I am in the middle of a senior project and I am lucky enough to be able to use basketball stats as part of my analysis. I have been looking into how regression models work and some of the data I have been checking have been very interesting. I started with point differential as the independent variable and wins as the dependent variable from a two year sample, and as expected the correlation was very high and the models all fit extremely well.

In an effort to find data that did not work very well I tried team assists as the independent variable and season wins as the dependent variable. The data came out very messy.

In the end the model for Least-Squared Regression was:

Season Wins=-24.93+3.067(Team Assists)

The R-squared of the model was .102. To put that is prospective 0 means no correlation, or completely random. If the R-squared is below .5 the model generally is not used. Basically the model is useless though it has a small positive correlation. It should also be noted that the Kernel Regression did not fit any better, but that is a little too much detail to explain and have you all still be reading.

What this means for the Kings. Well, in the NBA team assists do not equate to wins. The Kings are dead last in team assists, but surprisingly that is not as big of an issue as it seems at first glance.

I thought this was very interesting and thought it would be a good idea to share what I found with some other basketball fans. If anyone has any ideas onto why I would love to hear your feed back.

The lottery is obviously all about probability, and this is what confuses the casual fan. While the team with the worst record has the highest chance to win at 25%, but that also means that the field has a 75% chance of winning the number one pick. History agrees with this (since 1994 when the modern lottery was in place) the team with the worst record has only won only 2 out of 16 times or 12.5%.

This may seem small, but remember the sample size and also everything has variability. For example, the probability of the worst team only winning the lottery 2 out of 16 times is high about at about 13.4% chance whereas what you would expect (4 out of the 16) is only a 22.5% chance. If you want to know how I got that just ask below and I will try my best to explain it.

So for all those NBA Lottery conspiracy people about the draft, the numbers show that Stern is not messing with the balls odds of each team.

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Consistency is something that has plagued the Kings all season. Now with some players it is a matter of playing time to be consistent, but if the coach doesn't think the player is going to preform then consistent minutes will not be given. 

To get my information for the players below I took out games they did not play and took the standard deviation of their points per game. The lower the deviation is the better because on any given night the coach knows about how many points the player will score. With a higher deviation the player will go through more up and down points through out the season.

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First off sorry if the information isn't very well organized, this is my first time making a fan post.

To start I took all the NBA players and the money they make this season. There are about 450 player being paid by NBA teams this year. Some are not playing, but still being paid and some are overseas.

the Median= 2.9 million and that is about the price to pay for Kris Humphries

the Mean=4.7 million and that is about the price for Zaza Pachulia (note Durant is paid about that also but that is rookie salary grade and not a contract he signed)

Now to go to Kevin Martin, He makes 9.7 million and that makes him the 68th (or top 15%) highest player in the league. I would say that this is a very reasonable contract. For the money he makes he is suppose to be around the top 65 player in the league. I think he is in that range and therefore earning his contract. If you can think of a list of 64 players that are better please put it below.

To put it in prospective the 5 other players in his pay range are Danny Granger, Mike Dunleavy, Mike Miller, Gerald Wallace, and Kirk Hinrich.

Player (name) TS%|points per 36\rebounds per 36\assists per 36| per   (Note all numbers from only this season)

1. Danny Granger .558| 18.8\5.8\2.1|18.8
2. Mike Dunleavy .527| 17.2\5.7\2.2| 13.2
3. Mike Miller      .692|11.4\4.8\3.6|13.9
4. K-Mart             .531|20.1\4.4\3.0|17.3
5. Gerald Wallace .583|15.9\9.4\1.6|18.6
6. Kirk Hinrich      .519|14.4\3.6\6.3|10.3   
   

Those numbers are from a down year by K-Mart, yet still manages to put up solid numbers. K-Mart compares well with the other players in his pay range during a down season. I realize I am slurping K-Mart right now, but it will be nearly impossible to sign a player for cheaper that does the things he is capable of. Reasonable contracts are hard to come by in the NBA (T-Mac, Gilbert fires a shot here too), and for what is expected of Martin money wise he is producing.