NBA

"Sports betting should be brought out of the underground"

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has penned an op-ed that calls for the legalization and regulation of gambling on professional American sports.

Silver argues in the New York Times, published Thursday, that fans already skirt the law to bet on sports games — an estimated $400 billion is wagered per year — and writes that those actions should be controlled. “I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground,” he says, “and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”

He notes that many states sanction other types of betting like lotteries, legal casinos and even online gambling. And he points to global examples like England from which the U.S. could learn.

Silver’s message is a radical change from the NBA’s official stance just two years ago, when the league joined the NCAA, NFL, MLB and NHL in suing New Jersey over its efforts to legalize sports betting in casinos and race tracks. The leagues won the suit, though Gov. Chris Christie has since signed a bill lifting the ban on betting in the state.

But Silver also believes the benefits of legalization on sports gambling outweigh the potential pitfalls: “Without a comprehensive federal solution, state measures such as New Jersey’s recent initiative will be both unlawful and bad public policy.”

This isn’t the first time Silver has suggested the NBA would benefit from such a move. “It’s inevitable that, if all these states are broke, that there will be legalized sports betting in more states than Nevada,” Silver said at the Bloomberg Business Summit in September. “We will ultimately participate in that.”

[NYT]

Wayne Ellington Jr. has taken an indefinite leave of absence from his team

The father of Los Angeles Lakers guard Wayne Ellington Jr. was shot dead in Philadelphia on Sunday.

Police received a call about an traffic collision in nearby Germantown and found 57-year-old Wayne Ellington Sr. in the front seat of his Oldsmobile with a bullet in his head, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Ellington was immediately taken to the nearby Albert Einstein Medical Center for surgery, but was pronounced dead about three hours later.

A motive for his murder is not yet clear, and the city has offered a $20,000 reward for any further information.

Ellington Jr., who grew up in Philadelphia and joined the Lakers as a free agent in September, took an indefinite leave of absence from the team before traveling home earlier this week.

“I encourage anyone with any information to come forward to help authorities solve this case,” he said in a statement.

David Berri is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University.

Bryant may be on his way to surpassing Jordan's career points this season, but other numbers tell the fuller story of who should go down in basketball history

The Los Angeles Lakers are off to one of their worst starts in franchise history. The early returns not only suggest that the Lakers will not contend for a title in 2015, they also suggest that the Lakers are unlikely to appear in the playoffs.

Although the Lakers as a team appear destined to struggle, one positive event seems quite likely. Entering the 2014-15 season, Kobe Bryant had scored 592 fewer points in his career than Michael Jordan in his entire career. And given how much Kobe is scoring in the first few games of the 2014-15 season, we can expect that Kobe — if he stays healthy and keeps his scoring pace — will pass Jordan before Christmas.

When this happens, people might be tempted to ask: Is Kobe “better” than Jordan?

Brandon Jennings, the starting point guard for the Detroit Pistons, already answered this question before the season started. According to Jennings, Jordan had more help winning titles. As Jennings noted, Jordan never won without Scottie Pippen, while Kobe won two titles without another “great” player. Therefore, Jennings argues that Kobe is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time).

I suspect that few people agree with Jennings. At least, I think most people will agree that Jordan did more in his career than Kobe. But I also suspect that Kobe is “like Mike.” In other words, I imagine many people think the gap between these two players isn’t that large. The data, though, seem to tell a different story. Jordan isn’t just better than Kobe; in fact, when we measure the difference, we see that no one should suggest these two players are similar.

The NBA tracks a variety of box score statistics to measure player performance. When we look at these numbers for Jordan and Kobe, it is clear that the former has a significant edge. For example, when we compare what Jordan did for the Chicago Bulls to what Kobe did for the Lakers (before this season), although their scoring totals are similar, Jordan was the more efficient scorer. With the Bulls, MJ had an effective field goal percentage of 51.83%. In contrast, Kobe’s mark with the Lakers is only 48.72%. To put that in perspective, the average shooting guard in the NBA (since the 1979-80 season when the three-point shot was added to the NBA) has an effective field goal percentage of 48.56%. In sum, Kobe has not been much better than average with respect to shooting from the field.

Jordan’s advantages with respect to Kobe, though, are not confined to shooting from the field. On a per-minute basis, Jordan also did more than Kobe has with respect to rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots. Jordan was also less likely to commit turnovers, less likely to draw a personal foul and more likely to draw a foul. In sum, with respect to everything in the box score, Jordan was simply better.

We can do more than just stare at the numbers. The NBA’s box score numbers can also be translated into how many wins each player produces. What this analysis reveals is that wins in the NBA are primarily about gaining and keeping possession of the ball (rebounds, turnovers and steals) and then turning that possession into points (shooting efficiently). We have already seen that Jordan did more than Kobe with respect to all the factors that matter most with respect to wins. And when we turn to wins produced, we can see how Jordan’s impact on outcomes was so much bigger than Kobe’s.

Let’s begin with each player at his best. In 1988-89, Jordan produced 26.5 wins as a 25-year old shooting guard. Kobe’s best season was in 2002-03. As a 24-year old shooting guard for the LA Lakers, Kobe produced 13.0 wins. So each player hit his peak in his mid-20s (that is actually fairly normal for a basketball player). And at each player’s peak, Jordan was nearly twice as productive.

Across each player’s entire career (up until this season), it’s the same story. Jordan finished his career with the Bulls in 1998 (we will ignore his ill-fated return to the Washington Wizards when he was 38 years old). Here is what MJ did for the Bulls:

• 35,887 minutes played
• 204.8 wins produced
• 0.274 wins produced per 48 minutes

Meanwhile, here are Kobe’s career numbers before this season:

• 45,225 minutes played
• 138.7 wins produced
• 0.147 wins produced per 48 minutes

Again, Jordan’s production of wins dwarfs Kobe’s. And contrary to what Jennings argued, Kobe actually had better teammates across his career. Entering this season, Kobe’s teammates averaged 0.117 wins produced per 48 minutes. In contrast, Jordan’s teammates with the Bulls produced only 0.106 wins per 48 minutes.

So Jennings appears to be quite wrong. Kobe has not come close to Jordan. And I want to take this a bit farther. Kobe has also not been as productive as a few other shooting guards. For example, Kobe has produced fewer wins in his career than the career production of Clyde Drexler, Reggie Miller and Ray Allen. And on a per-minute basis, Kobe has done less across his career than both Manu Ginobili and Dwyane Wade.

A key difference between Kobe and these players is shooting efficiency from the field. Each of these shooting guards were simply better than Kobe at getting shots to go in the basket. And that means each player had a larger impact on his respective team’s ability to win games.

Kobe’s inability to excel with respect shooting efficiently was noted recently in an article by Henry Abbott for ESPN The Magazine.

Bryant has fired away for nearly two decades. He’s fourth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, trailing only Kareem, Karl Malone and Michael Jordan. He’s also just a few weeks’ play from setting an all-time league record for misses. “The problem is, he’s just not as good as he thinks he is,” says one source in the Lakers’ inner circle. “He’s just not as efficient as he thinks he is.

This passage essentially captures the weakness in Kobe’s game. Kobe will soon pass Jordan in scoring totals. But he will also soon pass everyone else in missed shots.

Those missed shots matter. The key to evaluating players is to make sure you measure accurately the positives and the negatives. In other words, accurate evaluation requires you get past the “scoring illusion” (i.e., placing too much emphasis on scoring totals in evaluating basketball players). When you take that step, it becomes clear that Jordan did much more than Kobe, and Kobe is nowhere close to being “like Mike.”

David Berri is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University. He is the lead author of The Wages of Winsand Stumbling on Wins and continues to serve on the editorial board of bothJournal of Sports Economics and theInternational Journal of Sport Finance.

Spoiler alert: He was good.

As the season opens, 37 countries will be represented on team rosters

For those worked up over foreigners taking American jobs, the National Basketball League can provide some fodder. The league announced Tuesday that 101 players from 37 countries, a new record, will be on NBA rosters at the season’s start. The NBA champion San Antonio Spurs have the most foreign players, nine, leading the league in that category for the third year. Their U.N. roster includes Frenchmen Tony Parker and Boris Diaw, two Australians, a Brazilian, a Canadian, an Italian and the big man from the small island, Tim Duncan, who is from the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The league’s foreign legion is led by 12 Canadians, who apparently failed at their nation’s preferred winter sport. France provided 10 players, Australia eight and Brazil sent seven. There are also 13 players from the former Yugoslavia, as those hoop crazy nations such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia continue to embrace the game.

There are just 450 jobs on the NBA’s 30 teams, which means that foreign players now hold 22% of them, up from 10% in the 2000-2001 season. Globalization is a two-way street, though. At least 80 Americans are playing soccer for foreign clubs.

Before the 24-second clock, teams trailing in the fourth quarter could never pull off a win

As the basketball season begins this week, it’s hard to imagine that 50 years ago the sport was in jeopardy. Potential fans could expect low-scoring games with lots of free throw shots, little contact and a very boring final quarter. A team with a small lead at the end of the game would hold the ball for as long as possible, essentially stopping play. The only thing the losing team could do was foul, which they did, and the final minutes of all close games would be drawn out into a free-throw shooting match. No quick layups, no desperation threes, no buzzer beaters. Just free throws.

How bad was it? In 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons squeaked out a win against the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18, a score that today only occurs in middle school junior varsity games. In a playoff game—a playoff game—in 1954, Syracuse beat New York 75-69, and 75 of the points scored were from free throws.

Unsurprisingly, nobody was buying tickets to watch a sport with even less action than baseball. Desperate, owner of the Syracuse Nationals Danny Biasone came up with a plan: a shot clock. Each team would get 24 seconds to put up a shot. If they didn’t, they’d lose the ball. They rule was put in place for the 1954-1955 season.

It was immediately effective: NBA teams averaged 93.1 points that season, 13.6 more than the year before. “The new rule…has made the pro game a better, faster, more exciting sport,” TIME Magazine wrote in 1954. “Under the new rule, in some games this year a team that was behind in the last quarter has managed to pull out to win.” Imagine that!

But not everyone immediately took to the shot clock. “Some college coaches (freezing is still very much a part of the college game) are eying it with misgivings,” reported TIME. March Madness wouldn’t be very mad at all without that clock. Luckily, college teams came around.

So as you tune in to the Dallas Mavericks tipping off against reigning champions San Diego Spurs Tuesday night, thank Danny Biasone for saving the sport of basketball.

Read TIME’s 1998 cover story about Michael Jordan, here in the archives: The One and Only

Can the NBA superstar sell $66,000 cars?