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For N.B.A. Hopefuls, Zip Code Matters

We’ve blogged before about the (relatively small) effect of birth month on athletic excellence.  But how does birth location affect a potential athlete? In The New York TimesSeth Stephens-Davidowitz  calculated the probability of getting to the N.B.A. by Zip codeHe found that players like LeBron James, born to a low-income teenage mom, are the exceptions to the rule:

I recently calculated the probability of reaching the N.B.A., by race, in every county in the United States. I got data on births from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; data on basketball players from basketball-reference.com; and per capita income from the census. The results? Growing up in a wealthier neighborhood is a major, positive predictor of reaching the N.B.A. for both black and white men. Is this driven by sons of N.B.A. players like the Warriors’ brilliant Stephen Curry? Nope. Take them out and the result is similar.



Losing Is Not a Winning Strategy in the NBA

The NBA season is beginning this week and fans of each team are, of course, optimistic. At this point, everyone can hope a title is possible come next summer. 

Although everyone could theoretically have dreams of a title in 2014, it is clear that every NBA fan isn’t actually hoping their team is successful in 2014. Some NBA fans are actually dreaming of an event that happens just after the conclusion of the NBA Finals.  For fans of a few teams, the focus is already on the 2014 draft.  For example, some fans of the Philadelphia 76ers seem convinced that not only are the Sixers not trying to win this year, but that this is actually the best course of action for this franchise.

Proponents of “tanking” dream of such number one picks as Shaquille O’Neal or LeBron James. Each of these players were selected number one and went on to win multiple NBA titles.  Of course, other number one picks – like Yao Ming, Michael Olowokandi, Allen Iverson, Joe Smith, Glenn Robinson, Chris Webber, Larry Johnson, etc. –  played their entire careers and never won an NBA title.



A Former NBA Coach Argues That Coaches Are Not Responsible for Outcomes

The coaching carousel continues to spin in the NBA.  In recent days, the Los Angeles Clippers – coming off the best season in franchise history – have decided not to bring back Vinny Del Negro as head coach.  The Phoenix Suns — coming off their worst season since they were in expansion team in the late 1960s – have decided to turn to Jeff Hornacek to lead their team back to respectability.   And the Atlanta Hawks – who were essentially average this last season – have turned to Mike Budenholzer to lead the team next year.

These are hardly the only teams to make a change.  Since the end of the 2012-13 NBA season, the Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Bobcats, Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons, Milwaukee Bucks, and Philadelphia 76ers have all decided that the person who coached the team at the end of this past season shouldn’t be around for the next season. In all, at least nine of the 30 NBA teams will have a new coach next year. 

These changes – as I have argued before –will probably not make much difference.   A study published in the International Journal of Sport Finance (full PDF here) – which I conducted with Mike Leeds, Eva Marikova Leeds, and Mike Mondello – found that most NBA coaches across a sample covering 30 years did not have a statistically significant impact on player productivity. And in other sports, we also have evidence that coaches cannot systematically change outcomes.



Seattle Is Frustrated By the NBA’s Command Economy

For 41 years, the city of Seattle enjoyed NBA basketball.  And then the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder.

Across the past year, though, there was hope that the NBA was returning to the Emerald City.  Sure the team was the Kings, a team that has lost at least 65 percent of their regular season games in each of the past five seasons. But if the Kings came to Seattle, other NBA teams would have to come as well (hey, the Kings-SuperSonics have to play someone).  And since the prospective owners (a group led by Chris Hansen) of the “Seattle Kings-Supersonics” offered a purchase price equivalent to an enterprise value of $625 million – more than anyone else (and more than anyone has ever offered for an NBA team) – it seemed likely that in a market economy (where the highest bidder tends to get the product) that the NBA was coming back to Seattle.

Unfortunately, Seattle learned this past week that the NBA doesn’t quite follow the rules of a market economy.  For Seattle to get the Kings, the other 29 owners had to approve the deal.  And when the dust settled, a majority of those owners thought an inferior bid from another group that wanted to keep the team in Sacramento was preferred.  Consequently, Seattle has been frustrated again.



What’s a Wall Street Executive's Wins Produced?

LeBron James was recently given his 4th Most Valuable Player award by 120 sportswriters.  Well, at least 119 sportswriters agreed LeBron was MVP.  Gary Washburn – of the Boston Globethought Carmelo Anthony was the league’s MVP in 2012-13.

It doesn’t take much effort to establish that LeBron was more valuable than Melo.  The numbers tell us (numbers taken from theNBAGeek.com) that LeBron in 2012-13 was a much more efficient scorer from the field; and a better rebounder, passer, and shot blocker.   LeBron was also better with respect to steals and personal fouls.  Yes, Melo scored more.  But that is just because Melo took many more shots than LeBron.  Unfortunately, people tend to think that players who take many shots have a huge impact on outcomes in basketball (consequently, players have an incentive to take as many shots as their coaches and teammates will allow).

Although no other sportswriter shared Washburn’s view that Melo was MVP, 102 of the 120 voters thought Anthony was one of the five most valuable players in the league.  So Washburn was not alone in his belief that Anthony is a “great” player.  



How to Fix College Coaching?

Rutgers University fired Mike Rice – the head basketball coach – last Wednesday. This firing came about after ESPN released a video that showed Rice abusing his players. Such a video had already been seen by Rice’s boss at Rutgers in November, but until the video was shown to the public, Rutgers did not feel compelled to fire Rice.

Former NBA player Paul Shirley (author of Can I Keep My Jersey?) observed the following about the Rutgers case in a recent interview at HuffPost Live (around 13:30):

The thing that people don’t want to hear, but which is true, is that this is probably closer to the norm than not. 

Shirley goes on to note that he doesn’t think many coaches are actually hitting players. But he does note that coaches do tend to have a certain approach in conveying information to players (an approach Shirley describes in the interview).

Is this general approach to coaching effective?  To date, I am not aware of any study of the effectiveness of college coaching.  A study I co-authored with Mike Leeds, Eva Marikova Leeds, and Mike Mondello and published in the International Journal of Sport Finance (full PDF here) looked at 62 NBA coaches across thirty years of data. Across this sample, only 14 coaches were found to have a statistically significant and positive impact on player performance. So most NBA coaches do not appear to make their players more productive.



How Did the Worst Team in NBA History Become a Title Contender?

Kobe Bryant says that “other team” in LA – the Clippers – are title contenders in 2013.

And Kobe made this statement before the Clippers defeated the Lakers on Friday night and then destroyed the Golden State Warriors (who are currently a playoff contender in the West) the next night. 

Yes, the 27-8 Clippers look like contenders. 

Of course, fans in LA can easily remember the last time this happened. That was back in …

Okay, this has never happened.

Unlike every other big market team in North America, the Clippers have never, ever, ever been a title contender.  In fact, the very best season in franchise history was last season.  When the 2011-12 regular season ended, the Clippers had a mark of 40-26.  This mark was surpassed by seven other teams (including Kobe’s Lakers).  In the post-season, the Clippers reached the Western Conference semi-finals — where they were swept by the San Antonio Spurs.  

Such a season likely left many NBA observers thinking the Clippers were a “good” team, but hardly a real title contender.  Again, though, this was the best team in the history of the Clippers.  For the first time in franchise history (which began in Buffalo in 1970-71), the Clippers won 60% of their games. 

In 2012-13 the Clippers have moved beyond being the best team in franchise history to being one of the very best teams in the NBA.  After 35 games, the Clippers have a 0.771 winning percentage; a mark that – as of Tuesday morning – currently leads the NBA.

Clearly the Clippers are better than they were last year.  And that leads one to wonder… how did this worst team in NBA history become a title contender?



The Oklahoma City Thunder Stumble While Following the Oklahoma City Thunder Plan

Much has been made of the plan the Oklahoma City Thunder followed in building a title contender.  Here are the basic steps the Thunder supposedly followed:

1.Lose a bunch of games across a few seasons, which allows a team to accumulate lottery picks
2. Draft “stars” with lottery picks
3. Sign “stars” to long-term contracts
4. Win a title (or more)

The Thunder did well with step one.  Starting with their last two seasons in Seattle in 2006-07, this franchise had three seasons where it won 31 games, 20 games, and 23 games. 

These performances primarily led to the following four high picks in the draft:



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!



Woulda, Coulda, and the Real Story Behind the Redeem Team

ESPN.com recently offered a somewhat confusing article comparing the 2012 U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team to the 1992 Dream Team.  The headline of the article – “LeBron: We Would Beat Dream Team” – makes it clear that LeBron James believes the 2012 team would defeat the 1992 Dream Team. 

The first line of the story, though, makes a somewhat different claim: “LeBron James has joined Kobe Bryant in saying that he believes this year’s Team USA Olympic men’s basketball team could beat the 1992 Dream Team.”

And then further in the article, we see…

James’s comments echoed those of Bryant, who two weeks ago made a similar proclamation.

“It would be a tough one, but I think we would pull it out,” Bryant said at a news conference. “People who think we can’t beat that team for one game, they are crazy. To sit there and say we can’t, it’s ludicrous. We can beat them one time.”

Bryant appeared to soften those comments a bit Friday, telling reporters, “I didn’t say we were a better team. But if you think we can’t beat that team one time? Like I’m going to say no, that we’d never beat them.

“They are a better team. The question was ‘Can we beat them?’ Yes we can. Of course we can.”



Michael Jordan, the Bobcats, and Running the Lottery Treadmill

The Charlotte Bobcats came into existence in 2004.  At the conclusion of the next five seasons, the Bobcats finished out of the playoffs and hence earned a trip to the NBA’s lottery.  

After all of these lottery picks, the Bobcats finally made the playoffs in 2010.  That Bobcat team – the best in franchise history – only won 44 games and failed to win a playoff game.  Nevertheless, this squad was the highlight in the brief history of this team. 

Two short years after this epic campaign (epic by Bobcat standards), Charlotte has posted the worst season in franchise history.  In fact, with a winning percentage of only 0.106, the 2011-12 Bobcats were the worst team in NBA history.

If we look at what happened to Charlotte’s roster, it is easy to see why this team became so bad so quickly.  Back in 2009-10 the Bobcats were led by the following players (Wins Produced numbers taken from theNBAGeek.com, explanation of Wins Produced offered here): Gerald Wallace, Raymond Felton, Boris Diaw, Stephen Jackson, Nazr Mohammed, and Tyson Chandler.   



Don’t Be Deceived by Carmelo Anthony’s Scoring Totals

Here is how the Associated Press led the story describing the Miami Heat’s elimination of the New York Knicks in the 2012 NBA Playoffs:

The final horn sounded, and LeBron James wrapped his arms around Carmelo Anthony in a warm embrace.

Their head-to-head scoring matchup in this series was even, 139 points apiece.

Just about everything else tipped Miami’s way — so the Heat are moving on and the New York Knicks are going home. 

Such a lead gives the impression that Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James played about the same in this series.  If we delve a bit deeper, though, we see that the scoring totals are quite deceptive.



Kevin Durant Impersonates Russell Westbrook for Sprint

If you have been watching the NBA recently – and with the playoffs going on, you should be – you may have seen the following ad for Sprint.

Often people don’t pay attention to what people say in ads.  But this one – starring Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder – has a very interesting opening line: “Man I was double-teamed.  With no one to pass it to, so I pulled up and hit the shot for the win…” 

Let’s think about this for the moment. Durant says he has two defenders on him (i.e. he is double-teamed).  That means – if the other team is playing the standard five players, there are three more defenders on the court. And if Durant has four teammates on the court (and that would be standard), there must be someone open. But Durant says that there is no one to pass it to. 

Hmmmm…. 



Will the NBA Allow Ads on Jerseys?

One of our earliest Freakonomics Radio podcasts wondered whether the NFL might someday sell ads on players’ game-day uniforms (there is already sponsorship on practice jerseys). After all, it’s common practice in soccer, even in the U.S.

As Bloomberg Businessweek reports, the NBA might beat the NFL to the punch:

What’s not so certain is what a jersey deal is really worth. Front Row Marketing Services, whose parent company, Comcast-Spectacor, runs 11 regional sports networks and owned the Philadelphia 76ers until last fall, figures the annual cost to companies to place their logos on uniforms would range from $1.2 million to $7.5 million per year, depending mainly on the market where the team plays.

study by Horizon Media last year put the annual value of the television exposure of the space across an NBA jersey’s chest in a range from $4.1 million for the L.A. Lakers to $300,000 for the Minnesota Timberwolves. [David] Abruytin [sic], whose IMG arranged the partnership deal between the NBA and its official automotive partner Kia Motors, says those numbers are probably low. He estimates the Lakers could fetch $10 million to $15 million per year.



Would Paying College Players Really Destroy Competitive Balance?

March Madness is in the air. Over the next few weeks the nation will be focused on the fortunes of 68 college teams.  And all this focus on a supposedly amateur sport generates tremendous amounts of money.  For example, in 2010 CBS and Turner Broadcasting agree to pay the NCAA $10.8 billion to broadcast these games for fourteen seasons. This money represents more than 90% of the NCAA’s revenues.

Since colleges and universities tend to be non-profit, who gets all this money?  One person who seems to benefit is John Calipari, head basketball coach at the University of Kentucky.  Last summer, Kentucky extended Calipari’s contract, with a new deal that will pay him $36.5 million across the next eight seasons. Contracts like this – which seem comparable to what an NBA coach might command — are somewhat surprising. As economist Andrew Zimbalist has observed, the revenues of college sports – although apparently immense – pale in comparison to what we see in professional sports. And that leads one to wonder how a coach in college can command such a salary.



How the NBA Takes Money From People Who Don’t Like Basketball

The Sacramento Kings will continue to exist. This week, the City Council approved a plan to finance a new home for the Kings in Sacramento. The price tag, though, is pretty steep.  The arena will cost $391 million, and $255.5 million will be coming from the city of Sacramento.   

Opponents of this plan – and there were just two on the nine-member Council – noted that sports arenas don’t provide much economic benefit. Furthermore, they questioned why public money should be given to a private business. 

As Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy – who voted no – observed: “This city is on the verge of insolvency. As far as I know, we still technically qualify for bankruptcy under federal law.”

Proponents of this plan, though, argued that this plan will create jobs and economic benefits.  And it was this argument that apparently persuaded the majority.

So we have two perspectives and one question: Do sports generate jobs and economic growth? 



Football Freakonomics: What Can Linsanity Teach Us About the Upcoming NFL Draft?

In his first six NBA starts, Jeremy Lin averaged 24.3 points and 9.5 assists while leading the Knicks to six straight wins. 

If those numbers were attached to someone like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, you wouldn’t bat an eye. But until a couple weeks ago, Lin was little more than roster fodder, an undrafted player already cut by two teams and about to be cut by his third. That’s when a desperate coach who had run out of able-bodied point guards threw him into the fire. The rest – for the moment, at least – is history.

Let’s be honest: the reason we’re hearing so much about Lin is because he was overlooked. This might lead you to think he’s a true anomaly, a great game-time athlete who somehow slipped through a pro sports league’s finely-tuned talent-scouting machine. But if you look closely at the NFL, you’ll find Jeremy Lins all over the place.



Ball Hogs and Long Meetings

Listen to an NBA coach during a game and you will often hear him scream something like the following:

  • “You have to share the ball.”
  • “Start looking for your teammates.”
  • “Quit taking the first damn shot you see.”
  • “Come on, pass the damn ball.”

Why do coaches have to keep screaming this message?  The answer seems easy.  Basketball players love to shoot.  In other words, many players have trouble resisting their inner ball hog.  Consequently, coaches have to scream a lot.

Academic meetings typically involve less screaming.  But the behavior we see in these meetings is surprisingly similar to what we see on a basketball court.  For example, recently I attended a meeting at Southern Utah University.  The meeting began at 4 pm, and 25 minutes later we still hadn’t started on the items that were the actual subject of this gathering.  Instead, numerous people had chimed in on items we supposedly had finished in our previous meeting (and other issues not related to the subject at hand). 



Why Was Jeremy Lin Overlooked, and Should He Get Married?

A reader named Xavier Fan writes:

Would love to see some commentary on the Jeremy Lin phenomenon in the NBA. Is this not a classic Moneyball-style “undervalued player”? Indeed, one of the best parts of the whole feel-good story (and there are many) is how consistently teams and coaches at the college and NBA level overlooked him before his breakout week. Even the Knicks were ready to release him a few days before his first big game against the Nets. Was he overlooked because he didn’t “look the part”? Will this impact how scouts and coaches evaluate players? What is the current status of sabermetrics for basketball?

The phenomenon is indeed phenomenal, and there has already been a lot of interesting stuff written about it (including his overseas marketing potential and an anti-Asian joke-gone-wrong).



Revenue-Sharing Isn't Needed to Make NBA Small-Market Teams Competitive

According to the Sports Business Journal, the NBA is going to fully phase in a revenue-sharing plan in 2013-14 which:

1. “Calls for all teams to contribute an annually fixed percentage, roughly 50 percent, of their total annual revenue, minus certain expenses such as arena operating costs, into a revenue sharing pool.
2. “Will shift $140 million around the league
3. Will allow a single team to receive up to $16 million (this year the most any team could receive was $5.8 million), a mark that is about 25 percent of this year’s payroll cap

All of this will — according to Jeanie Buss (Executive VP of business operations for the Los Angeles Lakers) — allow teams to become “economically viable so that every team has the opportunity to compete.”  And according to Buss, this will “make for a healthier league.” 

As the article notes, Buss served on the committee that created this plan.  And as the article also notes, Buss and the Lakers will contribute the most revenue.  Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that this plan will dramatically change the level of balance in the league.



Playing the Nerd Card (Ep. 77)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “Playing the Nerd Card.”

(You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)

It’s about the rise in basketball players (and other athletes) showing up at press conferences wearing the kind of eyeglasses usually associated with Steve Urkel and Buddy Holly. Among the practitioners: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, and Robert Griffin III.

What’s going on here? Has the rate of myopia exploded, even among premier athletes?

We talk to Susan Vitale, a research epidemiologist with the NIH’s National Eye Institute, who worked on a large study on myopia in the U.S. There has indeed been a huge spike in recent decades, and it’s especially pronounced among blacks.



NBA Fans Give the League a Predictable Present on Christmas

Before labor peace came to the NBA, it was not uncommon to hear stories that the lockout was going to negatively impact fan interest in the game (here is one example in this genre). The story basically went as follows:

1. Fans become angry when the games are taken away.
2. The longer fans go without games, the angrier they become.
3. Stay away too long and the angry fans will never come back.

This story actually gets repeated every time a labor dispute that taken away games in North American sports. And the story certainly seems plausible.

A few years ago, though, Martin Schmidt and I investigated the impact disputes have upon fan attendance; and much to our surprise (yes, we tended to believe the stories sports writers had told us for years) we failed to find an effect. Attendance in the major North American sports is not statistically impacted by labor disputes.



The Economic Battlefield of the NBA Lockout

The following is a guest post by David Berri, a Professor of Economics at Southern Utah University. He is also the lead author of Stumbling on Wins, the general manager of the sports-economics blog Wages of Wins, and is a frequent contributor to the Freakonomics blog.

With the NBA away, sports fans are looking for something to satisfy their need to watch teams strive for victory. Well, why not take a look at the teams competing in the lockout? Okay, maybe this is a contest only a sports economist could love. But while it may not appeal to everyone, the labor dispute is still best thought of as a contest between two teams.

The first team is the NBA owners. The owners are the dominant buyer in the world market for elite basketball talent, so they have substantial monopsony power. In the other corner are the players, who are currently trying to disband their union. This union gave the players monopoly power in the sale of elite basketball talent (more specifically, in helping to determine the conditions under which individual players would sell their services). When a monopsony meets a monopoly on the economic battlefield, the outcome is determined by bargaining.



Call It a Comeback: Why Performance Increases When We're Losing

If you were a New York Knicks fan in the mid 1990’s, you surely remember a certain 1995 playoff game in which Reggie Miller scored 8 points in under 9 seconds (two back-to-back three pointers, and two foul shots) to rally the Indiana Pacers to a last-second win over the stunned Knicks. It was a truly sad moment for New Yorkers, made all the worse when the Knicks lost the series in seven games. For whatever reason, some players seem to play better from behind. Reggie Miller certainly did.

A recent study by Jonah Berger of Wharton and Devin Pope of the University of Chicago highlights how being slightly behind is often an advantage. The authors devote a large part of their research to studying 18,000 NBA and 45,000 college basketball games. They also conducted an experiment in which people played competitive games and were given feedback halfway through.



FREAK-est Links

This week: an economic analysis of gang colors; a chopstick shortage in China; the mathematics of basketball; the social networks of elephants, and are smart people getting smarter?



Answer to Same-City NCAA Sweet 16 Questions

Last week, we posed two questions regarding the NCAA basketball tournament: what are the odds that two teams from the same city would make the Sweet 16? And when was the last time that happened? To the first person to answer correctly, we offered some Freakonomics swag. And you responded, 147 of you to be exact.




Let Teams Choose Their NCAA Bracket Position

Nate Silver has (another) truly insightful post demonstrating the possible perverse advantage of receiving an 11th seed instead of an 8th seed in the NCAA tournament.
He explains: “[An average] team like Arizona would have a considerably better chance — about two-and-a-half times better, in fact — of winning its second round game and advancing to the Round of 16 as a No. 12 seed than as a No. 8 or No. 9 seed. This, of course, is because it has not yet had to face the No. 1 seed.”



The Latest in NBA Data Analytics

If you’re the kind of sports stat-head who loves that the Bill James movement has become mainstream in baseball, and you wonder why basketball doesn’t pay more attention to analytics, you may be pleased to read this article and this one about the annual Sports Analytics Conference at MIT Sloan.



The Miami Heat's New Incentives

The Miami Heat has been on fire lately, with a 10-game winning streak. This was how things were supposed to go when the team put together its holy WadeBoshJames trinity, but the season didn’t start out so well.