(Editor’s note: These numbers were compiled before Saturday night’s NBA action, so keep that in mind.)
I think we can all agree that the Thunder have looked a little different than we remember them being last spring. Without much change in the roster, the Thunder were expected to pick up right where they left off last season. A few blowout losses and a couple close games against not so stellar teams have raised concerns, despite a pretty reasonable 5-3 record. Last night’s win was reassuring, but something still feels off. For this week’s column, I’ll looked at the Thunder’s stats over the first eight games of the season to identify where the Thunder are deviating most from last year, and I’ll throw in some speculation as to whether these trends are likely to continue.
First, a caveat: Whenever anyone quotes any stats this early into the season, sample size problems should absolutely be considered and everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Right now, a cold stretch or a big game is amplified to such a degree it is often hard to tell what’s really going on. To avoid having to mention this after practically every sentence in this article, I’m mentioning it now. Read more…
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Thunder Numbers
AP Photo
The reason I proposed (or desperately hawked) Thunder Numbers to Royce is to have a forum to research many of the claims that people make without any real proof. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about players along the lines of “Player X should have a big season, it’s a contract year”, “Player Y is mad that he didn’t get offered an extension, he’ll be out this season to prove his team wrong” and “It’s a contract year, I (Nick Collison) should totally grow my hair out to look younger.” But does this performance improvement actually happen? And how big is it? The Thunder have three important players who will be in their contract years in Jeff Green, Nenad Kristic and Nick Collison. Can we expect them to step up more than usual with the added incentive of millions of dollars?
Luckily, I wasn’t the first person to investigate this topic. In 2006, a Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote an article about NBA contracts and performance, instead of, you know, watching out for any potential housing bubbles. To be fair, I’m sure that this article wasn’t the difference between prosperity and financial collapse (probably); economists often use professional sports to measure measure various economic effects and incentives because it is easier to assess an NBA player’s performance than a random guy. So anyway, he found that there was a positive correlation between contract year and performance, using standard box-score statistics and a combined stat called “composite ranking”. I’ve made a quick table with the paper’s major findings below. Reading the table, it implies that the average contract year effect on points/game is +.847, which is pretty substantial. Read more…
Commentary
Thunder Numbers
