He was good enough that one of the pro basketball team hired him as a consultant to provide a sabremetrics approach to winning. But I think he quit that gig because ownership didn't take his vision seriously.
ob·jec·tive əbˈjektiv/Submit adjective 1. (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
wait what makes him such an NBA expert that this is a new thread? I see nothing analytical about his tweets, it just translates as, "oh shet I never watched the Rockets, I never realized how bad James Harden is on defense, now that I've see a few games, Harden doesn't give a shet". You find a random person in a bar and he can come up with the same conclusions.
The folks running the MIT Sports Analytics Conference thought Voulgaris was panel-worthy. Bill Simmons also thought that Voulgaris was BS Report guest-worthy. If nothing else, Voulgaris is one guy who watches a ton of NBA games and runs analytics numbers as parts of his gambling work. He most likely watched more NBA games, particularly random unexciting games with not very popular or good teams, than most people because most people don't sit down and watch ORL vs. SAC and the like. So at the very least the guy has seen a ton more of bad defenders (and bad players in general) than most of us on a regular basis.
Sorry to quote myself, but just last night I posted this in the "McHale not a Championship Coach?" Thread: "If he was he wouldn't stand for one of his stars saving his energy for one side of the court." So needless to say I agree with this guy.
He's not really a "household" name, except among the gambling world and stats heads. However, among those sets he's a heavyweight. And unlike most of us, this is a guy that has literally bet Millions of dollars on the NBA and gotten very rich along the way. This should give some perspective. http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/dollars/post/_/id/2935/meet-the-worlds-top-nba-gambler Haralabos Voulgaris is high profile enough that his opinions are worth noting.
I know who he is. But these specific tweets doesn't show he used any stats or analytics to come up with these opinions. It's more like a casual remark after closely watching Harden's defense, which I assume he has not done before this. Let's be honest, anyone that has seen more than 5 games of the Rockets this year knows Harden doesn't give a **** on defense.
I'm afraid the fitness issue is a valid one. We all know Harden can try harder on defense, but the question is do we want him to if it means his offense drops?
Have you ever talked to the guys that manage the sports books in Vegas. They know what they are talking about. That's why vegas makes money on sports betting. Yes, you should listen to him much more than a 20 year old on clutch fans that lives with his mom and is in titty whitties posting on here.
There's a reason Vegas is basically printing money. You don't consistently beat the house without knowing your stuff. "titty whitties"? Intentional or not, hilarious typo.
I don't get the whole "It's just one guy's opinion, not thread worthy" reaction. "One guy's opinion" threads get discussed here all the time. In fact, there a "Bill and Jalen think the Rockets are sleeper contenders" thread was just started, and that's just Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose's opinions. The key factor here is that Voulgaris does have some degree of knowledge in the NBA game. Enough so that Bill Simmons deemed it proper to have him on a recent Grantland.com podcast-- recorded at about the same time as the Jalen Rose video-- to discuss NBA player awards and current trends. As I and others mentioned, the guy uses an analytics approach in his betting, and has multiple monitors in his living room so he can follow a bunch of games simultaneously. This is not some "Yahoo Contributing Network" "article" "written" by some random guy. Also, while Voulgaris' tweets may not contain all of the reasons why he thinks Harden is a bad defender, it is reasonable to think that Voulgaris has the data to back up his claim. It is doubtful that Voulgaris would make this claim if the data actually say that Harden is a sneaky good defender and his reputation as a bad defender is overblown.
Bob is a good Twitter follow - he can be pretty critical sometimes but he generally points his criticism in appropriate directions based on his own extensive NBA watching. It's a nice change from any basketball reporter on ESPN/SI/national TV (Zach Lowe excepted), who just rolls with the go-to storylines of the season and rides them until the wheels fall off. Harden still has defensive potential, he had a brief streak in March of actual above-average defense. If you disagree, don't attack the guy with an opinion - instead, name five worse perimeter defenders starting in the NBA today. I feel like you probably can't - and mind you, I still love Harden.
Lol at people calling out Haralabos. I know him personally and to say he has at the minimum made 8 figures alone betting on the NBA. You guys can keep taking the words of Stephen A Smith's of the world as gospel, but I'd be shocked if there are more than 5 people in the world that know and understand NBA basketball better than Haralabos (and that includes NBA personnel) Also if you guys followed him last year you'd know that he was one of the few people saying that Harden would be amazing as a #1 option and was extremely high on him.
That's like saying Phil Jackson is not a championship caliber coach because he wouldn't stand for one guy chucking up 30 shots and not passing it to someone else.
