Wages of Wins

The common perception that Jordan was one of the greatest players to play the game is supported by the evidence. We have already noted, though, that Jordan’s greatness may have actually diminished, rather than enhanced, the productivity of his teammates. Now we turn to another Jordan myth.

Let’s spend just a bit of time discussing Jordan’s post-season exploits. Previously we examined Jordan’s first retirement. Now we wish to look briefly at how he exited the NBA’s stage the second time. It was Game Six of the 1998 NBA Finals. The Bulls led the series three games to two, but the final two games were to be played in Utah. With twenty seconds remaining, the Jazz had the lead and the ball. Game Seven seemed inevitable.

Still Utah needed to score if it hoped to keep the Bulls at bay. Fortunately for Utah it employed one of the greatest scorers in NBA history, Karl Malone. When the ball went to Malone, though, Jordan stepped forward and took it away. Now the Bulls had the ball, but they were still down by one point. This is how the Sporting News NBA Guide describes this final Chicago possession: “The defender (Byron Russell of the Utah Jazz) loses his footing and falls to the court as he tries to keep the best player in the game from blowing past him. Michael Jordan seizes the moment. He stops on a dime, elevates and lets fly with the shot that will win or lose the game. Nothing but net” (Sporting News NBA Guide 1998–99, p. 117, italics added).

What a story. At the time this was thought to be Jordan’s final NBA moment. To win the championship his team needed both a defensive stop and a score, and MJ provided both. Certainly this tale proves that Jordan could, in the words of the NBA Guide, “seize the moment” and elevate his game to such a level that victory was inevitable. Given how this book has gone, it may come as no surprise that a bit more investigation reveals that this view is just another NBA fable. The box score from this game states that Jordan took 34 shots and made only 14. This is a success rate of 41%.Had Jordan made 47% of his shots, his regular season average from that year, he would have already made two more shots before the drama of the final seconds unfolded. In this scenario, a last second shot may not have been necessary.

The story we hear leads us to believe that Jordan could choose to make a shot when the game was on the line. If he had this power, why did he not choose to make more shots in Game Six? Furthermore, why did Jordan only hit 35% of his shots in Game Five? This was a game that would have also given the Bulls the title, this time on their home floor. Unfortunately, the Jazz won by two points, an outcome that could have been avoided had MJ simply “chosen” to hit more shots.

Of course performances in a couple of games don’t prove a point. What we wish to do is make use of our simple model, Win Score, and evaluate the entire history of Jordan’s regular and post-season performances. Table 8.4 reports our analysis, where we list MJ’s per-minute Win Score performances. In looking at these results, we must remember that we are using our simple model. An average shooting guard will post a per-minute Win Score of 0.13. With this average in mind, we can easily see that Jordan was an above average performer in each regular and post-season we examined. This is not surprising given our previous analysis of MJ. Whether we utilize Wins Produced or Win Score, Jordan ranks as one of the best players to play the game.

We have already covered this ground. What we wish to examine now is Jordan’s ability to elevate his game when it matters most. As we can see, although Jordan is easily above average in both the regular and post-season, his post-season performance was consistently below his regular season production.

The only two years where Jordan actually improved on his regular season Win Score were 1985–86 and 1994–95. In each of these seasons Jordan played less than twenty regular season games. Also, in each of these post-seasons, Chicago failed to win a championship.

Of course one might expect performance to decline in the playoffs. Teams play better defense and at a slower pace in the post-season. So naturally players accumulate fewer points, rebounds, etc. To see how big a decline we can expect, we collected data for every player in every post-season from 1995 to 2005. On average, Win Score declines by .03. Even when we take this average decline into account, though, Jordan still doesn’t consistently get better in the playoffs. Specifically, if we add .03 to Jordan’s playoff performance, adjusting for the expected decline from the slower pace and better defense teams play in the post-season, Jordan’s production in the post-season is still worse than his regular season output in eight of the thirteen seasons we examined.

TABLE 8.4

Michael Jordan’s Playoff History

Season	Regular Season Games Played	Post-Season Games Played	Win score per Minute, Regular Season	Win score per minute, Playoffs	Relative to Regular Season, Playoff Performance ...
1984-85	82	4	0.282	0.237	DECLINED
1985-86	18	3	0.194	0.241	IMPROVED
1986-87	82	3	0.245	0.230	DECLINED
1987-88	82	10	0.323	0.280	DECLINED
1988-89	81	17	0.391	0.304	DECLINED
1989-90	82	16	0.360	0.326	DECLINED
1990-91	82	17	0.354	0.348	DECLINED
1991-92	80	22	0.311	0.243	DECLINED
1992-93	78	19	0.306	0.271	DECLINED
1994-95	17	10	0.187	0.212	IMPROVED
1995-96	82	18	0.304	0.201	DECLINED
1996-97	82	19	0.266	0.224	DECLINED
1997-98	82	21	0.196	0.179	DECLINED

Note: An average shooting guard from 1993-94 to 2004-05 had a Win Score per-minute of 0.128

Excerpts (c) 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. No further use, reproduction or distribution of this material is allowed without the written permission of the publisher.

Chapter Nine Excerpt