I am not a Bill Simmons hater. The guy has some excellent observations about the NBA. He knows a lot about professional basketball in the United States and can be sometimes clever with his writing, and uses his own platform shrewdly. I admire that.
When push comes to shove, I would actually describe myself as a Bill Simmons hater hater. And yes, you read that last sentence correctly.
This time of year, however, Simmons begins spouting nonsense about college basketball because he watches four NCAA tournament games and it makes my blood boil.
Please, Mr. Simmons, when it comes to writing about college basketball: Click on the little “X” in the right-hand corner of the window you’re working on and put the laptop away. The blathering must stop.
Simmons’ latest blog entry includes the following gem:
The biggest tournament shocker for me: The "powerful" Pac-10 failing to live up to the hype, keeping just three teams alive in the first round and then having two of those teams nearly get toppled in the second round. (By the way, count me among those who thought the Pac-10 was better than every other conference. The lesson, as always ... well, you knew already.)
It is the quotation marks around powerful with which I take exception.
The Pacific-10 was powerful, Bill, you just didn’t spend enough time thinking about what the heck you were writing. The Pac-10 placed three teams in the Sweet 16: Tied for the best in the land.
What do you mean “powerful”?
Now, I must warn you: What follows is a statistical breakdown of the conferences. If numbers with decimal places make your knees tremble, I implore to turn around now. This could get ugly.
First, I would like to place my biases on the table. I reside and pull for ACC teams. This may sway my analysis somewhat, but I hope it does not.
I base this analysis on kenpom.com’s Pythagorean Winning Percentage (PWP), a weighted average of offensive and defensive efficiency.
The easiest and most straightforward way to do this is to average the PWP for the entire conference and to see where that pits us.
| Average PWP By Conference | ||
| Rank | Conference | Avg PWP |
| 1 | B12 | 0.885 |
| 2 | P10 | 0.874 |
| 3 | ACC | 0.873 |
| 4 | SEC | 0.843 |
| 5 | BE | 0.836 |
| 6 | B10 | 0.828 |
| 7 | MVC | 0.722 |
| 8 | A10 | 0.704 |
| 9 | MWC | 0.672 |
| 10 | CUSA | 0.629 |
This table is especially illuminating, given the dearth of folks out there picketing for the Big 12 to be named basketball’s best conference. It also appears to give credence to Mr. Simmons’ comment about the Pac-10. It says a lot about the strength of Kansas and Texas that they were able to survive such an outstanding conference.
However, let’s think about this further, the Pac-10 contains Oregon State. OSU is quite possibly the worst team in any major conference.
They have a PWP of 0.353, good for 199th in the country. One strong or weak team does not a conference make. You wouldn’t say Conference USA was a strong conference just because Memphis was in it, would you?
If we drop the best and worst teams from each conference and then continue with the analysis, we have:
| Average PWP By Conference Best/Worst Team Dropped | ||
| Rank | Conference | Avg PWP |
| 1 | P10 | 0.926 |
| 2 | B12 | 0.890 |
| 3 | ACC | 0.875 |
| 4 | SEC | 0.850 |
| 5 | BE | 0.850 |
| 6 | B10 | 0.846 |
| 7 | MVC | 0.743 |
| 8 | A10 | 0.711 |
| 9 | MWC | 0.694 |
| 10 | CUSA | 0.642 |
Holy cow! Look at the difference between the Pac-10 and the Big 12. What a gap!
The strength of Washington St., Stanford, USC, and Arizona (plus some other quality lower-tier teams) really buoys Pac-10 to the top of the list, making them clearly the top conference this past year.
Listen, Bill, just because your Final Four team, USC, didn’t make it because they were matched up against a woefully under-seeded Big 12 (there it is again!) team in Kansas St. doesn’t mean you have the right to go dumping on the entire conference.
(All stats courtesy of kenpom.com)
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5 months ago
A few questions: (1) If I change variables in the formula used to have different weighting than they currently do, how does that effect the outcome? (3) related to this - how do we know it is not missing some key variable all together? (3) is a 3 - 5 % change in this variable a significant amount of difference to distinguish teams? (4) each conference has a different number of teams, can we normalize for that somehow? When you start geting rid of two teams in the Pac-10, that is much different than getting rid of two teams in the Big East.
All that put aside, I get your point. By some measures, you could argue the Pac 10 as the best conference and, therefore, Bill Simmons is a C-Bag :)
4 months ago
These are all excellent points - mostly, my answers will consist of "I'm lazy and didn't want to do this or that." But let me try to address them.
(1) The "weighting" is estimated by using the log5 method. Ken Pomeroy has calibrated the weight by using the weight that closest approximates a team's true winning percentage. It doesn't say specifically how he established the "best" weight (minimizing the sum of squared errors?) So, I'll refer you to his website - see the link above - for further questions. I've email Mr. Pomeroy on many occasions and he's very receptive and responsive to email.
(2) We don't. The analysis isn't adjusted for confounding, but it's a nice little example. Don't you think?
(3) I'm not working with standard errors here - so I'm unable to say whether they are statistically different from one another. Presumably, I could bootstrap the results, but that seems like a lot of work.
(4) Also a great point, when I was whipping these out, I definitely thought about this. When nothing came quickly - i.e. when I had my short burst of inspiration to write this article - I just went with straight means. Again, like the answers to (2) and (3), the actual answer is I'm lazy and probably could come up with a number of teams weighted average, but I think the example serves on it's own.
Finally, my point isn't necessarily that Bill Simmons is a jerk (which he very may well, but I don't know the guy) - it's just that he's sloppy and that's not fair to his readers.
4 months ago
Ben, Wonder if you aren't actually giving more credibility to a writer than he deserves. Scientific measurement of college sports is a great sport in and of itself. Anyone who is relatively adept with statistics can, and does, manipulate them to support their position. Heck, such skills are critical for any publicly held company to evaluate when selecting an accounting firm to compile their annual report.
Back to your point. Readers should be discriminating in their evaluation of writers if they want solid reporting. Editorial is obviously another case. In making blanket statements about which conference has the deepest talent, results should be the primary resource for establishing a position. That said, player talent and coaching talent in the Pac-10 is outstanding. Looking at the three Pac-10 teams in the Sweet 16, each has an excellent chance to advance to the Elite 8. Should that play out, the argument as to the strongest conference this season will be tilted even more in favor of the Pac-10.
Finally, my closing point would be, "Bill who?"
from 4 months ago
Lew - I agree with your comments that readers ought to be savvy about picking who they read if they want good reporting.
However, I disagree with the comment about statistics. The Benjamin Disreli's old saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." doesn't necessarily apply if the analysis is transparent and the data is good, which I think it is here. Also, if people disagree with the analysis (or just have questions - like AJ above) which is great, I love disagreement, they need to call out the statistician. Although, I guess it should be duly noted that I punted on most of the questions.
Unrelated note that I didn't include in the article: Isn't it amazing that conference USA's PWP went UP when I dropped the best/worst teams? It really tells you how truly abysmal Rice is, because the down-pull from rice was even greater than the up-pull from Memphis, even though Memphis had an outstanding season.
4 months ago
I love Simmons work but hate his annual March madness stuff when he think he can watch 4 days of basketball and pass it off like he was paying attention for the entire season. I also hate how all he seems to care about is breaking down the draft prospects for all the big-time players - it'd be nice to table that discussion until closer to the NBA draft.
from 4 months ago
Preaching to the choir, here. Thanks for the comment.
4 months ago
Simmons is just a different animal than most sportswriters, and that's why he's so successful.
Taking a side on every issue is part of his "everyman" vibe that his fans like, and that's what pays his bills.
Love him or hate him, everyone knows who he is - and that counts for as much as anything in the media business.
As mentioned, Simmons has always been insightful and well-educated about the NBA, even five years ago when a lot less people cared.
But what separates Simmons from most sportswriters is that he writes about EVERYTHING. If John Clayton talked NBA or NHL, you'd say "What the hell does he know?" and disregard his opinion immediately. But Simmons has crafted a niche where he can write a column about whatever he wants and and pull it off.
The "haters" are usually people who don't realize that if Clayton is the CNN of sportswriters, Simmons is the E! network.
Ben, and those who've left comments, you're all smart enough to know when to disregard his opinion. The analysis done in this piece is more than Simmons has ever done regarding NCAA basketball in his life.
I say more power to him, and am definitely not a Simmons hater either. I consistently enjoy his work, but you have to approach a lot of his stuff without dissecting his expertise.
Ben, I like the way you've disproved his statement without being disrespectful.
The only place where I differ with you is when you tell him to "click the X" instead of writing about the NCAA tournament. I think writing about everything (even stuff he admittedly has no clue about) is what makes him the "Sports Guy."
I am often entertained by the random criteria with which he makes his analysis, including things like the Karate Kid analogies. If he only wrote about the NBA, while sliding in NFL point spread picks, he'd lose a lot of the vibe that got him to where he is in the business.
from 4 months ago
Many thanks for the well thought out comment.
You're probably right about Simmons. I actually have been wanting to write this type of article for a while and Simmons' comment is what set me off on it. Like you said, his appeal does come from the everyman opinion he takes and that's why he's so successful. He probably spouts nonsense in other forums (the NFL?) that I take less umbrage to and enjoyment from because I am less well versed in those areas.
It's also a matter of delivery. Simmons delivers his opinions with such dogmatic expression that it's easy for those unfamiliar with college basketball to think "Hey, Simmons knows what he's talking about!" when he does not. I just hate it when NPR calls him up as a college basketball expert.
That being said, the gentleman does rock a good Karate Kid reference and does link sports well to pop culture. So, he should be commended for that.
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