind, let’s take a stab at who can win the gold medal for Team USA in 2016.   In picking this team I am only going to consider:

Given these rules, I am not going to consider any player who hasn’t played in the NBA yet.  And I am going to leave off the 2016 team Kobe Bryant (he will be 97 years old in 2016), Tyson Chandler, Deron Williams, Andre Iguodala, and Carmelo Anthony.   Each of these players were on the 2012 team but will be older than 30 in 2016.

I am also going to break my rules and include LeBron James and Chris Paul (so much for rules!).   Both players will be 31 in 2016.  And although players tend to begin to get noticeably worse in their 30s (and tend to stop improving in their mid-20s), I think James and Paul will still be quite productive at 31.

Player

Age: August 2016

Position

Wins Produced per 48 minutes

(2011-12 NBA season)

Dwight Howard

30

Center

0.233

Andrew Bynum

28

Center

0.197

Kevin Love

27

Power Forward

0.196

Blake Griffin

27

Power Forward

0.157

LeBron James

31

Power Forward

0.331

Kawhi Leonard

25

Small Forward

0.257

Kevin Durant

27

Small Forward

0.200

James Harden

26

Shooting Guard

0.267

Paul George

26

Shooting Guard

0.202

Chris Paul

31

Point Guard

0.324

Ty Lawson

28

Point Guard

0.193

Mike Conley

28

Point Guard

0.182

    Average WP48

0.228

Joining this duo will be Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, and James Harden; three more veterans of the 2012 squad.  That means there are seven players who did not play this year.  These include…

Again, I am ignoring players who have yet to play.  So this roster should not be seen as a prediction of who will go or even who should go by the time we get to 2016.  What this exercise does show, though, is that it is possible to construct a team that is almost as productive – in terms of WP48 – as the original Dream Team in 1992.  That team had an average WP48 of 0.247.  This team comes close to this mark.

One last note… before these games, there was a bit of controversy as both Kobe and LeBron thought this current team “could” defeat the original Dream Team.  When the games ended, this current edition posted the second largest margin of victory.  When we consider that the international competition has improved in the past 20 years, maybe Kobe and LeBron were on to something.

Certainly I think it is possible to construct a team that is as productive as the original Dream Team.  Of course, if decision-makers think that chemistry and coaching are really the important issues, that simply may not happen.


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