Benches and Blowouts
Saturday, March 1, 2008 | 11:17 PM ET
One of the more curious things about the Toronto Raptors this season is how many times they’ve absolutely blown their opponents out of the water. They’ve won eight games by 20 or more, including four games by 30 or more. Toronto has only won 32 games, so that a quarter of those wins are blowouts is unusual.
The question, though, is this: how much does a 39-point-win mean in the grand scheme of things?
If you ask a coach, they’ll likely say a win is a win, whether it’s by 39 points or one point. But one person who thinks that points matters is ESPN’s John Hollinger, who developed a tool to measure a team’s quality based in large part on point differential as opposed to wins and losses.
It’s not a new idea, but the interesting thing about Hollinger’s power rankings is that, once set, it essentially runs itself, thus completely taking out bias beyond the bias of the numbers themselves. Of all the little statistical measurements he’s come up with since joining ESPN, it may also be my favourite, if only because it doesn’t try to measure the immeasurable, to know the unknowable. Daily updates don’t hurt either.
This past week, Hollinger took a look at his rankings and realized something odd: the Raptors, a team that hasn’t put together a decent winning streak all year, was ranked fourth overall. (They’ve since dropped after their loss to Indiana Friday night). The article is now an Insider access only piece, but suffice to say that Hollinger credited Toronto’s performance with the stellar play of Chris Bosh and Jose Calderon and the team’s tendency to shoot the lights out. The T. Jose Caldeford blog asked Hollinger about the rankings and got some interesting answers here. (Link via the Mike Grange’s From Deep blog).
Hollinger makes good points, but still: fourth? Even the most optimistic fan of the team would find that hard to swallow.
It got me wracking my brain: if I assume the differential model is worth something (and I do), how do I reconcile the numbers with the team I see in front of me? The answer might be in those blowouts.
I’ll start with asking another question: what’s the difference between a 20-point win into a 40-point win? More often that not, it’s the quality of the reserves. To get a margin of victory to push past 20, you really need to be pouring it on, with your worst players clobbering the other team’s worst players. And I think most Raptors fans can agree Toronto’s bench is one of the best in the league.
Conversely, the New Jersey Nets are a team widely regarded before the Jason Kidd trade as having one of the worst benches in the NBA, or, at the very least, one of the biggest drop-offs in talent from starters to reserves. Interestingly, if you look at the league standings, the Raptors have a better +/- differential than their record would suggest, and New Jersey’s +/- is unusually bad given their won-loss record.
But if you took Toronto’s eight blow-out wins (and two blow-out losses) and capped the margin of victory in each of those games at 20 points, Toronto’s season +/- would go from +4.4 to +3.4, or a drop of one-point a game.
The Nets, on the other hand, have had eight losses of greater than 20 points and not a single victory above 20. If you did the same math with that team their +/- would rise from –4.6 to –3.6.
Choosing 20 as a cut-off point is entirely arbitrary and therefore not very scientific, but I did it to illustrate a point, which is this: sometimes blowouts are misleading. When the playoffs begin, and starters begin logging more minutes, Toronto’s bench edge may diminish, if not vanish altogether. So praise Toronto’s reserves for making all of those blowout wins possible. But don’t hold your breath that they’ll keep it up two months from now.
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About the Author
Paul Jay has been writing about basketball for seven years, working as a basketball columnist for Rogers Sportsnet and writing for CBC Sports, Raptors Insider, Dose and appearing on air with Sportsnet and Raptors TV. In his 12 years in journalism, Paul has written features for some of the best publications in the country, including the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, Saturday Night, Canadian Lawyer and This magazine. He first joined CBC.ca during the 2004 Athens Olympics and currently writes online for CBCNews.ca as a technology and science writer.
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Comments
Jason
Halifax
This article makes me laugh, actually. And though some people do say a win is a win, it is a win no matter how you look at it. Whether it's a 1 point close game or a forty point blow out, it only shows how much a team works well against another team, or how Toronto plays as a unit and recats to a disorganised team. This Hollinger system seems rather pointless, as it only remains a scientific determination on how a team will do. A score is only telling people on how well the teams are playing; if the score is rather close, that means the teams are playing very even, and depending on how high of a score or low of a score, tells the viewers that they are either playing very well, or both teams need practice. A huige blow out means the losing team played horrible and had no chnace what so ever, and a small blow out means the losing team could played better.
Numbers also often mean nothing. FOr example, the team having a bad week or the such. You base a teams success on inaccurate numbers.
Posted March 6, 2008 06:14 PM