Do Revenge Games Exist?
By Dashiell and Spencer Nusbaum
Revenge Game (noun) — A game in which a player is competing against a team he holds a grudge against. He may hold this grudge against an individual player, or an entire team. Common variations include:
Broken Brotherhood: (Westbrook vs. Durant), (Marcus and Markieff Morris vs. Phoenix), Broken Fatherhood: (LeBron James vs. Delonte West), and Broken Heart: (Reggie Miller vs. the entire state of New York, and more specifically, Reggie Miller vs. Spike Lee)
In a recent article, writer Bill Simmons spoke about attending a game with Houston Rockets General Manager and noted analytics guru, Daryl Morey. During the game, Simmons explains, Morey joked that “The worst thing about making so many trades over the years is that every Rockets game now sets up a Revenge Game for the other team.”
Was this just a joke from Morey? Or was there any statistical evidence to back up his proposition?
We decided to find out.
How did we define a “Revenge Game?”
It would be next to impossible to quantify different variations of revenge games. If a player like Durant leaves the Thunder, does it become a revenge game for every member of the Thunder? Is it a revenge game for Durant if he willingly left in free-agency? Questions like this helped us narrow our definition of a “Revenge Game.”
Our definition of a Revenge Game: For Player X, the first game played against the team Player X was most recently traded from. (Does not include sign-and-trades)
Comparison Tool: Revenge Game stats vs. Rest of Season stats. If Player X got traded partway through the season, we’d take their stats from whatever portion of the season they played on their new teams.
Player X must have:
- Played at least one game for the team they were traded from
- Started at least 50% of games for their new team
- Played against former team in the same season they were traded, (ie if traded before the 2017–2018 season, must have played against former team in the 2017–2018 season)
- Started the game against their former team
Data:
We sampled 82 players to get an 82 game sample, the length of one full NBA season.
All data collected before January 12th, 2017. The only notable omission would be Chris Paul’s game against the Clippers (The Tunnel Game), in which he had 19 points, dished out 7 assists, and pulled down 6 boards, about on par with his season average.
Do Players Perform Better in Revenge Games, and, If So, By How Much?
Here’s how much better/worse players do in revenge games:
The only statistics in which the athletes perform worse are turnovers and fouls. Everything else improves or stays the same. In general, they play better. They take more shots, commit more fouls, and turn the ball over more, erratic tendencies suggesting that the desire for revenge does seep into their minds. There’s an almost negligible change in the number of assists, and considering they play 1.08 more minutes per game,it’s safe to say that they aren’t looking to pass the ball much more than they normally would.
Game score is a stat created to give someone an understanding of how well a player played in a given game based on simple box score stats (like all the ones found in the table above). It’s not perfect, but it’ll serve as the mark of what we’re looking for — how, comparatively, did players perform in revenge games.
An improvement in game score of 1.5 over an 82 game sample is definitely something, but it’s not a huge difference. However, we did notice that in the past few years, performance in revenge games has changed.
Have Players Gotten Better at Revenge Games?
Let’s look at those same stats since the 2014–2015 season
Players play more, take more shots, convert them at a slightly higher clip, rebound more, etc. They do everything more. The same was true of the cumulative data, except to a much lesser extent.
A change in game score of 4.12 is significant. That’s the difference between 2016–17 Russell Westbrook (MVP) and 2016–17 Jimmy Butler (All-Star).
We took season average game score and subtracted it from the individual game’s game score, and plotted them over time. This is what it looked like.
Is the r2 value 0.087? Yes. Does it also look like there’s a clear upward trend in the data as we get closer to the present day? Yes.
So what’s causing this? Is it narrative? Has the league had more drama since? There’s one other way we could look at the hypothetical effect of narrative on a player’s game from this data.
Does Time Played With One’s Former Team Correlate with Success in Revenge Games?
Theoretically, if a player played for a team for a longer period of time, they’d have more motivation, more drive to do well against them after getting traded by them, right? Of course, there are narratives to be had outside of simply duration of time played for a team — the Morris twins come to mind as a prime example.
“Everybody knew how bad I wanted to play with my brother. Phoenix knew. For them to trade me without consent or telling or anything like that was kind of like a, I would say slap in the face, because of the contract I took from those guys and the money I took from them. That was kind of a slap in the face.” — Marcus Morris
“One thing for sure, I am not going to be [playing for Phoenix anymore]. If you want to put that out there, you can put that out. I don’t give a [expletive]. I am not going to be there at all. That’s just what it is.” — Markieff Morris
But because it’s so hard to quantify exactly how much motivation each player had to destroy their prior teams based on news headlines, we’ll examine the next best thing.
It seems like there’s more variation when they play longer. Here’s a graph of how far off the player’s game scores were from their season averages.
They seem to play with a greater deviation from their season average.
The Three Season Theory
How much better did those with at least three seasons worth of games with their former team perform in revenge games?
On average, these players had game scores 2.57 points higher than their season averages.
Variation:
There was more variation among those who were in a revenge game against a team they had played at least three seasons with, as there was more volatility (a larger standard deviation) a higher percentage of players landed outside the norm (+/- one standard deviation). However, we need to take this with a grain of salt, because the total variance was not drastically different between the two data sets.
Cumulatively, how many players performed better than normal?
Positive Game Score Compared: 22
Negative Game Score Compared: 15
How much better did those with less than three seasons worth of games with their former team perform in revenge games?
On average, these players had game scores .57 points higher than their season averages.
How much variation was there among players who had played less than three seasons with their former team?
Cumulatively, how many players performed better than normal?
Positive Game Score Compared: 24
Negative Game Score Compared: 20
Notable Revenge Games
What are some of the best revenge games (that is, game score relative to their season average)?
1. Jusuf Nurkic vs POR
Nurkic owns not only the best game relative to his season average, but the best game out of anyone on this list, period.
8. DeMarcus Cousins vs SAC
Cousins owns the second best game score, although only 8th best relative to normal performance. Boogie dropped 41 and 23 against his former team.
What are some of the worst?
82. James Harden vs OKC
3–16 from the floor. Harden was only 62nd ranked on the list in terms of raw game score, but 82nd compared to season average.
81. Brandon Knight vs DET
Shot 2–7 from the field to go alongside his 6 turnovers.
80. Eric Bledsoe vs LAC
3–10 from the field
78. Paul Pierce vs BOS
82nd raw game score, 78th comparatively. 2–10 from the field, 5 fouls.
In Conclusion
It seems as though there is a correlation between the amount of time you spent with your former team, and how well you perform against said team. Logically, this makes sense as a motivator. The caveat to this is that each player differs in personality. We are trying to quantify something largely qualitative. A guy like Thaddeus Young may just not be the revenge type (statistically, he isn’t.)
The data also suggests that once Player X has played three seasons worth of games with a club, their motivation either
- Carries the same weight over time (the difference between four and eight seasons with a team being inconsequential) or
- The role of motivation has a limitation, and can only carry so much weight in any individual game (outside of maybe Westbrook, players don’t get to just turn on Rookie Mode when they wish.)
In addition, the narrative of a revenge game seems to have a more positive impact on performance since the 14–15 NBA season.
Does this matter? To NBA teams, maybe not so much. To fans, absolutely, and to those who take part in DFS, it’s definitely something to take into account.
Overall, we can conclude that yes, players do on average perform better in revenge games, whether that be because of narrative, knowledge of one’s’ former team, or any other host of reasons.
Make sure you circle your calendars for February 9.
Do you just want to see the individual games?
Here ya go.
For full statistics, click the link below:
