FIBA Suns

FIBA 2010 kicked off today. The US beat the crap out of Croatia, 106-78, as expected.

Both Suns players in the tournament got into the action today. Goran Dragic had 16 points and 8 assists in 26 minutes of Slovenia's romp over Tunisia. Hedo Turkoglu had only 6 points, but 7 assists as host Turkey embarrassed the Ivory Coast. Former Sun (now Raptor) Leandro Barbosa scored 13 points in Brazil's win over Iran.

The Seniors Problem

As wait for primary results tonight, here are some thoughts on the nature of the electorate. As we know, primaries tend to be senior-dominated contests. Here's the 2008 primary voters by age (from the VAN), along with approximate shares of the 18+ population (based on some rough math from census.gov):

	Population	2008 Prim.
18-24	9%	1%
25-34	20%	4%
35-54	37%	25%
55-64	15%	23%
65+	18%	47%

It seems like a problem to me that people under 55 (66% of the 18-and-over population), are such a small share of the primary electorate (30%). And its not just primaries, of course. Midterm generals are senior-dominated, albeit to a lesser extent:

	Population	2006 Gen.
18-24	9%	1%
25-34	20%	7%
35-54	37%	33%
55-64	15%	24%
65+	18%	35%

We already knew that seniors vote at higher rates than everyone else. That's no surprise for a number of reasons. Nor is it seniors' fault that everyone else votes at lower rates. What's striking, however is that we can improve the representativeness of the electorate simply by raising the profile of the races involved. The 2008 general electorate, for example was much closer to a representative sample:

	Population	2008 Gen.
18-24	9%	5%
25-34	20%	12%
35-54	37%	35%
55-64	15%	30%
65+	18%	18%

Yet another reason why we should have fewer elections.

International Sports Notes

1) I wrote the other day about Team USA's embarrassing performances in international basketball. The good news for our national sports dignity is that we're at least the defending champions in the World Cups of baseball and football (yes, there is a World Cup of American football).

The record on baseball is somewhat mixed. While we won the 2009 World Cup (with an amateur team) with a record of 14-1, our amateur teams at the Olympics haven't won since 2000 (won bronze in 2008, no medal in 2004). Turns out that Cuba is the real power in amateur baseball. The 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics, organized by Major League Baseball (and featuring major league players) were both won by Japan, with the best U.S. finish being 4th place in 2009.

I'm not sure who decided we needed a World Cup of American football, but there have been three of them beginning in 1999. Japan beat Mexico in the finals of the first two, neither of which included an American team. In 2007, we decided to show up and kick some ass. A bunch of former college players, our team beat South Korea 77-0 and Germany 33-7 on its way to a 23-20 double overtime win over Japan. Everything about that last sentence still feels strange.

2) The European Champions League (we're talking soccer here) is almost down to the final 32 teams, at which point the format is basically the same as the World Cup (eight groups of four teams, top two advance from each group) but with twice the matches and stretched out between September and next May, since it overlaps with the regular European league seasons.

At least two Americans will play in the group stage. Maurice Edu's Rangers squad qualified by winning the Scottish league last year, and German 2nd-place team Schalke 04 features up-and-coming star Jermaine Jones. Another rising star, Sacha Kljestan will have to help Belgian side R.S.C. Anderlecht beat Serbia's FK Partizan on Tuesday to advance. None of their teams will be expected to advance very far, but each of these young midfielders will gain valuable experience against top-flight squads.

Incentives and Republican "Rejectionism"

There has been a lot of chatter on the Poli Sci-friendly blogs lately about the Senate Republicans' strategy of uniformly filibustering virtually all of the administration's efforts. I think the strategy - which I like to think of as operating like a parliamentary party trapped in a Madisonian system - is super-interesting and wanted to write about it. Read all four links if you like, but here's a quick summary of the original ideas in each:

Jonathan Sides is right that "elections writ large depend more on performance than on policy," so the Republicans strategy would be effective only if it actually hampered performance. He also critiques the "Party of No" messaging from Democrats, since "the people who will agree with that are the people already likely to vote Democratic."

Ezra Klein mostly just wanted to highlight Sides' post, but he does point out that "if President Romney had proposed ObamaCare before a mostly Republican Congress, it would've gotten an easy majority of Republicans" because partisans take cues from their leaders.

Matthew Yglesias corrected Klein's assertion - properly, in my view - that Democrats would have voted against RomneyCare en masse. "Had that happened," he says, "the resulting legislation would be substantially more popular with Republicans and Independents than the current legislation is." That seems right to me. Elite consensus usually leads to strong voter support (think Iraq debate, circa 2002-2003).

Jonathan Bernstein is really who I'm getting around to here:

"I've read quite a few liberal observers lately who believe that Republican behavior is strictly rational and reveals a real problem with the political system: Republicans obstruct, the government doesn't work well, voters punish the Democratic incumbents. But that formula, while it may work with the stimulus or unemployment benefits or perhaps Fed appointments, really doesn't apply across the board."

That's true. It's hard to argue that Republican opposition to, say, immigration reform really hurt voters' perceptions of Democratic performance (by damaging the short run economy). Instead, he argues that Republicans have "learned" from their success in the 1994 midterms after opposing essentially every Clinton initiative (principally the 1993 budget, which passed the Senate with Gore's tie-breaking vote). As he says, "the subsequent drop in Barack Obama's approval ratings in spring 2009 just seemed to confirm they were on the right track" in re-running the same strategy. Note that he doesn't actually believe that they're right about 1994.

I buy that Republicans are responding to both the "hey, it worked in '94" and the "maybe we can damage their performance" incentives. But it seems to me that what we're primarily seeing here is a party who's primary voters have shifted dramatically to the right. Officeholders have extraordinarily strong incentives not to cooperate with Democrats, in order to avoid primary challenges. Also, as GOP loses its moderates, the Senate caucus should logically be dominated by Senators who simply want to oppose all Democratic initiatives on principal.

Here's a fun tidbit: only Brown, Collins, and Snowe are from states Kerry won in 2004. In the 1993-1994 Senate, Slade Gorton (WA), Mark Hatwood (OR), Bob Packwood (OR), David Durenberger (MN), Chuck Grassley (IA), Alfonse D'Amato (NY) and John Chafee (RI) were all Republicans from states that Dukakis had won in 1988. And Dukakis only won ten states!

FIBA 2010

Who else is excited for the 2010 FIBA World Basketball Championship? Didn't know it was coming up? Or that it existed at all? Don't worry, here's the rundown. Oh, and psst, it's August 28-September 12.

This year's tournament is in Turkey. The 24 participating nations are divided into groups of six, and play one game against each other teams in their group (five games in five days). The two teams in each group with the worst records are then eliminated, leaving the remaining 16 teams to fill out a single-elimination bracket.

We invented the sport, so we should expect to pretty much destroy everyone right? Well, not so much. We've won only three times since 1950. The first year that the US actually sent pro players was 2002, and while the team wasn't exactly a bunch of superstars, dropping out in the quarterfinals to Yugoslavia was a huge disappointment. The 2006 roster was similar to the Beijing Olympics "Redeem Team," including MEGA TEAM, aka Lebron, D-Wade, and Chris Bosh. That team lost to Greece, 95-101, in the semifinals before beating Argentina in the third place game.

The 2010 roster is currently at 13 men, so one of these guys won't make the trip to Turkey. But here are the boys in the red, white, and blue:

Guards: Chauncey Billups, Stephen Curry, Eric Gordon, Andre Iguodala, Rajon Rondo, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook; Forwards: Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay, Danny Granger, Lamar Odom, Kevin Love; Center: Tyson Chandler

I'm excited about Durant getting this chance to really break out as a superstar. The rest of the team is pretty oddly constructed. Rose, Rondo, Westbrook, Curry and Billups are the cream of the Point Guard crop in today's NBA, but do we really need all five of them? The roster is also pretty small, with just one Center and only two other guys at 6'-10" (Love and Odom). The USA is in Group B along with Brazil, Croatia, Iran, Slovenia, Tunisia. Our first game will be vs. Croatia (ESPN, 11pm ET). Get excited.

Cumulative Voting in Chandler

Putting off "how elections work" for one more post, this article about city spending on the new City Hall and Arizona Ave. improvements becoming the dominant issue in Chandler's election got me thinking about how these sorts of things would play out under cumulative voting.

Let's suppose that spending really is the decisive issue in this election, and that other factors like campaign spending, endorsements and incumbency play no role. Let's also suppose that most voters will vote for candidates pledging to reduce spending. Finally, let's take the candidates positions on the two projects above as indicative of their view of city spending.

Three candidates, opposed to both projects, are in the "spending is inherently evil" category: Roe, Taylor, and Weninger. One candidate, Trinity, is in the "spending can do good things" category. The other two, Hartke and Wallace, are both rhetorically and historically somewhere in the middle. Suppose voters are also divided into three camps, too. 50% are flatly anti-spending, 30% are pro-spending, and 20% are in the middle (not crazy, but worried higher spending will lead to higher property taxes while they're already hurting). For simplicity's sake, there are 100 voters.

Under the current election system (requiring 50%+1) we would expect the three anti-spending candidates to win. The anti-spending 50% all vote for Roe-Taylor-Weninger. The pro-spending 30% vote for Trinity along with Hartke-Wallace (the next closest to their preferences). And the middle 20% vote for Hartke-Wallace and then spread their third votes evenly across the other four candidates.* The results would look like this:

Candidate	Anti 50%	Middle 20%	Pro 30%	Total
Roe*	50	5		55
Taylor*	50	5		55
Weninger*	50	5		55
Hartke		20	30	50
Wallace		20	30	50
Trinity		5	30	35

* = winner

Now, let's re-do the election using cumulative voting (each voter can distribute their 3 votes however they'd like). We assume that voters have strong preferences and will cast a second/third vote for their preferred candidate rather than support a less-than-ideal candidate. Voters have no means of choosing between preferred candidates, and will choose to divide their votes evenly among them.

Anti-spending voters will divide their votes among their 3 preferred candidates. The pro-spending voters will each give all 3 of their votes to Trinity. The middle 20% will split their votes evenly between Hartke and Wallace (half will give 2 votes to Hartke, half to Wallace):

Candidate	Anti 50%	Middle 20%	Pro 30%	Total
Roe	50			50
Taylor	50			50
Weninger	50			50
Hartke		30		30
Wallace		30		30
Trinity*			90	90

Trinity would win, along with two of the anti-spending candidates. Note that the pro-spending side breaks through (and not the middle) both because it is the largest minority and because it consolidates its support behind one candidate. Suppose the middle 20% organized to only support Hartke. He would claim all 60 of their votes and win a seat as well. The proper response of the anti-spending 50% would be to only support 2 candidates, returning to equilibrium at 1-pro-spending candidate and 2 anti-spending candidates emerging from the election.

The anti-spending side still holds the policy reins, so the cumulative scenario is functionally different only in that it guarantees at least one opposition faction a public forum for its opposition. The strong incentives to organize with like-minded others created by a cumulative system also means more people organizing around city elections, which can't be a bad thing.

Can Point Guards Win NBA Titles?

Over the last twenty years, the most common route to the NBA championship has been to pair one elite superstar with another legitimate all-star (or better). Think through the last two decades: Jordan-Pippen, Olajuwon-Drexler, Shaq-Kobe, Shaq-Wade, and Kobe-Gasol have won 14 of the last 20 titles. 13 of those 14 times, both players made All-NBA (essentially the top 15 players in the league).

According to Wikipedia, All-NBA team voting:

“is conducted by a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada…

Players receive five points for a first team vote, three points for a second team vote, and one point for a third team vote. The five players with the highest point totals make the first team, with the next five making the second team and so forth…

…each team has consisted of two forwards, one center, and two guards beginning with the 1956 teams.”

First, a couple of notes on using All-NBA teams as data. 1) There is no distinction between point/shooting guards or small/power forwards; overall, there are 60 centers, 75 power forwards, 45 small forwards, 55 shooting guards, and 65 point guards. 2) Players are sometimes incorrectly categorized (Amar’e Stoudamire is always listed as a Center while he’s usually played PF) and some have switched the positions they were elected for between years (Dirk Nowitzki, Tracy McGrady, Paul Pierce).

Anyway, pairings of two All-NBA are common: 58 teams in 20 years. That’s to say that the competition among elite teams is tough enough that 78% of these “1-2 punch teams“ don’t win a title. The Suns even had three guys (Nash, Stoudamire, Marion) on the All-NBA teams in 2004-05 and didn’t win.

If one were a GM, one would want to know if history gave any clues as to how to go about putting together a “1-2 punch” of all-stars. Are any positions or combinations of positions especially valuable?

This converges with another topic I’ve wanted to explore. The Suns, for as long as I’ve known them, have been more often than not: 1) championship contenders/interesting in the Playoff discussion and 2) led into that discussion by an All-Star point guard and one other All-Star. Between KJ (3-time All-Star), Jason Kidd (3 All-Star games as a Sun), and Steve Nash (5 All-Star games as a Sun), we’ve had an All-Star point guard 11 of the last 21 years. KJ led us to the ’90 conference finals and with Barkley to the ’93 NBA finals. Nash, with Amar'e and Marion (until he was abandoned in favor of the great Shaq disaster in Feb. 2008) has brought us 3 conference finals appearances (all great series) in six seasons.

So why did we never break through? Is it related to having a point guard occupy one of our two slots?

Which brings me back to the 58 teams who had two All-NBA guys. It turns out that 27 did not feature an All-NBA point guard, while 31 of them did. Of the 27 without All-NBAs at point, 13 won championships. Of the 31 starring elite PGs, none won the title. Point guards have fared much worse than the other positions in the opportunities they’ve had to be paired with another All-NBA guy:

Position	Titles	Seasons with another All-NBA
SG	12	22
SF	6	11
C	5	27
PF	3	26
PG	0	31

The All-NBA pairs that won titles were: Jordan/Pippen (5), Shaq/Kobe (3), Kobe/Gasol (2), Olajuwon/Drexler, Wade/Shaq, & Garnett/Pierce.

Shooting guards have been them most successful, especially if named Jordan or Bryant (10 of the 13 titles between them). With this small sample (for each SF, PF, and C, all of the titles are held by a pair of guys), it’s hard to draw any conclusions except that PGs don’t seem to work as one of the two guys. Once the Nash era is finally (and sadly) over, the Suns’ front office might want to keep that in mind.

Then again, set aside Jordan and Kobe’s titles and you have this chart, so maybe we still don’t know much about building champions:

Position	Titles	Seasons with another All-NBA
SG	2	9
SF	1	6
C	2	21
PF	1	24
PG	0	31

As a bonus, here are the guys who made All-NBA at least 5 times and First Team at least 3 times.

They are undoubtedly the best players of these last two decades (in order of First Team appearances):

PF: Karl Malone, Tim Duncan, Charles Barkley, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, SF: Lebron James, Scottie Pippen, C: Shaq, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, PG: Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Allen Iverson, SG: Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan

Next up, how elections work.