I figured I’d pump out this final 2010 NBA Season post before LeBron James announces his free agency decision tomorrow.

I’ve already given the NBA Sim versions of the 2010 Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Rookie of the Year and Most Improved Player so there’s only one left: who is the Most Valuable Player of the season? Like I did with those fine previous efforts, I shall be conducting my research using APP+ (Adjusted Pece Performance above Positional Average). Without further ado, here are the top 10 candidates, from highest to lowest rated:

Top 10 MVP Candidates (Ordered by APP+)
#	Player	Team	Pos.	pPPG	pRPG	pAPG	FG%	3P%	FT%	APP+
1	LeBron James		F	32.50	7.98	9.37	0.503	0.333	0.767	28.50
	Chris Paul		G	20.18	4.58	11.52	0.493	0.409	0.847	19.89
2	Dwyane Wade		G	29.64	5.41	7.26	0.476	0.300	0.761	19.84
3	Kevin Durant		G-F	32.38	8.36	3.03	0.476	0.365	0.900	19.72
4	David Lee		F	21.91	12.46	3.87	0.545	0.000	0.812	18.80
5	Pau Gasol		F	19.73	12.17	3.61	0.536	0.000	0.790	18.44
6	Dwight Howard		C-F	19.92	14.34	1.91	0.612	0.000	0.592	18.22
7	Chris Bosh		F-C	25.75	11.65	2.55	0.518	0.364	0.797	17.78
8	Dirk Nowitzki		F	27.05	8.27	2.91	0.481	0.421	0.915	17.36
9	Deron Williams		G	19.91	4.25	11.19	0.469	0.371	0.801	16.28
10	Gerald Wallace		F	20.17	11.09	2.34	0.484	0.371	0.776	15.64
NOTE: Chris Paul only played in 45 games. This doesn’t satisfy my personal rule that players must participate in at least 60% of a season to be considered eligible for post-season awards.

This wasn’t even close. LeBron performed over 4 times as much as the average forward since 1980 (with an APP of 37.76 to 9.26) and even outperformed his closest rivals by 8.66 APP+ units (roughly the value of an average NBA player). Let that sink in: LeBron was better than his closest rival by pretty much an entire other player’s production. That is insane!

As usual, to wrap up this slightly content-lite blog, here are the All-NBA Teams based on APP+ …

All-NBA First Team
Position	Player	Team	APP+
F	LeBron James		28.50
G	Dwyane Wade		19.84
G	Kevin Durant		19.72
F	David Lee		18.80
C	Dwight Howard		19.72

All-NBA Second Team
Position	Player	Team	APP+
F	Pau Gasol		18.44
F	Chris Bosh		17.78
G	Deron Williams		16.28
G	Kobe Bryant		14.96
C	Al Horford		14.35

All-NBA Third Team
Position	Player	Team	APP+
F	Dirk Nowitzki		17.36
F	Gerald Wallace		15.64
G	Rajon Rondo		14.85
G	Steve Nash		14.69
C	Brook Lopez		14.09

APP – Adjusted Pace Performance
A weighted formula for combining everything a player does on the basketball court into one number. This number is then adjusted based upon the players’ team pace to provide a balanced way to compare players’ performance.

APP+ – APP Above Positional Average APP
Player’s weighted performance minus the performance of an average player at his same position.
An average player between 1980-2010 will have a 0.00 APP+

Stats through 4/14/10

I still owe one, final post on the 2010 NBA Season (namely the obligatory MVP blog) and then I’m free to move into the offseason. So I’m a few weeks behind? Big deal!

First, however, I’d like to touch base on my DB Project. Briefly, this is my attempt at fully owning my own historical basketball stats database. For years I’ve been toying around and adding to one I downloaded at basketballreference.com, but it’s outlived it usefulness and I’m starting from scratch on my very own.

Anyway, as I said in the first installment, I’m listing the components of each table as I finish them. I mentioned that the next step was going to be completing both the Team_Offense and Team_Defense table but they’ve taken me a little longer than I expected and are a little more separate than I anticipated. Here’s the first of the two:

Team_Offense
• Year
• League
• unique Team Abbreviation (for foreign key purposes)
• Games Played
• Team Minutes Played
• Team Field Goals, Field Goal Attempts, Three Pointers, Three Point Attempts, Free Throws, Free Throw Attempts and Percentages
• Team Offensive, Defensive and Total Rebounds
• Team Assists, Steals, Blocks, Turnovers, Personal Fouls, and Points
• Notes (how stats are determined, etc.)

Once again this table is of all the ABL, NBL, BAA, NBA and ABA teams from 1926 until the present. I’ll make sure to check them against my 2 book references and will enter them into the massive db when done. Still tuned for more updates on this super exciting subject! Next up is Team_Defense.

Only two more of these 2010 catch-up blogs! I promise.

Aaron Brooks took home this season’s most improved honors and, as usual, I have something to say to the contrary of the NBA’s decision. As I said last year:

The annual Most Improved Player award is probably the regular season honor I have the most problems with. Not only is the conditions for candidacy vague like the other awards, but whole other realms of problematic circumstances come into play. Some candidates appear to be young starters who take the next step and become all stars. Others are comeback kids who were hobbled for a season – either by injury or slump – and have returned to form. Still other candidates are breakout players who were probably pretty good during the previous season, but now have more minutes or a bigger role on a (possibly different) team. By the end of all this, what exactly are we measuring when we say “most improved?”

It’s easy to track individual player performance (I use APP+), but in order to not have the difference in performance from season to season be over-affected by change in minutes I divide change in performance by the ratio of change in minutes per game (what I call MIP Value). I like to have a 50-game (or 60%) cut off for all of my findings (otherwise it doesn’t feel like a completed year to me, but this is purely a personal call), therefore some players have been disqualified. Here are the Top 10 players with the highest MIP Value.

Top 10 Most Improved Players (Ordered by ΔAPP+ / ΔMPG)
			2009 NBA Season			2010 NBA Season
#	Player	Pos.	Team	APP+	MPG	Team	APP+	MPG	ΔAPP+	Δ MPG	MIP Value
	Carlos Boozer*	F-C		9.44	32.35		15.50	34.27	6.06	1.06	5.72
1	Kevin Durant	F		14.12	38.99		19.72	39.50	5.60	1.01	5.53
2	Josh Smith	F		8.98	35.09		13.95	35.44	4.97	1.01	4.92
3	Aaron Brooks	G		0.26	24.98		7.26	35.60	7.00	1.43	4.91
4	David Lee	F		13.68	38.86		18.80	37.27	5.12	1.07	4.79
	Greg Oden†	C		4.31	21.54		9.57	23.90	5.26	1.11	4.74
5	Joakim Noah	C		5.25	24.23		10.97	30.08	5.72	1.24	4.61
6	Marc Gasol	C		8.04	30.74		13.38	35.78	5.34	1.16	4.59
7	Ben Wallace	C-F		0.88	23.46		6.20	28.62	5.32	1.22	4.36
	Ryan Bowen	F		-5.84	10.43		-2.55	8.00	3.29	0.77	4.29
	Nazr Mohammed*	C		-6.09	8.74		2.20	16.97	8.29	1.94	4.27
8	Russell Westbrook	G		6.40	32.54		10.81	34.30	4.41	1.05	4.18
9	Louis Williams	G		1.87	23.69		7.04	29.88	5.17	1.26	4.10
	Nicolas Batum†	F		-1.91	18.41		3.61	24.81	5.52	1.35	4.10
	Danilo Gallinari*	F		-3.61	14.71		5.76	33.91	9.37	2.30	4.07
10	Brook Lopez	C		9.27	30.50		14.09	36.91	4.82	1.21	3.98
* – Player did not play 50 games in 2009 NBA Season † – Player did not play 50 games in 2010 NBA Season

Utah’s Carlos Boozer had the most dramatic improvement in performance this season, however one suspects this has more to do with playing in 41 more games during the 2010 season than he did the previous year. This leaves young phenom, Kevin Durant, as my pick for Most Improved. He did see a bump in minutes per game, however the difference was pretty much negligible (38.99 in 2009, 39.50 in 2010). What this suggests is that the vast majority of his improvement came not from external opportunity but internal development.

That said, Aaron Brooks wasn’t all that bad a selection. He was the third most improved player according to my methods. Last season’s winner, Danny Granger, was only the 10th most improved player so maybe voters paid a little more active attention to their NBA this year.

APP – Adjusted Pace Performance
A weighted formula for combining everything a player does on the basketball court into one number. This number is then adjusted based upon the players’ team pace to provide a balanced way to compare players’ performance.

APP+ – APP Above Positional Average APP
Player’s weighted performance minus the performance of an average player at his same position.
An average player between 1980-2010 will have a 0.00 APP+

MIP Value – Most Improved Player Value
((2010 APP+) – (2009 APP+)) / ((2010 MPG) / (2009 MPG))

Stats through 4/14/10

Yeah, I’m still backed up on posts. Here’s my take on the Rookie of the Year for the 2010 NBA season.

Tyreke Evans won the ROY honors but was up against some fierce competition (at least in the press) from Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings. Here’s a quick rundown of the best rookies from this season according to APP+.

Top 10 Rookies (Ordered by APP+)
#	Player	Pos.	Team	Pace	PPG	RPG	APG	APP	posAPP	APP+
1	Tyreke Evans	G		94.0	20.1	5.3	5.8	21.38	9.47	11.91
2	Stephen Curry	G		100.4	17.5	4.5	5.9	18.64	9.47	9.16
	Reggie Williams	F		100.4	15.2	4.6	2.8	15.86	9.26	6.60
3	Brandon Jennings	G		91.7	15.5	3.4	5.7	15.34	9.47	5.87
4	Darren Collison	G		92.6	12.4	2.5	5.7	14.99	9.47	5.52
5	Taj Gibson	F		93.1	9.0	7.5	0.9	12.67	9.26	3.41
6	Jonas Jerebko	F		88.5	9.3	6.0	0.7	12.19	9.26	2.93
7	Marcus Thornton	G		92.6	14.5	2.9	1.5	12.32	9.47	2.85
8	Jonny Flynn	G		96.1	13.5	2.4	4.4	11.76	9.47	2.29
9	DeJuan Blair	F		91.7	7.8	6.4	0.8	11.15	9.26	1.89
10	Omri Casspi	F		94.0	10.3	4.5	1.2	10.48	9.26	1.22

Note: Reggie Williams was ineligible as he failed to play in at least 50 games (60% of the season). This is not an NBA rule, but my own criteria for award selection.

Two things pop out here. First, it really seems like Evans and Curry were heads and shoulders above the rest of their class with third place, Jennings, producing almost half as much as second place, Curry. My second observation is what a guard-heavy class this was, as well. From the chart above and the All-Rookie Teams compiled below, there’s a clear difference in positional production as you go from guard to forward (and most alarmingly) to center.

2010 All-Rookie First Team

2010 All-Rookie Second Team

Pos.

Player

Pos.

Team

APP

posAPP

APP+

Pos.

Player

Pos.

Team

APP

posAPP

APP+

G

Tyreke Evans

G

13.11

3.97

9.14

G

Brandon Jennings

G

15.34

9.47

5.87

G

Stephen Curry

G

18.63

9.47

9.16

G

Darren Collison

G

14.99

9.47

5.52

F

Taj Gibson

F

12.67

9.26

3.41

F

DeJuan Blair

F

11.15

9.26

1.89

F

Jonas Jerebko

F

12.19

9.26

2.93

F

Omri Casspi

F

10.48

9.26

1.22

C

David Andersen

C

5.94

8.59

-2.65

C

Hasheem Thabeet

C

5.72

8.59

-2.87

APP – Adjusted Pace Performance
A weighted formula for combining everything a player does on the basketball court into one number. This number is then adjusted based upon the players’ team pace to provide a balanced way to compare players’ performance.

APP+ – APP Above Positional Average APP
Player’s weighted performance minus the performance of an average player at his same position.
An average player between 1980-2010 will have a 0.00 APP+

Stats through 4/14/10

Wilt Chamberlain is the official face of my huge, new database reboot project. As mentioned in a previous post, I’m completely dropping my old database and methodically building a new one up from scratch.

When I first started my NBA Sim programs 4 years ago, I found the initial stat requirements daunting. Sure, there were great basketball sites such as Basketball-Reference.com and 82Games.com, but I really wasn’t looking forward to copying and pasting every single line of data into a spreadsheet. I wanted a faster liftoff.

Luckily, I was able to find something that seemed to fit my needs. Over at the similarly titled but completely different Basketball Reference, I found a link to download a copy of their database in spreadsheet form. Sure, it wasn’t up to date (I believe it was missing the most recent season) and it contained more information than I needed, but it was an awesome discovery. I entered it into a SQL database and started building children tables off of it, updating it as seasons progressed, and conducting research using it.

Unfortunately, over the next couple of years I began to notice errors here and there. Player’s stats were incorrect, names were misspelled or butchered (like writing “Abduljabbar” instead of “Abdul-Jabbar”), and there were countless other minor bugs. No one issue was big enough to warrant concern, but the summation of them all began to chip away at the trust I had in the database. The other main gripe about the data was that it was organized based on someone else’s design and this method was not necessarily the most effective or convenient way for me to use.

All of this finally forced my hand: I realized I would have to engineer my own database from the ground up if I wanted it to be something I could both easily use and rely on. Thus, I’ve started The DB Project! The very first step of this endeavor has been completed: I finished creating the Team_Misc table which outlines the following:

Team_Misc
• Year
• League
• unique Team Abbreviation (for foreign key purposes)
• full Team Name (city + team name)
• Franchise ID (to keep track of team relocations and name changes)
• Conference and Division
• Partial Season status (if a team didn’t make it to the end of the year)
• Games Played, win-loss record and forfeited wins/losses
• Pythagorean wins-losses, Simple Rating System and Point Differential
• Team Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating, and Pace
• Offensive and Defensive Four Factors
• Arena and Attendance
• UPDATE: Logo image
• CSS Style (for team colors)
• Notes (when team disbanded, relocated, etc.)

I now have all of this information collected for teams in the ABL, NBL, BAA, ABA and NBA from 1926-2010. I’ll check these against my 3 references (the aforementioned Basketball-Reference.com; The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Basketball, 1891-1990 by David S. Neft and Richard M. Cohen; and Total Basketball: The Ultimate Basketball Encyclopedia by Leonard Koppett, Ken Shouler, and Bob Ryan) and move on to step 2: the Team_Offense and Team_Defense tables!

Last month, Jamal Crawford of the Atlanta Hawks won the Sixth Man of the Year award. According to Wikipedia, the sixth man is the following:

“The sixth man in basketball is a player who is not a starter but comes off the bench much more often than other reserves, often being the first player to be substituted in. The sixth man often plays minutes equal to or exceeding some of the starters and posts similar statistics. He is often a player who can play multiple positions, hence his utility in substituting often.”

How I’ll define the elligible players will be the following:

• Must not be in top 5 of GP on team (essentially removes the regular starting 5 players)
• Must be next highest in MP (so he really is the next person receiving playtime)
• Must not start in 50% or more of his GP (the only actual SMOY criteria)

Following is a list of the player(s) from each team that passed this test. Greyed out players fit the first two rules for elligibility, but not the third (ranked by APP+).

Team Sixth Men (Ordered by APP+)
#	Player	Pos.	Team(s)	GS%	APP	posAPP	APP+
1	Manu Ginobili	G		.293	19.47	9.47	10.00
2	Lamar Odom	F		.463	18.94	9.26	9.68
	Louis Williams	G		.594	16.51	9.47	7.04
3	Jamal Crawford	G		.000	16.06	9.47	6.59
4	Paul Millsap	F		.098	15.56	9.26	6.30
5	Andray Blatche	F		.444	15.56	9.26	6.30
6	Anderson Varejao	F		.092	15.39	9.26	6.13
7	Jason Terry	G		.156	15.57	9.47	6.10
8	Al Harrington	F		.208	15.25	9.26	5.99
9	Darren Collison	F		.487	14.99	9.47	5.52
10	Udonis Haslem	F		.000	14.33	9.26	5.07
	Jose Calderon	G		.574	14.47	9.47	5.00
	George Hill	G		.551	12.79	9.47	3.32
11	Ersan Ilyasova	F		.383	12.23	9.26	2.97
12	J.R. Smith	G		.000	12.20	9.47	2.73
13	Charlie Villanueva	F		.205	11.55	9.26	2.29
14	Brad Miller	C		.451	10.69	8.59	2.10
15	C.J. Watson	G		.231	11.48	9.47	2.01
16	Omri Casspi	F		.403	10.48	9.26	1.22
17	Terrence Williams	F		.115	10.07	9.26	0.81
	Al Thornton	F		.613	9.92	9.26	0.66
18	Jared Dudley	F		.001	9.83	9.26	0.57
19	Amir Johnson	F		.061	9.53	9.26	0.27
20	James Harden	G		.000	9.72	9.47	0.25
21	J.J. Redick	G		.110	9.49	9.47	0.02
22	Craig Smith	F		.027	9.03	9.26	-0.23
23	Ramon Sessions	G		.012	9.00	9.47	-0.47
24	Chase Budinger	F		.054	8.80	9.26	-0.46
25	Rasheed Wallace	F-C		.165	9.90	10.64	-0.74
26	Dahntay Jones	G		.342	8.62	9.47	-0.85
27	Willie Green	G		.247	8.26	9.47	-1.21
28	Juwan Howard	F-C		.370	8.04	10.64	-2.60
29	D.J. Augustin	G		.025	6.50	9.47	-2.97
30	Sam Young	F		.013	6.15	9.26	-3.11

I was very surprised to find Manu heading this list – I really thought Crawford (at .000 GS%, he’s the best performing never-starter) or Odom (he seemed to be way more solid this year than his “inconsistent” reputation would imply) was going to be tops, but Ginobili really is the second coming of John Havlicek. Start him, bring him off the bench – it doesn’t matter: the guy is going to play well.

APP – Adjusted Pace Performance
A weighted formula for combining everything a player does on the basketball court into one number. This number is then adjusted based upon the players’ team pace to provide a balanced way to compare players’ performance.

APP+ – APP Above Positional Average APP
Player’s weighted performance minus the performance of an average player at his same position.
An average player between 1980-2010 will have a 0.00 APP+

Well, since NBA Sim has been down and out for a month, I’ve got quite a backlog of items to get through. First, I’d like to touch upon the Defensive Player of the Year award. As everyone who is even a casual NBA fan knows, Dwight Howard was awarded his second consecutive DPOY trophy.

As I mentioned last season, box score performance is not the only thing that goes into a person’s decision vote for the Defensive Player of the Year. I outlined two examples of this in both Hakeem Olajuwon in 1990 and David Robinson in 1991 losing the award to the stellar but less-spectacular Dennis Rodman. This practice can be both a good (leadership, defensive performance not recorded in box score) and bad (reputation, politics) thing as it takes other, non-box score factors into consideration. However, I’m going to stick with my Adjusted Pace Defense (APD) mechanism that’s based purely on box score performance, pace and position played.

Top 10 Players (Ordered by APD)
#	Player	Pos.	Team(s)	DRB	BLK	STL	PF	Pace	APD	posAPD	APD+
1	Dwight Howard	C-F		9.7	2.8	0.9	3.5	92.0	13.11	3.97	9.14
2	Marcus Camby	C-F		8.4	2.0	1.3	2.2	92.6 / 87.7	12.06	3.97	8.09
3	Gerald Wallace	F		8.1	1.1	1.5	2.6	90.4	10.96	3.11	7.85
4	Josh Smith	F-G		6.0	2.1	1.6	3.0	90.1	9.71	2.84	6.87
5	David Lee	F		8.9	0.5	1.0	3.2	94.0	9.86	3.11	6.75
6	Pau Gasol	F		7.6	1.7	0.6	2.3	92.8	9.63	3.11	6.52
7	LeBron James	F		6.4	1.0	1.6	1.6	91.4	9.53	3.11	6.42
8	Troy Murphy	F		8.4	0.5	1.0	2.4	97.1	9.33	3.11	6.22
9	Andrew Bogut	C		7.1	2.5	0.6	3.2	91.7	9.73	3.55	6.18
10	Kevin Durant	G-F		6.3	1.0	1.4	2.1	93.1	8.70	2.57	6.13

Once again, if I had a vote in the DPOY award, I would concur with the real life results and support Dwight Howard. Not only is he the most imposing physical presence in the game, he anchored an elite defense (4th in opponent PPG, 3rd in DRtg) and also led the league in both rebounds per game and blocks per game. So, really, no matter how one votes for this award, he kind of had it in the bag this year (again).

As always, I like to redo the NBA’s “name”-heavy end-of-the-year lists. Here are my All-Defensive Teams for the 2010 NBA Season. Scoff at some of these choices if you wish (especially the ones who made it here mostly on defensive rebounding like David Lee) but, statistically, these guys are the elite, possession-enders in the league.

2010 All-Defensive First Team

2010 All-Defensive Second Team

Pos.

Player

Pos.

Team(s)

APD

posAPD

APD+

Pos.

Player

Pos.

Team(s)

APD

posAPD

APD+

C

Dwight Howard

C-F

13.11

3.97

9.14

C

Marcus Camby

C-F

12.06

3.97

8.09

F

Gerald Wallace

F

10.96

3.11

7.85

F

David Lee

F

9.86

3.11

6.75

F

Josh Smith

F-G

9.70

2.84

6.87

F

Pau Gasol

F

9.63

3.11

6.52

G

Kevin Durant

G-F

8.70

2.57

6.13

G

Jason Kidd

G

7.41

2.03

5.38

G

Andre Iguodala

G-F

8.15

2.57

5.58

G

Dwyane Wade

G

6.42

2.03

4.39

APD – Adjusted Pace Defense
A (work-in-progress) weighted formula for combining everything a player does on the defensive side of a basketball court into one number. This number is then adjusted based upon the players’ team pace and compared against the average at their position played to provide a balanced way to compare players’ performances.

APD+ – Adjusted Pace Defense above Average Adjusted Pace Defense at Position(s) Played
Nothing more than a player’s APD value above the average APD value for his position.

Stats through 4/14/10