Sports

Defense Wins Games

Bowen Blocks Dirk Matthew Yglesias and Tyler Cowen both consider the eternal question of whether defense or offense is more important, especially in the context of new NBA rules that allow for more scoring. Apparently some folks are arguing that, since it’s now easier to score, a team’s priority should be to bring in offensive-minded players, rather than concentrating on defense. (I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to identify the logical flaw there.) Yglesias argues that offense and defense must both be important, since the goal is to end the game with more points than the other team:

I concede that the new rules have made it harder to play defense. I fail to see, though, how that makes defense less important. Two factors determine who wins a basketball game: how many points your team scores and how many points the other team scores. Since you have the ball roughly half the time and the other team has the ball roughly half the time, it stands to reason that offense and defense should have exactly the same importance.

Unfortunately, that last bit is just as logically flawed as the previous argument. The truth is that defense is (still) significantly more important than offense in winning games.

How can that be, if teams (basically) spend the same amount of time, or number of possessions, on offense and defense? To decide which skill is more important, we have to consider the variation in results obtained by being good at one vs. being good at the other. In other words, which has a bigger effect on wins: being one of the best offensive teams, or being one of the best defensive teams?

Yglesias looks at some individual playoff results, which are somewhat inconclusive. But we can just look at the season stats and compare the results of being good at offense vs. being good at defense. Of course, we’re faced with deciding how to measure those skills. Points scored is actually not a good measure, since that is affected more by the pace of the game than by true offensive or defensive prowess. Points per possession would be perfect, but I don’t know where to find that stat. So instead let’s just look at Team Offensive/Defensive Field Goal Percentage (FG%), which is a pretty good proxy for offensive/defensive aptitude.

What you should really do is to type in all the data and correlate with wins, but that sounds like work. Instead, let’s just define a “good offensive/defensive team” as one in the top 10 of the 30 teams in the NBA in offensive or defensive FG%, respectively, and “bad” as being in the bottom 10. We immediately see that there is a greater range in defensive aptitude than in offensive aptitude. The median good offensive team shoots at a .474 clip, whereas the median bad offensive team shoots .439, for a difference of .035. But while the median good defensive team holds their opponents to .439, the median bad defensive team only holds their opponents to .478, for a difference of .039. In other words, there is a slightly bigger difference between good and bad defensive teams than good and bad offensive teams. Concentrating on defense, it should follow, would potentially have a bigger outcome in the win/loss columns.

And it does. The winning percentage of the good offensive teams is .580, while that of the bad offensive teams is .413, for a difference of .167. But the winning percentage of the good defensive teams is .615, while that of the bad defensive teams is .358, for a difference of .257. That’s a substantial difference. A good defensive team is much more likely to be a winner than a good offensive team.

The simple ex post facto explanation is just that all NBA players are pretty good scorers, or at least that the players who do the bulk of the scoring are all pretty good. There’s not too much of a difference in overall efficiency between the very-good and the truly excellent. But defensive abilities are much more variable, and perhaps also more dependent on coaching and team dynamics. Putting your effort into defense has a larger marginal payoff than putting it into offense. Which most coaches would agree with. People these days like to blame Pat Riley for that, but I think Bill Russell figured it out long ago.

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Throwing While Black

Warren Moon always wanted to be a quarterback. He had all the physical tools, as well as tremendous leadership abilities and a fierce determination to win. Only one problem: he was black. As stupid as it may sound, not too long ago conventional wisdom held that black people couldn’t be quarterbacks — they were athletes, not thinkers.

Moon was a successful high school football player in LA, despite playing in the kind of atmosphere where you received death threats from gang members playing for the opposing team. But he couldn’t get a scholarship offer from a major college. Well, that’s not exactly right — he did get offers, but only under the condition that he switch positions to running back or defensive back. One school, Arizona State, recruited him as a quarterback, but rescinded their scholarship offer after they signed two other (white) quarterbacks.

Warren Moon Determined to play the position he wanted to play, Moon went to junior college for a year, where he personally sent game films to major programs throughout the country. He was finally offered a scholarship by the University of Washington, where the team had been plagued by racial tensions. At UW he was the target of relentless taunting from fans, and his own teammates expressed skepticism of his ability. Nevertheless, in his senior year Moon led the Huskies to their first Rose Bowl in fifteen years, where they beat Michigan in a stunning upset.

Moon was named MVP of the Rose Bowl, but when the NFL draft came around, nobody was interested. He wasn’t invited to any combines or private workouts for teams. Word was out that he refused to convert to defensive back or tight end, which were the only positions at which NFL teams would consider him. As Moon put it, “The quarterback is the face of the organization, and white owners still weren’t ready for that face to be a black man. The owners wanted somebody to take to the country club, and they weren’t ready for that to be a black man.”

Undaunted, he signed with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League. In six years in the CFL, he led the Eskimos to five Grey Cup championships, winning two championship-game MVP awards, and set a league record for passing yards in 1983. He was inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame in 2001.

The NFL finally caught on, and Moon was signed by the Houston Oilers in 1984. He and his family were again the subject of death threats, and his wife and children were eventually forced to watch the games from a private stadium box. After one game in 1991, on the verge of signing a new contract, he had to explain to his nine-year-old son what it meant when a fan in the stands had yelled “I can’t believe they gave that f—— n—– $14.3 million.”

Moon persevered, setting the Oilers club record for passing yards in his first year, but didn’t really come into his own until his third year in the NFL. He led the league in passing in 1990 and 1991, joining Dan Fouts and Dan Marino as the only quarterbacks to ever post consecutive 4,000-yard seasons. He went to the Pro Bowl nine times. By the time he retired in 2001, he was third all-time in NFL passing yardage behind Marino and John Elway, despite having played his first six years in the CFL. If he had played in the NFL for those six years, throwing for 2,500 yard per year (an extremely conservative estimate), he would have finished his career as the league’s all-time leading passer by a substantial margin.

Warren Moon wasn’t the first black quarterback in the NFL, but he set an example that made it enormously easier for others to follow in his footsteps. There are now several African-Americans starring at quarterback in the NFL; sufficient evidence, in the eyes of some, to say “See? Racism doesn’t exist!” Ignoring decades of history, they will tell you with a straight face that the competitive pressures of running a professional sports franchise make it impossible to be racist, since any non-racist organization will be able to scoop up all the undervalued players. (Somehow that sounds familiar.) This from the same folks who, not too long ago, argued that “the White community” was entitled to disenfranchise blacks because Whites were “the advanced race.”

Today, Warren Moon is being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, becoming the first player ever to be in both the CFL and NFL Halls — oh yes, and the first black quarterback to be inducted. Congratulations, Warren; thanks to the example you set, you won’t be alone for long.

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Weltmeisterschaft

I haven’t had the time to type up the answer to yesterday’s quiz, so instead why not a World Cup open thread? It was pretty easy to discern the pattern in the quarterfinals, where Portugal beat England, Italy beat the Ukraine, France beat Brazil, and Germany beat Argentina — all of the Eurozone squads were victorious, while those nations still puttering along with their local currencies were left to go home and lick their wounds. Hooray for globalization!

But what is it that separates Les Bleus and the Azzurri, victorious in the semifinals, from their opponents? I mean, besides a bluish tinge, a strong wine tradition, almost identical flags, and amazing goals? (And being picked by me to lose?) Eventually it hit me: these were the countries that have been home to Popes! Sometimes simultaneously!

So what will happen in Sunday’s final? Italy has had more Popes, but France has been more of a leader in unifying Europe. A titanic struggle between the temporal and spiritual realms awaits. Allez les Bleus! Forza Italia! (I will, at the time, actually be in Italy, so I’m leaning slightly Forza over Allez, but I wouldn’t bet against that Zizou guy in his last professional game.)

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Fiddling with the World Cup

So a lot of visitors have been coming to CV to read Mark’s post on the Physics of Beckham. What’s more, the rest of the blogosphere is thick with commentary on the World Cup — 3 Quarks Daily has Alex Cooley reporting and Jonathan Kramnick grumbling, the Volokh Conspiracy has David Post enthusing and Todd Zywicki critiquing, and Crooked Timber has been hosting rollicking open threads. Who would have thought that people were interested in soccer? It’ll never be as popular as string theory, but there’s definitely some interest there.

Actually, philistine American though I may be, I love the World Cup. And I myself was doing Beckham blogging long before it had become fashionable. The World Cup is everything the Olympics should be, but isn’t. It’s a spectacle of true international importance, featuring a sport that people care about even in the off years, full of compelling personalities and a rich history, in which a country can’t dominate simply on the basis of a superior entertainment-industrial complex. And I have no desire to change the rules of the game to suit my uneducated predelictions. Even though basketball is my sport of choice, I have no problem with the paucity of scoring; just as I can appreciate the ebb and flow of the scoreboard and the drama of big runs and quick turnarounds in hoops, I can also savor the exquisite rarity of goals in soccer, with the attendant ebb and flow of anticipation as scoring chances are mounted and frustrated. I have no problem with the offside rule, nor would I want to see the goal size increased. Nor am I one of those postmodernists who would turn the whole thing into hockey. I don’t even have any problem with the idea that the world’s best team has a star named Kaka, or that the French think they can compete by fielding exactly the same players that won the Cup eight years ago.

That is to say, I am not a hater. So let’s nevertheless admit that there are a couple of things that everyone, from the most clueless newbie to the most knowledgeable expert, can admit are dramatically wrong with the game. And, perhaps, easily fixable.

The first is the refereeing. Not something Americans can feel culturally superior about, as the refereeing in the NBA or NFL is just horrible. But still, the quality in the Cup thus far has been atrocious, and not just because the USA was jobbed against both Italy and Ghana. (Against the Czechs they got what they deserved.) For one obvious thing, there is only one guy out there, expected to police every hidden elbow and maliciously-aimed foot? The notion is absurd on the face of it, and it’s hardly surprising that the difference between an innocent tackle and a game-altering penalty kick is basically a coin toss. (Has anyone before me noticed that the home-field advantage is really quite considerable in these games? They have? Okay, good.) And then you give to these subjective judgments an absolutely tournament-altering power — red cards not only send off a player, but keep him out for the next game, and force the team to play shorthanded for the rest of the match? The situation ensures that the amateur-thespian histrionics after a touch foul for which the Italians are infamous will always be amply rewarded. It’s not an admission of weakness to try to improve this mess somehow; surely nobody wants NFL-style reviews of the calls, but there must be ways (more referees, more latitude with the severity of sanctions) to make the games more fair.

But the real travesty, which I am absolutely convinced must be roundly despised by everyone in their right minds, is the shootout. I mean, come on. Some of the world’s best athletes run themselves ragged for over an hour and a half, with half the planet hanging breathlessly on the result, and it’s decided by a few free kicks from the penalty mark? That’s just insanity. The first World Cup final that I watched live (on TV) was Brazil-Italy in 1994, featuring a scoreless tie after regulation and extra time, the excitement of which was thoroughly destroyed by the shootout decision. This is embarassing, and has to stop. Especially because there is a completely obvious solution: let them keep playing! Sudden-death overtime. Some folks might worry that such an overtime period would just drag on forever. So, fine, let it! It won’t really go forever, because the players will get tired (and their number will be declining due to red cards!), and the ensuing sloppiness will make goals increasingly likely. And the excitement level would be amazing, adding to the drama of the world’s greatest sporting tournament rather than completely undermining it.

So come on, FIFA, do the right thing. Adjust a few knobs here and there on this World Cup thing, you may actually have something.

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Friday iChing: March Madness edition

It’s been a long time since we’ve busted out the Friday iChing, in which we use songs from our iTunes playlist as Tarot cards to tell the future. Fortunately Steinn has kept the tradition alive, but it’s time we step up to the plate. Also, substantive blogging is hampered by my travel schedule at the moment — and wouldn’t you know, I fly all the way to southern California just to get rained on.

Since it has been a while, and we don’t know when it will happen again, we should take advantage of the situation to ask a question of great magnitude and import: Will the plucky #2-ranked Villanova Wildcats and their scrambling four-guard lineup be able to charge through March Madness to win the NCAA basketball tournament? We point and click and the randomizer whooshes… The key explains each of the cards.

  1. The Covering: Madeleine Peroux, This Is Heaven To Me
  2. The Crossing: Thelonious Monk, Epistrophy
  3. The Crown: Bob Marley, Keep On Moving
  4. The Root: Vladimir Horowitz, Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2
  5. The Past: Von Freeman, I Love You
  6. The Future: Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song
  7. The Questioner: Yohimbe Brothers, Psycopathia Mojosexualis
  8. The House: LL Cool J, Jingling Baby
  9. The Inside: Ute Lemper, But One Day
  10. The Outcome: Squeeze, I Want You

Well, sometimes the Oracle speaks pretty clearly, even if it doesn’t tell you what you want to hear. The Covering simply restates the obvious: it would be great to win the national title. The Crown, explaining the best that can be obtained, is “Keep On Moving,” which I take to imply that we can at least expect some advancement into later rounds. Vonski’s “I Love You” represents the past, an obvious allusion to Nova’s spectacular upset of Georgetown to win the 1985 national title in one of the most thrilling basketball games of all time. The Inside implies that we fans hope/expect to win it one day again — but the Outcome, “I Want You,” while again stating the obvious nevertheless seems to promise something other than complete fulfillment. So, either the iPod is just teasing us, or it’s going to be close-but-no-cigar for the valiant Wildcats this year.

That’s okay, so long as it’s not Duke, we can all be happy.

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Like this!

You know who I would not want on my baseball team? A. J. Pierzynski.

Google the phrase clubhouse cancer and the first two results will be stories about Chicago White Sox catcher A. J. Pierzynski. Teammates and members of the media use those words and others—unprofessional, immature, arrogant, aloof—to describe him. His baseball misdemeanors are legion: chirping at the opposition, bitterly contesting balls and strikes (very stupid for a catcher, who must win goodwill for his pitcher), and venting his frustrations on opposing first basemen. “He doesn’t have a lot of baseball etiquette,” says one ex-teammate. “He’ll deliberately step on your foot at first base, then say, ‘Man, I didn’t mean to do that!'”

The most telling of the many, many (seriously, you wouldn’t believe how willing people were to talk about this guy) Pierzynski anecdotes we heard took place during spring training in 2004. Pierzynski, crouched behind the plate, took a pitch to the groin. Rushing to his aid, trainer Stan Conte asked him how he felt. “Like this!” Pierzynski grunted, then savagely kneed Conte in the balls.

“You just want to choke him,” says the ex-teammate, who has also played against him. “You want your pitcher to hit him in the head.”

Via Gapers Block.

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