This is a pretty funny rant, but I wonder if there is some truth of what you can get out of statistical analysis of fouls. there is more of the post at : http://www.forumblueandgold.com/ But this was the section I wanted to bring up....
Interesting analysis, but it sure comes off whiny! Utah and San Antonio both do the exact same things. In contrast, the Rockets have managed to play great defense without having to rely so obviously on the darker arts of defense.
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Wow... lakers fans are crazy. No way that's true. Tibodeau didn't start coaching the year Morey came to us.
What he is actually saying is that Thibs had Morey calculate which sort of fouls are more likely to be called. So that he could tell his players, pull on the arm rather than swiping at the ball.. because the first is less likely to be called a foul than the latter. But I won't disagree that Lakers fans are un poco loco!
He gives data-gathering too much credit. He's suggesting they have people looking at a bunch of play-tape, all the calls and non-calls, and categorizing (with a high degree of accuracy and completeness), "that was a swipe," "that was a hip-check," "that was a jersey-tug...." I'm a little incredulous. He also gives a bit too much credit to players' ability to use this statistical knowledge to execute plays that supposedly don't have a self-evident feedback to the defender (if it did, who'd need the stats?). Can you imagine a player going a whole season making a certain defensive motion that doesn't appear to deliver any benefit, because he has his coach telling him to keep doing it because the stats say it works? He also doesn't give Thib or the players enough credit to instinctively know what actions get calls and which ones don't. And, as a result, he makes a ridiculous argument that the Celtics have some sort of leg up because they know how to foul better than other people. They don't; player experience is much more valuable here than statistical analysis. Maybe the Cs have a small advantage by having such a veteran group. He also makes a pretty silly assumption that you can't go from bad to great in one season. Why not? They got rid of most of the guys who ran a bad defense a year ago and brought in a bunch of vets who know how to play defense and how to implement a system. Not hard to believe. I love statistics. They have a lot of uses. I'm sure they can be applied to analysis of foul-calling and defense. But, this isn't it.
At first I thought he might have a point, that statistical analysis could be done in order to determine how fouls are called. However, he then begins to qualify the different types of fouls he is thinking of. I'm sorry, but there is no way DMo has a computer that can tell whether or not a player makes a large swipe at a ball or whether a player rotates his hips on a screen. This is ludicrous. edit:// Whoops, already been said. I left the window hanging for awhile before I hit post.
someone or something other than the computer digitized and tagged the plays/sequences.. the computer only processed the digitized data/info..
morey and tibbs never worked for the c's in the same season. they only worked together in houston. since the rockets don't play like that, i would say it doesn't make much sense to blame either for the c's physical defense.
Ugh. I've hated the Lakers, but they're really starting to climb my "most hated" list. And their fans are absolutely loathsome.
Leon Powe was doing this last night on Trevor ariza, trying to go under the screen and losing Ray Allen on the pick and pop 3. That's a dead on analysis on how the roller drags the open man's defender with him. Yao would NEVER get away with that. But hey, I guess that was because Tim Dona-GHEY was reffing/conspiring against ust. /rant hehe
Yeah, but you could do that on a 486. You don't need a massively parallel server farm. On top of that, he mentioned the tagging paragraphs earlier when talking about defensive scheming. Hell, the data isn't even relevant past a single season since the NBA dramatically alters their focus for fouling each year. The point is that it's all ridiculous and nonsensical. I think we can all agree on that.
this rant proves the old adage "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" just some basketball fan with a peripheral knowledge of the digital age probably thinks the moon landing was a conspiracy it doesn't take the WOPR to figure out that a "wide swipe" is more obvious to the officials than a more discrete hold
George Karl figured this out 15 years ago. The Sonics always played zone against Hakeem / Rockets. It was against the rules and got called 3 or 4 times a game.
