Jouney’s Men

Many friends of mine does tour around the Philippines. This is their life and business. They love to go places and organize tours for clients.

One does it more frequently. He goes up and down the 7,1000 islands braving the airplane flights and mountain terrains. Some does it with less times. They might get the toll on physicality of the tour and rather stay at home and take care for their families.

PBA players do tours and go places, too. The places they go to are their prospective teams. Few does it more frequently. Some goes around the league with lesser constancy. See Figure 1, for the numbers of tours of some PBA players.

Figure 1

Their journeys may be for several reasons:

• Former team lacks no space for their talents. Did not sign the player for the next season/conference.
• New team needs their playing style in their rebuilding process. The player does fit in the rotation.
• The player does not get minutes in the former team. The player wants his butt lifted of from the bench.
• The former team trades the player to the new team in exchange of another player. Lopsided or not, it is still under the approval of the Commissioner.
• The former team disbands (RIP) or the former team gets timeout (COMA). No team, no play, player scrambles for employment.

Figure 2

From figure 1, the players with more frequent tours are Rich Alvarez and Mark Telan. Others are Mark Isip, Gilbert Lao, Billy Mamaril and Ali Peek. Only four of these guys’ tours are visualized in Figure 2.

We discuss Rich Alvarez’ journeys. Rich started with Shell. He was their prized rookie on those times. Played with Alaska for a while before suiting up for Red Bull (Barako Bull). Transferred then to Purefoods (B-MEG) and was then dealt with Ginebra. Last team he played with was with Air 21 before getting into wearing Talk and Text uniform. Out of possible 13 teams, he has been into seven. This is about almost 50% of the PBA.

Having toured those teams, Alvarez has had hard time of truly making a mark in the league though he was a main fixture of the Ateneo, UAAP champions. Transferring from one team to another gives him the frequent adjustment to the “new” team’s system of coaching and playing. Inserting himself into a line-up from one or two seasons to another, offers instability in his playing time and performance. As they say, “…a rolling stone gathered no moss.”

But this is however contrary to Ali Peek’ experience. Peek has been into six different teams counting Talk and Text as two places for him. Right now at TnT, he is playing as a dominating center at the middle. He gives the team a force to reckon with at  both ends of the court. He fits into the system. But it does not mean he was a fit also in his former teams. Because if he is, he won’t journey through his own tours.

Comparing Peek and Alvarez, tours in the PBA might turn out to be pleasant or not. But in any journey, you just have to move on from one place to another until you find your own place under the sun.

PBA On Twitter

There is an underlying economics with PBA players and coaches being on Twitter. See Figure 1 for the current state of PBA on Twitter.

Mainly, the reason they are on Twitter is to socialize. Maybe to speak their minds and connect with their family, friends and fans.

So they tweet.

They keep updated with one another. They update their followers. They talk about their playing performance and talk about their non-performance since they are riding the bench.

Figure 1

Running a successful company requires running a successful customer relations. Being reachable and accessible to the paying patrons. Understanding their issues and concerns with your product. Or just being there for them. Quickly replying and attending to their inquiries and questions.

This is what Twitter is bringing to the PBA. The Office of Commissioner did not ask them to make Twitter accounts but individually they signed up not knowing of the impact on the PBA economics.

• Twitter is free. PBA is not paying for any cost incurred but the PBA players and coaches pay for the internet connection and their gadgets to get into the Twitter.
• It connects the PBA to the people. It connects the players and coaches with their fans. It gives the media a quick link to the players and coaches.
• Fans appreciates when PBA players and coaches reply to their Twitter followers. They give the fans they are being valued and given time and attention by their hardwood heroes.
• PBA still knows they have a considerable audience out there. When adding all those Twitter followers they count about 178,000. If twenty followers are common to all, we still have about 174,000 people connected to PBA. This means you have this mass looking at their TVs each game night. This means a fraction of these numbers might go to your actual basketball show. And these numbers do not include fans outside the Twitter world.

Consider Chris Tiu, who is now playing with the guest Smart-Gilas in the PBA, having 62,000 followers. Consider Paul Artadi updating his fans regarding their practices and his new team. Consider Wesley Gonzales’ zany and funny replies to his followers. Consider Ali Peek’s intense conversation with his fans in Twitter. Rob Reyes’ connection with Pinoy sports bloggers via Twitter regarding his playing performance is big time. How about knowing Rabeh’s thoughts about the trade? Or Rabeh’s and Joseph Yeo’s discussion on Twitter about their losing game. These are only a few of what PBA is giving their customers on Twitter.

With PBA on Twitter, it is about the social experience with a big chunk of customer relations at its best.

Weekly Numb3rs

106 SHOTS
Air21 attempted this amount of field goals, including two and three points attempts, against Talk N Text. Out of those attempts, only 47 came through. This maybe an impact of the Texters’ defense or Air21’s inaccurate offense or Air21 in having new offensive weapons after the trade or all three reasons.  But this number is huge compared to TnT’s 89 attempts to shoot the ball. By the way, TnT won the game.

29 POINTS
Margin of B-MEG-Air21 game. This is the largest winning margin so far in the conference. This game was prior the trading of Air21’s three prized rookies to SMB in exchanged of four veterans.

13 GAMES
Out of 15, the TS% of the winning team is higher than the losing team. This is an observance of how good defense and good offense wins in the PBA nowadays. The two games deviating from this norm was won by ROS and Air21 over B-MEG and SMB respectively.

5 TRILLIONAIRE
Don Dulay is. When he was fielded by coach Tim Cone in their game against Smart-Gilas, Mr. Dulay did not register any negative stat for five minutes of court appearance. However, he also did not contribute to any positive stat. Across his name, the box score reads 5,000,000,000,000,000.

91.32 PERCENT
Highest TS% so far in the conference. This was attained by Ryan Reyes of the Talk N Text team. Having a usage of 28.35% when he is on the floor against Air21, this mark is considered high. One note though, Ryan had a TOV% of 40.65 in that game, diminishing his productivity. The game was played after the trade of SMB and Air21.

Fair Trade

Much has been said about the blockbuster trade between SMB and Air 21. Yet nowhere we can find an article discussing the transaction based on numbers. Some articles are very objective citing it was merely business dealings between the two franchises. Other comments come from subjective assumptions of who are affected by the trade outside the front offices and playing court.

So, I thought of coming up with a statement based on numbers to integrate objectivity on the exchanging of players. Using Win Score metric, a measure of player’s productivity I hope to extract some insights thereon using the players’ performance in the past All-Filipino conference.

Win Score = PTS + REB + STL + ½*BLK + ½*AST – FGA – ½*FTA – TO – ½*PF

When SMB and Air 21, at first, submitted the original trade plan, the players included three stalwarts from each. As shown in Table 1, Air 21 players have more productivity per 48 minutes with adjustment in age than the proposed SMB players on the trade block. With the premise that a basketball player regresses as he gets old, SMB players will have a lesser productivity in the coming seasons if they keep on playing. On the other hand, Air 21 young players will continue to develop, that is, if they will develop.

So, this first proposed trade is not balanced. SMB gets more and Air 21 gets less.

Table 1

When the commissioner turned down the trade, a revised agreement was submitted which was consequently approved. Four players from SMB will join Air 21 and the three rookies of Air 21 will suit up for SMB as shown in Table 2. Looking at the WS48 adjusted with age, SMB players are more productive compared with the Air 21 young guns.

Table 2

At the present productivity of the players, Air 21 gets more while SMB gets less. Again, with the premise that with age comes productivity regression, players going to Air 21 will match the productivity of players playing for SMB in the near future. Again, if Rabeh, Guevarra and Baclao will develop further.

Air 21 surely got the better deal in the trade considering the benefits they will enjoy in having experienced and championship caliber players in exchange for young developing players, that is if they develop. Meanwhile, down the road, in two or three years, regression in productivity will surely catch up with the older cagers.

Overall, this is a fair trade.

Visualization of PBA Trades

The figure below is my attempt to visualize the player trades or movements in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) for the year 2010-2011.

The solid lines represent the formal trades of players while the dotted lines are for players on-loan or temporary assignments.

• Barangay Ginebra did not transact any business even with their sister teams.
• Meralco Bolts as handled by Ryan Gregorio seems to be rebuilding and trying to find right pieces to form a winning franchise. Notice that there are direct trades between sister teams under MVP. They used conduits as much as possible.
• Air 21 is one of the busiest front office based on the figure.
• Barako Bull had exchanges with other teams where players on the rise were involved.
• Alaska, SMB and B-MEG had minimal business dealing with trying not to disrupt team composition.
• Talk N Text and Rain or Shine looks for good pieces around the league to boost their chances.
• Powerade’s player trades did not improve the team’s winning percentage.
• There were no trades between MVP and SMC teams.

There are underlying trade talks in the coming days, guess who will be involved?

Barakonomics

In Soccernomics book, one chapter is entitled “The Curse of Poverty”. In this section, the authors discussed why poor countries are poor in sports. They presented a methodology where they come up with the conclusion, poor countries are poor in sports.

This theory is also right with the Barako Bull Energy Boosters team in the PBA. Barako Bull have been poor in performance since they are poor.

Poor Team Performance. Table below shows the efficiency differential of PBA teams in the past conference.  Barako placed last in the win-loss standings, they also placed last in the efficiency differential considering their performance on both sides of the court.

From 2008 until the recent conference, the franchise has a 0.270 win-loss percentage where they dwell at the last spot in all elimination rounds.

Poor Performing Players. The Barako franchise history boost a list of superstar players in their roster since they jumped to the PBA from the PBL. Some of the notables are Kerby Raymundo, Willie Miller, Lordy Tugade, former Ateneo Blue Eagles: Enrico Villanueva, Larry Fonacier, Rich Alvarez and Paolo Bugia, Nelson Asaytono, Ato Agustin, Junthy Valenzuela, Mick Pennisi, and Cyrus Baguio among others. Just by having former Blue Eagles on the team might have good gate receipts. No wonder the team sold tickets in those times.

But not in the present times. Looking at Barako’s line-up last time, no player is considered a star who will provide people at the courtside seats. No player in the roster has claimed any PBA award in the past three years. Whenever Barako would have a rising star in the team, they would be quick to trade the guy in order to balance the team’s financial statements.

Poor Company Franchise. PBA is flocked by two largest conglomerates in the Philippines. One owned by the Cojuangcos, the other by MVP. Everybody uses cellphones and electricity. Everybody drinks beer, soda and gin. People need to feed their animals with feeds in an agricultural country like ours.

Seldom people will drink an energy booster, right?

Just compare TV commercials of those products and we can conclude who is poor or richer.

With this, a poor company can’t run a winning PBA team. It can only run a poor performing team.

In conclusion, the Barako Bull Energy Boosters’ achievements in the PBA reflects what they are. Poor.

All-Filipino Win Scores

The past All-Filipino conferences again shows a popular logic in basketball analytics that is performance is proportional to shooting efficiency. The figure below illustrates this point.

Figure 1

The scatter diagram presents that when True Shooting percentage (TS%) increases, the Win Score per 48 minutes (WS48) increases. Though TS% includes shooting statistics only and WS48 integrates all box scores data, the proportionality of both is very high.

Figure 2

Figure 2 gives us the offensive part and the defensive part of Win Score. For a player to be evaluated as a good producer, his name must lie within the upper right corner of the box. This entails playing better on both sides of the court. This is where Hatfield, Carey, Peek and Maierhofer land. The least productive players would be at the lower left corner of the figure. Notice some big men and guards are situated in that part of the graph.

To Pass or To Shoot

A player usually when holding the basketball has two strategies in mind. Shoot or pass. He can drive to the basket with shooting the ball in mind. He can drive to the basket and act as a decoy and fire the ball to an open teammate.

In basketball, we call players who are ball hogs or crocs. They always take the possession in their own hands by looking at the basket like its their own closet. Imagine using a Usage% of above 30% where you leave less than 70% for your other four teammates on the floor.

On the other hand, there are players who looks to make their teammates look good. They look to make plays mostly not for themselves alone but to involve their teammates in the rotation of the possession.

The graph below illustrates the AST% and Usage% in a scatter form. Note that formulas and definitions used were from Basketball Reference.

Usage percentage is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor.

Assist percentage is an estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on on the floor.

Figure 1

A basketball player would want not want to be on the lower right side of the figure. This is where notable ball hogs are in place – Cardona, Rabeh, James Yap, Gary David and Danny Seigle. Yes, they have the license to shoot. But they also have the license to make a pass, however they won’t. Keep in mind, Usage% does not define shooting efficiency thus this is only a player’s taking charge of the team’s ball possession including shots and turnovers.

A player would want to be where Alapag, Cabagnot, Artadi and Paolo Hubalde stand in the graph. Use some of the possessions yet distribute to the other same shirt colored players on the court. I am not saying they are efficient shooters or better play makers but they surely involve their team mates a lot. They are team players. They are point guards.

Does it mean points guards only have this kind of characteristic? At least that is revealed by the figure. It maybe true, it maybe not. But in no way a shooting guard or a shooting forward, a power forward or a center can’t do that.

Another scenario is, what if the receivers of the assist of these team players are the ball hogs? Well, the graph reveals this practical theory. This is a clear team dynamics or composition where a team needs a passer, a shooter and some defenders or role players, etc.

All-Filipino Championship Games Efficiency

The current championship series is one for the books.

Both teams are loaded with class A players and seasoned veterans. Both teams are well coached, at least I believe. Both teams led the eliminations. Both team have a strong backing of conglomerates.

Both teams are said to be more offensive than defensive, then it is time to look into what is making a difference in the series. Offense or defense?

Figure 1. Adjusted Offensive Efficiency

Based from the win-loss record of the series, we can see from Figure 1, that the adjusted offense of both team are consistent. Whichever team wins a game is ahead of the offensive efficiency over the other.

Figure 2. Adjusted Defensive Efficiency

Figure 2 is a revelation. TNT, win or lose, leads SMB in the defensive efficiency department. TNT allows an average of 91 points for SMB to score. On the other hand, SMB allows TNT to put in an average of 93.8 markers in all the five games.

Figure 3. Adjusted Efficiency Differential

Summing up those in figures 1 and 2, Figure 3 shows TNT is enjoying a good basketball performance over SMB on both ends of the court. In all five games, TNT has a higher adjusted efficiency differential.

If this trend would continue, expect TNT to snatch the trophy. Unless, SMB starts playing defense.

PS. Click this link which provides the spreadsheet used for the calculations and figures.

Predicting PBA Semifinals Outcome – Update 2

SMB and TnT won over their rivals with a respectable points margin in their last meetings. The predicted probabilities to win in the coming games gives them the due advantage.

Table 1