"An Open Letter to Houston"

Whenever there's a great comedy bit - in this case, one written by Scott Gilmour of Sports Column - I can't help but steal it. I've taken Gilmour's idea, in some cases recopying entire sections of it. Just wanted to know that what comes below isn't exactly my creation. (If you hate it, I suggest you blame Scott!)

(* * *)

Dear Houston,

First off, we would like to officially welcome you to our hell. Our cities are charter members of that small fraternity of places that know what it's like to lose their team. Actually, let us rephrase that: that know what it's like to have our teams either folded underneath us or carpetbagged away. We feel that we should have a talk with you, you know, one of those "just girls" talks.

Face it, we've all been through horrible breakups before. One party wants to make things work, and the other desperately seeks greener pastures. Some of us have had the grief of having the departing party leap into another, more successful relationship. We hope that we can find a hook-up somewhere, but it looks like all of the available men (or women) hook up with more glamorous partners wearing the most expensive clothes and perfume. You think that you'll never shower enough to clean the "dumped" off. Having lived through these disasters, we will share our relationships with you Comets fans.

Suppose you have a partnership with someone. We'll assume it's a guy, but hey, this is the WNBA and we know all about "don't ask, don't tell". Suppose your partner hooks up with someone new.

In Scenario One, the new person is 23 years old, has a hot body, is a part-time lead singer in a rock band and successful puppy doctor who speaks five languages and is a cordon bleu chef. You'll still be upset, but you can understand why your partner left. He or she is probably better off.

In Scenario Two, your partner tells you that they are leaving. Because they've turned gay (or straight). Or is joining a monestary. Or the French Foreign Legion. Or wants to be chemically neutered. Or doesn't even bother telling you they're leaving at all and are just...gone the next day without so much as a "wham-bam-thank-you-Ma'am".

As survivors of the second scenario (don't even get Charlotte started) ,you see, no matter how many time you tell yourself "it's not your fault", you get the overwhelming impression that it was something you did to hasten the decision. Because you didn't love them enough.

What's worse is when everyone is telling you - your parents, your friends, other human beings, Norman Chad - that you made a bad decision and you put your love in the wrong place. That everyone around you knew that your lover was a jerk who could never make a living, that everyone had bet that your love would only last a few years, and that love is just a stupid idea for idealistic losers anyway. (And by the way, your naysayers are married to some jerk who has nothing but contempt for them.)

You've gone through the Five Stages of Break-Up exactly the same we have. First, there's denial. Then, there's anger. Then, there's bargaining. And then, there's depression. WHOA IS THERE DEPRESSION. However bad these four stages may be, for ninety percent of us there will be the final stage: acceptance. When you realize that there was probably nothing you could do who could make him stay. (The other ten percent of us still stick pins in our voodoo dolls.)

Our advice: a lot of mimosas. Seriously. Until you can get to that place called acceptance, there's a hell of a big hump to get over.

There are some things that are out of the question. One of them is stalking. Trust me, when you see him (or her) wearing those new clothes and kissing someone else, your blood will boil. Maybe the league will decide to throw a party in your old city - bring an All-Star Game or some other fundraiser. Do not go there. All of the memories of the good times will just come flooding back. If you make a break, it should be a clean break. At least, a clean break until ten years from now when you get a new WNBA team and your two-timing ex comes to town. In which case, anyone wearing a Comets jersey in your arena will be burned at the stake.

Be prepared for the rumor mongers. If any two-bit WNBA franchise even hints at leaving their arena, Houston will inevitably be mentioned as a possible landing zone. This is the sports equivalent of running into your ex at the bar - it rarely goes anywhere and refreshes old wounds.

I also want to warn you about jumping into another relationship. Atlanta and Chicago might look teh sex-ay, but you don't have the history and you'd be limited to awkward small talk. Take stock of what your ex did to you - he bailed out of the relationship; you woke up one morning and found an empty spot on the bed, his stuff gone and a mailbox full of unpaid bills. Relationships on the rebound are always bad ideas.

It's going to take a long time to learn how to care again. There will be brief Tourettes-like outbursts of inexplicable anger that will confuse many others. But there are other fish in the sea. There's that New Yorker who seems so confident. There's someone in Los Angeles who looks like they have a car and a job. Even that bitch from San Antonio is starting to look really attractive.

After a while, you'll fall in love again. We understand. As for the Comets...well, if it wasn't meant to be it wasn't meant to be and you're probably better off without them. I hear that drinking makes the pain go away faster.

We hope you can get it back together and that your relationship works out. But if it doesn't, give us a call.

Sincerely,

Salt Lake City
Orlando
Miami
Portland
Cleveland
Charlotte

Tres Sportiv

From SignOnSanDiego.com:

Approximately 83 percent of teenage girls play sports, with basketball as the top choice, according to a survey sponsored by Seventeen magazine and the WNBA.

Very cool. Now if these young women begin supporting the W with their earning power....

Recruiting vs. NCAA Tournament Success - The McDonald's All Americans

Time to answer the question: what do Ivory Latta, Kasha Terry, Alison Bales, Camille Little and Ann Strother all have in common?

Answer: all of them were McDonald's All-Americans.

Ann Strother: 2002
Ivory Latta: 2003
Camille Little: 2003
Alison Bales: 2003
Kasha Terry: 2003

Some background about the McDonald's All-American team. Since 1977, McDonald's - the guys who make the Big Mac - have been naming high school All-Star teams. Being like everyone else in organized basketball, they didn't even notice the girls until 2002, when the first girl's McDonald's All-American team was named.

Sports America makes a list of 1200 girls, which is pared down to 150 players. The 150 players are then reviewed by a selection committee that shrinks the roster down to its final size. An "East" and "West" team are chosen, but more for balance than for geographical correctness.

These McDonald's All-Americans are considered to be the cream of the crop that the country has to offer, and as far as I know, all are seniors. These kids are heavily recruited by college programs, and most of the kids already know where they're going by the time the next college season rolls around.

If you look at some of these lists, they look like a WNBA roster. The 2004 McD All-Americans were pretty impressive. This list had Candace Parker, Crystal Langhorne, Nikki Anosike, Sylvia Fowles, Essence Carson, Alexis Hornbuckle, Tasha Humphrey, Candace Wiggins, and a couple of others that are on rosters today.

Of course, this doesn't mean that every McDonald's All-American will be a WNBA All-Star. Look at the Atlanta Dream, which has five McDonald's All-Americans on the roster, but only one of WNBA All-Star quality.

Once I learned about the McDonald's All-Americans, I asked myself, "how much does having a McDonald's All-American on one's college roster have to do with tournament success?" If I were, say, Coach Joe Blow from Wassamatta U., and I could recruit two McDonald's All-Americans , what would be my chances of success in the NCAA Tournament if I could get that far?

I first drew up lists of all of the All-Americans from 2002 to the present 2008 class. I looked up their college records. Some McD All-Americans, like Lindsay Richards (2002), got two years before injuries ended their career (Richards played at Iowa in the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons.) Others, like Brooke Smith (2002) would transfer after one year. Richards played for Duke from 2002-03, then transferred to Stanford. NCAA rules require that students transferring sit out one year. (Smith concluded her career at Stanford in 2007.)

Other students were medical redshirts, due to blown out knees and the like. Others couldn't cut the mustard academically (Erica Brown in 2005) or questioned their commitment to basketball (Elena Delle Donne in 2008).

The first All-Americans that made it through four years were the 2002 class, and it wasn't until 2006 that a college team could have a McDonald's All-American on their roster for four years. This gave me three NCAA tournaments to review - the 2006, 2007 and 2008 tournaments.

I accounted for three cases:

a) teams that went to the tournament and had an All-American on the roster,
b) teams that went to the tournament and did not have an All-American on the roster - these teams were the majority of teams, from the mid-majors and automatic byes, and
c) teams that had an All-American on the roster, but did not go to the tournament. Texas Tech had Erin Grant (2002), Brooke Baughman (2003) and Darrice Griffin (2004) but still couldn't make the tournament in 2006.

I wanted to look at games played in the NCAA tournament as opposed to games won. Looking at games played made more sense to me, as games played seemed to apply to all Division I teams, whereas games won restricted the group (in my mind) only to teams that made the tournament. A team that lost in the first round has one game played, a team that didn't make the tournament has zero games played.

We then restrict to teams that have McDonald's All-Americans.

The next step is to perform what is called a linear regression. Linear regression answers the question: "if the relationship between All-Americans and games played is linear - if having x All-Americans means you get to play y games in the NCAA Tournament - then what is the relationship?"

In real life, the relationship is not strictly linear, but we can statistically draw a "best fitting line" that best approximates the data.

Here are the "best fitting lines" for the 2006, 2007 and 2008 tournaments.

Let "x" = # of McDonald's All-Americans on your team.
Let "y" = # of expected games played in the NCAA Tournament that year by your team.

2006: y = 0.630x - 0.237
2007: y = 0.705x - 0.004
2008: y = 1.116x - 0.910

Note that for each of the years, the slope of the line - the number next to x - increases year per year. For each successive year in the analysis, having a McDonald's All-American has more impact.

Why is this? My hypothesis is that the selection committee has gotten better over time. Remember that the 2006 tournament represents the very earliest McDonald's All-Americans whereas the 2008 tournament reflects a McDonald's All-American committee with more experience in picking players. 2008 represented the strongest correlation between roster and tournament success.

Here is the best fitting line representing three years of data:

all years: y = 0.798x - 0.337

If your team has zero All-Americans on it, you will play an "estimated" -0.337 games in the tournament. If you have two All-Americans, you will play an estimated 0.798 * 2 - 0.337 = 1.259 games. Two All-Americans on the roster might get you past the first round.

If this relationship is correct, or even close to correct, it explains why these girls are so highly recruited.
Note that

in 2006, you needed three McDonald's All-Americans to make the NCAA finals (Maryland)
in 2007, you needed five McDonald's All-Americans (Tennessee, Rutgers)
in 2008, you needed six McDonald's All-Americans (Tennessee, Stanford)

In all three years of the NCAA Tournament for which McDonald's All-Americans play a fact, only one team in each of those three years that made it to the Elite Eight had no All-Americans on it.

2006: Utah
2007: Mississippi
2008: Texas A&M

Neither Utah, Mississippi, or Texas A&M was able to make it to the final four. Three years isn't much of a sample, but recruiting success appears to be highly correlated with tournament success.

So which teams have the most McDonald's All-Americans on them now? Which teams are the ones to look out for in 2009?



As you can see, Tennessee and Pat Summitt have an amazing nine McD All-Americans on the roster:

Fuller, Cane, Baugh, Bjorklund, Gray, Johnson, Manning, Stricklen, Brewer

Up next is Rutgers with eight All-Americans:

Vaughn, Prince, Rushdan, Lee, Sykes, Dixon, Pope, Speed.

As a matter of fact, one could probably pass off the list above as a pre-season Top 25 list and the casual observer wouldn't give it a second glance. Except, of course, for the observers who live in Connecticut.

POSTSCRIPT: The third column of the graphic should indicate Tournament Games, not wins. Since I'm at work, I'll fix it when I get home.

Thou Art Not Forgotten

I regret to report that it is currently a dead zone out there, newswise. Unless you're following the saga of Elene Delle Donne. We know Nikki Teasley has signed with the Dream but we have no idea how's she getting along with everyone. We know Josh Bagriansky has an interview set up with Coach Meadors but we don't have an article just yet.

My next article will be another math post - all we got right now. What's it about? Hint: what do Ivory Latta, Kasha Terry, Alison Bales, Camille Little and Ann Strother have in common?

WNBA Salaries

ducky24 posted the following information on the Atlanta Dream Message Board. For the purposes of references, I'm reposting it here on the blog.

WNBA Salary Scale
Minimum


Years of Service 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
0- 2 $34,500 $35,190 $35,880 $36,570 $37,260 $37,950
3+ $50,000 $51,000 $52,000 $53,000 $54,000 $55,000

* See Rookie Salary Scale below.

Maximum


(a) For Player Contracts entered into between a Qualifying Veteran Free
Agent with six (6) or more Years of Service and her Prior Team (including, but not limited to,
Contracts entered into with a Qualifying Veteran Free Agent with six (6) or more Years of
Service who has been designated as a Core Player) and Extensions of Rookie Scale Contracts
with Draft Rookies shall be:
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
$97,500 $99,500 $101,500 $103,500 $105,500 $107,500

(b) For all other Player Contracts, the Maximum Player Salary shall be:
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
$95,000 $97,000 $99,000 $101,000 $103,000 $105,000

For rookie salary scale, see WNBA Collective Bargaining Agreement pages 255-260.

Team Salary Cap


Maximum
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
$772,000 $803,000 $827,000 $852,000 $878,000 $913,000

Minimum
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
$750,000 $772,000 $796,000 $819,000 $844,000 $869,000


Bonuses
WNBA Champion - $10,500 per player
Championship Runner-up - $5,250 per player
Eliminated in semifinals - $2,625 per player
Eliminated in quarterfinals - $1,050 per player


Most Valuable Player Award - $15,000
All-WNBA First Team Award - $10,000 per player
All-WNBA Second Team Award - $5,000 per player
Defensive Player Award - $5,000
Sportsmanship Award - $5,000
Rookie of the Year Award - $5,000
Most Improved Player Award - $5,000
All Star Game Participant - $2,500

The Senior Prospects Metric: An Update

(Note: the following post might be stat-heavy and dwell obsessively on number crunching. If you have no interest in such things, you might just want to skip past this one.)

Q of Rethinking Basketball asked me in a comment about a post I had written which used the first version of the Senior Prospects Metric (SPM) to go back in time to the 2008 WNBA Draft and attempt to predict that draft. Here are the results:



So how did the SPM match up with how the players performed? And how well did the actual draft match up? The actual draft matched up very well, just creeping into the -0.5 area of large correlation. Whereas the SPM did not even reach -0.3, the generally hypothesized level of medium correlation.

Q suggested that instead of using Wins Score, I should use a metric that was more of a rate than a sum. Wins Score isn't high for players that don't get a lot of minutes, whereas a rate would measure "production per minute" and would not penalize players that had potential but didn't get a lot of minutes.

Therefore, instead of using Wins Score, I would use a metric I was already using for something else, called WS333 - "Wins Score for 33 1/3 minutes". WS333 asked the question, "how much Wins Score does the player produce per 33 1/3 minutes of play?". It would shrink the scores of players who had a lot of minutes, and expand the scores of players who didn't.

The results were...well....



AAAGGGHHH! When using a per/minute based metric, the SPM did worse - it got closer to randomness. Whereas the actual draft order got closer to a direct relationship.

I realized that I was going to have to add the height caveats that Hollinger wrote about in his inital ESPN article if I was to get any closer to an actual draft projection. I therefore added the height qualifications to the SPM and tried the entire result all over again.

Here are the final results. The "New Predicted Order" is the order you'd get if you use the updated version of the SPM to predict the draft outcome.



Kimberly Beck falls from 3rd to 10th. The new SPM punishes her for being a short point guard who didn't rebound well in college. Quianna Chaney also takes a hit for rebounding. Poor players get pushed down and the better players move up to take their places. Candace Wiggins moves to 8th from 10th, and Alexis Hornbuck moves all the way from 15th to 9th.

We'll look at the new correlations now.



The newest version of the SPM still does poorly against WS333 - but it does better than the older version. However, when using Wins Score, the correlation between SPM and actual player results actually moves from small correlation to medium correlation.

Even more interesting (to me anyway) is that the new SPM predicted order moves closer in correlation to the order from the 2008 WNBA Draft. It's still a small correlation, but it moves more in the direction of what the GMS of the WNBA actually do.

(* * *)

When thinking about this project, there were two matters on my mind.

The first matter is whether or not correlation is the correct statistical measure to use. As it turns out, correlation can be very misleading whenever non-normal variables are used.

A "normal variable" is a bell-curve type distribution. This implies a lot of numbers clumped up in the middle and trailing on both ends. If WNBA talent were normally distributed, it would indicate that most WNBA players have roughly the same amount of talent, with a few players being rather crappy and another few players being excellent.

This assumption is not true in baseball. In baseball, it's more of an exponential curve, with a whole lot of really crappy players and a small number of good players. (Go to this link for the image of an exponential curve.) I suspect that talent curves are the same way in the WNBA and this adds problems when using correlation.

The other matter on my mind is that we might not be explaining the relationship in the right terms - it might not be that draft position predicts player performance, but that player performance might be dependent on draft position! It might be the case that higher draft choices get more coaching attention to improving the fine points of their game than lower, non-playing draft choices. In short, there might not be some sort of "inherent ability" that never changes, but rather the ability is more likely to be coaxed out at the professional level by coaches and staff members the lower one is picked in the draft.

After all, if you're a first round draft pick, there's more pressure on GMs and coaches to get a better result. More attention is lavished on one's major investment than one's minor ones.

That's pretty much it for the conclusions. I hope to have an updated SPM at the end of the 2008-09 college season, so we'll see which players did better than the most recently concluded year, and which did worse. If your favorite college player does worse in the coming year, don't worry - Hollinger says that this happens in men's college basketall, and it will probably happen in the women's game as well.

New Link

Gotta add Sue F's new blog to the blogroll. The name of the blog is simply, "They're Playing Basketball". My suggestion is that you take some time, click the link, and go over there and read it.

Also, a shoutout to the Women's Hoops Blog, not just for providing the link, but to linking one of my articles on their blog. You wouldn't believe how many hits I got!

Small Market Blues

A Kansas City sports blog laments the fact that not only can the owners of the Sprint Center in Kansas City not "land" an NBA or NHL team, it can't land a WNBA team either. The arena's owners have been chatting up a Kansas City franchise for years now, including the years 2006 (when Charlotte disbanded and the players were dispersed) and 2008, when the Dream got its team.

The lone commenter writes "no tennant (sic) in the sprint center is better than a wnba team". It looks like the lone commenter is going to get his wish.

Here's what I don't get about the small market blues. When Baltimore's mayor talked up the possibility of a WNBA franchises, there were many more comments than the ones on the blog I linked to in the first paragraph. A third of the comments were the angrydumbjock.com crowd, who feared that some lesbian somewhere in Baltimore might be made happy by the arrival of a WNBA team. Another third focused on the perceived corruption of Baltimore's mayor.

The final third considered the arrival of a WNBA franchise as an insult. "Baltimore is a big league city," was the cry. They feared that the acceptance of a WNBA franchise would doom them to second-class status.

Here's one thing about dumbjocks and dumbjocksniffers - despite the fact that many of them are in sales, marketing, and the traditional "macho boy" kinds of business professions, when it comes to spots fandom they toss their business acumen right out the window. They forget about the necessity of networking.

First, take a look at all of the WNBA cities. They are all big league cities. In the entire history of the WNBA, there has been only one city that didn't have a corresponding NBA franchise - Uncasville, Connecticut, home of the Mohegan Sun casino. (The other is Seattle, but it did have an NBA franchise at the beginning of 2008.)

Second, many of these cities still have NBA ownership or staff operations.

Third, just about every WNBA game is attended by someone who knows something in the NBA. Either actual NBA players are watching (whenever I attend Dream games, the Dream make sure to highlight them on the jumbotron), or arena owners, or local businessment with money and sports connections, or whatever.

You would think that people would come to the obvious conclusion - if you want an NBA franchise, the best way to draw the NBA's attention is to start a WNBA team. Claims of the dumbjocksniffers set aside, the WNBA is assisted financially by the NBA because David Stern sees it in the NBA's best interest to have the WNBA around. And what does it cost the NBA to prop up the W? About as much as it costs for a low-scoring point guard on the New York Knicks. It's a low-cost subsidy that yields high results. (My fear is that the next WNBA commissioner will not be as smart as Stern is.) Those little kids that go to WNBA games might grow up to be WNBA fans -- and NBA fans as well.

When you start a WNBA francise, you make friends with WNBA President Donna Orender. Donna is in David Stern's back pocket. If you know Donna, you know David Stern by extension. And the rule in business is that it's easier to do business with people with whom you have some sort of "in", some sort of social connection.

What you don't do is belly up to the bar and claim, "We're a big league city and we deserve consideration". One thing about big league cities - they don't brag about how big league they are. It's little league cities that have some point to make.

So if you're living in Baltimore, or Kansas City, or Tulsa, why don't you use your brains? Get that WNBA team. A few seasons of good attendance, and when those NBA owners want to bail out on their teams - and you know that's going to happen sooner or later - guess where David Stern and the ownership will be looking first?

Atlanta Dream Sign Nikki Teasley

I'm excerpting this right from RebKell:

DREAM SIGNS FREE AGENT POINT GUARD NIKKI TEASLEY
-- Atlanta Signs Former University of North Carolina Star --

Atlanta, August 15, 2008— The Atlanta Dream announced today the signing of free agent point guard Nikki Teasley for the remainder of the season. Teasley spent the last two seasons with the Washington Mystics before parting ways with the team in March. She gave birth to her daughter in June and has missed all of the 2008 season to date.

“To have a 6-foot point guard is definitely an advantage,” said Dream Head Coach Marynell Meadors. “Nikki is a tremendous talent and excels at seeing the floor. She will be a huge plus for us and provides us with size at the point guard position.”

In her six year WNBA career, Teasley is averaging 8.7 points 3.2 rebounds and 5.0 assists per game. She started 33 games for the Mystics last season, averaging 5.2 points, 2.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game. Teasley was originally selected with the fifth overall pick in the 2002 WNBA Draft and spent her first four seasons in the league with the Los Angeles Sparks, where she hit the game winning shot in the 2002 WNBA Championship. Teasley was also named the MVP of the 2003 WNBA All-Star game.

During her collegiate career at the University of North Carolina, Teasley averaged an Atlantic Coast Conference record 5.8 assists per game. She finished her career as the Tar Heels all-time leader in assists (728) and three-pointers (236). She was the first player in conference history to lead the ACC in assists all four years and was only the second player to record 1,500 points and 600 assists in her career.

This will be very interesting. Wonder why she didn't decide to return to the Mystics.

Dream to Get Back to Work

We have a new post from Josh Bagriansky of Score Atlanta. It's about the Atlanta Dream players finally returning to practice.


...

“I would love to be here in Atlanta,” said Latta. “They just show so much love to women’s basketball. I love this crowd here. When we go to other places, we look at their crowd and we’re like, ‘man, we can’t wait to get back to Atlanta.’”

...

“I went to Orlando, had fun and relaxed,” [Lennox] said. “I got a lot off my mind. Overall, [the break] was great.”

I suggest that you go read the article in its entirety.

Best Performances by NCAA Coaches in the Post-Season

I'm going to replicate the work of an interesting blog called, "Yet Another Basketball Blog " and examine the success rates of women's basketball coaches. Like Dan Hanner, I'll look at the current leaders in appearances plus wins in the NCAA, but I'm changing the time frame to five years instead of ten years. The current school of each coach is listed, with annotations if the coach has changed schools

NCAA Appearances - Wins - Coach - School

5-24 Pat Summitt Tennessee
5-18 Geno Auriemma Connecticut
5-15 Tara VanDerveer Stanford
5-14 Gail Goestenkors (Duke 4/Texas 1) Texas
5-14 Sylvia Hatchell North Carolina
5-13 C. Vivian Stringer Rutgers
5-12 Brenda Frese Maryland
5-11 Kim Mulkey Baylor
5-10 Andy Landers Georgia
5-8 Melanie Balcomb Vanderbilt
5-7 Charli Turner Thorne Arizona State
5-6 Muffet McGraw Notre Dame
5-6 Sherri Coale Oklahoma
4-6 Pam Borton Minnesota
5-4 Doug Bruno DePaul (IL)
5-4 Jim Foster Ohio State
3-5 Kristy Curry (Purdue 3/Texas Tech 2) Texas Tech
5-3 Dawn Staley (Temple 5) South Carolina
5-2 Wendy Larry Old Dominion (VA)
3-4 Gary Blair Texas A&M
3-3 Sharon Versyp (Maine 3/Purdue 2) Purdue
3-3 Elaine Elliott Utah
4-2 Jeff Mittie TCU
4-2 Bill Fennelly Iowa State
5-1 Don Flanagan New Mexico
3-3 Deb Patterson Kansas State
4-1 Joanne Boyle (Richmond 2/Cal 3) California

We now want to develop an idea called "PASE", which is used both by Henner in the blog and by ESPN. PASE stands for "performance above seed expectations".

There aren't many benchmarks we can use to compare college coaches. Win-loss record certainly won't do it. A team's win-loss record depends seemingly on two things:

a) strength of other teams in conference, and
b) strength of non-conference schedule.

However, since 1994, the women's NCAA tournament has had 64 teams, with teams receiving a rank from "1" to "16" dependent on subjective assessment of strength (and later, Sagarin RPI). What we can do is compare a team's performance based on their seed with the performance of all the other teams that had that same seed in past tournaments.

We come up with an "expected win" count per seed - looking back over performance, we can say that a "6" seed is expected to win 1.03 games. Your average six seed makes it to the second round. If you're a college coach and can take your sixth-seeded team into the Sweet Sixteen, that's a plus. If you lose your first round game, that's a minus.

First, here are the expected wins associated with NCAA seed in the women's tournament:

1 - 3.73
2 - 2.65
3 - 2.38
4 - 1.78
5 - 1.15
6 - 1.03
7 - 0.85
8 - 0.48
9 - 0.60
10 - 0.35
11 - 0.37
12 - 0.23
13 - 0.13
14 - 0
15 - 0
16 - 0.02

Why isn't the #1 seed worth more wins? Because if you make it to the Final Four, you'll probably bump against the other #1 seeds.

Note that the #8 seed has had particularly bad luck. History shows that the #9 seed does better than the #8 seed.

The #14 and #15 seeds have never won a first round game in the history of the 64-team tournament. As for #16 being 0.02, I refer you to March 14, 1998, a dark day in Stanford history as they became the only #1 seed - in women's or men's play - to lose to a #16 seed as Harvard beat a Stanford team with two injured leading scorers by the score of 71-67 in the first round.

So given their assigned seeds, which coaches have done the best? We will look over the last five years only and determine how well, per year, each coach does above the expected number of wins.

Best Coaches vs. PASE (minimum 3 appearances in five years)

Pat Summitt 1.29
Tara VanDerveer 0.60
C. Vivian Stringer 0.59
Geno Auriemma 0.57
Brenda Frese 0.38
Pam Borton 0.34
Andy Landers 0.27
Muffet McGraw 0.14
Kim Mulkey 0.13
Charli Turner Thorne 0.13

This is pretty much a list of the big names in women's college ball - the best coaches are the ones with longevity, and they have that longevity because they can keep coming to the NCAA tournament and performing beyond expectations. Pat Summitt has won a few championships recently. That helps, and we see that on the average Coach Summitt gets one game beyond where she's expected to finish.

Worst Coaches vs. PACE (minimum 3 appearances in five years)

Don Flanagan -0.16
Wendy Larry -0.24
Tom Collen -0.25
Gary Blair -0.29
Joanne Boyle -0.40
Deb Patterson -0.52
Kay Yow -0.53
Sylvia Hatchell -0.54
Sherri Coale -0.73
Jim Foster -1.24

Flanagan is a good coach at a weak school. Tom Collen wasn't so weak that Arkansas didn't run off and hire him, and the same case goes for Joanne Boyle at California. Surprisingly, Sylvia Hatchell of North Carolina and Jim Foster have had some lousy post-season results. I wonder how well Sherri Coale of Oklahoma will do once Courtney Paris leaves the Sooners.

My next goal is to examine the relationship between a team's success and the number of McDonald's All-Americans it is able to sign. That should be fun.

It's Got What Plants Crave

"Verve has become the official energy drink of the Phoenix Mercury."

Pardon me. Grammatical error. I'll try again.

"Verve! has become the official energy drink of the Phoenix Mercury."

Another WNBA Prospect....

...Coach Meadors, if we get her into practice for August do you think she could see some minutes? (Link is here.)

Nancy Lieberman Looks Back...Using Mannatech!

I'm almost ashamed to link this. From Part One of a two part interview of Nancy Lieberman by Slam Online:

Lieberman: ...so, I’ve been taking this product since 1996. I swear by it. Anybody who knows me, I give the product to. You have to take this for 120 days because you won’t believe how you feel. Your recovery time, your stamina, your immune system and your overall health.

Players that have played for me or players I’ve trained have all at one point or another been on Mannatech. So, to be quite honest, that’s just a way of life for me. In my mind, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without having been on these products. Like I said, it’s not an experiment. I’ve been on them since 1996. I would never take on a challenge without that being a part of what I do. They’re the best. They’re simply the best.

I’m just telling you, try it for 120 days. These people do not pay me, okay? Usually I like to brag and people are paying me to brag about them, but these guys don’t pay me. I want them to pay me, but that’s what I’m telling you. I couldn’t imagine doing what I do, getting up in the morning and not having that be the first thing that I do.

Nancy! Don't you have any dignity?

Oh wait....

More Than One Change for the Mystics

Nakia Sanford of the Mystics recounts the following on the Pass The Ball blog:

Afterwards, I had to kick off my heels and rush back to practice. I felt like wonder woman doing a whirlwind change. I had to be a little late. I was already pumped from having to rush, but when I walked in the gym, I was soooo Hype!!!! We were scrimmaging against a group of men. It was a nice change. As Taj said “I am so glad I don’t have to practice against y’all today”. My sentiments exactly!! We have been killing each other in practice. The whole mood of the team is different. The energy. Coach J has us in check. Even in our scrimmage, every singe mistake was corrected. I missed a box out and got pulled immediately, and she let me know exactly why. I feel so good. This break gave me a chance to rest my body and my spirit (AND SHOOT FREE THROWS!!!!). The scrimmage was great because guys are so much quicker; we couldn’t do the things like make lazy passes or not box out. They would make us pay. But it was great seeing their faces when we took it to them. It was fun. After my exciting day, I came home and ate, and before I knew it I was knocked out sleep. Dog tired, the way it’s supposed to be

A few comments:

1) Little did Nakia know that she might not practice against Taj ever again.
2) Looks like Jessie Kenlaw is already doing as coach what Rollins never did.
3) Furthermore, it looks like Rollins never had the Mystics scrimmage against men - which is what every good college team is doing.

2009 WNBA Prospects, Part II

I'm coming back to the Senior Prospects Metric (SPM) and I'm continuing to make small changes in it. I'll mention the changes I've made:

Height has now been built into the model. I've found the heights of all of the players and made the following assumpions:

Guard height. John Hollinger makes distinctions between short point guards and short shooting guards. Since it's hard to determine whether a guard is a point guard or a shooting guard just by statistics (he furthermore makes a distinction between "short" and "somewhat short" guards), I've simply penalized any guard who is 5'8" or less. These "short guards" get a penalty which is 3/4th of the penalites that follow. The reasoning Hollinger uses is that if a short guard is really good, the other parts of the metric will overcome the height penalty.

Forward/center height. If a forward center is shorter than 6'3", they will receive a penalty.

The 6'6" ers. We could call this the "Katie Feenstra" rule. Hollinger noticed that NBA prospects who were taller than 7 feet were generally a sorry lot. These big men had distorted statistics because their opponents were generally shorter than the players they'd face in the WNBA.

I've penalized any player that is taller than 6'6". Sylvia Fowles barely makes the cutoff at 6'6".

Guards who can't shoot from the perimeter. According to Hollinger, a guard should be able to make at least 25 3-pointers in a season, which is about 0.78-0.85 threes a game, depending on the length of the season. If a guard can't make that many threes, they get a penalty.

Bad rebounders. In order to make this one work, I had to drag in a formula from John Hollinger called "Rebound Rate". I am not going to drag out the formula, which depends on the player's minutes played, her rebounds, and her college team's rebounds and opponent rebounds. I'll just explain how it works.

Assume that during an average game against College Team's Average Opponent, both teams have 100 total rebounds (that's a lotta rebounds!) Rebound rate answers the question "how many rebounds would player X get out of those 100 rebounds?"

Of course, the Hollinger Rebound Rate he uses in the draft prospects article...isn't the same as the Rebound Rate formula that he uses everyone else. I had to depend on a converstion from Frisco del Rosario, for which I thank him.

The penalties assessed are for:
* guards with a rebound rate of less than 5.0
* guards between 5'11" and 6'1" with rebound rates of less than 7.5
* guards 6'2" or taller with rebound rates of less than 8
* forwards with rebound rates of less than 12
* centers with rebound rates of less than 13

With no further ado, here are the 2008-09 prospects reevaluated.

Taj McWilliams-Franklin Traded to Shock; Humphrey to Mystics

From this link, via Rebkell:

to Mystics

Tasha Humphrey (F)
Eshaya Murphy (F)
2009 WNBA Draft 2nd-round pick

to Shock

Taj McWilliams-Franklin (F)

I don't know if I would have made that trade. Very, very interesting....

Imminent Doom of WNBA Foretold

With the Houston Comets franchise in danger of either relocating or being folded, even WNBA fans are expressing some doubt about the WNBA's stability. Jock-ish sportswriters and perpetual detractors say that the WNBA can't work and that the financial troubles and franchise relocations are a sign that no one really gives a damn and that WNBA watchers need to turn their attentions to more serious and stable sports.

I think that to drive the point home, the WNBA should look at the following unstable sports franchises. If the names aren't known to you, you can go to Wikipedia or a sports encyclopedia - I don't expect readers to be experts on dead leagues.

(* * *)

1876: Baseball's National League founded with eight teams.
1877: League loses franchises in New York and Philadelphia. League stumbles forward with six teams.
1878: League loses three franchises. Picks up three expansion franchises. Still a six-team league.
1879: League loses another two franchises. This time, picks up four franchises and is up to an eight-team league.
1880: League loses one franchise, picks up another franchise.
1881: League loses one franchise, picks up one franchise.
1882: For the first time, the league actually continues with the same group of franchises it had last year. However, there's competition from another league called the American Association.
1883: League loses another two franchises, but picks up two.
1884: Amazing! Once again, the league continues with the same franchises it had the year before!
1885: Still unstable. Loses a franchise, but picks another one up.
1886: Loses two more franchises, picks up another two. How can you tell who's in the league and who isn't in the league by this time?
1887: Drops two franchises, picks up two more. When is this crap going to end?

(* * *)

1920: National Football League starts out with 14 teams. One of them only plays one game. Scheduling left up to individual teams. No championship game.
1921: League blows up to 22 teams - however, five of the teams will fold after this year. Muncie and Cleveland will also fold after the season.
1922: It's going to be 18 teams this year, I think.
1923: League expands to 20 teams.
1924: That didn't work. Back to 18 teams. Chaotic scheduling. no championship game.
1925: Back to 20 teams this year. Championship, however, is a joke. We still can't figure out who the 1925 NFL Champion was.
1926: The NFL had 22 teams playing...well, at least part of an NFL season. Some folded. Some moved to rival leagues. College fans sit around and mock NFL, predict the league will be out of business in three years.
1927: It's time for radical cost-cutting measures. The weak sisters of the league are eliminated. This cuts the league down to 12 teams, its weakest ever. One team plays 13 games, another team plays five games, much laughter abounds.
1928: Down to 10 teams now. Two teams from the year before folded. College sports writer Norman Aloysious Chad predicts that league won't make it to end of year. In a column that showcases Aloysious's literary brilliance, he pens the well-known line "Who watches that crap, anyway?"
1929: Back up to 12 teams. One team decides to play a game under floodlights. Press claims that stunts like that can't save the NFL.
1930: Some teams move. Some teams drop out. League expands. We have 11 teams...I think.
1931: League has to cut down to 10 teams. Due to the Depression, one team folds in mid-season. Writers write 14th column of year on "NFL: An Experiment That Failed".

(* * *)

1946-47: Basketball Association of America starts out with uneven assortment of teams - six in one league, five in another.
1947-48: Four of the teams from the year before immediately collapse. They have to bring in another team from some other league to even out the teams.
1948-49: Looks promising. Four teams from the National Basketball League join the BAA. It's a twelve-team league!
1949-50: With both basketball leagues in bad shape, they join forces and become the National Basketball Association. They have 17 teams in three divisions.
1950-51: The 17 teams have to be contracted down to 11. Then one of the teams collapses in mid season.
1951-52: At last, some stability. One team relocates.
1952-53: For the first time, the teams from this year are the same teams from last year.
1953-54: So much for hope. The team in Indianapolis folds. That leaves the new NBA with nine teams.
1954-55: The franchise in Baltimore collapses in mid-season. With eight teams, the verdict is in: "pro basketball is a joke!"
1955-56: One of the teams ends up relocating in the tenth year of the league's existence.
1956-57: Thank god. More stability in an eight-team league with Minneapolis the westernmost team.
1957-58: Two relocations this time. It looks like the NBA is doomed to be an afterthought.

(* * *)

When looking back on these old failed leagues, the WNBA needs to learn some hard lessons. Either that, or they'll be a sports footnote, like those old failed leagues known as the National League, National Football League, and National Basketball Association.

Houston Comets Update

This is from Randy's Rants, written by a radio journalist in Houston.

We have some more info on the Houston Comets.

1. Hilton Koch will officially step down as Comets owner this morning in Houston during a press conference.
2. Jim McIngvale has declined interest in purchasing the franchise. McIngvale, known locally as "Mattress Mack", is in the furniture business and is a competitor of Hilton Koch. He had expressed interest in acquiring the Comets in years past.
3. If no new owner is found by November 2008 or January 2009, the Comets will either a) relocate, or b) fold, according to WNBA sources.

More news as it develops.

P. S. This is the 200th post of the Pleasant Dreams blog. Here's hoping that we can make it to 400!

Take a URL, Leave a URL

I've added a link to the Women's Elite Blog. The blog is run by BDA Sports Management, which represents several top-ranked WNBA players like Diana Taurasi and Seimone Augustus.

However, it is with great regret that I'm removing "The Libertine" from my blog roll. A fan blog dedicated to the New York Liberty, the blog has gone un-updated for almost two months and I fear that the site owner will no longer update. Which is very sad, because "The Libertine" was a inspiration to me - I told myself, "I hope my blog is as half as cool as 'The Libertine'."

The WNBA's "All-Sexy" Team?

According to MKRob at his Sports Blog, this team would be:

C: Lisa Leslie, Sparks
F: Candace Parker, Sparks
F: Swin Cash, Storm
G: Armintie Price, Sky
G: Deanna Nolan, Shock

Coach: Dawn Staley (ex-WNBA, now head coach at South Carolina)

I would replace Staley - who isn't even in the WNBA - with Jessie Kenlaw of the Washington Mystics. Now if we're going to open up the game to male coaches, well, that's a different ballgame. (I'll leave it up to you to figure out who the sexiest male coach is.)

Is such an article sexist? I don't think so. Baseball does this kind of stuff all the time. All-Handsome, All-Ugly, All-Ethnic, All-Tall, All-Blonde, All-Players With Long Names, etc. If the post stated that sexiness was the only value these players had, it would be sexist. However, I'd put these five players against any five in the WNBA in terms of talent.

"Predicting" the 2008 WNBA Draft with the Senior Prospects Metric

One of my recent posts used a convoluted metric to try to predict who would be the best senior prospects for the 2009 WNBA Draft. One of my commenters suggested that the metric be applied to the 2008 WNBA draft class. This way, we could determine if the metric could isolate who would be the most successful players out of that group of college seniors (and in the case of Candace Parker, juniors.)

I limited my analysis to the first three rounds of the draft. This involves 43 players (Sacramento was given a bonus third round pick - 14 x 3 + 1 = 43). Here is who the Senior Prospects Metric (SPM?) predicted for the draft.



At least we have the top four draft picks - Parker, Fowles, Wiggins and Hornbuckle - in the first round. The metric also brings a lot of third round draft picks into the first round, including two - Lauren Ervin of Arkansas ans Marscilla Packer of Ohio State - who ended up not playing a minute of WNBA ball. Ervin's season ended in December or January of 2008 with an ACL tear if I'm correct, which would explain why no one has heard of her - her position in the metric is based on the 16 or so games she played with the Razorbacks.

Let's look at how these player ended up in the actual draft. Furthermore, let's see how well each of these players have done in the 2009 season so far.

The last sentence where we "see how well" players have done is a loaded one. By what standard are you going to decide that players did "well" and players did not do "well"? There are several metrics you could use to evaluate players. I decided to use the same metric that SPM uses, the Wins Score metric. I like Wins Score because I think it evaluates shooting better than Efficiency.

Furthermore, using Wins Score solves the problem of players like Ervin who for whatever reason never made it into the league. Since Wins Score is an additive metric as opposed to some sort of rate, I can give those players who never made it into the WNBA( a Wins Score = zero. It works for me. These players have no positive stats, and no negative stats. It all balances out and furthermore strokes my ego by telling me that I'm a better player than Matee Ajavon).

The new picture:



It looks like Candace Parker and Nicky Anosike were the big wins of the draft. Both the SPM and the actual draft put them in the same locations.

Now, we need to know how much "correlation" the SPM and the Draft have to eventual Wins Score. Correlation implies a linear relationship between two lists of numbers.

A "zero" in correlation implies that there is no relationship.
A "one" in correlation implies that there is a strict relationship in the positive direction. As one list of numbers gets larger, the other list gets larger.
A "minus one" in correlation implies that there is a strict relationship in the negative direction. As one list of numbers gets larger, the other list gets smaller.

What we're hoping for is a negative relationship between draft position and overall performance. As position increases (#1, #2, #3....) the Wins Score associated with these numbers should start big, then start to drop.

Here are the correlation results:



These meanings of correlation depend on a lot. Let's look at the first one: the correlation between the SPM Predicted Order and the Actual Draft Order. 0.1220 is a very weak correlation, fairly close to random. The relationship between what the metric predicts and the actual draft pick order have little to do with each other.

Looking at the correction between the SPM Predicted Order and the Wins Scores of the Draftees, we get -0.2528. This is at the border of a small and medium correlation, more on the small side. At least the correlation is negative, which is what we want -- if it were positive, we would know that the SPM had no value.

Now, let's see how the actual GMs of the WNBA do against Wins Score. We get a correlation of -0.5925, a medium-large correlation on the large side of the border. The negative correlation is expected - as draft position goes up, performance should drop.

On the other hand, the -0.5925 number could be misleading. Remember that the Wins Score metric is linear additive - it gives you points whenever you do something well and takes points away whenever you do something poorly. It's not a "rate", but a sum. If a player is more likely to produce points than have points removed, then Wins Score and time played will have a strong positive correlation.

It is definitely likely that early draft picks will get more playing time than late draft picks - the draft pick has to be justified, or the player has to "get experience" and is more likely to be left in despite a low rate of Wins Score point production than a lesser pick. In short, early draft picks get better chances to build their Wins Score, so some of that good correlation might simply be a function of playing time.

(* * *)

Am I happy? so far I am. My next goal is to build in all of the height caveats. Hollinger stated that players of certain heights should be able to do certain things, and have points removed for failure. However, Hollinger is working with male height, and working in a different kind of game. This little side project of mine, it seems, is ever expanding - but at least, it's fun for a number cruncher!

Stacey Lovelace Waived by Shock

Stacey Lovelace was waived by the Detroit Shock. I guess whatever was going on with Stacey was bigger than both teams. Lovelace would only play seven games with the Shock...and her player file page at WNBA.com has been pulled....

Not Vultures, but the Noble Order of "Coragyps atratus"

More info regarding the Houston Comets. Links provided by Rebkell posters.

Link one is from Fox 26 in Houston, so there's no guarantee how long it will stay up on the website. I'll quote:

HOUSTON -- WNBA President Donna Orender was in Houston last month meeting with Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and Houston Mayor Bill White to solicit their help in finding a new owner or ownership group for the Houston Comets.

"We are told they are seeking a change of ownership and they would like us to help them find a person, or a group of persons, to take over ownership of the team," said Emmett in an interview with FOX 26 Sports.

Mayor White concurs.

"We will be looking for some new local ownership of that team and that's what she wanted to talk about." White said.

Mayor Bill White of Houston has confirmed that the WNBA is now operating the Houston franchise.

Link two is from the Houston Roundball Review. From the article, the writer says sources have told Kris Gardner that there are two groups in Dallas that want to purchase the Comets and move them to Dallas.

Link three is from the Houston Chronicle. It is the only link with comments, some poignant, some smart, some douchebag.

Here are what the options are for Houston.

1. The WNBA remains in control of Houston. This is not a good idea. As a part-time baseball fan, I remember when Major League Baseball took control of the Montreal Expos for a while. As the General Manager of a WNBA-operated team, you're very restricted. The WNBA will want to keep expenses down and will forbid you from acquiring any costly player whose salary the WNBA'll have to pay. Furthemore, every other GM will call the WNBA and ask, "why should player X be trapped in Houston when I can trade player Y who is "just as good" and I can aquire player X for my own team?"

Houston would become a dumping ground for the WNBA. I'm sure Bill Laimbeer has Donna Orender on speed dial with his hand poised above the button. Meanwhile, the team would move sooner or later and Houston fans would be treated to some awful B-ball from a lame duck franchise.

2. The team finds another owner in Houston. The best option. However, if this owner doesn't have deep pockets - one Rebkell poster wrote "(T)eams can not operate with millionaires as owners. You need multi-millionaires...." - we could have the same problem two or three years down the line.

3. The team finds another owner elsewhere. The team moves. We have the Dallas Comets. Or the Baltimore Comets. Or the San Francisco Comets. Or the Tulsa Comets. Hey, Utah relocated to San Antonio and that seemed to have worked out quite well. Orlando's relocation worked well, too.

4. The team folds and is disbanded. There is another dispersal draft. However, given the weaknesses of the teams in the Eastern Conference, my suggestion would be that either a) the Comets be merged with the Dream, or b) the dispersal be limited to the non-playoff teams.

It's too early in the game to say how things will turn out. Houston was sort of the #1 candidate for the kind of team that would face financial trouble. I knew that Hilton Koch was in trouble in Houston. I remember reporting about some member of the staff who had not been paid. The team blogger sort of disappeared. They were not just running Houston on a shoestring, they were running it on an aglet (you can look it up).

However, given that this blog loves to play with statistics and given that we also like to speculate, let's assume option #4 is in effect. Houston has a dispersal draft. Who should the Atlanta Dream take, given that they have first pick?

Here is the Houston Comets in order of descending Wins Score:

1. Sancho Lyttle - 184.5
2. Michelle Snow - 183.5
3. Tina Thompson - 105
4. Shannon Johnson - 79.5
5. Hamechetou Maiga-Ba - 56.5
6. Roneeka Hodges - 35
7. Mistie Williams - 26.5
8. Erica White - 17.5
9. Tamecka Dixon - 14
10. Latasha Byears - 4
11. Sequoia Holmes - 3.5
12. Mwadi Mabika - 0.5
13. Marcedes Walker - minus 2.5
14. Ashley Shields - minus 8
15. Matee Ajavon - minus 8.5

So it seems that the players to grab are either Sancho Lyttle or Michelle Snow. Myself, I'd take Snow. Snow produces more points and furthermore, she's a Tennessee alum. Although that means more orange jerseys at Philips Arena. Ugh.

Houston Comets Now Without an Owner?

From Rebkell at this link.

Dear Comets fans and supporters,

As you may have heard, the WNBA, Mayor Bill White and I are working diligently to find a new owner or ownership group for the Houston Comets. I wanted to take this moment to express my sincere gratitude at having had the opportunity to be an integral part of this storied franchise and thank you for the continued support that has made the Comets such an integral part of the wonderful Houston community.

As a longtime Comets fan and season-ticket holder, I understand and appreciate the significance of this team to the city of Houston and the WNBA. Since the league’s 1997 tip-off, the Comets have been core to the exponential growth of women’s basketball. By winning the WNBA’s first four titles, the team established itself as one of professional sports’ great modern dynasties and became a point of civic pride for Houston.

The fact that the energy, passion and commitment of Houston’s tremendous fan base no doubt ignited much of this success is something I was keenly aware of prior to purchasing the club. My tenure as owner has only served to enhance my longstanding admiration for the extraordinary atmosphere that takes over the stands at Comets games.

As we work to find an owner that will uphold the Comets’ tradition and guide this organization to great heights once again, please be assured that absolutely nothing about the experience of attending Comets games will change. The team is in the midst of a winning season and will be back home after the Olympic break to deliver more thrilling basketball action. Your support to date has led to an 11-2 home record, the second best such mark in the WNBA. The players will be counting on your energy and passion to help them secure a playoff berth.

Thank you for all the support that you have given the Comets before and during my tenure. My experience owning this team has been a great thrill, and I will continue to sit alongside you in the stands and cheer on our team.

Sincerely,

Hilton Koch

More on this as it develops.

Put a Milo on Her

For those who don't care about baseball, there's a book called Moneyball, written by Michael M. Lewis, which tells the story of how Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane turned to statistical analysis to turn the A's around for pennies on the dollar.

However, some of Beane's decisions had nothing to do with statistics. The book takes the reader inside the Oakland A's draft process. Beane and his staff have to sort through literally hundreds of players, speaking with scouts and making analytical decisions.

But before a single slide rule is touched, we learn about Milo. Milo was a former administrative employee of the Oakland A's who would just say the most horrible things to people and got on everyone's nerves. (He once told a new employee, as a way of greeting, "I was against hiring you.") He gained such a reputation that the name "Milo" was synonymous with someone socially maladjusted.

The Athletics draft board was a large magnetic board with hundreds of names attached. When researching the backgrounds of these players, Beane would find psychological red flags. Some had histories of problems with drugs or the law. Some had "all Fs" in college. Some were "god-squadders", people excessively preoccupied with religion. Some players were revealed to have zero scores in ambition or competitiveness on the primitive psych metrics the A's used.

Whenever Beane heard something that disturbed him, he said, "Put a Milo on him."

At that moment, a magnetic sticker with a picture of ex-Athletics employee Milo was placed next to that player's name on the board. No matter what the player's talent, that player was immediately removed from consideration. For a young player hoping to become a pro, to have a Milo put on you was a potential death sentence from the Athletics. Instead of 30 teams looking to sign you, there would now be 29.

Beane's reasoning was that small, weak franchises could not afford to have the development of players derailed by outside issues. With only so much money to spend, the Athletics had no time to invest in psychological or behavior correction - the choices of the Athletics had to pay off immediately. A club like the Yankees could afford to spend the money or wait for someone to get their head sorted out, but not the A's.

I think the above is true also with poor teams. The "head" of a player is not taken into account when drafting or acquiring players. It's a real risk to spend one's time and energy on a basket case, particularly if you have a sub-.500 record. No coach of a struggling team should be worrying about whether or not a particular player is going to "show up" mentally.

The comment about whether Courtney Paris wanted to play in the WNBA or not was what prompted this post. I don't believe that's the case about Courtney; in fact, everything I've read about Paris suggests that she wants to take her game to greater and greater levels. If this was something she had said, as an imaginary GM it might make me want to pass on her during the draft. (However, there is no proof that she's said such a thing. - Pet)

The Atlanta Dream has a couple of players I'm concerned about. One is Izi Castro Marques. Her meltdown in Madrid was shocking, and it almost cost the Brazilian national team a spot in the Olympics. Of course, we don't know the whole story about the animosity between Paul Bassul and Izi, but Izi should be controlled enough to keep her personal issues off the basketball court.

The other is Betty Lennox. Lennox and Meadors have clashed, and those clashes have made the press. Clearly, they don't see eye to eye, but if there are differing points of view, they shouldn't be reported to the press.

As the newest WNBA franchise, it's important that we make sure that we don't have any future Milos on the Dream. I'm not saying that everyone on the Dream has to have a perfect mental makeup. However, if Coach Meadors is reading this, I have a polite suggestion -- Coach Meadors, when you're evaluating talent for the 2009 Draft, and you hear stories about a senior college player clashing with coaches, or the law, or if you hear that a player's heart might not be in the game at all times, don't try to fix those things yourself.

Put a Milo on her. We'll take the basket cases after we have a WNBA Championship behind us.

2008-09 - The Best Senior Prospects

I've now concluded my analysis of the current Division I women's basketball prospects. All of these women will be seniors during the 2008-09 season. For blog readers which may be math-phobic, you might want to skip down to the very end where the players are actually named.

Why do an analysis?

Good question. The point is basically to try to determine which players deserve a closer look.

Whenever someone who likes statistics creates a ranked list, contention is the outcome. "How dare you claim that Player X is #16 when it's plain that X is better than Player Y who is #6?"

The goal is to look both with the eyes and with the stats. Your eyes can actually fool you as much as statistics can. In order to really know which players are the best, you would have to watch each of the named players for the entire college season. This is impossible for all but maybe a handful of reporters, and even they can only watch so many players in the day. Statistics do two things:

a) they isolate players that have distinguished themselves in some way in the boxscores and,
b) they point to a player's flaws as well as a player's strengths.

The Starting Point

I began with Hollinger’s idea that blocks, steals, rebounds, and three point shooting were important in a prospect. I determined that we should look at NCAA Division I players who were juniors in the 2007-08 season. Only players who were in the Top 100 players in any of the four categories indicated above should be considered. This left me with 108 players to look at, and I was able to locate statistics for 105 of those players. (Florida A & M and St. Mary’s (California), I’m pointing the finger at you.)

Ashley Paris, sister of Courtney Paris, was mentioned in a previous comment, so I added her to my list. As my attention is drawn to other players, I'll add them to my analysis.

Blocks, Forwards, Rebounds

One expects forwards and centers to be able to get rebounds, with guards at a disadvantage. All players should be able to get steals, with guards (being more agile and quick) having the best shot. Three point shooting would be primarily a guard skill.

I decided that the scale for blocks, steals, and rebounds would be linear. It would be based on number of blocks per game, steals per game, and rebounds per game. A good player should be good in all of these defensive skills at the college level. Therefore, these three factors were multiplied together. Ed Weiland has a stat called RSB40, which he uses as a multiplicative factor so I feel that I'm on the right track.

This decision hurts guards – because we don’t expect them to rebound - but the guards get a chance to be rewarded later.

Furthermore, the factor for steals was doubled. Hollinger weighted steals more heavily than any other factor in his analysis, and the numbers that come out at the end match up with “common sense” when I make the same decision.

The problem is that at some point in the analysis, you have to decide what number of blocks, steals, or rebounds per game corresponds to a factor = 1.0. Looking over the top 100 finishers in these categories, I made the following decisions:

1.5 blocks per game = factor of 1.0
2.2 steals per game = factor of 2.0 (remember, the factor for steals is doubled)
8.1 rebounds per game = factor of 1.0.

If you want different results, set different factors. I'm going to stand on these values, which would be pretty impressive if they were per-game.

Three-point Shooting

We ranked players by percentage, not by number of shots made. 0.343 percentage = 1.00 factor. Players were required to make at least an average of two three-pointers a game to sort out those people with high three-point shooting but low numbers of baskets – if they didn’t meet the average qualification, they got a zero factor.

Age

The age of players is definitely important, because older players are closer to their peaks. The youngest player among the candidates had a 11/18/1987 birthday. I began penalizing players who had birthdates before 11/18/1986. A person born a quarter of a year before that date would have 0.25 removed from the final score; a person born on 11/18/85 would have 1.0 removed from the final score. A player closer to their eventual peak should be devalued.

For some players, I was not able to find their ages. Those players were not penalized in the system. There was one player who was born in “January 1987”, I assigned her a birthdate of 1/15/87. She didn't suffer any age penalty according to my current rules.

Wins Efficiency

Certainly, we should reward players who can score, but by how much? There are so many metrics like PER and Efficiency. I don’t agree with “Efficiency” because I believe it overvalues crappy shooting. I therefore used the “Wins Score” metric, but divided it by Games Played – Wins Score is not divided by Games Played – to create a more Efficiency-like metric called “Wins Efficiency”. I divided the final Wins Efficiency results by 10 to award points. A player with a score of 10 in “Wins Efficiency” gets 1.00 point.

WPPR

This is a variation on Hollinger’s Pure Point Rating. The problem with Pure Point Rating is that if you apply the formula to WNBA players, they have terrible values. The reason is because in the NBA, the average team’s amount of turnovers is 2/3 of the amount of its assists. In the WNBA, players turn the ball over more and for an average team, turnovers and assists are equal. I simply removed the 2/3 multiplicative factor from Hollinger’s formula. In the NBA, assist/turnover ratio is misleading as to a player’s true value as a guard; in the WNBA assist/turnover ratio is more accurate.

My variation – WPPR – rewards players who have more assists than turnovers. A good guard will have a high WPPR and all players are rewarded 1/5 of their WPPR if the value is positive. In general, this decision rewards guards and punishes forwards and centers (who have more turnovers than assists), but the best forwards and centers at the college level can avoid turnovers. Still, they’ll have a negative number. If a forward or center has a negative WPPR, 1/10th of the WPPR is removed from the final score.

However, a guard who has a negative WPPR in the women’s game is someone whom one should be wary of. If a guard has a negative WPPR, 1/5th of the WPPR is removed from the final score.

50-50 players

Fifty-fifty players are players who have 50 blocks and 50 steals in a season in the men’s college games turn out to be excellent college players, according to Hollinger. Players are given a special 1.00 factor bonus for meeting this benchmark. Only two players qualify for this benchmark in the 2007-08 season: Demetress Adams of South Carolina and Jessica Bobbitt of Belmont. This is an additive factor, so no one is penalized for not reaching the mark. (Except for maybe Chante Black of Duke, who missed the 50-50 mark by one steal. I decided not to give her the point; your mileage may very.)

Conference Strength

Players were rewarded for playing against good teams and punished for playing against bad teams. The final score is multiplied by a factor equivalent to the strength of their conference. Conference strengths are determined by Jeff Sagarin’s ratings for women’s NCAA basketball. The central mean method was used, with the Big Twelve’s 86.55 rating converted to a 1.00 factor, and partial ratings converted linearly.

Final Factor

Equals:

blocked factor*steals factors (which is x2) * rebounds factor
plus three point factor
plus age factor (negative for older players)
plus Wins Efficiency factor
plus PPR factor
plus 50-50 factor….

all multiplied by conference strength factor.

Known Flaws

Hollinger points to several "red flags" that might disqualify a player. One of the flaws is the flaw of a player not receiving a certain number of rebounds per height. Hollinger states that "a player in the X range of height should receive at least Y rebounds per game". I wasn't able to do create these height categories because I don't have enough information about the range of heights in the NBA (and WNBA) to determine the appropriate cutoff points.

Furthermore, schools play at many different "paces". The word "pace" has a specific meaning in the APBRmetric community. I was not able to obtain this information and was not willing to calculate it for, oh, about 300 schools. Maybe someday, there will be a master women's college database. Until then, the speed at which schools play, the number of possessions per team, etc. is not taken into account.

(* * *)

So who are the leaders after all this number crunching? Lets look at the top twenty overall players:

Top Twenty Overall Players



We have Courtney Paris of Oklahoma as number one, and that's a good start. I'd expect Angel McCoughtry to be number two, but she ends up as #8 on the metric. However, Kristi Toliver at #2 should be no surprise.

I wonder if my formula gives too much credit to guards. Then again, I have approximately 20 centers, 30 forwards and fifty guards on my list so I shouldn't be surprised that guards are overrepresented. I would say the only surprises are Kristi Cirone of Illinois State and Jenna Schone of Miami of Ohio, both from small schools.

Top Ten Centers



I'm very surprised that the quality of centers drops of quickly after Courtney Paris. I don't know if centers get short shrift for having low WPPR or for the fact that most of the centers in women's college basketball don't seem to produce a lot of Wins Efficiency.

Top Twenty Forwards



Forwards also drop off quickly, although not as quickly as centers do. There are four good forwards to be had early in the draft. Most of the good centers come from the big schools.

Top Twenty Guards



Guards are the quality position in the metric. Even down at the twentieth position, there are decent guards. Furthermore, the small schools (Tiera DeLaHoussay at Western Michigan, Shantia Grace at South Florida) provide a large number of great guards. If you want to sneak up on someone in the draft, you can probably get a quality guard from an overlooked school.

I also wondered if guards are the prime position for players to make their presence known in women's basketball. The talent level at the women's college game is thinner than in the men's game, and it's more likely that tall (but not truly athletic) women have been pushed into the post positions in high school.

(* * *)

I'll try to keep this list updated, and to have the senior stats analyzed at the end of the 2009 season. Oddly enough, Hollinger says that good NBA players have a decrease in their statistics between their junior and senior years. So if one of your favorite juniors has a bad year...well, don't lose hope. And if one of your favorite juniors isn't ranked high on my list...well, 2008-09 has the power to change everything.

When Talent Overwhelms Necessity

Generally, there's a consensus as to who the number one pick of a draft in any year should be. Most of the draft touts who write about the NBA, or the NFL, or even the WNBA are pretty much in agreement about who the first handful of picks should be in any given year. There's a general consensus as to who the #1 pick should be, a slightly smaller consensus as to who #2 should be, and everyone's draft list differs beyond that spot.

If it were just as simple as teams choosing the best players available when their turns come up, predicting a draft would be easy. What makes draft predictions so hard is that teams have needs beyond talent. A team might already have talent at one position, but be lacking in another. If a team has two strong forwards, they won't be looking for another forward; rather, they'll be looking at the best of the guards still on the draft board. A team has to fit specific needs when drafting. Necessity is the mother of the draft.

There is, however, an exception. The exception is when one of the remaining players is so head and shoulders in talent above the rest that you should draft that player regardless of position. In the case of the team with the two forwards above, a undrafted forward might be playing at a level above the undrafted guards. In which case you draft the forward, and then decide who is going to get traded for a guard down the line or who can shift positions to make place for the new player.

Making matters more complicated for the Atlanta Dream is that if the magic ping-pong balls bounce the right way, Atlanta will get the first pick in the 2009 WNBA draft. In which case they'll have to answer their ultimate question, "draft for talent or draft for necessity?"

Here's how I see the Atlanta Dream vis-a-vis positions:

guard: not much of a need
center: we might be able to make do with Bales and Feenstra
forward: a clear need.

Therefore, Coach Meadors has to be thinking: "go with the best forward in the draft". I've been doing my preliminary analysis (to be printed tomorrow) and right now, I have the best forward as being Angel McCoughtry out of Louisville. The problem is, McCoughtry is the best forward but not the best player. That player, according to preliminary analysis, is Courtney Paris, a center out of Oklahoma.

So who does Meadors take? Paris, or McCoughtry?

The answer to that question is, "is Paris substantially better than McCoughtry?" Right now, my answer is "yes", Paris is just enough better than McCoughtry for the Dream to take Paris as the #1 pick if they get the chance. That will probably mean that Bales will stay as backup and poor Katie Feenstra will have to pack up her bags and go.

Where, oh where, will poor Kit go? And what kind of a forward could we get for Feenstra? Any takers?

"Dirty Girl! Dirty Dirty Dirty!"

It appears that the Australians are pegging the U. S. Team as "dirty players".

"We're used to playing against teams that are going to beat the crap out of us, because we are so good," said (Australian player Lauren) Jackson.

"People have to stop us somehow and that's the way they're going to stop us. People like Penny and myself and Belinda Snell you just can't let go to the basket because we'll kill people.

"So they're going to really stop us anyway that they can. And generally that's when black eyes and broken bones occur."

However, the U.S. players were unimpressed, choosing not to fan the flames before their opening game against the Czech Republic.

"Okay -- whatever!" shrugged American veteran Lisa Leslie, who will be attempting to win a fourth Olympic gold medal. "We gotta go get gold. Whatever it takes."

That was probably the best way to answer this criticism. I still remember this picture:



Hard to complain that your opponents aren't playing by Marquis of Queensbury rules when you've spent extended amounts of time marching around in army fatigues.

The Slow Down Time of No Basketball

Well, it's hard to drum up talk about the Dream. Everyone, even the players is on vacation. There's no Olympic basketball until about four days from now: I don't count FIBA's Diamond tournament or whatever they call it. I don't even have a basketball schedule for Georgia Tech yet.

So what am I doing? I'm trying to work on a statistical analysis similar to the kind Q does over at Rethinking Basketball. I want to analyze the current-junior-soon-to-be-senior college class in Women's Basketball and try to determine who will be the hot picks in the 2009 WNBA Draft. However, this involves looking up and imputting statistics for over 100 prospects. I'm about 35-40 percent done. After that, I have to assign how much weight to give to each of the numbers.
(Hm, maybe I should send this to Q for his critique afterwards.)

I also had the idea of writing a work of fiction where the 1981-82 Los Angeles Lakers (at their current ages, as middle-aged men) take on the 2007 Phoenix Mercury in a "Battle of the Sexes" like the Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs match. Unfortunately, it seems to involve too much research. I know where some of the 81-82 Lakers have ended up, but I don't know enough about their personalities or their current health statuses to make it interesting. Another project down the tubes.

When I get new news or new ideas, trust me, I'll let ya know.

The Petrel Memorial Hardwood Court

From the International Herald Tribune:

The WNBA is giving away a basketball court.

Fans in six of the league's cities will have a chance to win a new court for their town through a contest in which they will compete in various timed drills that will test fundamental basketball skills.

The competition, which will promote healthy competition, sportsmanship and team spirit, is set to begin on Tuesday and will run through Aug. 26 in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Sacramento and Washington. WNBA players will be on-hand to lead the basketball drills during the competitions.

A great way to get the WNBA's name in the local paper. (Although I suspect the angrydumbjock.com crowd would go "Oh no! Cooties!" if they ever stepped on such hardwood.)

Atlanta Dream 2009: Who Stays, Who Goes?

It's time to start firing up the grill.

With only seven games left in the season and the Dream pretty much mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, everyone turns in different directions. For the players on the Dream, it's about establishing personal marks. For the coaches, it's about evaluating the talent. And for fans, it's thinking about next year and fashioning the 2009 Dream Team in one's mind.

So here's my take on the Dream for next year, including which players by all rights should be a part of next year's team ("KEEP") and which players should think about life with the next WNBA expansion team. ("PASS")

Alison Bales - KEEP. The Alison Bales for Kristen Mann trade was Atlanta's best trade of the year. Both players have gone in opposite directions, with Mann becoming one component out of several in Indiana. Bales is getting more minutes than ever in her second year, is ranked seventh in blocks per game and third in defensive rebounds per 40 minutes. She might not be the player you'd build a franchise around, but Coach Marynell Meadors will have one fewer center to look for next year.

Ivory Latta - KEEP. Betty Lennox might be the playmaker, but Latta is the face of the franchise. It's a no brainer. Granted, Latta has not been a top ten player (except in three point goals and attempts) but this is Latta's first full-time year and her game can only get better. Furthermore, her ebullient personality makes her the Dream's spokesperson on and off the court.

Betty Lennox - KEEP. It's hard to be a leader, and Betty Lennox has learned that this year by enduring a 17 game losing streak. The downsides about Betty are her turnovers and her moodiness. Her comments about her relationship with Coach Meadors are cause for concern, but Lennox has to know that the team will be better next year than it is this year. As for the turnovers, a better Dream team means that Lennox won't see as many double (or triple) teams in 2009.

Katie Feenstra - KEEP. I'm sure a lot of posters at the Atlanta Dream Message Board have now fallen off their chairs - Kit has been a recepient of abuse all year. However, much of it is undeserving. Does she deserve to be starting center? The answer is no; having Bales has almost made us forget about Feenstra's perpetual struggles. Is Kit a better than average player? Yes. Can she play a role in backing up Bales? Yes. Feenstra will never be your starter, but she's too good to throw away. (And please, Coach Meadors, give up that dream of the "Twin Towers" and stop putting Kit and Alison on the floor at the same time.)

Kristin Haynie - KEEP. Haynie's career has been one of hot and cold. She's good for a few points per game, plays decent defense, but she turns the ball over too much to be a starting guard - we already have Lennox in the "turnover" slot. Latta took the starting role away from Haynie and it's not coming back any time soon. However, Lennox and Latta need someone who can back them up during a game. Haynie can give you a decent 14 minutes.

Erika de Souza - KEEP. If we were grading on a report card, we'd have to give De Souza a ladies' "C". She's simply not participated enough due to health issues. However, she's coming into her prime as a player, and the flashes of brilliance while Erika has been healthy reveal a player simply too gifted to toss on the discard pile.

Tamera Young - KEEP. Some rookies are instant stars. Others are long term projects, and it looks like Young is going to be the latter. Her 32.5 percent field goal percentage is ice cold, and that has to change if she's going to have any kind of future in the WNBA. She should consider herself lucky that she's playing on such a bad team; she'd be buried in the background on any decent team. However, she's revealed both endurance and the ability to get the offensive rebound.

Kasha Terry - PASS. Kasha Terry was a free agent acquisition, and now we know why she was left on the discard pile by Indiana. Too many turnovers and personal fouls might doom Terry to be one of those "have-height-will-travel" kind of players. She only shoots 55 percent from the free throw line, limiting Kasha's usefulness to the first three quarters of a game.

Ann Strother - PASS. Why do I suspect that Ann Strother will be wearing someone else's uniform in 2009? Fans have decried Strother's limited use, but I suspect they just like the cute blond player. She shoots 35 percent from the field, 71 percent from the free throw line, and generally averages more personal fouls than assists or steals in a game. Hasn't broken the 10 point mark this year. If there was any time for Strother to have a break-out year, this was it. It didn't happen.

Jennifer Lacy - PASS. Yes, we all like Jennifer Lacy, but Lacy has the power to inexplicably...disappear during games. When Betty Lennox scores one point in 20 minutes, that's a very bad day for Lennox. But when Jennifer Lacy scores one point in 20 minutes, it seems to be par for the course. Lacy is another abysmal free throw shooter (66 percent) and picks up an average of three personal fouls in the two quarters she plays during a game. She might be a leader in the locker room, but "transcendent talent" and "Jennifer Lacy" will never be used in a sentence together while Lacy is in the WNBA.

Iziane Castro Marques - PASS. It's been an awful year for Izi. She's been thrown off the Brazilian Olympic team, and she's lost her shooting touch. With the Storm, she was a great shooter but in Atlanta she's completely lost her confidence. Yes, Coach Marynell Meadors likes Izi a lot, but Meadors liked Kit a lot too -- and you don't see Kit starting many games right now, do you? Yet Izi inexplicably starts. Coach, Izi ain't coming out of the slump and between Betty and Izi, the team only needs one playmaker. Trade Izi.

Chioma Nnamaka - PASS. If you ain't gonna play her, send her someplace else. But if she can't get on with a team as limited as the Dream, we might be seeing Nnamaka's final year in the WNBA.

Marynell Meadors - KEEP. By now, the more rabid fans are heading for the pitchforks and burning torches. But frankly, this is not a very good team. I agree with Josh Bagriansky at Score Atlanta: if I were giving out grades, no one on this team, not even Latta or Lennox deserve an "A". This, sadly enough, is exactly the kind of team that goes 3-24. Meadors gets big points in acquiring Bales; loses points in hanging with Kit and Izi too long.

As they say, "You can't shine manure." And WNBA watchers and Dream fans blame Meadors for not rubbing vigorously enough, it seems. Meadors tried to get us Ann Wauters, but that was a chimeric hope. Yelena Leuchanka never showed up, Erika got hurt, and Meadors just had to make do and try to squeeze lemons into lemonade. Camille Little and Stacey Lovelace performing disappearing acts on the Dream sure didn't help Meadors any. When you're 3-24, no one is your friend.

Let's wait until the offseason, and see what Trader Meadors does in turns of drafting and acquisitions. If there are a lot of mistakes, bad trades, etc., then we can began firing up "Old Sparky" and look for a coach who wants a real challenge. But until that day comes, I'll stick with Meadors.

W and the W

An article in the Austin American-Statesman features CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, who made a detailed record of how George W. Bush has spent his seven-plus years in office. What I found odd is that the WNBA gets a mention.

In June 2008, Knoller left himself a note about the scene at an East Garden reception for the WNBA champ Phoenix Mercury: "The usual comments about their achievement and commitment to community programs. But Bush lingers some 16 minutes after the ceremony, schmoozing and chatting. Unusual. A sign of a lame duck with not much on his plate, perhaps."

Could be. Either that, or he likes women's basketball. It's been long rumored that Bush wants to be commissioner of baseball after he retires from office. But maybe W will be commissioner of the W....

The WNBA En Vacance

One of my favorite blogs is the Pass the Ball blog run by the Washington Mystics.

I've seen lots of player blogs, but they tend to be dehumanized. The player is simply too aware that their words will be read for public consumption, and they tend to be guarded. At Pass the Ball, however, the players aren't required to provide a lot of information (which loosens up the pressure, certainly) and you get a lot of little trivia that really humanizes the players. I like to read minor things like what toothpaste a player uses -- "hey! I use that toothpaste!" -- and it's nice to know what players are doing during the break.

Some blog entries of interest....

Crystal Langhorne

The highlight of this break is coming up this weekend, the last part of my break. Harp, Kristi Toliver, and Jade Perry are taking a nice weekend getaway. We're heading to Atlantic City tomorrow, we're going to do a little shopping, head to the beach, and probably squeeze in some good food there too. Then I might do a little gambling. I don't really like wasting my money so I think I'm only going to put up 20 to use on that. Of course we will go out somewhere that night. Then on Saturday, we're heading to Harp's house in Philly to a big get together her mom is having for her. After that we're going to get a hotel and go out once again. So I'm really excited about this weekend it should be a really good time.

Monique Currie

So I do get a few days to get away and relax and what a better place to go than to Miami! It will be a mini Duke reunion because Alana Beard and Iciss Tillis will be there as well. It’s not such a big deal that Alana is there because I am lucky enough to see her pretty much everyday but when you throw Iciss in the mix, the three of us really know how to have a good time. I’m sure a lot of memories will be made down there. I look forward to telling you all about them! I’m hoping to wake up early in the mornings and run along the beach while the sun is setting… but I doubt very seriously that that will actually happen though. It really does sound good though.

Currie's July 29th blog entry also talks about her failing a test to get her expired license reinstated, and about how she plans to deal with "fresh meat" Crystal Langhorne later on. Langhorne will learn not to diss her fellow bloggers....

Back From Vacation

In sunny Las Vegas. More like "hot and extremely humid Las Vegas". I slept 11 hours when I got home last night.

You would never guess who I met at the airport. Jerry Finkbeiner, the head coach of the women's basketball program at Oral Roberts University. Finkbeiner has been very successful at ORU; he made it to the first round of the NCAA Women's Tournament. Unfortunately, his team was assigned Tennessee in the opening round. You can guess how far ORU advanced.

So what was Finkbeiner doing in Vegas, of all places? Apparently, they were holding some tournament in Las Vegas for under-18 players. (I thought I saw a few of them at the hotels.) Finkbeiner was recruiting. Given ORU's success in women's b-ball, I'm sure the casinos don't want him near the tables -- Finkbeiner has a record of beating the odds against him.

Extremistan

It was Q over at Rethinking Basketball who introduced me to the work of The Arbitarian, who is one of a small but dedicated network of NBA (and by extension, WNBA) stat grinders.

He introduced something called the "playing style spectrum". The formulas are at the link above. They are simple formulas -- nothing more than simple division -- but the explanation is a bit long.

What's the idea? The idea is to assign three numbers to every player....

Scorer index: Determines how much a player specializes in points and field goal attempts
Perimeter index: Determines how much a player specializes in assists and steals
Interior index: Determines how much a player specializes in blocked shots and rebounds

I then applied the score to all players with more than 10 minutes per game playing time in the WNBA. Let's take a look at the players on the Dream. An important note is that a high number for a player does not mean that they are the "best in the WNBA", but rather that a high portion of their individual game rests in one of the three areas above.

Betty Lennox (0.91, 0.45, 0.2)

It's what we think. A high degree of Lennox's value comes from scoring, but the middle number is good - she can also handle the ball.

Ivory Latta (0.78, 0.84, 0.03)

Latta is not just a shooter, but a point guard who can work the perimeter and handle the ball. Her interior game, however, is nonexistent...but we don't expect Ivory to get rebounds.

Tamera Young (0.59, 0.4, 0.59)

Young is the type of player who can do several things well in the time she gets.

Iziane Castro Marques (0.99, 0.46, 0.09)

Izi's game is more heavily related to scoring even than Betty Lennox's is. Like Betty, she's also good at handling the ball and lousy at the boards.

Jennifer Lacy (0.79, 0.21, 0.50)

For someone who is a forward-center, Jennifer seems to concentrate on scoring points more. My guess is that either a) Jennifer has been forced to rely more on shooting due to the need to come back from losses, or b) the presence of other shot blockers has allowed Lacy to be more agressive with scoring. Then again, her numbers might have always been like this.

Katie Feenstra (0.22, 0.01, 0.98)

Not much of a scorer, and as that 0.01 indicates, a lousy ball handler with only 10 assists and 3 steals all year. Her game is a big woman's game. But does that 0.98 mean that her game depends more on blocked shots and rebounds than anyone else on the Atlanta Dream?

Kasha Terry (0.31, 0.16, 0.88)

A bit more of a scorer than Kit is.

Alison Bales (0.05, 0.11, 0.99)

Holy moley. Bales personal game comes almost entirely from her ability to block shots and get rebounds.

Erika DeSouza (0.13, 0.04, 0.97)

Again, another pure shot blocker and rebounder.

(* * *)

So what does this mean? It means we have a lot of players on the Dream that have "extreme" games. Lennox and Castro Marques are extreme scorers. You give them the ball, and they're going to take a shot with it, offense be damned. They like to create their own offenses. How good they are at doing that is a matter of debate, given Castro Marques's streakiness and Lennox's tendency to turn over the ball. If you have a pure scorer, you want someone who can hit what she's aiming at and not turn over the ball.

Let's look at Cappie Pondexter's triple of (0.96, 0.6, 0.06). She's sort of like Betty Lennox and Izi Castro Marques. Cappie is also a "shoot first" kind of player. However, she hits 41 percent of her shots, compared to the 35 percent that Izi hits. She's also only turned the ball over 62 times, compared to Betty Lennox's 100.

Let's also look at Feenstra, Terry, Bales and DeSouza. They rebound. They block shots. But for the most part, that's all they do, particularly Alison Bales. Granted, Bales does it very well - in Wins Score, Bales has the highest value of any player on the Dream, even Ivory Latta or Betty Lennox! However, aside from Terry, Bales, Feenstra and DeSouza are all one-dimensional. On the offensive end, they can set screens or get the offensive rebound, but other teams know that Bales or Feenstra won't be given the ball to score (heck, if Izi or Lennox is on the floor, it's a much better idea to double team the lead shooters). Compare their triples with Lisa Leslie's (0.33, 0.26, 0.82). Leslie's game depends a lot on getting those rebounds and shot blocking, but not to the extent of the big women on the dream. Defenses still have to worry that Leslie will score with the ball.

So why is this post called "Extremistan"? If you look at other teams than the Dream, players don't seem to be clustered up at one end or the other of the spectrum as much as the players on the Dream. The Dream is a bit more predictable in their individual games than players from other teams. That makes it easy to build defenses around what the Dream can do offensively, and vice versa.