Heat Produced: How Eddie House and the Dress Coders Delivered Home-Court Advantage

The third article posted on this blog was about Eddie House signing with the Heat and whether Jamaal Magloire or Juwan Howard would be in a suit on the inactive list instead of a uniform (hence the term "dress coders"). In an odd turn of events, it turns out home-court advantage in the NBA Finals came down to how well those three played in the last game of the season against the Toronto Raptors.

Let's take a look at how Eddie and the Dress Coders won home-court advantage.

This article will use Win Score and Estimated Wins Produced, statistical models created by Professor David Berri from the Wages of Wins Journal, to measure how much a player's box score statistics contributed to their team's efficiency differential and wins. An average player produces an estimated 0.100 wins per 48 minutes (Est.WP48), a star player produces +0.200 Est.WP48 and a superstar produces +0.300 Est.WP48. More information on these stats can be found at the following links: 

Simple Models of Player Performance
Wins Produced vs. Win Score
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics

Game Notes:

The Wins Produced stats estimated from the box score for the last game of the regular season were posted in this spreadsheet.

• Toronto native Magloire was the most productive Heat player with an estimated 0.504 wins produced from 19 rebounds, two steals and eight points on four shots and four free throw attempts.
• Mario Chalmers was the second-most productive Heat player with an estimated 0.196 wins produced from 13 assists, two rebounds and two steals.
• Juwan Howard was the third-most productive Heat player with an estimated 0.179 wins produced from 18 points on 12 shots and four free throws with six rebounds.
• House was the fourth-most productive Heat player with an estimated 0.116 wins produced from 35 points on 27 shots.
• Magloire, Chalmers, Howard and House were the only Heat players with above average production in the game.
• Canadian-born Joel Anthony was the least productive Heat player with an estimated -0.101 wins produced from one point on four shots and two free throws with three rebounds and three fouls in 21.2 minutes.
• Joey Dorsey was the most productive Raptors player with an estimated 0.244 wins produced from seven points on four shots and four free throws with seven rebounds and four steals in 32.1 minutes. 
• Dorsey and Julian Wright (0.145 est.WP48) were the only Raptors with above average production in the game.
• The least productive Raptors player in the game was Alexis Ajinca with an estimated -0.098 wins produced from eight points on three shots and six free throw attempts with five fouls and one turnover in just 15.5 minutes.
• The Heat came out firing in the first quarter and outscored the Raptors by 36 points per 100 possessions.
• The offense and defense died in the second quarter as House shot 0-5 and the Raptors went into halftime with a one-point lead after outscoring the Heat by 42 points per 100 possessions.
• The game was won in the fourth quarter as Chalmers, House, Jones, Howard and Magloire held the Raptors to the fourth-worst quarter by any Heat opponent this season with an estimated -0.413 wins produced. 
• The Heat outscored the Raptors by 78 points per 100 possessions in the fourth quarter as they held them to just 10 points on 22 possessions for an offensive rating of 45.8.

And that's how home-court advantage was won.

Unless referenced otherwise, original game data used for this post was taken from popcornmachine.net and nba.com.