Can you help someone with his research paper ?

Hello everybody :)

As part of my master's degree in strategic management, I am writing a research paper on the NBA and more particularly on the behavior of players (competitive or cooperative) and how these behaviors impact the value of players and the results of their team.

However, for the moment I have difficulty determining which statistics to choose to translate cooperative behaviors (play for the team first) or competitive behaviors (play for yourself kind of).

So I would like to know if you could help me on this issue as my graduation depends on it.

Thanks a lot guys !

I don’t think you will find any statistics on this as it is mostly opinions in this matter. Very tough to know someone’s competitiveness and how much of a team player they are. Westbrook for some example would have some say he’s selfish and others put him at the top in competitiveness and someone who is all in for his team. I’ll try to come up with something that helps out!

It is difficult to say. Going off the definitions you've given for cooperative behaviour and competitive behaviour, then I would say that these are statistics that are worth looking at:

Cooperative behaviour: passes per game, assist percentage, assist/field goal ratio
Competitive behaviour: Field goal attemps per game, usage rating, shots unassisted percentage

It really is difficult, but that's where I would start.

Yeah there is no statistics that clearly indicate some type of behavior but i think you can find some of them that can at least help you like the one you said or maybe the distance covered by a player.

I also thought about Westbrook and the analysis with which you see that depending on the number of shots he takes the winning percentage of OKC varies a lot

Quote:

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Originally Posted by French Pelican

Yeah there is no statistics that clearly indicate some type of behavior but i think you can find some of them that can at least help you like the one you said or maybe the distance covered by a player.

I also thought about Westbrook and the analysis with which you see that depending on the number of shots he takes the winning percentage of OKC varies a lot

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They also win like 75% of their games when he records a triple double. Not the exact % but I know it is very high. Don’t know if that helps any.. There is a lot of stuff you can find but it will still come down to a lot of opinion on your part. Pretty interesting though. Would like to read when you finish. I’m a great proof reader!

yeah that's the problem with this kind of research, it's pretty subjective and up for debate but since there is no precise mesure that's the only solution !

And sure when i'm done i can post my findings if you are interested in reading them.

yeah so a big challenge I would see is defining who you are trying to say they are playing for. When you say "for the team", are you talking on the court only? a player could play for themselves and their team mates, but not necessarily for the coach as such (or organization). I would think that looking at the bigger involvement in the organization may be more helpful for an idea of a players mentality. Though this wouldn't be something published anywhere (there would be internal data surely). How many team events attended, fan days, team community, training sessions attended/missed, team workouts, self workouts. I am not sure on what the contractual obligations are on players to attend events (I imagine there must be something). What type of players go above and beyond to contribute to the organisation at large (and to improve themselves in general)? not just on the court every game (sure you could look at hustle metrics, distance travelled, speed on both ends - but these are all going to have to be viewed in the larger picture of the teams play style, relative to other team mates, positional and play style of the player etc, if there is comparative data for a player at different teams).

I'd also question whether cooperative vs competitive even == team vs self. These would all be hyper competitive people (by normal person standards). You would need to look into individual players, what their role is in the team, heavy iso ball types. Man, so many threads to pull on from such a small amount of information provided.

If you can figure a formula to determine which players play for the betterment of the team over their own glory, PLEASE send it to the Pels! Here's rooting for you!

BACK IN THE DAAAAAAAAY.

Like way back in the day. Hornets era. On this site (I think). They used to keep track of player's effort. Hustle Meter or something like that. Anyone else remember?

(Remember berries)