Wednesday, April 28, 2010

2010 Free Agents

Much has been made about this summer and the free agents available. For good reason as much of the big names in the league are available. However, the real story is which players will cash in at the expense of better alternatives. Using the 2009-2010 Win Score totals, a formula developed by David Berri it is clear where this will happen. Chris Bosh and Amare Stoudemire are both good players who are percieved as superstars. The New York Knicks would gladly make a swap Chris Bosh for David Lee. This move, of course for the Knicks would be a terrible idea. Lee has in fact been better the Bosh in WinScore48 and WP48 every year in his career.

Here is the list of some of the percieved top free agents and there corresponding Position Adjusted Win Score (PAWS) totals for the 2009-2010 season. First here are the average win score totals for:

PG- 6.1
SG- 6.3
SF- 7.3
PF- 10.3
C- 10.3

To arrive at PAWS, one takes a player's win score and subtracts it from the average at that position. So if Lebron James, a SF, has a win score of 17.2 and the arrive SF has a win score of 7.3, Lebron has a PAWS total of 9.9.

Lebron James 9.9
Carlos Boozer 7.4
David Lee 7.1
Chris Bosh 6.7
Dwyane Wade 4.8
Mike Miller 3.8
Amare Stoudemire 3.6
Joe Johnson 2.4
Rudy Gay .4
Al Harrington -1.3

A note on Al Harrington. Harrington is being touted as a 2nd tier free-agent, the reason being that scoring is the only thing that evaluators and media types look at. Harrington is below average in every single statistical category for a power foward except in... scoring! Whoever signs Harrington is making a terrible mistake.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Chad Ford's NBA draft prospects

Chad Ford's list of the top 100 draft prospects is out and it is clear that Ford, like most evaluators, only look at athletic ability and the ability to score. Here is Ford's list of 100 prospects. (insider)

Using Win Score, a formula devleoped by David Berri, one can tell who is statistically a good player and who is lacking. Taking it a step further, using PAWS (Position-Adjusted Win Score) it becomes clear who is worthy of a top choice and who is not. The need to adjust for position is done because every player has a different role on the team respective to their position played.
Here is the top 50 prospects according to Ford and their respective Win Score and PAWS value.

The above average players are listed in blue, and red denoted below average performers.