Ages of Success in the NBA: How Unusual are the Blazers? (Updated)
One of the major themes of this seasons has been that the Blazers have been unusually successful for their age. I wanted to know, more precisely, just how young the Blazers are and just how successful they have been, given their age. So, I did a little research and found out. The answer? In short, they are one of the younger teams--though far from the youngest--and on pace to be by far the most successful team for its age in the past five years.
Average Age
Most media sources call the Blazers the second youngest team in the NBA, with the Golden State Warriors being the youngest. This description comes from calculating the the average age of each roster in the NBA. As many people have pointed out, however, this is a less than ideal measure of age because some rosters have veterans or rookies that seldom or never play.
A better measure of a team's age, in my view, is the average age of the players on the floor. (To be more precise, define the average age of players on the floor as the expected value of the average age of the team on the floor from a randomly selected moment in the season). Believe it or not, this is relatively easy to calculate. It is just each player's Age * Minutes played divided by the total minutes played by the team.
Here are the average ages of teams calculated in that manner, with the teams currently projected to go to the playoffs by Hollinger in bold:
Team Average Age
MEM 22.8978
POR 24.1397
CHI 24.7834
CHA 24.8325
MIN 25.0516
OKC 25.2086
UTA 25.2347
GSW 25.3229
MIA 25.3542
NJN 25.6025
ATL 25.8435
NYK 25.9501
MIL 26.0521
PHI 26.3214
SAC 26.5633
IND 26.7588
CLE 26.8154
LAL 26.9129
TOR 27.0772
WAS 27.2451
ORL 27.5021
LAC 27.5592
DEN 27.7794
NOH 27.9039
BOS 27.9651
DET 28.2222
HOU 28.3585
DAL 29.2533
PHO 29.5305
SAS 30.6093
As you can see, when calculating the average age of teams in this manner, the Blazers are indeed the second youngest team, but the youngest team is the Memphis Grizzlies (now, whenever you hear an announcer say the Warriors are the youngest team, you can snicker at their ignorance). It's also pretty damn clear that older teams, in general, are much more likely to make it to the playoffs.
Average Age Part 2: An Alternative Measure of Maturity
Now, some might think that even the average age of players on the floor is a less than ideal measure of what we really care about when we talk about the youth of a team--it's maturity as a basketball team. What if, for example, a team's stars are veterans and its younger players are role players? Certainly that is a more mature team than a team whose stars are young and whose veterans are role players, right? Perhaps. The only difficulty is that it's a little tricky to objectively determine who is a role player and who is a star. Nonethelss, in order to investigate if measuring the maturity team in some way dramatically changes the picture, I calculated teams' average age weighted by the number of field goals attempted (each players age*fga/total field goals attempted by the team). Think of this as the average age of the team's field goal attempts:
Team FGA weighted Age:
MEM 22.5476
POR 23.9251
OKC 24.4223
MIN 24.5981
CHI 24.7143
CHA 24.7957
UTA 25.0517
MIA 25.2547
GSW 25.5418
NYK 25.8768
NJN 25.9572
MIL 26.025
PHI 26.096
SAC 26.2507
CLE 26.2931
ATL 26.351
IND 26.6009
TOR 26.8093
WAS 27.1953
LAL 27.2098
DEN 27.2108
ORL 27.4351
LAC 27.6127
NOH 27.9389
HOU 28.1777
DET 28.5663
BOS 28.8435
DAL 28.9353
PHO 29.5283
SAS 29.8134
As you can see, this doesn't change the story too much. The Blazers are a little younger, but still the second youngest. This is primarily because Pryzbilla does not attempt a lot of field goals per minute. One of the teams whose ranking changes the most when calculating team age in this manner is, interestingly, Boston.
Win % by Average Age and FG weighted Age
The next thing I wanted to do was to get a better sense for where the Blazers stood in terms of the success given their age. To do this, I plotted team's win percentage this season against their average age and drew a (non-linear) regression line that shows (roughly) the average win percentage of a team, given their age:
via i37.tinypic.com
The results are interesting. There is a pretty strong trend toward success (defined as win percentage) increasing with age up until a team's age reaches 28 or so. The top three teams in the league (Boston, LAL, and Cleveland) have an average age between 26 and 28, though so do some of the worst teams (Cllppers, and Wizards). The oldest teams, Dallas, Phoenix, and San Antonio, are all winners, but they are not the league's elite.
The Blazers are clearly the best 24 and under team and appear, to my eyes, to be on a trajectory towards joining the league's elite in the next couple of years. Of course, no one can be certain what the future will hold, and making projections into the future is dangerous, but it is easy to see why so many of us are optimistic about the future.
We see roughly the same picture if plot win percentage against teams' age weighted by field goal attempts. The only difference is, perhaps, a shortening of Boston's window for elite play:
via i37.tinypic.com
Power Ranking by Average Age and FGA weighted Age
Since the Blazers have played such a difficult schedule, I also plotted the Sagarin power ratings against their age and FGA weighted age:
via i35.tinypic.com
via i33.tinypic.com
The same general conclusions seem to hold. The Blazers are ahead of the curve and on pace to join the league's elite. These graphs suggests, even more strongly, that there are diminishing returns to age (teams peak at 28 or so). In addition, I was amused to see that the teams that have fired their coaches are all significantly below the age-power ranking curve.
Age and Win % in the Past Five Seasons
Finally, I was curious to see if the age-success relationship that we see this season holds for previous season. And, I wanted to know if there had been any other teams as young as the Blazers that had been as successful. So, I put the data together for the past five season (2004-2005 to 2008-2009.... I could do more, and I might).
In the graph below, I plotted win percentage against team average age. I labeled Portland this season and last, as well as the nearest competitor for the title of "best young team in the last five years":
via i37.tinypic.com
The only team in the past five years that could possible argue to be a better "young" team than the Blazers is the 04-05 Phoenix Suns. The average age of that Suns team was 25.1, a full year older than the Blazers. They were, however, led by the veteran Steve Nash, who was 30 years old by the end of the season. So, I give the title of best young team in the last five years to this years' Blazers.
UPDATE: Age and Win % in the Past 10 Seasons
I had a little more time this afternoon and added five additional seasons. And, because some were interested, I marked which teams eventually won the NBA championship in each season (they are the black diamonds). With five years of additional data, the 2008-2009 Blazers still stick out:
via i33.tinypic.com
Lastly, a question to ponder and discuss: the age success relationship appears to only get stronger as I add more data; why aren't there more older teams in the NBA?
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Comments
Wait - they've already had success??
Seriously? Keeping the bar pretty low here aren’t you?
Cisco? Cisco? CISCO!!!! #*$!%! !
by lietothegirls on Dec 10, 2008 3:06 PM PST up reply actions
Wow.
You just made my fanpost last week on this topic look like a pile of puke.
I’ve put less work than this into term-long college research papers. Excellent job. Thanks for putting in the effort.
Write-in Rudy for All-Star 2009!
Well, gosh...
[blushes]
Thanks for the follow-up. This is far more thorough an analysis than anything I could have done. Bravo.
Write-in Rudy for All-Star 2009!
Yowzers.
Extraordinary.
"When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car"
by you'vegottomakeyourfreethrows on Dec 9, 2008 11:49 AM PST reply actions
LOL
And people were thinking I was a geek after my post. This is really interesting, if you are into stats, and impressive if you aren’t.
Do you like asparagus?
nnnnnnnNice.
Could you do my taxes next year?
Rudyculize: The act of Rudy making others look slow, dim and generally oafish.
http://www.myspace.com/y5k
uh hmmm......I am slinking back to the Junk Drawer now
bye
That 70's show:
Kelso: Red! I guess ur wondering why I'm going through your stuff. See, I needed to borrow your saw...because I need to chop down a tree...because there's something stuck in it...an animal...a rabbit...and I would like to return that rabbit to the wild so it can lay its eggs!
Red: Kelso, rabbits don't..............how the hell did a rabbit get up a tree?
Kelso: uhhhhhh Eric threw it up there.
Red: Eric threw a rabbit up a tree?
Kelso: Yeah, he's a sadistic bastard.
I was told there would be no math...
…I agree with all of the above props. This is a very in-depth report on Age vs Production of all NBA teams. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. Posts like this are what make BE great.
Next we need to factor the experience of these “veteran” teams vs the youthful legs of teams like the Blazers. When the playoffs start, and the Blazers are in, will their fresh legs and athleticism counteract the savvy play of the older dudes?
by cic on Dec 9, 2008 12:21 PM PST reply actions
Wow.
Now that’s a post.
I tried do something like this a while back on average age of NBA champions. It was garbage compared to this, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to account for weighting the playing time. Your methods are really good. Any chance you could do this for past NBA champs? How old does a team need to be to win it all?
Thanks. Again, great post.
The cowards never started
The weak died along the way
Only the strong survived
They were the Trailblazers
A-ha
Now that I see it again I remember I was looking at years of experience, not age, as well as years on that particular team. I don’t know if I learned anything other than this stuff is too much work. Your stuff is great.
http://www.blazersedge.com/2008/7/28/581189/how-much-experience-is-nee
The cowards never started
The weak died along the way
Only the strong survived
They were the Trailblazers
It would be really easy to point out which teams won the championship in each season....
I’ll update it with that information.
I considered doing something with years of experience and/or minutes played by rookies, but the play stats dataset at basketball-reference.com does not have years of experience. I could add it in, but it would take an extra merge, so I didn’t do it.
Nice work.
Now how about giving us an analysis based on the impact of foreign born players on a team’s roster.
btw – Duncan counts as a US player. The Virgin Islands are US territory.
hakkaa päälle !
Look, you guys are missing the obvious
This guy should be sorting out the economy, not posting here. Somebody call Obama’s transition team.
Do you like asparagus?
by jscot on Dec 9, 2008 12:51 PM PST reply actions 3 recs
His graphs
might not look so promising on that subject…
"I believe in [Joel]. I just love the way he plays." - Nate McMillan
Great Stuff
Now I have another question. And I wish I had the time and energy to figure this one out. And I am not sure I will explain it properly, but here goes:
We are one of the youngest teams, we look to be progressing fairly well and quite rapidly. I wonder if there is a correlation between the time the key players play together and getting more familiar with each others game and winning percentage. Obviously Boston last year was a complete anamoly, but if you think of the Spurs, Chicago, Lakers, Pistons, etc.. they all played together for a while before they became championship material. How long does that typically take, what are the variables, etc…..
But maybe it is easier to just say that the longer you play together the better you become and don’t try to prove it one way or the other.
"I saw him in the face" Sergio's quote on the latest alley-oop to Rudy.
That's a great question...
I’m sure it could be answered, but it would take a few minutes of thought in order to figure out how to compile the information.
I think the early success of Phoenix is a cautionary tale for the Blazers. On the one hand, perhaps they never got much better because their best player (Nash) peaked not long after the 2004-2005 season… or perhaps their style of play was not conducive to winning a championship, but I think, as much as anything, success is not guaranteed.
I think that the bigger problem with Phoenix
was that their cheapskate owner kept on selling draft picks so that he didn’t have to pay the luxury tax. This killed Phoenix’s chances of developing any sembalance of a bench.
by tingeyga on Dec 9, 2008 5:27 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
great point...
But without that cheapskate owner, the Blazers wouldn’t have Rudy…
by haildablazer on Dec 10, 2008 3:42 PM PST up reply actions
Or Sergio
The knicks wouldn’t have Nate Robinson… Boston wouldn’t have Rondo…
by TheGreatDane17 on Dec 10, 2008 7:09 PM PST up reply actions
wow
Very good. My brain hurts now.
There is probably no more terrible instance of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man — with human flesh.
Paul Muad'Dib - Dune (Frank Herbert)
My Translation: My Dad is a dude just like me, and my sons are dudes like me also. I love that.
Season Tix: Section 315, with my sons
disappointing....
no animation or pie charts.
Next time reach a little higher.
vERYkERRPLEX...... stop asking me what the #$% it means!
you mean - make the pie higher?
Cat's foot, iron claw - LaMarcus Aldridge screams for more. At paranoia's poison door, alley oop slam throw it down big man. - Variations on a theme by Peter Sinfield.
by 22baylor on Dec 9, 2008 4:06 PM PST up reply actions 2 recs
Clearly a science graduate student
I did graphs like this trying to publish scientific data, so you must be pretty proficient just to whip it out like this. You make several strong points about the potential future of the Blazers, and this should have a calming effect on those fans who are disappointed that we are not championship level yet. There is likely more to come…based on good, scientific evidence, of course.
Very interesting production report.
So based on the projections, in 2 years Boston production declines , LA stays roughly the same and Portland moves up? . Cleveland we have no clue , it’s entirely dependent upon LeBron staying, but if he does stay Cleveland will also stay the same? Is that about right?
Sophia
Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod. - William Shakespeare
You've hit it big time, PoliSam...
the BlogFather Henry Abbott linked to your charts in today’s Mini-Bullets.
Kudos, Big Time!
I think HAbbott spends a good amount of time on this site lurking.
"When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car"
by you'vegottomakeyourfreethrows on Dec 9, 2008 2:36 PM PST reply actions 2 recs
Henry is Mortimer
Mortimer is Henry!
Sophia
Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod. - William Shakespeare
by BlazerFan1 on Dec 9, 2008 2:41 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
nah...
Mortimer has less hair than Abbott… but he is funnier.
"When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car"
by you'vegottomakeyourfreethrows on Dec 9, 2008 2:51 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Mortimer could be a Henry
He has never told us his real name.
by Sabonis4Ever on Dec 9, 2008 3:14 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
I love truehoop
but Mortimer knows more basketball than Abbot.
The quality of the writing is equal.
by Falcao on Dec 9, 2008 5:18 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Sophia
Your comment reminded me of that dumpster show on NBC, Henry VS Edward.
Christian Slater is… Henry….
Christian Slater is……. Edward…
by TheGreatDane17 on Dec 10, 2008 7:11 PM PST up reply actions
holy cow! that is sweet!
Every night the team scores 100 points is sort of a mini-Hispanic night.........all the fans get free Chalupas. --Bust a Bucket
I don't think he's ever linked to a Fanpost before
Before he did it, I was going to say that this would be the first one, but I didn’t want to jinx it.
He should’ve mentioned how awesome it is that this is a fanpost, and not frontpage stuff.
Sam
this was sick, dude. I earned the enmity of my psychology group because I should be working on a presentation with them right now and instead was reading this post with slack-jawed amazement. What is your background? Are you a professional statistician of some kind?
Thanks. I'm ABD in Political Science
Not getting any close to that D when I spend my time doing Blazers stats rather than political science research. O, well.
Me too. If you're down this way, numbers are your best friend in PS
It’s frustrating for a number averse guy like me. But, when you throw out BBall numbers like that it’s cool.
I'm a really really ridiculously good looking orange mocha frappaccino drinking manhammer sandwich
Interesting graphs
To me, it’s just for fun and giggles. The season is too early to draw any trends or data points. It’ll be more interesting after a full season’s worth of games.
One thing to remember is to not conclude the Blazers trajectory is going upwards as they age. A sample of 22 games is too small to project. And these graphs only imply a weak correlation, if any, between age and winning percentage, definitely not a causation. So basically, it tells us what we already knew about winning teams. Mostly veterans with experience, so this years Blazers is just bucking the stereotype so far.
Thumbs up for all the work.
BINGO, BANGO, BONGO
Right
I trend to emphasize that the trajectory is tentative. In addition, I never used the word cause…. However, while you cannot run an clinical experiment to determine definitely if age (or experience in the NBA) has a causal relationship with basketball skill, I’d bet my life on it.
I wouldn't bet my life on it if I were you
The NBA has self-feedback loop which filters out participants. Over half of all players drafted do not stay in the NBA for more than 3 years. Sergei Monia, Taurean Green, Ha Seung Jin, and countless others will not have the opportunity to improve their basketball skill in the NBA. I believe I read that the NBA is the easiest league to project because players project very accurately to their previous season and virtually all players stabilize their production per minute/pace by their 3rd year.
BINGO, BANGO, BONGO
I agree...
That it would be very, very difficult to identify the true relationship, but I’m sure there is some relationship. As you said, players definitely improve early in their careers and they must get worse eventually or we would have 90 year old basketball players, no?
unrec
Every night the team scores 100 points is sort of a mini-Hispanic night.........all the fans get free Chalupas. --Bust a Bucket
by prezofdeath on Dec 9, 2008 3:54 PM PST up reply actions 2 recs
My 2 cents
Looks to me that a look at the chart shows that with another year of experience, and the Blazers are contenders. There is also the real possibility that they could dominate the league for many more years! Hooray math!
hmmmkay
Great stuff
There’s a rec, and then there’s a rec.
Everyone thinks the Blazers are abnormally good for their age, but you look at the numbers and prove it up. With graphs and charts and all kind of stuff I used to sorta know how to do on my TI-82 but could never begin to pull off now without gears grinding to a halt in my head and smoke pouring out of both ears…
Bravo.
Along with Dave and Ben’s day-to-day insight and info, these are the kinds of posts that give BlazersEdge such a strong name.
(Mr. Abbott, where you at? This is “First Cup” worthy stuff… )
Q: Is Greg favoring his knee?
Frye: He favors dunking on your head, that's what he favors.
Nerd question
What’s the correlation coefficient for the age/win % plot and what is it if you only use a linear fit instead of a polynomial fit?
Boomshakalaka
Looks like the relationship is more significant with each graph
Based on the eyeball test, looks like as you add more data (whether through making it more precise, or by adding years), the relationship becomes more significant. Is that mathematically true?
Q: Is Greg favoring his knee?
Frye: He favors dunking on your head, that's what he favors.
For the 10 years of data
r-squared for a linear regression is .25
r-squared for the polynomial regression is .26
So, it’s surprisingly close to linear and there’s lot’s of variance unexplained by age… On the other hand, the t-statistic for age in a linear regression is 10… which I almost never see in my own field.
can you do just one more thing?
plot the blazers from 00 to 09 against the fitted curve.
Only if it’s easy, thanks again for the post.
Another interesting thing to look at instead of average age
would be to look at average years in the league and how that translates into winning.
Possibly the best fanpost in Sportsblog history
Question – can you come up with a chart that incorporates say, all NBA seasons in the past 20 years? I’d like to know if there is a point where expected wins declines at a certain average age.
Also, perhaps control for age using Salary; or even control for both salary and minutes played. That’d be cool.
M, period. Fresh, comma.
Young teams
The OP’s brilliance is staggering here. Mad props. The question was raised as to why there aren’t more “old” teams. In the NBA, you need to be greedy – one team wins and 29 lose. This precipitates risk taking and an skew toward unproven players with high ceilings. These players are typically young. Add to the mix the fact that a young .500 team is much more interesting to a fan base than an old .500 team and I think you have your answer. The draft is also a factor in that young, bad teams with potential can vault into contention via draft picks.
Something to ponder: The majority of titles won in NBA history have been a result of being awful and landing a superstar with a top 5 pick. Recent NBA history contradicts this, but may be more anomaly than norm. So, if a championship is the true goal, shouldn’t most teams actively be trying to get much worse?
by Engineering Problem on Dec 9, 2008 11:22 PM PST reply actions
"This precipitates risk taking and skew toward unproven players with high ceilings"
That was pretty much my thought as well.
I like that you one-upped it by asking why more teams don’t actively try to get worse! I think the answer is that a franchise wants its fans to believe it could win an NBA championship, but also wants a team competitive enough to sell tickets even when it’s not quite there.
Could you clarify/expound
more on your statement that the majority of titles in NBA history have been the result of landing a top 5 pick. Like, what years do you define as recent history? If you define recent history as post lockout the championship teams of the Spurs, Lakers, Pistons, Heat and Celtics each included players that were drafted in the top 5 of their class (Duncan, David Robinson, Shaq, Billups, ’Sheed, Shaq again, Wade, Garnett).
Partial list
Jordan’s Bulls, Magic’s Lakers, Bird’s Celtics, Isiah’s Pistons, Hakeem’s Rockets, Duncan’s Spurs, Walton’s Blazers.
I think the Lakers may have received Magic via trade, so that’s an exception. But the basic premise that teams win championships mainly because of top 5 picks made as the result of being bad holds much of the time.
by Engineering Problem on Dec 11, 2008 4:44 PM PST up reply actions
Nice work, but
Very interesting data—there seems to be at least a loose connection between average team age and success. However, many of the graphs that the OP drew a “regression line” through look like shotgun blasts rather than clear patterns. I doubt many of them have a R2 value of greater than 0.4. In other words, while there might be a general tendency for success to come with experience, having a bunch of 28 year olds on your team is not necessarily the recipe for wins.
Very nice post
Can you redo the charts and color eat dot with the team’s colors. Better yet, can you change each dot to the team logo? I’m sure that wouldn’t take that long at all.
I was going to call you PolishSam or PolymorySam as a joke, but I wasn’t sure you would get it. A lot of folks misspell animalmart1’s name.
Great post. Does early success indicate how a team may fair on the curve?
Do teams that do well at a very early age tend to progress at a higher rate than the average? Looking at the curve rate, it looks like we’ll be just below where Boston is right now, but I’m wondering whether that’s applicable to teams who acheive at earlier ages.
I'm a really really ridiculously good looking orange mocha frappaccino drinking manhammer sandwich
Give in to temptation
I'm a really really ridiculously good looking orange mocha frappaccino drinking manhammer sandwich
hahahaha
thats wut u get for being great, now everybody wants more. outstanding work, a true joy to read. you are sooooooo offishully a part of what makes the BEdge the only sight i turn to for Blazers news and perspective. thank you.
Travis please save us
by Sabonis4Ever on Dec 2, 2008 5:14 PM PST Gameday Open Thread: Blazers vs. Knicks on Blazer's Edge
If you are feeling ambitious
It would be interesting to learn the average age of the starting teams for the last ~15 NBA champions. Which was the youngest? What—and you might need a 25 year sample to answer this confidently—appears to be the optimum average and perhaps mix?
Which team had the youngest veterans?
Which team had the youngest two starters, say? Does it appear you have a realistic chance with two starters under 23? Without two over 27?
My guess is that it’s been done already. Whatever, it would be interesting.
stata?
what program did you use to run all the data? you’re at ucsd, right? there was another guy on here from SD i talked to about meeting up at a bar to watch a game some time. interested?
JAH
more followup
impressive work, obviously.
So, let’s so you are a bad team, like Charlotte. This seems to indicate that if you can simply keep a mediocre unit together past age 28, you’ll have a respectable team. Perhaps that’s actually true. Over the past 5 years, only 2 or 3 age 28+ teams have had losing records.
I think the next step is to follow individual teams over the course of 5-10 years. Are teams getting better (and older) in place, or is team age really a function of free agency, trades, etc.
M, period. Fresh, comma.
Correlation or causation?
Are the older teams better because they are older, or is it just that the bad teams dump their players for someone young in hopes of improving?
Perhaps teams are only allowed to get old together if they are good together. So perhaps the aging together is the result of being good, rather than the cause.
Do you like asparagus?
Yeah... tit would be hard to know
I have thought a bit about the trajectory of individual teams and the trickiest thing is that rosters change a lot from year to year. Teams add rookies and veterans and think the number and type of changes gets tricky to track very quickly. Just imagine trying to figure out what’s going on with a franchise like the Clippers! They were one of the younger franchises for most of the 90s and just never got any older because of how the team was managed.
Describing winning percentages of teams, given their age is pretty simple. Going the next step and trying to make projections about where a team will be in 3 years given a team’s age today is much harder.
all in all a really great post!!
A few things it would be interesting to investigate:
- Is the median a more stable measure of central tendency than the arithmetic mean?
- What is the relationship of variability (esp. on the ends of the distribution)? (i.e., does it make a difference if you have a team tightly locked around 28 versus if you have a mix of you and older players who average out to 28)
- It would be really neat to include a repeated measures type of analysis into this that would investigate not only winners of the finals but how these age trajectories set up nba dynasties (franchises who win more than half of their possible championships during the time period of some player(s)/coach core or even nba dynasty-lites (franchises who make it to more than half of their finals in post season appearances during the time period of some player(s)/coach core.
You note that you used the data from basketball-reference.com.. did it take a lot of cleaning and prep work to prepare the data set for analysis?
Boycott Rose Garden Concessions!!!
http://www.blazersedge.com/2008/11/8/657044/boycotting-rose-garden-con
It wasn't too bad....
The player-stats data is pretty clean and easy to import into Stata. Merging the player-age data with the team win pct numbers took an additional step.
I’ve also downloaded the data from basketballDatabase. It’s easier to import and merge in that format in some ways, but there are more errors and I have to calculate the age of the players each season myself.
This was amazing
Here I was, not reading it like an idiot, and then I said wowzers and saw it had 45 recs. I mean, I was GOING to read it, but I knew it’d have numbers and numbers are why I have Robots around doing my numbers work.
This was an amazing post, making somewhat complicated (to the idiot, like me) math stuffs into easy to understand words, and shows what we already all assumed— the Blazers are an extremely unique team right now. VERY young, and good (not great, but that’s coming).
The Blazers are also in a very unique situation where while most teams can’t afford to keep all the youth together after the rookie deals are up, we got Papa Allen writing blank checks for KP. Plus, the main core has no known ego or selfishness that might rear it’s ugly head and make keeping the player detrimental to the team.
In addition to our good record and team play, I cannot remember a similar situation to what the Blazers have. The Bulls found success (somewhat, since they only peaked at 49 wins) with youth, but they were pretty average as far as ‘stars’ go. And then, they wasted the cap space and their youth didn’t improve. Some say it could happen to us, but I think our youth just outclasses their youthful core (in every way possible).
It’s just an entirely unique situation. GOOD young players, super rich and committed owner, good smart GM (also young and New Wave with his thinking), cap space, and while there will be a minutes crunch there won’t likely be ego problems in our future.
What other team has been in our situation? It’s uncharted waters, as far as I can remember.
Last season we were the 3rd youngest team ever, and since the 1st and 2nd youngest team won a combined 31 games we were (by default) the most successful team at that age, ever. We ain’t much older this year… if we make the playoffs, would we be the youngest team to ever make the playoffs?
Like I always say, we are extremely lucky to be Blazer fans.
Mortimer
"It’s just an entirely unique situation."
I agree. I think this is what makes projecting the future pretty hard. The Blazers are in a unique situation. As the data shows, they are unique just in the relatively simple terms of their youth and success. The is no comprable team to the Blazers this year. They are sitting out there by themselves. Then you add the uniqueness of the management, ownership, and cap situation and it’s even more unique. Future success is by no means guaranteed, but there is certainly a lot to be excited about.
"why aren't there more older teams in the NBA?"
1. Are there enough players over 28 worth having on your team to fill more teams to an older age and better win %?
2. Do NBA insiders get progressively better at evaluating players as they age and weed out more of the weeds whereas at the younger ages they are still prone to uncertain /unsound thoughts about “potential”?
3. Do older players migrate to better / older teams? How much does the dynamics of the salary marketplace as it is operating today affect the options and the decisions of older players? Now this could change if more younger and less successful teams woke up to the value of vets, at least the value of vets in the mix with the right young guys.
4. Wave after wave of the top 40 draft picks or so signing every year does help flush the older guys out.
5. It would be interesting to see the % of total winshares (of whatever variety) of young, prime and old players for good, average and poor teams. Almost all teams are a blend and while the average age is interesting the mix would be worth highlighting too. It is not just whether the food is sweet or sour but how much of each is in the recipe.
Great Post!!
Last year the Blazers were the 3rd youngest team in NBA history.
The 1st and 2nd youngest teams in NBA history only won something like 10 to 12 games, and as we know we won 41 games last year. I didn’t see any numbers on how many games were won by the 4th, 5th, etc. youngest teams in NBA history.
Do you know how young the Blazers are VRS history this year? It’s probably not significant this year, but their win% VRS age this year seems to be way over the statistical norm.
GO
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