|
WEBSITE NEWS |
|
September
2, 2007 With the release of the paperback version of The
Wages of Wins, this website has finally been updated. Added are details on the paperback and a
link to technical notes. Because the
website has not been altered much since February, 2007, links to two recent
columns by Dave Berri have been added to the
left. Finally, the list of links –
many of which are repeated at our blog (The
Wages of Wins Journal) – has been removed. One should note that news concerning The
Wages of Wins will likely be noted in the future at The Wages of Wins Journal. Material is added to our blog on almost a
daily basis. Consequently that forum appears to be the best place to find
current news (and our full list of links).
February
12, 2007 At The Wages of Wins
Journal - our
blog – a page has
been created that lists all the teams analyzed during the 2006-07. So
far, comments have been offered for 24 of the 30 teams in the NBA. This
page also has links to all the analysis done of the NBA after 41 games.
This analysis includes a report on the Top 30 players, the NBA All-Stars, and
the top rookies in 2006-07. December 22, 2006 A few
new links have been added to the list on the left. These include Darren Rovell’s
Sports Biz blog from CNBC, Dan Shanoff’s Blog, and TrueHoop. November
5, 2006 At The Wages of Wins
Journal - our
blog – a page
has been created with links to all the columns we have written for The New
York Times. As the page notes, you must be a subscriber to TimesSelect to view this work. The
review of the past NBA season has also been concluded. You can
see the stories our metrics – Wins Produced and Win Score – tell for each
team at The
NBA Team Reviews: 2005-06. October
8, 2006 At The Wages of Wins
Journal - our
blog -- the review of the past NBA season continues. You can see
which teams have been covered – and which still need to be reviewed – at The NBA Team
Reviews: 2005-06. For
those who follow the NFL, each week the NFL’s quarterbacks are ranked in
terms of QB Score – the simple metric we introduce in The Wages of
Wins. You can see these rankings at the Weekly QB Score
Rankings. September
10, 2006 At The Wages of Wins
Journal - our
blog -- a review of the past NBA season began on August 22. The
review will proceed in alphabetical order, beginning with all teams in the
Eastern Conference. Look for a new entry every few days until the
season begins. July
22, 2006 Our intention with The Wages of Wins was to write a book that
would be very accessible to a general audience. For the most part the
reviews of our book indicate that we were successful. Unlike the
typical book written for a general audience, though, our book is based almost
entirely on material we previously published in academic journals and/or presented
at academic conferences. As we note in the book, peer reviewed academic
articles are not written for a general audience. Consequently, we
suspect most of our readers are not interested in these papers. Still,
a few people may wish to know which academic article or articles served as
the foundation for each chapter. To satisfy this curiosity a new link
has been added to the left side of our home page. As the link title
suggests, clicking on List
of Academic Articles will take all those who are interested to a listing
of the articles where much of the material reported in The Wages of Wins was
initially reported. This
list demonstrates that what we say in The Wages of Wins is not strictly the
product of our efforts. Other researchers like R. Todd Jewell, Aju Fenn, Bernd Frick, Roberto
Vicente-Mayoral, Anthony Krautmann, Erick Eschker, Rob Simmons, and Young Hoon
Lee played a role in researching the material we present. This list is
incomplete, since it ignores the anonymous referees who reviewed our work,
the journal editors who agreed to publish this work, and all the economists
who participated in the academic conferences where our work was
presented. As we note in the book, we certainly owe a large debt
to all the people who helped us with the research we report in this book and
we sincerely thank these economists for their support and assistance. July
8, 2006 More Reviews Have Been Posted!!! The Wages of Wins
has now been reviewed by The New Yorker,
The
New York Times, CNNSI.com
(Sports Illustrated On-Line), and The Bakersfield
Californian. All of these reviews are posted in our review section.
A
link to the recent New
York Times Keeping Score column by Martin Schmidt has also been placed on
the left of our website. Stanford
University Press has added quite a bit of additional material at their website for our
book. At the Stanford Press website you will find links to
many of the reviews and columns associated with our book, the Preface
to our book, as well as Chapter
One. You will note that their website also looks much better than
our site. That is because their site is maintained by professionals,
while this site is maintained by three economists (who know very little about
websites). In
other news... Doug
Drinen of Pro-Football-Reference.com
has posted a lengthy
comment on our analysis of quarterbacks (found in Chapter Nine of The
Wages of Wins). Specifically, where we focus solely on
quarterbacks, Drinen has posted an examination of
wide receivers. And Drinen has promised
even more analysis along these lines in the future. Beyond his work
at Pro-Football-Reference.com, Drinen is also a
professor of mathematics at the University of the South. JC Bradbury,
of Sabernomics fame, was until
recently employed as a professor of economics at the same school. After
a one week break we are again posting material at The Wages of Wins Journal.
Today’s posting builds upon the last sentence of Dick Friedman’s review at
CNNSI.com. As Friedman notes, “...the next time your favorite team's GM is
talking about tendering a maximum contract to that ball-hogging trey chucker,
you might send him a copy.” Soon after Friedman posted this statement
the Denver Nuggets and Carmelo Anthony agreed to a
maximum contract. Today Dave Berri posted
a review of this deal. June
17, 2006 The Wages of Wins Journal is now into
its third month of existence. This week the focus is on the NBA Finals.
After each game Dave Berri is posting an analysis
of the productive – and unproductive – players on each team. Check back
after Games Five, Six, and Seven (if necessary) to see how productive Wade,
Shaq, Nowitzki, and company have been. In
Game One the star was Jason Terry of the Mavericks. Dallas was also
helped considerably in Games One and Two by Nowitzki
and Erick Dampier. Games Three and Four have been the Dwyane Wade show. After below average performances
in Dallas, Wade has been much “Like Mike” in the past two games. With
Shaq impersonating Shaq in Game Four, the Heat won easily. Check back after
Game Five to see if Wade’s high level of productivity
continues. So
far we have posted about 70 different stories on our blog. On average that is
around one posting per day. For professors who are happy to write 3-5
papers in a year, this seems like an immense amount of writing in a short
period of time. Still, when we look at Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution, Greg Mankiw’s
Blog, and Brad DeLong’s
Semi-Daily Journal, where multiple postings appear everyday, we realize
are output is relatively low. Hopefully this summer we will be
able to pick up the pace. June
1, 2006 Malcolm
Gladwell has commented on The Wages of Wins three
different times. We are obviously quite pleased that someone with his
reputation so obviously enjoyed our book. He has given us permission to post
all three comments on our website. So if you following the link here, or on
the side bar, you can read what he has to say about The Wages of Wins. Is
Michael Jordan the best player to ever play in the NBA? For those looking for
a contradiction of the conventional wisdom, you may be disappointed with the latest
entry at The Wages of Wins Journal
(our blog). For those who love Michael Jordan, you will be happy to
learn that Wins Produced does indicate what you already knew – MJ was one
great basketball player. May
29, 2006 Malcolm
Gladwell has posted two additional comments at his blog. The first
expands upon his review
of The Wages of Wins in The New Yorker.
He concludes his posting by noting the most over-rated and under-rated
players in the NBA from this past season. Upon revealing these lists,
based upon the analysis presented in The Wages of Wins, Gladwell
notes “Now argue with that list all you want. Factor in
intangibles. Make projections. Move some people up and down. But once you’ve
read the book, I promise you won’t be able to dismiss it.” The
second
item Gladwell posts builds upon a story reported at
The Wages of Wins Journal (our
blog). In introducing this story, Gladwell
states “Anyone who believes in the conventional, adhoc
methods of valuing basketball players has to answer for the injustice done
this year to Kevin Garnett.” To
understand Gladwell’s comment, please look in our
blog for more on the Tragedy
of Kevin Garnett. Beyond
Gladwell’s interest – which we hope makes everyone
who has not done so already buy his bestselling books Blink and The Tipping Point
--others have also noted our work. Michael
Bradley at CBS SportLine
has also commented on The Wages of Wins. Bradley employs our analysis
to argue that Kobe Bryant – despite leading the NBA in scoring – was not a
good choice for league MVP. His column, which you can see here, builds upon a
post made at The Wages of Wins Journal
in April. This post you can read here.
The Kobe Bryant story was updated in a post
made yesterday. The
Wages of Wins Journal has also been
noted by Business Week. In the June 5, 2006 issue (p. 12) our blog is
recommended. Given that our blog has only existed for about six weeks,
we are very pleased to be acknowledged by Business Week. One might ask, why
does Business Week think you should read our blog? “For a view of the
sports world as Adam Smith would have seen it.” One
final note... The number of postings at our blog – The Wages of Wins Journal
– now approaches fifty. Today The
NBA Post-Season Awards was posted. This simply reports who the MVP,
Rookie of Year, and members of the All-NBA teams would be if sports writers
only considered a player’s Wins Produced. A quick preview: The most
productive player in the league was once again Kevin Garnett. May
19, 2006
May
3, 2006
April
29, 2006
April
19, 2006
April
16, 2006
April
13, 2006
|