Thanks wnes but durvasa is actually correct when he said that I'm a troll. Because I am indeed a Troll. I only post when we win games, whereas I avoid coming into this forum for a couple of days if we loose.
I think Yao deserved the POM and he'll become a legitimate MVP candidate by the end of the season... Congrats!
We've had a bit of change in leadership at the top at SI.com, and it appears not everyone is a fan of my writing. Shocking! Hopefully I'll be back to writing columns soon, I still take all these notes and try to watch/record every game I can; but, for now, I'm just doing what I've been assigned. Player Power Rankings are hardly my top pick, but they are what they are, and I'll at least try to make those semi-kickass.
Yao is the most-deserved player for the November POM. No question about it. Tmac will win the Decemeber one. Go Houson Rockets.
You needed to make a case because you threw the bomb. It was your responsibility to back up your own words. But I'm tired of this thread and I'm sure you are too, so I'm letting you off the hook.
At the end of the day, I'm probably not going to convince you or most here that Dirk had a better month. And, no, I don't consider it my responsibility to have to spend an inordinate amount of time rigorously backing up an opinion, to your satisfaction. It's a futile exercise: you couldn't construct a bulletproof case that Yao is more deserving than Dirk, how can I be expected to do this for Dirk? No such case exists, either way. I've explained where I think Yao needs to improve, and I've explained (in general) why Dirk's month has been more impressive to me. Whatever countpoints have been made, I've tried to respond to (and I've been trashed for doing so). Nothing productive will come out of continuing this discussion, so I'm happy to end it here.
Wow...I liked your stuff. Unlike most NBA writers, you like the game and take the time to be informed on more than just your local/favorite team.
I see our illustrious SI columnist hasn't the courage to say exactly what he means (and to be held accountable for his words). Reminds me of some women I know.
Because women are, somehow, "weaker" in your eyes? I'll account for this: you sound like a twat, unlike any woman I've ever been around.
By converting to per possession stats, an up-tempo team's per game stats usually get artificially "diluted," compared to those of a slow-tempo team. At the end of a game, each team plays exactly 48 minutes, not any pre-determined possessions. And that's all it matters. Your FT shooting analogy is flawed, however subtly surreptitious, which you may not realize. The whole purpose of the shooting FT is to make the shot and thus score -- with extremely rare exception that when scores are tired or close near the end of a game, the FTer intentionally misses the last FT, aiming to grab the rebound. The main purpose of a possession is to find the best way to score, for instances, by means of taking wide open or uncontested shot (usually outside), or taking the ball inside to the low post by a player who's capable of shooting in close range at high FG% or drawing shooting foul. Still, in not so rare occasions, a team strives to maintain its possession as long as the shot clock allows in order to keep the opposing team from getting back the possession and score quickly. Even if it leads to a turnover as the shot clock expires, it's a tactical success nonetheless. Under normal circumstance, a team uses its possession not just to get off a shot, either in time or in a hurry. Avoiding turnover is not the goal of a successful possession, getting a high percentage shot and/or forcing a shooting foul are what a team is looking for. Theoretically and practically, a team can have a zero turnover game but still lose in a landslide, if most the shots are bad shots that clank the iron. Since you brought up free throw shooting as a comparison, here is an example that is more appropriate. Poor free throwers such as Shaquille O'neil, Chris Dudley, and Tim Duncan sometime shot air balls from the free throw lines. But are they incapable of shooting the ball that at least touch the ring? Of course not! The reality is they shot what they considered a good shot that had a better chance to go in than those they previously missed miserably, but unfortunately it went eery against they will. Shooting airballs in free throws is much like committing turnovers in possessions. They are both unintended side products. (a side product doesn't mean it's trivial, though) Many raw and original stats can be purposefully manipulated to make some "points," but not every massaged data is useful. Dean Smith may have conjured up some per possession stats, but he may have also decided which player to play in a game depending on whether his dog licked the left or right side of his face on a certain day. This is what Kelly Dwyer called dismissive. LOL Well, first of all, the per 40 minutes stats are about as useless as the per possession turnover rate, because if a player doesn't/can't play nearly as close to 40 minutes per game, the whole damn thing is a pointless exercise. Second, your argument in fact doesn't disprove my assertion that Yao has more "touches" than Duncan does. For starter, how is getting assisted not a "touch"? Furthermore, Yao draws more double-teams than Duncan (through constant posting and reposting), therefore, high turnovers are expected. Third, you again are living in denial. Whether you look at individual turnovers per game, or the relative individual turnover "contribution" to the team's total, Yao is not doing statistically any worse than Duncan. If you are biased in your assessment of different players, expect others to call you out. It's a fair game. I am not sure why you keep running in circles. I don't think I said PER shouldn't be used as a metric to select POM winners. My contention has been that it is not the only one that's considered, since otherwise POM may as well be called PERPOM. If this is the only standard that has been used, I have no problem with that. And if that's the case, Dirk deserves it, and Yao robbed him. But in reality, it's not. I have a feeling you worship John Hollinger and his PER stuff way too much. You should have known by now his "expert" assessment of Bonzi Wells for the Houston Rockets turns out be nothing but a joke. Um, I think you're more confused. I guess there is fundamentally philosophical difference between you and me. But hey, as they say, we can agree to disagree.
Less willing to stand up and be counted, that's for sure -- just like you. Lots of sniping from the safety of ambiguity, just like you. Some women have guts, don't get me wrong, but most of them are like you.
No, teams that play at a fast pace score an artificially high number of points, because they get more possessions to do so. A bad defensive team can choose to slow the game down to a crawl and give up less points per minutes. But they're not playing better defense -- i.e. they haven't given themselves any advantage by giving up less points because they in turn have less possessions to score. You're still not understanding. In any given game, both teams will basically play the same number of possessions. Who wins will be determined by which team is most efficient in scoring on those possessions (and, conversely, stopping the other team on those possessions). Consider the following team attributes for Team A and Team B: Team A: 100 ppg scored 95 ppg allowed 100 poss/g (very fast) 100 pts per 100 possessions scored (poor offense) 95 pts per 100 possessions allowed (great defense) Team B: 100 ppg scored 95 ppg allowed 85 poss/g (very slow) 118 pts per 100 possessions scored (great offense) 112 pts per 100 possessions allowed (poor defense) A simplistic analysis that only looks at points scored and points allowed per game might surmise that both teams play very similarly. In fact, they are quite different, which becomes clear when you look at the possession data. Those are rare occassions. A given game will have roughly 90 possessions for each team. What you describe accounts for maybe a handful of possessions each game. But how does this example even discredit the use of possession-based statistics? Even if you focus on what a team does per minute (or per game), these "no so rare occasions" have an impact. Theoretically, a team can shoot a terrible percentage and not get to the line and still win as well. Or a team can shoot a great percentage and lose (if they turn it over a lot). The ultimate goal of an offense is to score as much as possible with the possessions available. There are "four factors" to any successful offense -- none of which is the ultimate "goal", but which nevertheless any team will strive for: high percentage from the field, limiting turnovers, offensive rebounding on misses, and getting to the line and making the free throws. I don't even understand the point you're trying to make here. How are points per possessions more "manipulated" or "massaged" than points per minute? I'm speechless. We're talking about a man who's considered to be one of the great basketball minds in the history of the game, and that's your response? I'm being dismissive? What do you call your non-response regarding Dean Smith's use of possession-based stats? You keep bringing up Duncan's turnovers as a percentage of the team turnovers. So what? Why is that relevant? Irrelevant in this case, since both players are capable of playing the same number of minutes. A player who's field goals are assisted on a large majority of his shots does not have the ball in his hands as much. And you don't know that Yao draws more double-teams, but you can pretend like you do because it helps your argument. Whatever. Last season, Duncan drew more double teams than Yao (as tracked by mysynergysports.com, and which I've posted on this board). Yao was less active last year, sure. But so was Duncan. He only turns it over more frequently, and the Rockets as a team turn it over more frequently with him on the court. Other than that, sure Yao is not doing statistically worse than Duncan with turnovers. I didn't want to do this, but I'm going to spell it out for you only once. Don't bring this crap up again: ------------------------------------- My initial comment: Congrats to Yao, but I think Dirk deserved it more. This is stating an opinion, not bias Your response: PER is not the only way to evaluate a player. If Dirk is down, with their depth, the Mavs may still be able to make the playoffs. If you take Yao out, the Rockets are lottery-bound. Prior to the Suns game, Yao was the only NBA player whose points and rebounds were both in the top 10. That is pretty darn significant in the eyes of many NBA analysts. Even the Suns announcers took the notice. A legitimate response. You highlight why the positives for Yao, while giving a reason for why Dirk isn't as deserving. Is this "bias" on your part? I'll assume it's not. My rejoinder: Probably true, but Dirk was still the better player in November. You could make a case for Boozer or Duncan ahead of Yao as well. Again, stating an opinion. Note that I didn't say Boozer or Duncan were more deserving, only that a case could be made. A case could be made for Yao as well. The most convincing case, in my opinion, is for Dirk And it's not just the PER. The Mavs are over 18 points better per 100poss, relative the opponent, when Dirk is on the court (-9.2 with him off, +9.4 with him on). The Rockets, interestingly enough, have only been +3.4 with Yao on versus off. Actually, point differential is close to 0 for the Rockets with Yao off the court. This is me responding to your implication that I'm only looking at PER. There are actually a variety of statistical indicators one could look at, this is just an example Yao is the best center in the game, but he needs to learn how to handle double teams better. A player of his caliber who gets so many touches and draws so much attention has to average more than 2 assists a game. Yao's turnovers are also unacceptably high. And that's not nitpicking either ... we're the 27th worst team in turnovers, and I'm convinced trying to run the offense through Yao is a big contributor to that. Here, I'm explaining a weakness in Yao's game. Again, that's not "bias". I'm clarifying the area I think Yao needs to improve the most; what held him back, compared to Dirk, for the POM Here's your counter-response: Well, Dirk is ahead of Yao in PER, but not by much. Yao on the other hand leads both Duncan and Boozer by quite comfortable margins in PPG. So I am not sure what you are trying to make here in the Yao's 1st POM thread. Is this bias on your part? I would say no, but by your own ridiculous criteria it very well could be Indeed Yao's turnovers are high, so are Duncan's. If you take into consideration the missed FTs, Duncan's value drops further down in the tube. Good to see you point out Houston is among the worst in turnovers, in which Yao contributes his share mightily. But you conveniently ignore perhaps a more important team stats -- FG%, which is 24th in the league. Many of the passes from Yao to his wide open teammate didn't result in FGs. If those Rockets not named Yao know how to hit their shots, Yao's assist number naturally goes up. Now, you decided to initiate the Yao vs Duncan portion of this discussion. You do this by critiquing Duncan while defending Yao. Note that I never claimed, one way or another, that Yao was less deserving of the award than Duncan. I said a case could be made for Duncan (or Boozer). It goes without saying that a case could be made for Yao as well. A case could also be made for Yao ahead of Dirk, incidentally. I just think a more convincing case can be made for Dirk. Thanks for playing. And this is you being smug. My response: Yao has played well, I just don't think he deserved this award the most. I'd rather he get it in a month when he really plays like the best player in the conference. No bias ... Duncan is also handling the ball much more (percentage of field goals assisted much less and assists are far higher). And Spurs as a team are 6th best in limiting their turnovers. Yep, Duncan's free throws are much worse. But he's also a better defender and rebounder. You pointed out Duncan's weaknesses relative to Yao in your previous post. Here I add balance to that picture. If you think that's "bias" on my part, what the hell do you call what you were doing? It would help some, sure, but probably not a lot. In the 7 games in which Yao's teammates shot better than 40% from the field, he averaged 2.1 assists per 35 minutes. In the 8 games in which they shot less than 40% from the field, he averaged 1.3 assists per 35 minutes. If the team was in the top 10 in FG%, maybe Yao would average 2 assists a game. That's still scandalously low for a player who was drawing comparisons to Bill Walton and Sabonis early in his career. Yao has a problem recognizing when the double teams are coming and reacting quickly to them. If Yao was a better passer (the one part of his game I think is most overrated) maybe his teammates would shoot better. You implied before that Yao is just as good a passer as Duncan, he just gets less assists because of the low FG%. This is what I'm responding to. Anyways, it's not my intention to rip apart Yao's game. He's a very good player, best at his position. Best low post scorer in the game. Solid interior defender, great teammate, good rebounder, all that stuff. He just wasn't the West's best in the month of November. Here, I list Yao's many positives, which I would presume would be well known on this board already. ------------------------------ In your next response you claim I'm being "one sided". A foolish charge to make when the person is not claiming to provide a complete assessment and comparison. Nevertheless, I said Yao was the best center in the game, and I enumerated all his positives. You, on the other hand, haven't recognized a single weakness in his game (turnovers are explained away by double teams), nor have you acknowledged the strengths of the other candidates (Dirk, Duncan). This charge of bias on your part is a combination of ignorance and hypocrisy: (a) you apparently don't understand what "bias" means, and (b) whatever the charge is, you're at least as guilty of it as me, if not more so. If it's not already clear, I don't only take into account PER. But I understand what PER measures (which apparently you don't), so I recognize that it's redundant to look at points and rebounds in addition to PER. Is this how you argue? Call the other person pretentious, biased, dishonest, and then try to portray me as a mindless devotee? Garbage. For the record, here's Hollinger's assessment of the Wells acquisition: Oh, wow. What an idiot. Whatever. Do my a favor and just "agree to disagree" with me in the future too.
They do, and I am not being ironic. Women also bend the subject a lot when they are losing, just like you. The ambiguity I object to was in your original message to me. You started this, after all.
