Category: Sports

Kind of like the NBA All-Star game

In the NBA All-Star game, no one is playing defense any more, and so the score was a ridiculous 211-186, something which would never happen in a regular season game.  (Note that some of the league’s finer defenders were on the floor, though Joel Embiid, the reigning MVP and an intimidating defender, was sidelined due to injury.)  Some part of the ethic of (defensive) service has disappeared, though the players are still happy to shoot and score.  And they certainly will play defense hard when the playoffs roll around.

I’ve never seen papers on the labor supply of royal families (Cowen’s Second Law?), but I do wonder what it varies with.  It is hard to use one’s royal position to influence politics, at least in the UK.  And certainly you are not paid more if you work harder.  The King or Queen nominally owns a lot of land and art, but in practice one cannot pull income streams from those assets.  You can have a Michelangelo drawing hung in your bedroom, but that if anything is a reason not to go out in public.

You can use a royal family position to meet with lots of important people, but toward what end?  Raising money for your next start-up?  Alternatively, you can work harder to raise your stature and influence with the other royal family members (now we’re getting somewhere).  But what if that equilibrium falls apart, if only because of one or two initial defections, or in the case of the King an illness?  What external force would keep the whole struggle for royal family influence going?  Is this a case of multiple competitive equilibria, and now we (they?) are stuck in the low effort corner?  Can Lina Khan work on this?

What if they are all just pissed off with the lot of us?  In that case, what is our next move in this von Stackelberg game?  Should America reapply to the Empire with some trembling hand probability?  Would it suffice to give them Newfoundland back?  Take Northern Ireland off their hands?  Do they want us to send more or fewer tourists to London?  Should one of them marry Taylor Swift, or at least date her, to remain in the public eye?

If the NBA All-Star game is to improve, perhaps viewer censure (or mockery) for the non-cooperators is the primary way forward?

If econs could hoop — The New Bazaar

That is my podcast with Cardiff Garcia, now on-line and with transcript too.  Cardiff proposed a novel approach:

Who is the Magic Johnson of economics? Who was the Adam Smith of basketball?

On this fun and oddball episode of The New Bazaar, Cardiff speaks with Tyler Cowen, economist and author of GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?

Inspired by the sportswriter Bill Simmons, Tyler wrote his book from the standpoint of a fan—having fun, taking sides, admitting biases, unapologetically trying to entertain the reader instead of presenting sober (boring) analysis.

Cardiff and Tyler—both huge basketball fans—first discuss Tyler’s ranking of the great economists and his lament for what economics used to be. Tyler also gives his reasons for releasing the book as a ChatGPT trained on its text, the first such book of its kind.

Then begins the fun. They take turns finding analogs for the great economists from the history of the NBA. And they do the same in reverse for basketball’s own GOATs. Which economist changed the nature of the field similar to the way Steph Curry set off the three-point revolution? Is there an economist whose comprehensive genius rivaled the ability of LeBron James to engineer exactly the outcome he wants on the court? What basketball player matched the charisma, brilliance, and even investment success of Keynes?

And why does Cardiff argue that Tyler himself is the Charles Barkley of economists despite their differences in personality, size, and other obvious dimensions?

All throughout the chat, Tyler and Cardiff are exploring the common traits that lead to greatness in hoops, the social sciences, and perhaps other domains. A treat for fans of either economics or hoops, or who simply appreciate the virtues of fandom itself.

Recommended, for some (not all)!

If you care enough, the state-contingent market will be there

Washington has the right to swap firsts with Phoenix in 2024 if the Wizards’ first (if 13-30) to New York is not conveyed. Phoenix can trade its 2024 first but not until the night of the draft. The Wizards also have the right to swap firsts in 2026 (if 9-30), 2028 (if 9-30) and 2030. Orlando then has the right to swap its 2026 first with the less favorable from Phoenix or Washington. Memphis has the right to swap the less favorable firsts of Phoenix and Washington in 2030. The Suns owe Brooklyn unprotected firsts in 2025, 2027 and 2029. Brooklyn also has the right to swap firsts with Phoenix in 2028. The Wizards then have the right to swap the least favorable first from the Nets, Suns or the 76ers first in 2028. Phoenix has three second-round picks available to trade.

Here is more from ESPN (gated) on NBA trade options as the trade deadline approaches.  And how about the Zion Williamson contract? (NYT):

Beyond the shift for the final three years of the deal, Williamson is at risk of losing even more in guarantees if he doesn’t hit certain marks during regular checks of his weight and body fat. Under the contract, the sum of Williamson’s weight in pounds and his body fat percentage must be less than 295. He was listed as weighing 285 pounds last season, meaning his body fat could not be higher than 10 percent.

The Pelicans also have protected themselves in case Williamson has any further significant issues with the fifth metatarsal in his right foot. If he suffers a fracture or a stress injury to that bone or the healed callus, or has what the contract calls a “hardware failure” related to the previous injury there, then half of his base salary for 2024-25 would no longer be guaranteed if the team released him.

That is only one part of the complexity of the broader deal.

Stephen Keese on coachability (from my email)

You wrote that sports often teaches students how to be a team member and coordinate with others.  True enough, but I think there is a more important educational benefit from sports that does not require team participation or competition nor risk injury. That is learning to be coachable.  Historically coaching was a fundamental part of higher education.  In English universities, coaches are called tutors.  Elsewhere they were/are known as mentors and guides,Being coachable or mentorable is one of the most valuable traits of students and adults, whether as a solo practitioner, group leader, or team member.

Do I want the Wizards and Capitols to move to Virginia?

No, in short.  To be clear, I don’t have any personal NIMBY stake in this, as the new site in Alexandria is about as far away from my home as the old site downtown.  The bad news is that there are fewer complementary visits attached to the new site.  Under the current regime, the Museum of American Art — which is pretty good — is a mere block away.  The National Gallery is walking distance.  How about all those meeting opportunities in DC?  So you can combine a game visit with many other good activities.  I’ll even accept a higher risk of crime for this benefit.  What comparable opportunities might we expect from Potomac Landing in Alexandria, VA?  A bunch of overpriced corporate-branded taverns nearby?  Whom do you think you can meet for that early dinner, before going to the game?

It is also easy to leave the current site and make a clean getaway.  You could walk for five or six blocks and catch an Uber without hindrance.  Or you could park your car in a garage ten blocks away and drive home without hassles, or needing to deal with post-game traffic.  (And is the Metro still running?)  A concert or sports venue can be evaluated by a simple rule: if your only options for leaving are the ones they have planned for you, it will be a bad experience.

Ugh.  And I haven’t even gone into the well-known bipartisan reality that sports stadium subsidies are inefficient, inegalitarian, and full of rent-seeking opportunities.  These have been described as possibly the largest stadium subsidies ever.

At a deeper level, I think it is also better for NoVa if the DC downtown does not collapse altogether.  But again you don’t have to get into those points.  Even if you could move the stadium at zero cost, the new venue would not create a nominally better experience.

*Who Makes the NBA?*

That is the new book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, with the subtitle Data-Driven Answers to Basketball’s Biggest Questions.  Most notably, it was written in thirty days with the help of GPT-4.

It’s quite good!  Excerpt:

A statistically significant percentage of sons of NBA players shoot free throws at a higher clip than their fathers.

Jokic, by the way, started off playing water polo, and that is partly why he passes as he does and has such good court vision.  And this:

And the average NBA player shoots free throws 1.5 percentage points lower in clutch moments in playoff games.

Is some of that due to being more tired rather than choking?  On average taller players choke more on free throws, which is perhaps consistent with this hypothesis?  Being very tall, they are less likely to be athletic and well-conditioned, in equilibrium that is?

I really liked this book, kudos to the author(s)!

Who is rising and falling in status in the NBA?

Falling:

Damian Lillard
Jordan Poole
Zion Williamson
Klay Thompson
Andrew Wiggins
Austin Reeves

Rising:

Embiid
Maxey
Porzingis
Haliburton
Curry (not Seth)
Dare I say Kyrie Irving?
Lebron, if that is even possible at this point, he is already GOAT
Greg Popovich
Wemby
Bam Adebayo

That is a lot of status reshuffling, but it seems to be happening pretty quickly and I suspect most of it will stick, with Kyrie Irving maybe still up for grabs.  Others?

When I was over Auren Hoffman’s house, I bet (using play chips only) 70% that either Boston or Denver wins the title this year.

The economics of collegiate sports participation

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

As for the students themselves, recent research indicates that sports performance makes former student athletes more valuable in the workplace. Former college athletes are much more likely to enter the high-earning fields of business and finance, relative to their non-athlete classmates. That can benefit the former students, their alma mater and the overall economy.

The research also shows that student athletes are less likely to get a doctoral degree or become a medical doctor, or to enter STEM fields. Might it be that the STEM jobs will become the province of the less athletic?

Looking at just Ivy League graduates, former athletes do better in the labor market — that is, they earn more money — than non-athletes. This result holds even when controlled for school attended, year of graduation, field of study and first job. Those same athletes are also more likely to hold senior positions. That could be evidence of leadership skills, or of their ability to learn and improve over time, as indeed good athletes must do. After five years, the earnings of the former college athletes start to outperform their non-athletic peers.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that college athletes actually learn something useful. And what they learn, in many cases, is probably leadership skills. It is also possible that their athletic experiences sharpen their wits, their competitive sense, their problem-solving acumen and their ability to work with others.

Interestingly, the same study shows that athletes in more socioeconomically diverse sports, such as track and field, also earn more than their non-athletic peers. This suggests that their advantage comes not from having attended some fancy prep school.

Here is the original work by Natee AmornsiripanitchPaul GompersGeorge HuWill Levinson Vladimir MukharlyamovOne broader lesson is that colleges and universities should encourage more “hands on projects.”

My excellent Conversation with Lazarus Lake, ultra-marathons

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary:

Lazarus Lake is a renowned ultramarathon runner and designer. His most famous creation (along with his friend Raw Dog) is the Barkley Marathons, an absurdly difficult 100-mile race through the Tennessee wilderness that only 17 people have ever finished in its nearly 30-year existence.

]Tyler and Laz discuss what running 100 miles tells you about yourself that running 26 miles does not, why so many STEM professionals do ultramarathons, which skill holds people back the most, why his entrance fee is no more or less than $1.60, the importance of the Barkley’s opaque application process, how much each race costs to mount, whether he sees a decline in stoicism and inner strength in America, what accounting taught him about running, which books influenced him the most, who’s going to win the NBA title next year, how he’s coping with increasing fame, the competition he’s most focused on now, and more.

And one excerpt:

COWEN: Of all of those skills, which is the most scarce? Which holds people back the most, apart from just the running and the endurance? What are they most likely to screw up?

LAKE: I think these days, navigation is a bigger problem than it used to be because people have become dependent upon GPS. If you don’t use part of your brain, it withers. If you’re not accustomed to knowing, in your head, where you are and just listening for a little voice to tell you when to turn next, it’s something of a problem because they don’t get to take GPS.

COWEN: They literally end up lost in the woods, some people.

LAKE: It happens.

COWEN: What happens to them then? They stay there for the rest of their lives? They wander slowly back to civilization, or . . . What becomes of them? They send out a call for help?

LAKE: If they don’t find their way out in a couple of days, we’ll go look for them. Usually, they will. So far, they’ve always found their way out.

COWEN: That’s the incentive.

LAKE: Sometimes they wander around for an extended period of time lost, but that’s what they signed up for. They’re on their own. All the electronics and all the conveniences of modern life are gone, and they just rely on themselves.

And:

COWEN: How did carrying bodies to the morgue influence your subsequent life?

LAKE: [laughs] How did you know I did that?

As I’ve said before, CWT guests who do not have a college degree are better on average (in equilibrium).

Model this, NBA rebounding edition

There has staggeringly been only one U.S. representative among the league’s top 10 rebounders for each of the past three seasons.

That is from Marc Stein.  How did that happen?  Where is the current-day Charles Oakley?  Moses Malone, our nation turns it lonely eyes to you!  Dennis Rodman would do as well. Yet here is the list of the top rebounders from last year in the NBA, and yes Rudy Gobert is French.

Of course, you all know that in the key FIBA games the U.S. squad was badly rebounded by a number of nations, including the tiny Lithuania (their population is tiny, not their size per person).  And Bam Adebayo was tired from the Finals and was not available.

Why has the balance of rebounding power turned so seriously against U.S. basketball players?  Is it that all the tall ones are nowadays being hired by Goldman Sachs or Open AI?  Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me.

One hypothesis is that today the game demands a broader set of skills, and more teamwork, than in earlier times.  Charles Oakley still would make the NBA today, but perhaps as an 11th man, rather than as a regular player who could hone his skills and become a leading figure.  In other words, the return to training big men has (maybe) gone up a lot.  Simply being big and strong yields a smaller return than before, because on offense they are counting on you to hit that open three-point shot.  On defense, they are counting on you to rotate on perimeter defense in a manner that Oakley did not have to worry about so much.  And so on.

And maybe the European and other teams do a better job training their big men at younger ages.  The European big guys do in fact have excellent long-distance shooting and often higher quality passing skills.  The U.S. players (mostly) leaving college after their first year does not help with this.

And thus, in that equilibrium, the better shooting makes the teams as a whole, better rebounders as well.  That is a modestly counterintuitive conclusion.

Or is there some other, better model for why U.S. rebounding prowess has declined in recent years?

The Bat the Ball and the Hopeless

You will no doubt be familiar with the bat and ball problem;

  • A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.
  • The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.
  • How much does the ball cost? ____ cents.

In a paper in Cognition, Meyer and Fredrick test multiple versions of the bat and ball and related problems to try to uncover where people’s intuitions go wrong. The most remarkable two versions of which are shown below:

  • A bat and a ball cost $110 in total.
  • The bat costs $100 more than the ball.
  • How much does the ball cost?
  • Before responding, consider whether the answer could be $5.
  •  $_____

———–

  • A bat and a ball cost $110 in total.
  • The bat costs $100 more than the ball.
  • How much does the ball cost?
  • The answer is $5.
  • Please enter the number 5 in the blank below.
  •  $_____

Remarkably, even when told to consider $5, most people continue to answer $10. Even more shockingly, most people get the answer right when they are explicitly told the answer and instructed to enter it, yet 23% still get the answer wrong! Wow.

The authors conclude:

…this “hinted” procedure serves to partition respondents into three groups: the reflective (who reject the common intuitive error and solve the problem on the first try), the careless (who answer 10, but revise to 5 when told they are wrong), and the hopeless (who are unable or unwilling to compute the correct response, even after being told that 10 is incorrect)

…many respondents maintain the erroneous response in the face of facts that plainly falsify it, even after their attention has been directed to those facts….the remarkable durability of that error paints a more pessimistic picture of human reasoning than we were initially inclined to accept; those whose thoughts most require additional deliberation benefit little from whatever additional deliberation can be induced.

As an economist, I would have liked to see an incentivized version (maybe some people are pulling the authors legs) but I don’t actually think that explains the results. Quite a few people are indeed hopeless.

My Conversation with Vishy Anand

In Chennai I recorded with chess great Vishy Anand, here is the transcript, audio, and video, note the chess analysis works best on YouTube, for those of you who follow such things (you don’t have to for most of the dialogue).  Here is the episode summary:

Tyler and Vishy sat down in Chennai to discuss his breakthrough 1991 tournament win in Reggio Emilia, his technique for defeating Kasparov in rapid play, how he approached playing the volatile but brilliant Vassily Ivanchuk at his peak, a detailed breakdown of his brilliant 2013 game against Levon Aronian, dealing with distraction during a match, how he got out of a multi-year slump, Monty Python vs. Fawlty Towers, the most underrated Queen song, how far to take chess opening preparation, which style of chess will dominate in the next ten years, how AlphaZero changes what we know about the game, the key to staying a top ten player at age 53, why he thinks he’s a worse loser than Kasparov, qualities he looks for in talented young Indian chess players, picks for the best places to eat in Chennai, and more.

Here is one excerpt:

COWEN: Do you hate losing as much as Kasparov does?

ANAND: To me, it seems he isn’t even close to me, but I admit I can’t see him from the inside, and he probably can’t see me from the inside. When I lose, I can’t imagine anyone in the world who loses as badly as I do inside.

COWEN: You think you’re the worst at losing?

ANAND: At least that I know of. A couple of years ago, whenever people would say, “But how are you such a good loser?” I’d say, “I’m not a good loser. I’m a good actor.” I know how to stay composed in public. I can even pretend for five minutes, but I can only do it for five minutes because I know that once the press conference is over, once I can finish talking to you, I can go back to my room and hit my head against the wall because that’s what I’m longing to do now.

In fact, it’s gotten even worse because as you get on, you think, “I should have known that. I should have known that. I should have known not to do that. What is the point of doing this a thousand times and not learning anything?” You get angry with yourself much more. I hate losing much more, even than before.

COWEN: There’s an interview with Magnus on YouTube, and they ask him to rate your sanity on a scale of 1 to 10 — I don’t know if you’ve seen this — and he gives you a 10. Is he wrong?

ANAND: No, he’s completely right. He’s completely right. Sanity is being able to show the world that you are sane even when you’re insane. Therefore I’m 11.

COWEN: [laughs] Overall, how happy a lot do you think top chess players are? Say, top 20 players?

ANAND: I think they’re very happy.

Most of all, I was struck by how good a psychologist Vishy is.  Highly recommended, and you also can see whether or not I can keep up with Vishy in his chess analysis.  Note I picked a game of his from ten years ago (against Aronian), and didn’t tell him in advance which game it would be.

In which sector are the top performers stupidest?

One of my core views is that the most successful performers in most (not all) areas are extremely smart and talented.  So if you are one of the (let’s say) top fifty global performers in an area, you are likely to be one sharp cookie, even if the form of your intelligence is quite different from that in say academia or the tech world.

You might that a sport such as basketball selects for height, and thus its top performers are not all that mentally impressive.  But I’ve spent a lot of time consuming the words of Lebron James, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (including a podcast and a dinner with the latter), and I am firmly convinced they are all extremely intelligent.  From what I’ve read about supermodels, they are also an extremely intelligent group at the very top.  There are many good-looking women, but managing your career to get to the top in a non-self-destructive fashion still requires extreme talent.

In general, most forms of top achievement involve knowing how to practice and knowing how to manage your career, both of which are likely to select for both smarts and determination.

So what then is the area where top performers are just not that smart?  Comments are open.

Markets in everything, hockey romance edition

Before last week, many people may not have known about the existence — or exceptional popularity — of hockey romance novels. But the subgenre captured mainstream attention when an NHL player and his wife called on readers to stop sexually harassing him.

Allow me to explain: A sizable portion of BookTok, a book lovers’ community on TikTok, is devoted to romance. Creators share spicy reading recommendations throughout the genre, including hockey romances. When it comes to posts about this particular category of romance novel, quotes from books will appear on top of video edits of real NHL players, sometimes doing suggestive groin exercises on the ice.

Posters gravitate to players who remind them of their favorite book boyfriends, and one popular choice is Seattle Kraken center Alex Wennberg. His team initially courted BookTok with posts and hashtags in the same style, and flew out a popular creator for a playoff game…

Within the subcategory of sports romance, hockey dominates. Right now, all 10 of the top sports romances on Amazon involve hockey.

Here is the full story.