So do you delusional steven curry bandwagoners still think he's mvp

Good post. While I don't agree on every detail you say, the big picture is right.

I would compare stock trading with player evaluation. Knowing the past performance of a stock is important in deciding on how much you would value it. However, every good investment advisor would tell you that past performance does not guarantee future success. The more volatile it is, the more likely it won't follow it's past pattern.

Statistical analysis tells you what happened in the past, not what will happen in the future. There are a lot of human factors affecting a player's future performance. This is why character should be an important consideration. A low character guy is less predictable than a high character player.

The failure of Ty Lawson is a perfect example of this. A lot of us, including myself, thought Lawson was surely going to help, just a matter of how much. That's why I don't blame Morey for acquiring Lawson. But it should be a painful lesson we should all learn.

 

Many people confuse coming to their own personal conclusions with proving yourself right to others. Eye-test is only useful for the former, because you're basically convincing yourself that what you've seen with your own eyes is correct. Of course, we all know that's not the case based on years of psychological research (confirmation bias, focusing effect, etc.)

So if you think Player A is better than Player B largely based on the eye-test, it's fruitless to engage with other people in a debate, because you have no sufficient evidence to convince others whether your opinion is true or wrong. It's called falsifiability, which is the bedrock of any sound argument and if your theory is unfalsifiable, then it's not a legitimate theory in the first place.

All you can do is state your personal opinion and then move on. Don't couch it as an objective fact and don't challenge others to change their mind. You are unqualified to do that if you are an eye-test advocate.

Now if you are in the stats camp, your argument can be falsified. It's very simple, find out what's wrong with a particular stat or its interpretation and go from there. Stats are tailor-made for this kind of discussion, because it usually contains generalized information (thus much less selective than the eye-test) and objective in nature. Not objectively true, but objectively falsifiable.

Who is the greatest scorer in the history of NBA? If you are one of the eye-test advocates, you have to go through all the past footages of every single player and then make a mental note whenever some player 'seems' to have scored more than others. Funny thing is, once you start recording their points, you're basically half-way into the stats camp. Notice how bizarre that process sounds like? I'm not arguing that stats should be given 100% weight and there is no room for casual observation, but it should be unquestionably clear as to which of the two is a more reliable source of information (to everyone, not just yourself) whenever people engage in this kind of discussion.

 

Very interesting that you you feel no human on earth is ever insightful and draw accurate conclusions from their own eyes / experienced observation skills; that every single human is prone equally to comfirmation bias because you can base it on years of research by the same humans who has confirmation bias (hint: you are a human also).

So in a world of competition, every human is wrong if they use their eyes to decipher something, and there is no winners and losers, better or worse conclusions? If someone wins due to picking out an important key of the event with their eyes that others miss, then the very fact that this insightful observer wins is not an objective result, it is just an opinion.

 

but accurate conclusion with respect to what? how can you prove that your eye-test results were accurate? based on another eye-test? no, eventually you're gonna have to use some kind of objective evidence, like the stats or records, to make your case. this is the vicious cycle that eye-test followers such as yourself can never get out of. you use words like 'accurate' without considering how that could be determined.

it all makes sense when the idea just floats inside your head. everyone thinks like that. everyone thinks they've figure it out. that's not the point here. the issue is how are you going to prove that your assessment was correct to others.

pointing out faults in stats accomplishes nothing, because there are even more problems with eye-tests. "But stats don't tell this part of the story" can be easily countered with "yes, but eye-tests don't tell that part of the story either". So, this is meaningless conversation to have. The focus should be, is there a bigger hole in eye-tests than in stats? or vice versa? that's should be the question.

 

Your post doesn't really address what I posted. But perhaps you were talking about eye-test vs. anaylitics. I don't know why this has to be a dichotomy. You need both. But I suspect that we are thinking about two different things when we say "eye-test."

In my post, I am talking about the big picture. So "eye test" refers to the human judgment in evaluating players. And that judgment should be on things that are not readily quantifiable yet very important in predicting future performance.

If high level decision making can be made by simply crunching numbers, why do companies need to spend millions of dollars hiring great CEOs? Successful decision making on a high level is not just based on statistical analysis (although you cannot ignore it). There are human factors that take human judgment calls which cannot be quantified.

Now if you want to talk about the smaller scale "eye test" e.g. whether Player X is a good defender or not, then the problem is how you quantify a complex concept such as "defense" or "offense."

It is easy to use stats to say if Player X scores more points than Player Y. But how can you say if Player X is a better offensive player than Player Y? We all know that being a good offensive player is not just about scoring points. So you use composite "advanced" stats. The caveat of all those composite stats is that they are calculated by formulas that give weights to various measurable performances. But who decide on what is to be given what weight? You see, once you get into complex evaluations, you have to have some subjective decisions made by human beings. (Defense is even more difficult to measure.)

Now what if eye test and stats don't match? In an extreme hypothetical case, let say advanced stats tell me Beverley is a better offensive player than Kobe but 99% of people's eye test says that Kobe is better. What do you do? You only have two options. You can either say that stats show that most people are wrong, or you can say that there must be something wrong with that particular way of calculating individual offense. Either can be true. How do you decide?

 

of course you need both but the discussion arises because there are some group of people who argue that stats are generally more useful in evaluating players and there are other camp that claims the same thing for the eye-test.

you say human judgement is very important in predicting future performance but so is analytics. there are areas where eye-test comes short, and in other domains analytics would not do very well. but you didn't prove which one is more effective than the other, which is kind of the point here.

you keep listing all the areas where eye-test fares well as if it proves your point, but as I said that's a meaningless tactic since I can also do the exact same thing with the stats.

can you judge who was the greatest scorer in the history of NBA just by eye-test alone?

and replace the word scorer with rebounder, passer, shot-blocker, defender, etc. and you get the point.

If you think that it's all subjective in the end, then you should always preface your opinion as so. And move on from the discussion, because there is nothing of value that you can add here. All you said was "there are areas where stats don't do well and sometimes human judgment is need", which everybody agrees. The point of contention is which one is a more reliable source of information in evaluating players, stats or eye-test? and you still haven't addressed this issue.

 

That CEO analogy is extremely flawed because at the end of the day, your performance as a CEO is evaluated in terms of profit margins, which is also one type of stat. Even areas where human decision making is greatly valued, it all comes back to the numbers and objective evidence when evaluating someone's performance. No one is denying human judgement should have a role in this, you are simply wasting your time if your objective is to convince others on that point, because everybody already agrees.

But when it comes to performance evaluation, stats hold significant edge over the eye-test, whether in the NBA or in a corporate setting. You can't fire an employee just because the employer felt like he was slacking. He or She should provide some kind of concrete evidence before firing someone, so that at least both parties can come to somewhat of an agreement. There is a very impractical aspect of the eye-test side of the argument that you keep ignoring, which is it basically champions personal feelings and opinions over objective facts, and if everybody takes that stance, no one will be convinced by another person's argument because it's all basically he-said-she-said, and my thoughts count just as much as your thoughts.

 

if you can't quantify the concept because it is so complicated, then how can you draw any conclusions about it just by watching games with your bare eyes? Even worse, how can you prove to others that your impression of player so-and-so is correct? that sounds even more bizarre to me. Yes, there are some subjective elements even in analytics, but the point your missing is it's still less subjective than the eye-test. Which one of the two is more subject to personal biases and subjective opinion? Again, you're just pointing out some of the weaknesses in pro stats argument which is fine, but you never consider the alternative. We live in a imperfect world, and every option is evaluated against other options, not by itself in a vacuum. So what if stats are not 100% objective, it's still more objective (and I would also argue more accurate) than the eye-test. and that's my point.

 

No. But you can't even judge who was the greatest scorer. You didn't get my point. Know how scored the most point is easy. Judging who is the greatest scorer is not as easy because the guy who scored the most point might not be the BEST scorer. "Best" is something not totally measurable.

Same with rebounder, passer, shot-blocker. Having the most number does not make you the "best." And putting the category of "defender" alongside with those other categories shows that you didn't not get my point.

 

You miss understood my analogy. The analogy is not to judge the CEOs. The CEOs are there to make human judgments. Otherwise, companies can just build computers to be their CEOs.

 

I think you're the one not getting the 'point'. Whatever issue you have stats, it's not going to be solved with 'eye-tests'. Why do you keep ignoring this part of the equation? All you're saying is stats can't do this, stat can't do that, but what about eye-test? eye-tests are even less accurate and more subject to personal biases. so which one should you take?

 

and the final judgement on the quality of that 'human judgments' is dished out in numbers, which is the irony you're not getting here. besides, companies hire humans because AI is not advanced enough to do that job, not because it's impossible in principle.

 

you're totally missing the point and kind of derailing this conversation into the semantics territory here. not being able to come to definite conclusions as to who is the 'best scorer' or 'best defender' is a semantic issue, and doesn't have anything to do with inherent limitations of analytics or stats. that problem exists just as much for the eye-test side of the argument as well. what do people really mean when they say X is the best scorer or defender? it's basically a linguistic and philosophical problem that is out of purview of this discussion.

my point is, if we agree on certain premises - such as the player who had the most points throughout his entire career or averaged most points should be considered the best scorer that ever played the game - it is pretty easy to figure out who was the best scorer by just looking at the stats. but it's almost impossible to do that with eye-tests, even if we agree on those premises, because the impression I have that player A seems to score a lot whenever I happen to watch his games, could in no way qualify as a legitimate evidence, because of its very limited scope and my personal biases.

 

Pretty much like Hakeem dominated David Robinson the MVP, Westbrook just showed the world he is a better player than Curry.

 

Westbrook may be the best player in the world. He is more important to OKC's success than KD.

 

Checking in on page 5 of troll thread.

(I don't even like Curry).

 

To me eye test is just something we haven't learned how to measure yet. Advanced stats came about because "eye test" people thought that certain players made the whole 5 man lineup better even though it was not reflected in their personal stats. We can measure any stat but it takes human judgement to figure out what it means and even what further stats need to be measured. There are literally near-infinite stats to measure, so I would not discount what an eye test person sees. The human brain can process an extraordinary amount of information. However, if we can't measure it, it's only because we haven't figured out how.

 

Westbrook is a damn beast