John Hollinger's formula puts The Heat at No. 1 in Power Rankings

Didn't the C's rape the heat twice already???/

 

The Houston Rockets fandom has been more receptive to in-depth stats, probably because of Morey. But recently I've noticed a disturbing backlash against stats after the team's 1-6 start. Hollinger's formula is not some made up BS. It simply uses factors such as point differential and strength of schedule that have historically been strong indicators of future performance. It's still early in this season and standings will change.

 

And the dumb comes out again.

I'd venture to guess that, on a given week, John Hollinger watches three times as many hours of NBA basketball than anyone else on the ESPN roster save for Kevin Arnovitz.

 

I like how this matters to everyone.

The only thing that counts is the W-L at the end of the year.

Not Hollinger's program, not other people's opinions.

Only the W-L record at the end.

 

The problem I find with his formula and especially early in the season is the SOS... it makes the Heats seem harder because they played the C's twice and lost, the same problem is with where the Rockets are.

- It shouldn't matter what your SOS is if you lose them all, if you split them then fair enough. Does that mean in theory a team like the Wolves should be highly rated if they started with Lakers, Heat, Celtics, Hornets etc. but lost them all?

- By losing to the Celtics twice the Heat have actually made the Celtics record better, therefore making their SOS harder, it's like when people were saying teams we played were 21-4 for our first 5 games... you take out the 5 games against us and it's 16-4... still impressive but not quite as bad. Without knowing the math I wouldn't be surprised with ESPN's love of the Heat that it may have been changed slightly to benefit them this year.

 

Yes, AT THE END. You people are acting like our 2-6 record is at the end of the season, and think that a historically very accurate predictor by Hollinger is somehow inferior to the knee jerk perspectives of amateur fans.

 

Unfortunately he doesn't leverage any of those hours to compile his rankings:

 

the problem is if you expect it to be perfect early in the season. just like humans aren't going to know what to make of everything with only 8 or so games of data, neither is a formula. one result changing can have a huge effect when it's 10+% of the season. turn out blowout of minnesota in to a close win and we're probably much lower. or turn steve blake's made 3 into a miss and we might be even higher in the rankings.

again, early in the season, results are going to be more circular. yes, losing to a team makes their record better, but of course if you beat them then you'd hurt their record. after 30 or 40 games these things probably won't matter.

if they lost them all by 30, no they wouldn't be highly rated. that's why it looks at both MOV and SOS. now if you lost 3 1 point games to the 3 best teams, then there wouldn't be much reason to rate you poorly, as all the results we would have would simply indicate that you don't appear to be much worse than the very best teams around.

yes, i'm sure the fact you don't understand the formula must mean it's flawed. i'm sure hollinger perfectly anticipated the heat's start and was able to preemptively change the formula to best move them up the rankings based on what their various stats were going to be. it couldn't just be their large point differential and tough SOS.

 

Lakers and Celtics were 10th and 12th best team last year, that's how dumb it is.

 

All the heat haters are going to be sucking it towards mid season and in the playoffs. Going to take them a lil time to get it together. So they lost a few games early, that means they suck? lol. Celtics and Lakers can challenge them, but other than that they are head and shoulders above the rest of the NBA.

 

/thread

you win

 

Yeah ok they are going to be head and shoulders above the league in the playoffs? so they are a lock for the title i guess if they are going to be head and shoulders above the league. wow

PUT YOUR BETS IN NOW PEOPLE!!

 

Mr. Clutch = John Hollinger

 

I don't know why people lose their common sense when it comes to statheads.
9 games is obviously a small sample size. If a player who generally averages 10ppg averages 20ppg after 9 games, fans generally use common sense and develop a wait-and-see attitude before proclaiming the guy a 20ppg scorer.

So why do we feel 9 games is enough of a sample size to determine Hollinger's rankings worth? And ridicule him for it?

 

For the first few thanks for just saying exactly what I did about the early SOS. Second sarcasm buddy... I obviously don't think that he rigs it, was a dig at ESPN's love for all things Lebron. Also MOV's mean little and it shouldn't matter.. sure its his list and he can do whatever he wants but still in the NBA its a poor measure when there is no % in play in the standings, look in recent years at teams like the Suns and Mavs beat up on crappy teams a lot more than the more disciplined teams like the Spurs did but at the end of the day who was better? The Rockets over the last few years are another example... they had very few 'large' wins but still got the job done. Another reason is because margin makes no difference and only the win or loss does you always get the benches playing often for the winning side in a blow out, not always from the losing side... both teams in these situations are not approaching the game as they would normally.

 

Speaking of the dumb coming out... you are a perfect example of watching more hours of NBA means little when offering good opinions, good to see you back posting on here though, when can we expect another one of your foul mouthed tantrums because someone posted your article on here instead of linking? something that always amused me considering how many hits you probably get from followed links from these boards.

 

To whine about the formula is another, valid, thing. What was I complaining about?

Ah, yessum. The tired idea that John Hollinger doesn't watch any games, which I believe was tossed out two or three posts into this thread.

 

I'm sorry, I love CC.net, but how many hits do you really think make up a difference between a linked-to or completely-posted article on year. 25? 30? If even that? I love this place, but let's not overstate its influence.

The point is the protocol, which was in place a decade ago (at least) on this site, and seems to have gone away.

It has nothing to do with me as a scribe on a site that talks about Dwight Howard's shoes. The point is the push away from the sort of tact and reason that was pervasive on these boards nearly a decade before you even signed up -- back when OnHoops.com and CC.net were having playful back and forth snark wars entering the 1997-98 season -- the sort of tact that has seem to have gone away.

It has nothing to do with Yahoo!, ESPN, whatever. Nobody seems to understand that.

It's the idea that this is OK. For any site, big or small. And after spending ages posting on this site and politely asking people dozens of times to stop, it's a blankety-blank shame you lot forget about all those times, and instead focus on the times that I (rightfully) lost it because the posters and (to a lesser extent) moderators just decided to give up.

But by all means, keep missing the point.

 

Oh I agree with you its poor thing to do but I also know that it happens a small percentage of times compared to the amount of times part articles with a link or just a link are used. If it really makes no difference why make a fuss? You can't expect a non profit website like this to be able to monitor 24/7 threads to quickly delete or change when a complete article is posted without a link. I just wonder why you bother coming here? most of your posts are negative at others opinions if they disagree with yours and often throw jabs at their intelligence... hey I do it too but I do throw the odd positive post out too and I actually support the team this site(a fan site) is for.

Also sure this site has changed in the last decade(which I was coming to well before this accounts sign up) and I agree to the worse but at the same time any fan older than 21 will agree NBA articles by people like yourself and obviously anything ESPN has also dropped off poorly to service this new 'player fan' age. I understand the problem you are in, the sensible articles of old won't get the hits and comments a Lebron or Dwade or Howard loving article would get but that still doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me that its the way things are going in how sports journalism especially on the internet are done. It's a shame when someone is labeled a 'hater' just for writing a couple of negative articles on a Lebron or Howard, regardless of if they have written 10 times as many positive ones. Gone are the days when people like you and ESPN would of been writing about the great start by New Orleans or mentioning players in smaller markets when they improve their game... now every Heat game we get dozens of writers offering their opinions and grades of how they went. OK I well end the rant... got a bit carried away but still just my opinion. Enjoy

 

Other than the Lakers and Celtics, YES, the heat are head and shoulders above the other teams in the NBA - that's exactly what I said.