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Of course, it is still the case that when decision makers in the league make mistakes there are clear consequences. If you build a team poorly, the team will frequently lose, and those that put the team together will likely lose their jobs. Making bad decisions can lead to a loss of employment in all industries, so this is a consequence most people understand. There is an even bigger consequence forbad decision making in sports. Millions of people watch and pay attention to sports. When coaches and general managers make mistakes in sports, not only do they lose their jobs, but they are also open to ridicule from a very large group of people. So people who make mistakes in the NBA suffer fairly severe consequences.

Suffering consequences for your mistakes, though, does not necessarily mean the people know why the mistakes were made. Let's go back to the story of the Pistons in 2004. We are told that the Pistons played "the right way" and were rewarded with a championship. When we look at the team's payroll, though, they put their money with their scorers. Even on a team playing the "right way," scoring is still what brings the most money to the players.

The Pistons' experience illustrates the problem with seeing mistakes in professional sports. Sports are a zero-sum game, which means the number of winners equal the number of losers. Regardless of what methods teams use to evaluate talent, half the teams will win, half will lose. At the end of the season, one team will still be crowned champion. Every year the champions confirm that the basic approach used in the NBA is correct. Let's put it this way. Imagine that every team believed it needed to play its mascot to win basketball games. If this were each team's approach, half the teams would win with their mascots, the other half would lose. At the end of the season, one team with its mascot would be crowned champion, confirming the need to play your mascot.

Following this analogy, scorers are the mascots of the NBA. We have shown that scoring by itself does not create wins. Yet many scorers, despite not offering many wins, are paid the most by their respective teams and are considered the key to whatever wins the team actually achieves. Sometimes this is not a problem. When the Spurs think their leading scorer, Tim Duncan, is their best player, they are right. When the Lakers thought that their two leading scorers, Shaq and Kobe, were their best players, they were right. When the 76ers, though, think their leading scorer, Allen Iverson, is their best player, the data tell a different story. Unfortunately, every year a team wins a title thinking their leading scorer is their best player; therefore, this particular mistake, without some statistical analysis, is quite difficult to see.

We would note that the focus on scoring may just be a way of simplifying the complex information talent evaluators face. The same abilities that allow a person to score in the NBA would also allow a player to rebound, generate steals, and create assists. Players like Jordan, Garnett, and Kobe are not just great scorers, but have athletic abilities that allow these players to accumulate rebounds and assists. So when people see an athlete who can score, a leap of faith might be made. If the player can score, he probably can do all the other things a team needs to win, and consequently significant scoring ability is seen as evidence that the player helps a team accumulate many wins. Unfortunately there are clear exceptions to this simplification. When scorers do not actually contribute significantly to wins, teams often end up losing. Consequently, teams have turned to other explanations for why losses accumulate. Teams talk about the importance of coaching and team chemistry. And they add and subtract players, hoping to find the combination that works. Every year, one team hits the jackpot, while others keep searching. Unfortunately, without the proper statistical tools, many teams are left in the dark.

And this is a point we wish to emphasize. Without statistical analysis, one cannot see how the actions the players take on the court translate into wins. One can play basketball. One can watch basketball. One can both play and watch basketball for a thousand years. If you do not systematically track what the players do, and then uncover the statistical relationship between these actions and wins, you will never know why teams win and why they lose. Staring at these players play is not a method that will ever yield the answers that the proper analysis of statistics will yield. And this is true if you stare for one day, or as we said, if you stare for a thousand years.

Excerpt from The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport, by David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook. (c) 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. By permission of the publisher, http://www.sup.org/.

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