Analyzing statistics in modern day sports is one of the prime sport-fan pastimes. However it is possible to capture more information than just a plain statistical description of the data.
For example, it is possible to use financial models and techniques to understand performance in sports in a more insightful way. In particular, in the case of the recent NBA finals, we can analyze the performance of each player as if it were a financial asset.
A financial asset or security is anything that has the potential of giving a financial return overtime, such as stocks, bonds, treasury bills, and others. In this way, our goal is to analyze and asses a player's performance, and identify how reliable and efficient he is.
In the case of the 2016 NBA Champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers, we can perform this analysis by studying the player's individual performance compared to that of their conference during the 2016 season. Here we can determine how sensitive a player is with respect to the overall conference performance and how effective he is.
We can mesure how sensitive a player is to the performance of the overall conference performance using the idea of beta. Taking the benchmark to be the East Conference during the 2016 season, we can find that the most independent players were Richard Jefferson -who was very consistent-, Tristan Thompson, and Kevin Love, while the ones that followed the overall conference performance were Sasha Kaun, James Jones, and J.R. Smith.
In terms of effectiveness, the Sharpe ratio provides a very accurate description on the worth of having a certain player on the team's lineup. With this, we can find that the most reliable players on the Cavaliers were Kyrie Irving and LeBron James, who were almost twice more reliable as the next players Matt Dellavedova, Tristan Thompson, and Timofey Mozgov.
Portfolio management strategies can be applied to analyze the performance of sports teams which provide a very insightful and interesting way to understand the game and enjoy it better.
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