Andre Iguodala on the Thunder: "They were better than us, better than Cleveland"

I live in okc,Sick of their whiney fan base,Let me know when they win a title.

 

Like when LAC loses to Portland after CP3 and Griffin both go down to injury. Portland was just better. Fact!

 

You said it yourself, "after CP3 and Griffin both go down to injury".

Try again.

 

I think I pretty much made my point. Maybe you should try another reply.

 

If you need this explained to you....never mind. Every once in awhile put the crack pipe down.

 

Opinions are "subjective" in the sense that they are in the minds of people, not like facts that actually happened in time and space.

But it does not mean that they have no truth value. Opinions are not fact but they are based on facts (or perceived facts). A team is considered "better" because of a lot of factors that are based on facts (past performance, records, stats, etc.) Some opinions are superior than others because they have more factual evidence.

Again, the bottom line comes back to whether you would acknowledge the notion that the "better" team does not always win. If you do, then you should agree that "winning" and "better" are not the same thing in sports. And you cannot say something like, "This team won, so they must be the better team."

 

Do you not understand the meaning of subjective and objective? You're right in that subjective is all in the mind of the perceiver, while objective is a measurable outcome in the observable world. To say that opinions are subjective, but "based on fact" means nothing more than to say that they are subjective. Different people can come to different "subjective" conclusions based on the same set of objective data.

If you say team A is better because of "criteria A" and I say team B is better because of the same criteria, who is right and who is wrong? Upon what authority can we even make such a determination? Yours? Mine? Says who?

If, instead, you are somehow going to declare that "better" means a certain measurement within a set of predetermined criteria, then that's fine. However, it no longer is subjective within the context of your declaration. In other words, if you are going to say that team A is better because... say, 1. they win more games and 2. they score more points, then there really is no opinion. It is simply a mathematical fact.

What it comes down to is this. You're making a declaration that "better" does not mean winning a seven game series. Upon what authority you make this claim is not clear. You did not support your argument. In fact, you did not even provide an alternate set of criteria for which you think "better" should be determined. Instead, you chose to go down the pseudo-intellectual route of subjectivity and objectivity.

 

What you say is exactly what I mean. Anyone who say "Team A is better than Team B" can be challenged. There is no set criteria for what constitute "better" in head-to-head sports. If I give you a set criteria, somebody can challenge that. I am not trying to come up with a set criteria. I am challenging your simple criterion of "winning a 7-game series.

In fact, many people would agree, including myself, that winning a series depends a lot on match up. Being able to beat a team because of good match up does not really mean you are better.

Let's use the real teams in a hypothetical situation to illustrate. Let's say GSW is able to beat OKC in a 7-game series. CLE is able to beat GSW in a 7-game series. And OKC is able to beat CLE in a 7-game series. Now tell me which team is better than the others? This scenario is totally realistic. And it shows that "winning a 7-game series" alone cannot be the criterion of "better."

 

If you're talking about "opinion" and "subjectivity," then there really isn't anything to challenge. There's simply no objective way to determine superiority of either claim. That's the problem you run into when you deem that something is subjective... you cease to be able to make any truth statement about it.

If on the other hand, you concede that "better" is not an opinion, but rather an objective comparison with a set of criteria, then you can certainly challenge the veracity of a claim. I think this is the actual argument that you are trying to make by your subsequent posts, which renders your statement about "opinion" and "fact" as entirely wrong.

As far as the "better" and "best" idea in basketball, it's nothing something you can determine without first defining the terms. In fact, you can't even tell if it's subjective or objective without first defining what you are talking about. In my view, "better" means being able to beat a team in a series if you consider the structure of the NBA playoffs. This is a very narrow definition as it would change if the structure of the playoffs was different. I don't take care to take hypotheticals into my definition, as they are entirely useless for describing events in time and space. I think the Cavs were better than the Warriors this year because they beat them in a 7 game series. I cannot make a comparison claim about a series that did not occur.

 

Unless we are operating in the realm of unsubstantiated opinion, the terms better/best should be backed by some objective metric. When a team (OKC) loses to another (GSW), the burden of proof is on those who say the losing team was "better." Because team performance is not a linear variable - it is entirely possible and even likely that the "better team" was the winning team because at that moment in time, the performance and direction of improvement in performance was superior in the winning team even if the average performance across an entire season was inferior to the team that lost. Therefore, to prove that the losing team was better, one would have to prove one or more of a number of things: 1) that their average overall performance was superior for most of the year, 2) that their inferior performance over the course of a 7 game series was within the realm of normal performance variance and not indicative of average performance/success, or 3) that the losing team's inferior performance was purely the product of chance or fluke and if repeated numerous times over, that the odds of the same result occurring would be close to zero.

In the absence of overwhelming evidence suggesting one or more of those explanations (and this list is hardly exhaustive, I'm sure there are other considerations), it is very, very hard to say a losing team was better than a winning team - or in the case of Cleveland, a whole series removed from even facing the losing team. Moreover, as Easy pointed out, there is the possibility (and likely reality) that performance varies depending on opponent, so "better" is even harder to suss out - making the burden of proof even more onerous to say the losing team was better.

Imaging if Houston faced Seattle from '93-'95 and didn't win those championships - is the fact that Seattle lost in round 1 due to them being inferior than, for example, the Nuggets? That might be a series in which you could point to one or more of the explanations above and say that the better team lost (perhaps running that "experiment" 100 times would result in the observed outcome only once or twice). Does this mean Houston was better than Seattle as the two never faced? Impossible to say - the fact that Houston won those championships and were peaking (i.e. the slope of their performance at that given moment was pointing upward) is partially offset by their poor performance against Seattle during the regular season. Yet, given the sheer number of factors at play, it is virtually impossible to say that Seattle was better than Houston despite having lost, because for Seattle to take advantage of that regular season dominance, they would have also have to have beaten 5th seeded Utah.

Anyway this was a really long-winded way of saying that AI's claims are almost impossible to prove or disprove, but in general it is much easier to claim that the winning team was "better" than the losing team.

 

On the Warriors:

Warrior fans before game 5: GSW will eliminate Cavs with or without Green. Last year in CLE and this year at home. Best of both worlds.

Warrior fans before game 6: no way both Irving and James score 41 pts each again, and Draymond is back. CLE will smell like champagne again

Warrior fans before game 7: refs/nba got what they wanted. Curry is mad and is going to go off. Warriors have not lost 3 in a row all year. When was the last time they lost 2 in a row at Oracle?

After game 7: Barnes sucked. Iggy had back problems. Bogut was out. Curry was only 80%. Well, the story line last year was that you could only play the team in front of you when GSW became the luckiest team in NBA history to avoid playing a healthy top-5 team in OKC, LAC, SAS, and CLE. Assuming health for both teams in both years, it would still be 1-1 CLE at the very least.

Folks who still think the Warriors were the better team after a 7-game series or that OKC would have beaten the Cavs are inconsistent/bias/making excuses. In Games 1 & 2, GSW role players came up huge and the Cavs were still playing Delly/Frye. One could say that the Cavs simply figured the Warriors out, and that the bench of GSW came back down to earth. Curry doesn't get to re-do his finals until his shots fall to his "season average". Same goes for Klay.

If finals are "reimagined" to determine which team is the better team (adjusted for chokes, health, stamina, suspensions?), we would need to revisit 2011, 2010, 2009 (KG), at the very least. It is completely absurd to see fans acting as if GSW is the unlucky team here.

The fact is GSW finally faced two ELITE and HEALTHY teams for the first time in two years and they lost one and should have lost the other. If it weren't for luck, one could say the Warriors would still be ringless. And since when does a 73-win team with 3 all-stars and the back-2-back MVP get to blame role players (Barnes, Ezeli, Varejao) for their epic choke? It would be hilarious to see LBJ fans pointing fingers at Delly, Shumpert, JR Smith, etc.