For several seasons now there has been a fair amount of open grumbling about a certain team getting a disproportionate number of TC boosts (see
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5006&p=45110&hilit=tcblessed#p45110. One GM last season went on a rant about how TC might bless "good" GMs (
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6761. Well, I decided to look into how many TC boosts the Hawks actually get. My methodology is a little simplified. I just looked at every player from every year to see if their potential increased so this isn't going to catch boosts that could be just as good but don't change the potential color and will also catch potential color changes that were caused by paid training. I know, it isn't perfect but I think it is still instructive. Here are some interesting pictures.
- bumps2.PNG (74.48 KiB) Viewed 1441 times
- bumps1.PNG (72.11 KiB) Viewed 1441 times
So have the Hawks been getting a lot of TC boosts lately? Uh, yes. Definitely yes. They went from an average team in terms of TC boosts to having the second most TC boosts in a span of about 4 years. In fact they have had 10 boosts over a span of 4 years. To put that in perspective 8 teams have had 10 or fewer boosts in their entire 33 year history. The Hawks have been truly #tcblessed. The Wizards have also been very lucky in the game of TC roulette. They have quietly averaged almost a TC boost a year. The Bucks and Spurs have also been favored by the TC gods over the years.
So do I think there is a correlation between winning and TC boosts? Obviously I could look into that statistically, and maybe I will, but for now I am going to say probably not. Look at the Spurs flat line in the 2010's during a period when they made the playoffs every year and won two championships. But there is another important factor that explains a lot of this, age. Look at the Suns flat line during the reign of Love. This is probably a product of the fact that they have employed approximately 2 players under the age of 35 during that entire span. They trade their pick every year so they really haven't had a chance at boosts. I did run one regression at the player level.
- bump_reg.PNG (119.93 KiB) Viewed 1441 times
It turns out after you control for player, player potential, team, and year, age really doesn't explain much. When you look at the R squared you realized none of this actually explains very much. When you look at the estimates by team, note that they are comparing the propensity of players on that team to get a TC boost compared to the reference team, in this case the Wizards. The Hawks are no more likely to get a TC boost than the Wizards when controlling for all of the stuff I just mentioned. There are teams that get fewer on average but I can't really explain that (maybe I'll look into it later). For now I'll sum up the article by saying that you have just read yet another article in which I present evidence that TC is too random to really understand well.
