You must be mistaking some other post or posts with mine, as I am positive I used it once. No big deal, but I don't know what you are referring to when you mention "making broad assumptions about their perspective." In any case, I posted to take issue with your dismissing confirmation bias as "pop psychology" but you backed off of that. And I agree with your pt, as I said earlier, that the the concept can be abused and can be abusive, asinine if you will, to lay it on someone in a debate. However, in my experience, "regurgitating stats" often doesn't resolve the impasse bc the debate often revolves around which stats to use and which are better, and which stats require more context to properly interpret.
I think it depends. If the person's opinion is based on tangible stats, then of course it wouldn't be fair to attack them for it. But if those people are just making snap judgments based on a few minutes of clips then I think it's fair to say they might suffer from some kind of confirmation bias. And aside from King Boo, no one seems to be posting any stats and instead they use non-specific words like "a bit," or "a few."
Perhaps I should clarify. I meant more of involvement rather than stats. If you watched him with D' Antoni and Woodson, he seemed a lot more passive for Woodson, like he would just pass the ball to Melo and then stand in a corner. Stats won't really show you that.
There are no "stats" to talk about in some minutes of scrimmage footage -- everything that happens can be counted on one or two hands.
HOLY SH--!!! The rockets looked fantastic! Terence Jones looked like old school Walter Berry at St. John's. Omer had a beautiful dish. Lin was crossing over guys. This is a legitimate, competitive NBA team, boys and girls. I say they're a 500 team in the WC.
Just ignore the first day footage. That was a mess. I pegged them at 42-45 wins before seeing any of this footage, then dropped them to 35 or so after seeing day one. Now I have them back at 43 wins.
I have to admit I am generally suspicious of claims that there was a big difference between Lin's play under D'antoni and under Woodson. It wasn't the same, but I think the difference is often overstated. As for your comment about his feeding the ball to Melo and then standing around, I think there was definitely an element of deferring to Melo as the star player (as necessary acknowledgment of locker room politics), but if Melo is positioned in the post, he should be fed the ball, as he is very effective with the ball there. I wouldn't call that either passive or active, but just getting a high efficiency shot for the possession. (When Melo isn't in the post and is instead chucking up long-2s is another story.) Let me ask you this -- what is the difference between the idea of getting other teammates involved and feeding the ball to Melo? You wouldn't call the first case passive, but would call the second case passive. I don't think there is a difference on Lin's part. It just happens to be that when the ball goes to Melo, it's less likely it's coming back. As for "passiveness," or "getting other teammates involved" (however you want to think of it), I would say it has less to do with which coach he played under, and more to do with which quarter it was. He took fewer shots himself in the first 3 quarters, and looked more to get others involved in the offense, and I don't think this pattern changed under Woodson. An interesting stat is Lin's distribution of field goal attempts across quarters. 1st 80 2nd 94 3rd 104 4th 98 We see from those numbers that in the first quarter Lin shoots less himself and is trying more to assist baskets. These are Lin's distribution of free throw attempts by quarter: 1st 23 2nd 29 3rd 56 4th 75 It's dramatic how often he gets to the foul line in the fourth quarter -- by any definition, he's not passive at the end of the game, and I don't think this fundamentally changes under Woodson. And to put that in context, the numbers would even be more tilted if Lin actually played in the fourth quarter of blowout games. Like in the blowout of the Blazers (which Felton diehards so rarely mention), I think Lin sat out for most of the fourth quarter.
Actually, I'm a big fan and wish him all the best. I can just see why smarter people than I passed up on him. He shows up when it really counts, though.
I agree that Lin's fga oftentimes was a lot lower in the earlier quarters than the later ones. On the other hand, I'm not sure if the passiveness was more due to Woodson or Melo playing the main role in the offense. Idk...perhaps I'm a bit biased because I felt Woodson didn't really have any offensive plans, ran very few pnr's with Amare and offensive sets, instead relying on iso.
How do you know that's not what Woodson told Lin to do? "Hand the ball to Melo and get out of the way!" We know Woodson is Iso Melo all the way. That's what other PGs did too after Lin went down.
