MVN: Most Valuable Network

Does NBA coaching make a difference?

Professor Berri is about to unleash a book entitled, I believe, Stumbling on Wins (which I have preordered... his last book was tremendous).  Anyway, according to Slate.com the book will argue that NBA coaches make very little difference.  If that is the argument, I think its wrong, or else it has to assume a certain level of honesty and competence to be right. 

In other words, I truly believe that if I wanted to sabotage an NBA team, I could do so by ordering the coach to distribute minutes in an irrational, non-optimal manner.  Thus, if the coach is either trying to sabotage the team or is an incompetent manager of playing minutes, he could have a negative impact on the team's overall success (I am borrowing my theory from, or basing it upon an analogy to, Professor Earnshaw Cook's identical argument about the impact a baseball manager can have upon a baseball team's win capacity) .  Chicago Bulls coach Vinnie Del Negro seems to be making my case for me.

Two times this season I have ranked the NBA's starting units and reserve units according to each units "+/-" per minute production (the latest rankings will appear tonight in the next post on this blog).  On both occasions one team had production numbers that were the opposite of what one would expect.  And both times the "opposite" team was the same team... the Chicago Bulls.

The Bulls starting unit production is horrible... near the bottom of the NBA.  The Bulls bench unit is excellent... near the top of the NBA.  Since the Bulls starting unit (like all starting units) receives about 2/3rds of the team's available court time, that is what you call a non-optimal distribution of playing minutes. And it almost certainly must be harming the Bulls. 

At the moment they are a 15-20 team, and their pythagorean suggests they are even worse. But it is very possible they would be better with better coaching.  If the starting unit is producing -4.6 points per minute, while the reserve unit is producing +0.8, it is almost certain that someone or someones on the Bulls reserve unit ought to be getting starting minutes, and vice versa (one of my candidates for fewer minutes would be the wildly overrated Ben Gordon).

Thus I think coaching CAN make a difference.  If the coach does not know what he is doing, or if he is dishonest (remember Pete Rose?), he can either knowingly or unknowingly sabotage a team's productive capability.  And I would question whether that is what is happening right now in Chicago.      

ADDENDUM:

I just did some dirty math to try to estimate how many games Del Negro's weird distribution of playing time cost the Bulls.  Lets assume -- and I realize its a bit reckless, but lets do it anyway -- lets assume you can reverse the numbers through an optimal distribution of playing time.  In that case the Bulls overall point differential would be -178.4.  At the moment it is about -717.6.  I estimate that for every win above or below .500 is worth about 159 points.  Thus, the Bulls are lucky at the moment by 2.5 games.  Their pythagorean, as well as my estimate, suggests they should be 4.5 games below .500, which would make their record 13-22 rather than 15-20.

Now, if you take their estimated "optimal distribution" numbers, a reverse of their starter/bench averages, they ought to be at -179 points, and thus about a game below .500.  In other words they ought to have about 16.5 wins, and if you assume the same amount of luck, 18.5 games.  Thus, one could argue that incompetent coaching has cost the Bulls about 3.5 games.

 Questions/Comments/Ideas for future posts?:  Email me anytime!  That's Ty at bucks_diary@yahoo.com