NBA Players Research Articles

Business, Bankruptcy, and Beliefs: The Financial Demise of NBA Stars

The financial troubles of professional athletes are an ongoing topic of intrigue. In general, the zealousness brought to private equity schemes are a common factor in observed financial insolvency. Considering the behavioral attribute of self-confidence I propose a simple model which explains entrepreneurial activity and adverse financial outcomes. The model implies that investment effort increases with self-confidence, while promoting financial solvency. Constructing a unique database of NBA players affords a singular opportunity to measure confidence directly from behavior, avoiding bias from self-reported surveys. In addition, I observe for-profit business ventures and use this data to test the model's implications for the outcomes of both entrepreneurial activity (investment effort) and bankruptcy. Without correcting for endogeneity it does appear that starting businesses causes bankruptcy. After using charitable foundations as an instrument, however, the data confirms the model's prediction – that investment effort is associated with financial solvency. That said, I also find that the effect of confidence on bankruptcy to be non-monotonic. Having some confidence decreases the probability of bankruptcy, but high levels increase this probability.

Complementary cooperation, minimal winning coalitions, and power indices

We introduce a new simple game, which is referred to as the complementary weighted multiple majority game (C-WMMG for short). C-WMMG models a basic cooperation rule, the complementary cooperation rule, and can be taken as a sister model of the famous weighted majority game (WMG for short). In C-WMMG, each player is characterized by a nonnegative vector with a fixed dimension, and players in the same coalition cooperate by producing a characteristic vector for this coalition (each dimension of this vector equals the maximum of the corresponding dimensions of its members). The value of a coalition is 1 if and only if the sum of its characteristic vector is larger than that of its complementary coalition, in which case the coalition is called winning. Otherwise, the coalitional value is 0. In this paper, we concentrate on the two dimensional C-WMMG. An interesting property of this case is that there are at most n+1 minimal winning coalitions (MWCs for short), and they can be enumerated in time O(nlogn), where n is the number of players. This property guarantees that the two dimensional C-WMMG is more handleable than WMG. In particular, we prove that the main power indices, i.e. the Shapley–Shubik index, the Penrose–Banzhaf index, the Holler–Packel index, and the Deegan–Packel index, are all polynomially computable. To make a comparison with WMG, we know that it may have exponentially many MWCs, and none of the four power indices is polynomially computable (unless P=NP). Still for the two dimensional case, we show that local monotonicity holds for all of the four power indices. In WMG, this property is possessed by the Shapley–Shubik index and the Penrose–Banzhaf index, but not by the Holler–Packel index or the Deegan–Packel index. Since our model fits very well the cooperation and competition in team sports, we hope that it can be potentially applied in measuring the values of players in team sports, say help people give more objective ranking of NBA players and select MVPs, and consequently bring new insights into contest theory and the more general field of sports economics. It may also provide some interesting enlightenments into the design of non-additive voting mechanisms. Last but not least, the threshold version of C-WMMG is a generalization of WMG, and natural variants of it are closely related with the famous airport game and the stable marriage/roommates problem.

Beyond the Game or Business as Usual?: Daily Newspaper and Wire-Service Coverage of John Amaechi's Coming Out

Through a sociology of news framework, this project examines how daily newspaper and wire-service sports reporters and columnists covered former NBA player John Amaechi's 2007 announcement that he is gay. Specifically, this study was interested in discovering what types of sources reporters used and if non-official sources such as those from gay and/or lesbian activist organizations were included in coverage. Results found that official sources dominated coverage and non-official sources were rarely heard from.

Getting What You Need: How Reputation and Status Affect Team Performance, Hiring, and Salaries in the NBA

We study how the reputation and status of resource providers affect the two organizational outcomes of product quality and revenues, hiring decisions, and prices paid to resource providers. We argue that reputation and status have different effects on outcomes: reputation has a stronger effect on product quality, and status has a stronger effect on revenues. Building on this, we argue that actual quality mediates the effect of reputation on revenues more than the effect of status on revenues. Moreover, reputation and status have different effects on how organizations acquire resources: when their product quality is low relative to their aspiration level, organizations will display a preference for recruiting high-reputation resource providers over high-status ones. Conversely, organizations will display a preference for recruiting high-status resource providers over high-reputation ones when their revenue is low relative to their aspiration level. Finally, although both reputation and status have positive effects on the price paid for a resource, we argue that the relationship between reputation and pay is weaker for high-status resource providers. We find support for our hypotheses in a sample of NBA players and teams.

Transmission of Norovirus Among NBA Players and Staff, Winter 2010–2011

In December 2010, 24 players and staff members from 13 National Basketball Association teams were affected with gastroenteritis symptoms. Four of 5 stool specimens from ill players and staff tested positive for norovirus genogroup II. We document evidence of transmission both within teams and, potentially, between teams in 2 instances.

A Tribute to Texas Basketball

Texas is as culturally and racially diverse as the number of storms and hurricanes that enter the gulf waters in any given year. Germans, Italians, Irish, Hispanics, African Americans, Vietnamese and Jews are well represented and have enhanced the state in many ways. However, this article is not about anyone of these groups, but is about all of them who played high school, college or professional basketball in Texas. This story is about basketball and how it developed in Texas. So, come with me and learn about little but important facts, people, places and records that you will not find anywhere else in one place. This is a tribute by a basketball junkie and a Certified NBA Players Agent. Only by understanding what is written here can the reader fully glean the interest and development of basketball in Texas.

On Estimating the Ability of NBA Players

This paper introduces a new model and methodology for estimating the ability of NBA players. The main idea is to directly measure how good a player is by comparing how their team performs when they are on the court as opposed to when they are off it. This is achieved in such a way as to control for the changing abilities of the other players on court at different times during a match. The new method uses multiple seasons’ data in a structured way to estimate player ability in an isolated season, measuring separately defensive and offensive merit as well as combining these to give an overall rating. The use of game statistics in predicting player ability will be considered. Results using data from the 2008/9 season suggest that LeBron James, who won the NBA MVP award, was the best overall player. The best defensive player was Lamar Odom and the best rookie was Russell Westbrook, neither of whom won an NBA award that season. The results further indicate that whilst the frequently-reported game statistics provide some information on offensive ability, they do not perform well in the prediction of defensive ability.

Stratified Odds Ratios for Evaluating NBA Players Based on their Plus/Minus Statistics

In this paper, I estimate adjusted odds ratios by fitting stratified logistic regression models to binary response variables, games won or lost, with plus/minus statistics as explanatory variables. Adapted from ice hockey, the plus/minus statistic credits an NBA player one or more points whenever his team scores while he is on the basketball court. Conversely, the player is debited minus one or more points whenever the opposing team scores. Throughout the NBA season, the leagues better players are likely to have positive plus/minus statistics as reported by Yahoo!Sports and 82games.com. Crude or unadjusted odds ratios estimate the relative probabilities of a player having a positive plus/minus in a win, versus a negative plus/minus in a loss. Home and away games are twin strata with teams playing 41 home games and 41 road games during an 82-game regular season. Stratum-specific odds ratios vary because some players perform better at home than on the road and vice versa. In order to adjust for home court advantage, stratified odds ratios and their 95 percent confidence intervals are estimated for each of the Los Angeles Lakers during the 20092010 regular season.

Probabilistic skylines on uncertain data: model and bounding-pruning-refining methods

Uncertain data are inherent in some important applications. Although a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to modeling uncertain data and answering some types of queries on uncertain data, how to conduct advanced analysis on uncertain data remains an open problem at large. In this paper, we tackle the problem of skyline analysis on uncertain data. We propose a novel probabilistic skyline model where an uncertain object may take a probability to be in the skyline, and a p-skyline contains all objects whose skyline probabilities are at least p (0?<?p???1). Computing probabilistic skylines on large uncertain data sets is challenging. We develop a bounding-pruning-refining framework and three algorithms systematically. The bottom-up algorithm computes the skyline probabilities of some selected instances of uncertain objects, and uses those instances to prune other instances and uncertain objects effectively. The top-down algorithm recursively partitions the instances of uncertain objects into subsets, and prunes subsets and objects aggressively. Combining the advantages of the bottom-up algorithm and the top-down algorithm, we develop a hybrid algorithm to further improve the performance. Our experimental results on both the real NBA player data set and the benchmark synthetic data sets show that probabilistic skylines are interesting and useful, and our algorithms are efficient on large data sets.

Represent: Hip Hop Culture, the NBA Dress Code and Employment Discrimination

In 2005, the NBA implemented a new dress code for players. This dress code regulated the way players dress while away from the job. Employers have long been interested in regulating employees’ conduct both on the job and off. Where the employers’ interests are impacted less the law has sometimes granted a remedy to employees whose freedom of expression has been limited. As with many of the conditions of employment, the most important consideration in analyzing the rights of employees is whether the employment at issue is public or private. Courts have consistently permitted private employers to control its workers’ off-the-job expression unless it fits into very narrow exceptions. Expressions made on-the-job are generally afforded less protection than expression made off-the-job. Courts assessing private employees’ wrongful termination claims for years have always focused on whether and when private employers’ interest in managerial control and operational efficiency outweighed workers’ expressive interests, courts now concentrate on, and defer to, employer’s claim to control the expression of its employees to protect its own expression. In cases involving claims of private employees disciplined for off-duty expression or conduct, employers often argue that their employees are acting as employees, even when away from work, asserting that the employers’ association with employees who engage in certain off-duty expression undermines the employers’ credibility in communicating the employers’ own contrary views. In response, courts often characterize such off-duty expression and conduct as harmful not because of what it reflects about the employee’s own ability to perform his job, but rather because of what it communicates about the employer’s position on a topic. These decisions reflect courts’ intuition that the public will inevitably associate private employees’ off-duty expression with their employers. Employees in the private workplace have little protection from the courts unless the employees’ behavior fits into narrowly defined pigeonholes. While NBA Players may still be able to work in their chose profession, their ability to express themselves in their private lives is constrained because of their race and sex. This situation requires a new Title VII framework that more carefully attends to what it is that the employer seeks to communicate and whether that message is actually impaired by employee expression or conduct.

From college to the pros: predicting the NBA amateur player draft

The reverse-order amateur draft is an institution common to each of the major North American professional team sports. The draft is designed to give the weaker teams access to the future stars of the sport. The focus of our inquiry is how information on amateur player performance is employed by decision-makers in one sport, the National Basketball Association. Our analysis will suggest that future NBA players who score in college will see their draft position improved. This focus, though, appears to impair the ability of poor teams to improve.

Basketball Shoe Brand Preference of the Young Basketball Enthusiasts in Hong Kong

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in English; abstract also in Chinese. The study attempts to investigate the choice preference of basketball shoe brands as perceived by the young basketball players in Hong Kong. A survey questionnaire was designed with content validity being established. The data for this study were collected from 240 young basketball enthusiasts in Hong Kong. Data were treated utilizing descriptive statistics mainly in terms of frequency counts and percentages. Chi-square statistic was used to determine the gender differences in various variables. Nike is the most dominant basketball shoe brand as indicated by the respondents. Male subjects chose the basketball shoe products because of the ‘comfortableness' and ‘price', whereas shoe ‘style' is the females' first choice. Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Lebron James were identified as the top three most popular NBA players who are endorsers to basketball shoe brands. The use of NBA to promote basketball shoe branding in Hong Kong appears to have further room for development. The present finding provides some insight and understanding about the basketball shoe products and market in Hong Kong. 本研究旨在探討本港年青籃球愛好者對籃球鞋品牌的喜好，研究以問卷調查方式進行，共收集了240名年青籃球愛好者的意見並進行統計分析。結果顯示：Nike是最受歡迎的品牌；「舒適」和「價錢」是男性受訪者喜歡選購籃球鞋的原因；而女性則喜愛籃球鞋的款式。高比拜仁、米高佐敦及勒邦占士的贊助品牌是最受年青籃球愛好者所喜歡的。

Scoring and Shooting Abilities of NBA Players

We propose two new measures for evaluating offensive ability of NBA players, using one-dimensional shooting data from three seasons beginning with the 2004-05 season. These measures improve upon currently employed shooting statistics by accounting for the varying shooting patterns of players over different distances from the basket. This variance also provides us with an intuitive metric for clustering players, wherein performance of players is calculated and compared to his cluster center as a baseline. To further improve the accuracy of our measures, we develop our own variation of smoothing and shrinkage, reducing any small sample biases and abnormalities.The first measure, SCAB or, Scoring Ability Above Baseline, measures a player's ability to score as a function of time on court. The second metric, SHTAB or Shooting Ability, calculates a player's propensity to score on a per-shot basis. Our results show that a combination of SCAB and SHTAB can be used to separate out players based on their offensive game. We observe that players who are highly ranked according to our measures are regularly considered as top performers on offense by experts, with the notable exception of LeBron James; the same claim holds for the offensive dregs. We suggest possible explanations for our findings and explore possibilities of future work with regard to player defense.

‘Have You Got Game?’ Hegemonic Masculinity and Neo-Homophobia in U.S. Newspaper Sports Columns

In February 2007, U.S. media outlets covered the coming out of retired NBA player John Amaechi, one of only 6 professional male athletes from the four major U.S. team sports to have announced that he is gay. This study analyzes newspaper columns by prominent U.S. sportswriters about Amaechi's announcement. Textual analysis found that although the columns could be read as progressive, they were not; they condemned individuals who expressed overtly homophobic views while reinforcing the status quo in a variety of ways. The neo-homophobic discourse can be compared with that of new racism, a strategy that maintain racial hegemony in the U.S. As such, these columns effectively rendered Amaechi's announcement as having little value in addressing homophobia in the sports/media complex.

Top-k typicality queries and efficient query answering methods on large databases

Finding typical instances is an effective approach to understand and analyze large data sets. In this paper, we apply the idea of typicality analysis from psychology and cognitive science to database query answering, and study the novel problem of answering top-k typicality queries. We model typicality in large data sets systematically. Three types of top-k typicality queries are formulated. To answer questions like “Who are the top-k most typical NBA players?”, the measure of simple typicality is developed. To answer questions like “Who are the top-k most typical guards distinguishing guards from other players?”, the notion of discriminative typicality is proposed. Moreover, to answer questions like “Who are the best k typical guards in whole representing different types of guards?”, the notion of representative typicality is used. Computing the exact answer to a top-k typicality query requires quadratic time which is often too costly for online query answering on large databases. We develop a series of approximation methods for various situations: (1) the randomized tournament algorithm has linear complexity though it does not provide a theoretical guarantee on the quality of the answers; (2) the direct local typicality approximation using VP-trees provides an approximation quality guarantee; (3) a local typicality tree data structure can be exploited to index a large set of objects. Then, typicality queries can be answered efficiently with quality guarantees by a tournament method based on a Local Typicality Tree. An extensive performance study using two real data sets and a series of synthetic data sets clearly shows that top-k typicality queries are meaningful and our methods are practical.

The Economics of Discrimination: Evidence from Basketball

This Chapter reviews evidence on discrimination in basketball, primarily examining studies on race but with some discussion of gender as well. I focus on discrimination in pay, hiring, and retention against black NBA players and coaches and pay disparities by gender among college coaches. There was much evidence for each of these forms of discrimination against black NBA players in the 1980s. However, there appears to be less evidence of racial compensation, hiring and retention discrimination against black players in the 1990s and early 2000s than the 1980s. This apparent decline is consistent with research on customer discrimination in the NBA: in the 1980s, there was abundant evidence of fan preference for white players; however, since the 1980s, these preferences seem much weaker. There appears to be little evidence of pay, hiring or retention discrimination against black NBA coaches, and while male college basketball coaches outearn females, this gap is accounted for by differences in revenues and coaches' work histories. There is some dispute over whether these revenue differences are themselves the result of employer discrimination.

Fuzzy neural Web agents for efficient NBA scouting

The intelligent agents are very useful for World Wide Web applications. Intelligent agents are designed and implemented for a variety of tasks in diverse range of applications: managing e-mail, navigating and retrieving information from the Internet, online shopping, electronic business, monitoring stock prices or currency exchanges, etc. In this paper, we present and describe an intelligent service agent that assists an NBA scouting agent in his/her work. The particularity of our agent is that it not only retrieves relevant information about NBA players from the Internet for the scouting agent but also derives metadata from that information, which consist of player performance evaluation and player statistics prediction.

Celebrity Misbehavior in the NBA

I compare and contrast theories of why NBA players misbehave on the court, then test them empirically. I find evidence that earnings are positively correlated with misbehavior and that both absolute and relative salary matter. For instance, a player who is highest paid on his team misbehaves roughly 7% more than one who is second-highest paid, even at the same salary level. This relative effect I interpret as due to lack of good substitutes for top players. I also find some evidence that personal preferences may be important in understanding misbehavior, but no evidence that immaturity or peer effects are important determinants of misbehavior in the NBA.

Fluid Balance, Hydration Status, and Sweat Electrolyte Concentrations in NBA Basketball Players During Pre-Season Practice

1236 Very little is known about the effects of two-a-day training on the hydration of professional basketball players. PURPOSE: To determine fluid intake habits and hydration status of NBA players, we observed four players on two separate occasions spaced two weeks apart. METHODS: The first observation day was during a preseason two-a-day practice. A urine sample was collected prior to each practice to determine urine specific gravity (USG). Players were weighed before and after practice as were bottles containing their choice of beverage. Sweat loss, percent dehydration, and fluid intake were calculated from these measurements. Sweat patches were placed on the right forearm during each practice to obtain sweat samples and were analyzed to measure sodium and potassium concentrations (flame photometry). Additionally, skin fold measurements were obtained. The same measurements were taken two weeks later to detect any changes that may have occurred due to training and acclimation. RESULTS: Average height, weight and percent body fat were 193.0 cm, 101.4 kg, and 14%, respectively. Sweat rates were modest, with an average of 0.85 liters per hour. Dehydration ranged from 0–1.5% of body weight. The range for USG was1.011 – 1.035 g/ml. The majority of samples (56%) were above 1.030, indicating the players were hypohydrated prior to the start of practice. Sweat sodium and potassium concentrations were within the normal range for all players (44.2 – 86.6 mEq Na/L and 3.6 – 6.3 mEq K/L, respectively) on the first practice day. Sweat samples were obtained on two of the four players during the second visit two weeks later. While potassium concentration remained constant, sweat sodium concentration decreased markedly (56 and 44 mEq/L to 27 and 29 mEq/L). CONCLUSIONS: The NBA players appeared to be inadequately hydrated prior to the start of practice. Based on USG, even if players restored their initial, pre-practice morning body weight, the players were hypohyrated when they returned for the second session. This limited sample suggests players need to be more proactive with rehydration strategies.

Fluid Balance, Hydration Status, and Sweat Electrolyte Concentrations in NBA Basketball Players During Pre-Season Practice

1236 Very little is known about the effects of two-a-day training on the hydration of professional basketball players. PURPOSE: To determine fluid intake habits and hydration status of NBA players, we observed four players on two separate occasions spaced two weeks apart. METHODS: The first observation day was during a preseason two-a-day practice. A urine sample was collected prior to each practice to determine urine specific gravity (USG). Players were weighed before and after practice as were bottles containing their choice of beverage. Sweat loss, percent dehydration, and fluid intake were calculated from these measurements. Sweat patches were placed on the right forearm during each practice to obtain sweat samples and were analyzed to measure sodium and potassium concentrations (flame photometry). Additionally, skin fold measurements were obtained. The same measurements were taken two weeks later to detect any changes that may have occurred due to training and acclimation. RESULTS: Average height, weight and percent body fat were 193.0 cm, 101.4 kg, and 14%, respectively. Sweat rates were modest, with an average of 0.85 liters per hour. Dehydration ranged from 0–1.5% of body weight. The range for USG was1.011 – 1.035 g/ml. The majority of samples (56%) were above 1.030, indicating the players were hypohydrated prior to the start of practice. Sweat sodium and potassium concentrations were within the normal range for all players (44.2 – 86.6 mEq Na/L and 3.6 – 6.3 mEq K/L, respectively) on the first practice day. Sweat samples were obtained on two of the four players during the second visit two weeks later. While potassium concentration remained constant, sweat sodium concentration decreased markedly (56 and 44 mEq/L to 27 and 29 mEq/L). CONCLUSIONS: The NBA players appeared to be inadequately hydrated prior to the start of practice. Based on USG, even if players restored their initial, pre-practice morning body weight, the players were hypohyrated when they returned for the second session. This limited sample suggests players need to be more proactive with rehydration strategies.