What happened with Baron, Brand and Maggette? Game theory explains.

07.14.2008 | 11:37 pm | Fun with Ex Warriors, The Warriors, The X Factor

No, “game theory” is not some regional offshoot of pimpology. Game theory is actually a respected branch of applied mathematics, where the application in question is frequently the social sciences. Given the seemingly inexplicable chain reaction that sent Boom Dizzle south, Elton Brand east and Corey Maggette north, let’s see what the smart guys might have already expected to happen. As commenter Skinny Kahuna noted last week, the way things played out is eerily reminiscent of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a game-theory construct developed by a couple of pocket-protector wearing RAND Corporation employees back in the fifties. It goes a little something like this.

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (”defects”) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

Even though cooperation would produce the ideal result, the “dominant” strategy, as it is known, is to betray. This is because it will always produce a guaranteed positive outcome. In this case, a five-year contract, I mean, er, sentence. No, I didn’t make that up. Read the Wikipedia entry for yourself if you like.

Now. The events of last week. Make the jump for a an interesting excerpt from the LA Daily News, courtesy of our new favorite source for Beard-related factoids Clips Nation.

Dunleavy said the team’s original plan was to re-sign both Brand and Maggette and make a push for Sacramento point guard Beno Udrih.

As such, Dunleavy was in New York at 12:01 a.m. EST, meeting with Udrih. But things changed when Baron Davis opted out of his contract with the Warriors late in the night June 30. As soon as Davis became available, the Clippers went after him.

“Elton led the way with it,” Dunleavy said. “He called Baron and recruited him.”

Brand also apparently called Maggette.

“Elton called me to tell me about the situation with Baron Davis and asked if I wanted to be in it and I did,” Maggette said. “I really thought all three of us could be with the Clippers, and with that, we could’ve won a championship. I wanted to be there. I talked to Baron myself.”

With all three parties commanding some pretty major cake, I’m not sure how the salary thing was supposed to play out. Maybe Tim Kawakami wasn’t available to crunch the digits down, at least not before David Falk started whispering in Brand’s ear about “respect” and “betrayal.” Then the Dubs threw down and it was on. Like hot butter to the pop the pop the pop corn.

Maggette acknowledged as much. “It only lasted like a minute. I could tell I wasn’t in (the Clippers’) plans,” he said. “It was hard, you know. Because I thought they wanted me back. I’d done a lot in L.A. … Then Golden State jumped in, made me feel real comfortable and that they really wanted me to be there.”

Maggette said that he doesn’t harbor ill will toward the Clippers. He’s only trying to stick up for Brand, who has taken a considerable amount of heat for signing with the 76ers.

“We loved the fans in L.A. They gave us so much over the years,” Maggette said. “Both of us wanted to come back, and both of us should still be there. If it would’ve been handled differently, we would’ve.”

In the Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario, this basically means that the real winners are wearing badges. At least if alpha decision-making is carried out reliably, as it quite often is. In this case, the “West Coast Celtics” that weren’t couldn’t quite pull the trigger on blind trust. Well, it seems one could. And did. He’ll be number wearing number one for the red, white and blue guys down south next season. But don’t listen to me, here’s the egghead version.

In this game, regardless of what the opponent chooses, each player always receives a higher payoff (lesser sentence) by betraying; that is to say that betraying is the strictly dominant strategy. For instance, Prisoner A can accurately say, “No matter what Prisoner B does, I personally am better off betraying than staying silent. Therefore, for my own sake, I should betray.” However, if the other player acts similarly, then they both betray and both get a lower payoff than they would get by staying silent. Rational self-interested decisions result in each prisoner’s being worse off than if each chose to lessen the sentence of the accomplice at the cost of staying a little longer in jail himself. Hence a seeming dilemma. In game theory, this demonstrates very elegantly that in a non-zero sum game a Nash Equilibrium need not be a Pareto optimum.

Uh, yeah. But what does Steve Nash have to do with this?

Turman