he only makes those statements if we're healthy, which we never were. and he's right. we're better with a healthy mcgrady. he's not so obviously we're better off without him. it's good to see him believing tracy can be "a heck" of a player again.
Actually If I had to choose one it would probably be Kevin Garnett or maybe even Yao... However, I don't know what Duncan relies on more, Power or finesse. Hakeem was clearly a finesse player just like Yao and KG. Both Yao and KG have excellent footwork as well, Yao' being injury prone hurt his chances of being more mobile. KG not gaining any muscle hurts him of being more like The Dream. I have 2 other guys that play like the Dream before Duncan.
Those are all computer-based, not a subjective evaluation. You shouldn't read that as "these players are the most similar", but rather "these players are the most similar based on their size, age, and box score numbers". Generally it works well, but the stats don't cover everything (which he's well aware of if you've ever actually read his stuff) so there will be quirky results from time to time.
I question how Howard's stats are anything similar to Amare's. Amare has yet to average 10+ RPG in a season, despite playing on the fastest offensive system in the league. Anyways, to me Hollinger does not have as much credibility as other ESPN analysts or experts.
KG I can sort of see, but he doesn't dominate on the low blocks nearly as much as Duncan has and Olajuwon used to. In terms of athleticism and some of the post moves, Garnett resembles Olajuwon more. But Garnett's role in his teams' offenses was very different. More of a face up jump shooter and facilitator. KG often wasn't a go to player down the stretch of games. As for Yao ... some minor similarities in the post but generally not a good comparison at all. Physically they were very different, which Hollinger's similarity scores factor in.
I agree with everything you said.... But I re-read your post about Duncan and The Dream. I def. Agree that their roles are pretty much identical. However, in terms of how they play I don't see much in common. I believe most of Yao's post game is like watching Hakeem's post game in slow motion.
It's not like there are a lot of players out there who are like Dwight Howard. Any player you choose, we can nitpick at the differences. The goal isn't to find an identical player, but the "most similar".
I don't know, I think Tyson Chandler is quite similar to Howard. Howard is clearly better, However it's like he is a glorified Tyson Chandler.
I think that was probably a typo. In context this makes a little more sense: "Which makes total sense -- prior to this year McGrady was a heck of a player, and it's possible he'll never be one again."
That's not bad, actually. Hollinger may actually agree with that. Again, those similarity scores are purely computer-based. Subjectively, I don't think he'd disagree that Chandler's style of play more closely resembles Howard's. In a purely statistical comparison, it's hard to ignore the difference in their scoring rate.
Ya, Hollinger has always been a believer of the Rockets but his predictions are based on stats and they tend to be very accurate except(and he will admit this too) when teams have major injuries. In general though, his predictions are mostly pretty accurate. I recall it was Bill Simmons who once said that Hollinger is consistently the guy on the ESPN staff who wins the office pools for NBA predictions. Like the stats based approach or not, he is more accurate than most of the other NBA commentator guys. I would certainly listen to him over pretty much any of the jackass insiders(like Stephen A, Adande, Broussard, etc.) or the former players(Legler, Mashburn, Gary Payton, etc).
Except that he couldn't predict the mountains of injuries we've sustained every year. He did predict San Antonio to win it all when Dallas was far and away the best team in the league, so I wouldn't scoff at him and his numbers. He's a far better analyst than every other basketball analyst on ESPN.
i like hollinger, but the only way that says anything about whether hollinger knows what he's talking about is if the spurs had actually beat dallas. dallas had a much higher point differential than golden state, but considering they were 67-12 against the rest of the league and 0-3 against golden state, the matchups obviously made the differential irrelevant. i would say it's likely that if the mavs face anybody but golden state in the first round, they win the title. the only other team that gave them problems was phoenix, but the spurs owned phoenix and faced them in round 2 and knocked them out. the mavs would have been playing the spurs, who they matched up well with, in the conference finals, and would have had a pretty easy time against cleveland if they won. the WCF would have been close but i'd give the mavs a 55-60% chance of winning despite having the lower point differential.
Hollinger has always rated Mcgrady especially after Mcgrady's monster playoff performance last season on one leg. I don't remember but I think he did a comparison for it. Once again though his always basing it on stats so its not unthinkable for him to beleive Mcgrady could return. As this board knows though, its all about his mentality
This. Predictions is not about always being right, but doing the best assessment you can. Also, at least Hollinger looks at his failures and try to improve. 99.9% of so-called experts speak out of their asses and then just flip-flop when results suggest otherwise.
I really like Hollinger. I run the Magic Number calculator, but I've tinkered with running other stats and Playoff engines to guesstimate future games and standings. I have a great deal of respect for what he does. As he freely admits, Numbers give a good indication of what will happen, but there's no way to accurately gauge what will happen when the game is played. He backs up what he says with mountains of evidence, and he's always been a big Rockets believer. What's not to like?
Just to add though durvasa. The most similar guy that plays like Tim Duncan is Brad Daugherty. Both of them had excellent mid range jump shots, and they were both excellent passers too. Daugherty maybe wasn't as good as Duncan on defense since Daugherty wasn't that much of a shot blocker, but in terms of the resemblance and overall game. Daugherty would be the guy that plays most similar to Duncan. Certainly not Hakeem Olajuwon.
Hollinger always predicts the Rockets to go far during the season. Then, he backtracks once the postseasons starts and he realizes how dumb he was.
