money to a cause that runs counter to their political sensibilities: gun haters contributing to the NRA, pro-lifers contributing to Planned Parenthood.)
This sameloss aversion affects coaches. They behave much like the shortsighted mutual fund manager who forgoes long-term gains to avoid short-term losses and the amply girthed professors who could lose weight only when faced with a loss rather than a reward. The coaches are motivated less by potential gain (a touchdown) than by fear of a concrete loss (the relative certainty of points from a field goal).
More broadly, many coaches ultimately are motivated less by the potential of a Super Bowl ring than by the potential loss of something valuable they possess: their job. And in sports, there are few faster ways to lose your employment than by bucking conventional thinking, by trying something radical, and failing. A coach ordering his team to punt on fourth and three—even when it’s statistically inadvisable—faces little backlash. He is the money manager who plays it safe and loses with Walmart. If he goes for it and is unsuccessful, there’s hell to pay. He is then the money manager who loses on that unknown tech stock and now risks losing the entire account.
It makes for an odd dynamic in which the incentives and objectives of coaches aren’t perfectly aligned with those of the owners or the fans. All want to win, but since the owners and fans can’t be fired, they want to win at all cost. Give a coach truth serum and then ask what he’d prefer: go 8–8 and keep your job or go 9–7 and, because of what’s perceived to be your reckless, unconventional play-calling, lose your job?
It’s not just football coaches who make the wrong choices rather than appear extreme. Inbasketball, for instance, prevailing wisdom dictates that coaches remove a player with five fouls, particularly a star, rather than risk having him foul out of the game. But does this make sense?
We can start by measuring how long a player sits on the bench once he receives a fifth foul. We analyzed almost 5,000 NBA games from the 2006–2007 to 2009–2010 seasons and found that when a player receives his fifth foul, on average, there is 4:11 left to play in the game. He’s benched for about 3:05 of that remaining time, leaving only 1:06 of actual playing time with five fouls. Stars are treated a little differently. * On average, they don’t receive their fifth foul until there is 3:44 left, and coaches bench them for a little more than two minutes.
The strategy of sitting a player down with five fouls and waiting until the end of the game to put him back in presumes that players, particularly stars, are more valuable at the end of the game than at other times. But this is seldom the case.
Statistical analysts in basketball have created “plus-minus,” or an “adjusted plus-minus,” a metric for determining a player’s worth when he is on the floor. Simply put, it measures what happens to the score when any particular player is on the court. When a player is plus five, that means his team scored five more points than the opponent when he was on the floor. Thus, this measure takes into account not only the individual’s direct influence on the game from his own actions but also the indirect influence he has on his teammates and his opponents. It measures his net impact on the game.
As often as we hear about “clutch players,” for the average NBA player, his contribution to the game, measured by plus-minus, is actually almost two points
lower
in the fourth quarter than in the first quarter. This is also true for star players and is even the case in the last five minutes of the game. Thus, the strategy of sitting a player down with five fouls to save him for the end of the game seems to be based on a faulty premise—he is no more valuable at the end of the game.
Now consider who replaces the player when he sits on the bench. The average substitute summoned in the fourth quarter
This sameloss aversion affects coaches. They behave much like the shortsighted mutual fund manager who forgoes long-term gains to avoid short-term losses and the amply girthed professors who could lose weight only when faced with a loss rather than a reward. The coaches are motivated less by potential gain (a touchdown) than by fear of a concrete loss (the relative certainty of points from a field goal).
More broadly, many coaches ultimately are motivated less by the potential of a Super Bowl ring than by the potential loss of something valuable they possess: their job. And in sports, there are few faster ways to lose your employment than by bucking conventional thinking, by trying something radical, and failing. A coach ordering his team to punt on fourth and three—even when it’s statistically inadvisable—faces little backlash. He is the money manager who plays it safe and loses with Walmart. If he goes for it and is unsuccessful, there’s hell to pay. He is then the money manager who loses on that unknown tech stock and now risks losing the entire account.
It makes for an odd dynamic in which the incentives and objectives of coaches aren’t perfectly aligned with those of the owners or the fans. All want to win, but since the owners and fans can’t be fired, they want to win at all cost. Give a coach truth serum and then ask what he’d prefer: go 8–8 and keep your job or go 9–7 and, because of what’s perceived to be your reckless, unconventional play-calling, lose your job?
It’s not just football coaches who make the wrong choices rather than appear extreme. Inbasketball, for instance, prevailing wisdom dictates that coaches remove a player with five fouls, particularly a star, rather than risk having him foul out of the game. But does this make sense?
We can start by measuring how long a player sits on the bench once he receives a fifth foul. We analyzed almost 5,000 NBA games from the 2006–2007 to 2009–2010 seasons and found that when a player receives his fifth foul, on average, there is 4:11 left to play in the game. He’s benched for about 3:05 of that remaining time, leaving only 1:06 of actual playing time with five fouls. Stars are treated a little differently. * On average, they don’t receive their fifth foul until there is 3:44 left, and coaches bench them for a little more than two minutes.
The strategy of sitting a player down with five fouls and waiting until the end of the game to put him back in presumes that players, particularly stars, are more valuable at the end of the game than at other times. But this is seldom the case.
Statistical analysts in basketball have created “plus-minus,” or an “adjusted plus-minus,” a metric for determining a player’s worth when he is on the floor. Simply put, it measures what happens to the score when any particular player is on the court. When a player is plus five, that means his team scored five more points than the opponent when he was on the floor. Thus, this measure takes into account not only the individual’s direct influence on the game from his own actions but also the indirect influence he has on his teammates and his opponents. It measures his net impact on the game.
As often as we hear about “clutch players,” for the average NBA player, his contribution to the game, measured by plus-minus, is actually almost two points
lower
in the fourth quarter than in the first quarter. This is also true for star players and is even the case in the last five minutes of the game. Thus, the strategy of sitting a player down with five fouls to save him for the end of the game seems to be based on a faulty premise—he is no more valuable at the end of the game.
Now consider who replaces the player when he sits on the bench. The average substitute summoned in the fourth quarter
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