Bias in player evaluation with former Bucks executive Seth Partnow

There is always bias in everything we do, in every decision we make, and how we talk about and view things in sports is no exception. Fans of the Milwaukee Bucks are always going to be biased to varying degrees on things that involve their team.

Whether it be defending a star player like Giannis Antetokounmpo or pitching fake trades where the Bucks give up significantly less but it’s viewed through a Bucks bias as relatively fair, there is always going to be some sort of bias clouding our judgment.

Even league executives are guilty of this in some form or fashion. I recently spoke with former Bucks Director of Basketball Research and NBA analyst at The Athletic Seth Partnow, whose new book The Midrange Theory touches on many different aspects of analytics within basketball and how it has evolved the game, how the meaning of the word has been misconstrued, how they’re used properly and improperly, and how they can help to remove our bias when evaluating players.

(I recommend picking up Seth’s book. It’s great for fans who want to dive deeper into understanding how analytics play a role in every basketball decision but also where its limitations arise, such as when evaluating defense.)

Individual player evaluation and analysis have been something I’ve tried to expand my knowledge of recently. Partnow’s book made me start asking questions of why we let certain things cloud our view of a player and why we don’t simply look at what value the player can bring to the team as opposed to outside factors.

Bias in player evaluation with former Bucks executive Seth Partnow

Right off the bat in his book, one of the things that caught my eye (as it will for most Bucks fans) was Partnow talking about the process of the team signing Brook Lopez back in the summer of 2018. It was a great signing at the time on a one-year, $3.38 million contract and has aged very well since then considering how important Lopez is to the team.

Partnow mentions that there was a negative perception around Lopez, but not because of how he played in the previous season with the Los Angeles Lakers. It was because he was coming off of a big contract and because he didn’t live up to the expectations of that contract, he was seen as a negative asset. Partnow explained how this was the case.

"“I think that the part where it does get a little fraught, almost, is in a situation where a player has finished a contract that maybe had him overpaid and now they’re going to be paid whatever you’re going to pay him. But the perception is so tied to ‘Hey, this guy was overpaid before and therefore he’s bad.’ And it’s a subtle bias but I do think you see it creep in.”"

It’s not shocking to me that Lopez wasn’t seen as a big asset, but even at the time, many were surprised the Bucks were able to land him for the price that they did. It was also surprising to me that league executives allowed a past contract to influence their view of the value that Lopez could bring to their team on a new contract.

Another example he gave was Jeff Green, who has been traded multiple times in his career for a decent return, which in turn will influence how we view that player as our minds are tied to the acquisition cost, not the player itself. “Once you take [the perception of] ‘man, it cost us a first-round pick to get that guy,” Partnow says. “Once you remove that from the equation, then it’s so much easier to see kind of the player he is, rather than necessarily viewing it against the backdrop of the value proposition.”

One of the other aspects is bringing a player into your team and evaluating how their role will translate on your team from what they did on their old team. In the book, Partnow talks about the idea of an 82 game player versus a 16 game player. The idea that one guy is a floor raiser who will get you wins in the regular season but won’t have the same success in the playoffs for a myriad of reasons (Carlos Boozer is the example given in the book) against a role player who succeeds at what he does and becomes more important in the playoffs (Robert Horry).

So when you’re looking to bring in a player that is putting up big raw stats on a bad team or a role player on a good team that would be expanding into a bigger role, both can be tricky to evaluate. But Partnow believes a player in a bigger role coming into a smaller role could be slightly more so.

"“It’s always fraught trying to figure out how would a guy will perform any role. And to me the bigger risk is the guy who is in a big role and is moving to a different big role, even a slightly smaller one, because his value, such as it is or was perceived to be, is tied to what he is in that old role. And if you’re giving him a smaller role or just a different one, you’re paying for what he did previously, and what he’s going to do going forward is more likely than not worse, just kind of sight unseen.”"

A lot of what we do in evaluating a player is tied back to their contract and, rightly or wrongly, it influences a lot of how we feel about a player. ” you’re almost never considering a player skill in a vacuum,” Partnow explains. “Just because it’s the intersection of player’s skill and the cost of keeping or adding them to your team. Whether that’s, you know, the asset cost in a trade or simply the opportunity cost of the moves you can’t make it because of that player’s spot on your roster.”

Although we don’t always pick up on these preconceived or subtle biases in our thought process, it happens all the time when talking about certain players and how their values are perceived.

It’s not easy to recognize that we’re doing this as fans or people in the media and that’s without having the attachment of your professional career tied to these decisions where your bias may be taking over.