In this week’s installment, I want to quickly touch on a few topics from the last week.
Marginal Value of Offense at the Rim and Beyond the Arc
First, I want to revisit the concept of marginal contributions on the team level. Using a framework of marginal gains or losses is extremely helpful across the gamut of topics for analysis, as when we are trying to determine the “value” of a given player, team or strategy, it’s always relative. There are 1,230 wins to go around in an NBA season — well, for now at least. I’m perhaps too much of a traditionalist to be supportive of the sort of omnibus approach to schedule changes that has been floated, but discussion of possible impacts is probably best left to a time when we see more concrete proposals.
But, given that fixed number of wins, if the absolute level of production rises, for example in the increasing numbers of players hitting heretofore rare milestones, this means a win is…
