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Several major problems with WoW (my critiques, though APBR probably has more. There was a huge knockdown dragout between Berri, Hollinger and the dude who works for the Sonics about 18 months ago):
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Google being my friend, I give you
Dan Rosenbaum (aforementioned Sonics guy)
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But all of this still begs bigger questions.
(i) Does an analysis of how team statistics predict wins (which in essence is what Wins Produced does) tell us much about how to use statistics to apportion credit among players on a team?
One of the implications of this approach is that there is no room for credit to be given for shot creation. The authors do not arrive at this assumption empirically; it is simply something they assume given their approach.
In my opinion, understanding the value of creating shots is perhaps the most important aspect of analyzing basketball statistics. If, like in baseball, players each got a turn to take their shot, then this would not be an issue. But that is not the case, so I have a hard time making sense of an approach that assumes away what I consider to be a critical aspect of the game of basketball.
(ii) Remember that without the team adjustments (which have practically no effect on the relative ratings of players), Wins Produced likely does a terrible job predicting team wins. So what this says is that two versions of Wins Produced that are practically identical, one does a great job predicting team wins and the other does a pretty lousy job. What does this say about using the prediction of team wins as a barometer?
(iii) This is not really a criticism of Berri and his co-authors, but I have always felt that our box score statistics tell us more than we give them credit for. For the most part, this book follows the typical approach in logically relating the values of a point scored, field goal missed, rebound, turnover, etc. But I have always felt that these stats also tell us something about players in addition to the impact on the game at the time they occurred. Could guys who turn the ball over or a lot not be as good help defenders? Might the guy who gets steals do a better job keeping the floor spaced? Might the great rebounder do a better job catching tough pasess or picking up loose balls?
This is the logic I have used in relating my adjusted plus/minus ratings to points, rebounds, assists, steals, etc. And I have tended to find that the weights for these stats differ a lot from the logic-based approaches of Dean Oliver, John Hollinger, and Berri and his co-authors.
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