Book Scratch Paper 1: Time and Space
A project I've had on the backburner might happen in real-time!
Alright, so still figuring out this Substack thing. For fun, I opened it up to paid subscribers and for now, what I’m planning on is letting you in on a project I’ve wanted to do forever — examine every “star” trade in NBA history and note … almost none of them worked out for the team that lost the star! In fact, it’s possible none of them worked out. We’ll get there! The tentative title is - “Reach for the Stars: An Examination of Failed NBA Trades".” We’ll see how it goes. I plan to use Thursday / Friday to release drafts/notes/etc. and if all goes well, eventually make this into a book.
Here’s a quick outline of an opening chapter. It’s tentatively titled “Time and Space” and the key point is to address why basketball is so different than the other sports despite being the same! Basketball is the only North American major team sport where one star can make or break a team. And before even analyzing player stats we can break down some of why.
Number of players
NBA: 10 people on the court at once, 5 per team.
NHL: 12 people on the court at once, 6 per team.
MLB: Up to 13 people “on the field” at once, and a team at max has 9 people out.
MLS: 22 people on the field at once, 11 per team.
NFL: 22 people on the field at once, 11 per team.
A simple ratio of how much one player can be worth to the total game or even their team at once is clearly skewed towards the NBA.
Division of Labor
NBA: PG, SG, SF, PF, C But each plays both offense and defense.
NHL: 3 Forwards, 2 defense, 1 goalie.
MLB: 7 different field positions, Pitcher, Catcher, 9 different batting spots.
MLS: Forwards, midfield, defense, goalie. Seems like some different configurations allowed.
NFL: Offense and Defense, specific positions per each.
To try and make this section succinct will be difficult!
Hockey division of labor is not a big issue here actually. The bigger issue will be time, which we’ll get to shortly.
Baseball is the easiest sport to say - despite the analytics, an individual can’t be worth a ton, and that’s just the rules. Each player has to take turns on offense. Each player is stuck to a small portion of the field on defense.
Football has players specifically for offense, specifically for defense. Then those individual positions get even more defined. The one position that will be interesting to compare to the NBA is the quarterback, but a key thing here is that is an offense only, whereas, in basketball, players play both sides of the court.
Soccer I would argue despite specific positions the division of labor is not the issue on player impact. It’s both a combination of the number of players, above and field size, which we’ll get to later.
Time
In basketball, a starting player is expected to play at least 60% of the game (roughly 30 minutes of a 48-minute game). And, provided they are healthy, it is expected they could play every game in the season. In older eras, players would play closer to 80%, and once Wilt Chamberlain averaged over 48 minutes a game (due to overtime). This is a huge differentiator between it and the other sports.
In hockey, there are multiple “lines” for offense and defense. And these lines routinely switch out, often in real-time, during the game. In 1999 the NHL started recording “Average Time on Ice”, for non-goalies. The upper bound was around 30 minutes a game, or roughly 1/2 the time (hockey games are 60 minutes long). More recently it’s closer to 26-27 minutes per game, and this tends to be for defensive positions. Goalies do play the whole game, but this is one place we’ll get into the analytics. Not sure if it will fit in this chapter, but goalies tend to be “interchangeable!”
Baseball as already discussed essentially forces its players to take turns. Unlike the other sports, which are time-based, baseball could be defined as turned-based, and baseball basically says each non-pitching player gets 1/18 of the time. Pitchers do, in theory, have the opportunity to play the whole game. However, starting pitchers only play around once every four or five games. And in the modern MLB, they tend to be restricted to around 100 pitches a game. So even from a turn-based perspective, they are very limited compared to basketball.
In soccer players can play the whole game, which is wild to me. The issue with soccer won’t be time, it’ll be space!
In football, players are limited to offense or defense. Similar to old school hockey, even a player like a quarterback, will at most, be on the field roughly 50% of the time.
Space
Let’s look at field dimensions per sport:
NBA: 94 feet by 50 feet - 4,700 square feet.
NHL: 200 feet by 85 feet - 17,000 square feet.
MLB: Silliest one, will explain more below, at minimum 52,800 square feet.
MLS: 115 feet by 75 feet* - 77,675 square feet.
NFL: 160 feet by 120 feet - 57,600 square feet.
Baseball doesn’t require specific field dimensions but does require the wall to be at least 325 feet out. I may invest more time in this, but even assuming each field was a 325 by 325 triangle, it would be 52,800 square feet.
The most important aspect is that a basketball court is 1/3 to 1/16 the size of other respective sports. So putting it all together (will likely change this to a cross table.)
Basketball - 1X the size field. 10 players. Players can play both offense and defense, can play 60-100% of the game.
NHL: Field is 3X the size. 12 players. Some offense/defense separation. Players (not goalie) play at most 50% of the game.
MLB: Field is at least 11X the size. Up to 14 active players. Players, not pitcher, do play both offense and defense but governed to around 1/9 the field. Pitchers get at most 50% of the game, but only play around 1/5 of the games (at most!)
MLS: Field is 16X the size! 22 players. Some offense/defense separation. Players can play the whole game.
NFL: Field is 12X the size. 22 players. Pure offense/defense separation. Players at most play around half the game.
The key point of this chapter, which may grow or shrink (or just eventually turn into a blog post!) is to note that at the “rule” level there’s a reason one player, like LeBron James, can mean so much to their team as compared to other sports.
Any feedback is welcome! As noted, super rough pass of a chapter idea. In theory that is what my Thursday/Friday members-only column will be for the near future.
Thanks!
Dre