On Wednesday, Henry Abbott of Truehoop and ESPN offered the following bet/prediction: (Darko) Milicic will help his team more than (Shaquille) O’Neal will this upcoming season.
Mr. Abbott based his argument mostly on relative age and minute allocation and he challenged someone to take the opposing viewpoint for a friendly public wager. When I first saw this, my first impression was to throw down but a statistical examination and taking situation into account, revealed that the has a chance at being right. I wasn’t the only who reached a similar conclusion . Prof. Berri’s noted this on his blog as well (see here).
My logic on this breaks down as follows:
Darko has been atrocious but there’s a good chance that Shaq performance will fall of a cliff . If their performace is equal at .050 WP48, Darko will win based on age. I would lay odds 3-2 in Shaq’s favor if I were laying a line but I wouldn’t take the action if offered (too risky).
The point of this post however is to answer reader requests. In the comments on Prof. Berri’s blog, some lively discussion took place and the following question was asked by reader Chicago Tim:
“I’ll note that Michael Jordan produced 10 wins with Washington at age 39, and Derrick Mutumbo produced 8 wins in Houston at age 40 (and in far fewer minutes than Jordan). Any other productive oldsters in NBA history?”
Since we are all about the fan service, here’s a table with every performance of greater than 5 wins produced on or after the age of 35:
There are in fact 99 of these seasons produced by 52 players. There are 521 individual seasons by players 35 or older since the merger so this feat happens about 19% of the time. The kings of this list?:
Stockton & Malone share the honor with the Chief nipping their heels. Another fact of note:
Where an older player having a season of >5 Wins produced used to be a rarity, it is now becoming increasingly common. I argued (here , here and here) that the quality of basketball in the NBA has gone up to it highest levels ever partly because medical advances have allowed older player to prolong their careers and the data here seems to reflect that hypothesis.
Chicago Tim
08/06/2010
Here’s the link to Prof. Berri’s table giving Jordan 10 wins when he was 39:
http://www.wagesofwins.com/MJCareer.html
Why the discrepancy?
I never realized that in 1997 and 1998, when Utah had great teams that would have won it all in most years, Stockton was 35 and 36 and Malone was almost 34 and 35 (birthday in July). And then they kept going! Wow.
arturogalletti
08/06/2010
I’m using Andres’ Automated numbers. The minute allocation by position is different. Prof. Berri has him 100% at SG. The algorithm goes 48% SG and 52 % SF
todd2
08/07/2010
Nice post, Arturo. I was surprised to see Bob Lanier on the list. He was plagued by inuries through most of his career.
arturogalletti
08/07/2010
He was consistent when he played. He’s an example of a guy who I think has a longer career nowadays.
Mark N
08/08/2010
I hate to say this, but the graph of number of >5 win seasons by over 35 players seems to track the steroid boom in other sports.
arturogalletti
08/08/2010
It’s an interesting point. I do tend to think it has more to do with advances in arthroscopic surgery myself. Basketball is evil on the knees.