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Monday, May 03, 2010
No, no, no, no, NO!
Freakanomics had a Q&A setup with Berri and their readers. I avoided reading the thread because, well, I knew something was going to be said that was going to be flat-out wrong. Someone sent me an email asking me to check it out. I’m reading, and I’m happy, and reading, and then…
Outcomes in basketball are less random. Over the past 30 years, the team with the best record in the NBA has won the NBA title 16 times. The team with the second-best record took the title eight times. Furthermore, over the past 30 years, only eight different teams have won an NBA title. In contrast, nine different teams have won the World Series in the past fifteen seasons.
So although basketball allows more teams into the playoffs, outcomes don’t appear as random as we observe in baseball. The reason for this difference is what we call “the short supply of tall people.”
They are simply repeating what they’ve said in the past, while completely ignoring the argument as I’ve shown it: the more individual confrontations that makes up an event, the less random chance plays a role. It’s obvious, isn’t it? If an NBA game lasted 12 minutes, how many games would the Cavs win? If an MLB game ended after 5 innings, how many games would the Royals win? The longer you play, the less chance affects the final outcome. What do you think Nadal’s record would be in 1-set matches compared to 5-set matches? Also, the more tightly centered the talent level, the more chance plays a role. If the basketball talent base is spread out wider than in baseball, than there’s less luck involved in basketball.
So, it comes down to two things: the spread in talent per confrontation, and the number of confrontations. It has nothing to do with anything else.
(One of the reader’s in that thread said the same thing as I did, but called it Scoring Action. I like that term better than Confrontations.)
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