Sorry for the late reply. A series is not won or lost in game 1 or game 7. It is won or lost in all games played. If the series was only determined by game 7, then why didn't they just play a 1-game series? -------------------------------------------------- Before I go on with other points, let me rescind my earlier comment about your "out of bound 3 review" scenario. Now I want to say that nothing can be done to do justice to the situation. Replaying the game wouldn't be fair because the whole situation has changed. Leaving the result as is wouldn't be fair to the opponent. And nullifying 3-points wouldn't be fair because the Rockets might have won in other ways if that shot was correctly called. It is just an unfortunate mistake that cannot be repair. That's why most league would not do anything. That thing is, we could never find out what would have happened had the shot been called correctly. That being said, I now think that taking off 3 points from Houston's score is probably the most reasonable thing to do IF you want to do something about it, because that is the least intrusive of what actually had happened in the game. In other words, it is reasonable to assume that had the shot been called correctly, things would have happened more or less the same. But again, I don't want to be dogmatic about this. ----------------------------------------------------- Seeing your reply about my touchdown scenario let me begin to understand where you are coming from. You are seeing the importance of each play in terms of its impact (probability-wise) to winning the game AT THAT POINT OF TIME. The difference between us is that I see the importance of each play in terms of its contribution to winning the game AS A WHOLE. So yours is time-dependent, and mine is time-independent. The time factor is why I argue that the importance of "winning shots" is subjective. As human beings, we do not know the end result of a game before it happens because we live IN time. We only know the probability of the result. That creates emotional tension. As we get closer to the end, i.e. the result is closer to being revealed, the tension increases. That is why lopsided games are less interesting because the end results are revealed (almost) fairly early. The tension is low as is the emotion level. Being human, we can only look at the game as a whole by hindsight. The reason why hindsight is 20/20 is because there is no probability. All actuality is 100%. For example, the probability of Brewer making the half court heave was very low. So for all practical purposes, the winning shot happened some time earlier. But he made the shot. Now the miracle shot was as real as any other shots in the game. There is another point. Do you disagree that the missed free throw prior to the last shot was as important as the made shot for the Timberwolves to tie the game? Is it reasonable to say that not just that particular missed free throw, but the other missed free throws and missed layups, and yes, all the made and missed shots in the whole game by both sides, including the miracle shot at the end, led up to the end result of a tied game? I could go into more details with all the points you made. But it would take too much time. Anyways, you are a statistician and I am a philosopher. It is only natural that we see things differently.
Let's take the missed free throw directly preceding the miracle shot. Its significance is quantifiable. We can compare a 4 point lead with 2.4 seconds vs. a 3 point lead with 2.4 seconds, with no timeouts. Because it is so close to the end of the game, there's less random noise to unnecessarily complicate our calculations. 4 point lead = 99% we win the game. 3 point lead = 90% we win the game, 10% of forced overtime through a miracle 3. I don't think there's anything wrong with those numbers. IF a miracle 3 is made, THEN the missed free throw totally changes the game. This is pretty easy to visualize. Granted, the end of the game is the sum of every single missed shot and made shot and turnovers, but nowhere can you say that ONE particular missed free throw can greatly determine the outcome of the game. If Brooks had begun the game with a long 2 pointer because he had his toes on the line, could you really argue that our chances of winning diminished by a significant amount? The fewer the possessions that remain, the greater the effect one point possesses.
Your reasoning is the same as durvasa's, which is in terms of probabilities. We need probability to predict only because we do not know future actuality. Brooks' foot on the line would have been significant psychologically (as all other shots) had we known what was going to actualize from that point on. The closer we are to the end, the clearer we know the significance of each point scored in the game.
Let's suppose the series went down this way: game 1: win game 2: win game 3: loss game 4: loss game 5: win game 6: loss game 7: win We know, of course, that the team needed to win 4 games to win the series. But which of the following statements are true? (1) game 1 win was necessary to win the series (2) game 2 win was necessary to win the series (3) game 5 win was necessary to win the series (4) game 7 win was necessary to win the series The answer is only (4) is true. The first two "wins" (in games 1 and 2) were not strictly necessary, because the team could have picked up wins in games 3 and 4 to make up for those losses. You acknowledged before that future events aren't predetermined, but actually your argument still implicitly assumes that is the case. This is the source of the disagreement. I'm glad you answered that way. That's how I see it as well. Now, let me modify the scenario. Instead of it being an out-of-bounds that happened in the middle of the game, suppose on the final buzzer beater it is determined after the fact that there was an offensive goal-tending. So, the ruling should have been no basket, and with no time remaining that team should have lost. Now, what is a just resolution? If a call is screwed up in the middle of the game, well it may or may not have changed the outcome. But if its right at the end, in the decisive moment? I would argue, in that case, the league would be obligated to take away the win. If I was the team that got screwed in that situation, I would demand it. Objectively speaking, that blown call hurt my team's chances of winning the game more than a blown call in the middle of the game would have. In the final minute, strategy changes dramatically depending on if you're down 2, down 1, or up 1, up 2. Even before the final minute, minor changes in the the margin can shift strategy in particular moments, which could significantly alter the course of the game. So I don't agree that it is reasonable to assume things happen more or less the same. But time plays a huge role, so how can that be ignored? Teams must be constantly aware of the time remaining. Playing each possession the same and ignoring the game clock only makes sense if your goal is simply to maximize point differential over the course of 82 games, rather than to win as many as possible. Again with the emotions. Just because the end of games is a more emotional moment, that doesn't mean that heightened emotion isn't tied to objectively increased importance. If my goal is to support my family financially, but I'm lazy and as a result I lose my job, I will be an emotional wreck. That doesn't mean my screw up is only "subjective". Objectively speaking, I screwed up big time (given my objective of supporting my family). Same thing. The reason we are more emotional on a successful (or failed) last second play is because, objectively speaking, there is greater importance on that play. There can be a sound, logical basis for being happy/upset. "Led up to" the end result? Sure. By the same token, you could also say that Corey Brewer's great grandfather choosing to have sex with his grandmother generations ago "led up to" that game winner. Should I attach equal importance to that event as well? There are an infinite number of things that led up to the end result. I see no reason to give equal importance to all of them. Regarding the missed free throw. It was a big miss, but the Wolves still needed the "miracle" shot to tie it up. So, no, I don't attach the same importance to it. That miss may actually have been less important than some of the other Rockets miscues that occurred in those final two minutes. I don't believe the importance of a shot should change based on unexpected events that happen subsequently. Things should be judged based on the knowledge that is available at the time. That's true of moral decisions, business decisions, coaching decisions, and plays that an athlete makes (or doesn't make). That's my philosophy.
But you can't know that, so why pretend otherwise? The importance of the moment, if we are to attach any practical meaning to that concept, should be based on knowable conditions, not a crystal ball.
First, let me apologize for my intermittent posting pattern that makes a good discussion difficult to sustain. I can't help it due to work and other responsibilities. I will try to come back to answer your points in the previous post when I have time. It is not pretending. It is abstracting. We can understand abstract concepts that we can never actually attain. The concept of infinity is one example. The concept of seeing things as a whole in a timeless way is another. I am not dismissing the meaning of subjective importance, or else I wouldn't be a basketball fan. In fact, I DON'T want to have a crystal ball. (For games I can't watch but only record for later, I would not want to know the result before I watch it.) We make a lot of important decision in life (e.g. marrying someone) based largely on subjective importance. That does not mean I can use objectively quantified argument to prove that my girl is better than yours. This whole conversation started in response to the OP's article about clutchness. I think we both agree that if it can be argued with words like "more" as in "Kobe is more clutch than any player in the league" there should be something objectively measurable. What we do not agree is that "clutchness" is an objective entity tying to the importance of a play.
Once you set agreed-upon criteria, you sure can. If your only goal is to have a girl that makes as much money as possible, you can objectively call one "better" than the other if she makes more money. Maybe you think winning is a subjective goal. What I'm arguing is that given a particular goal (winning a game, or winning a playoff series, or winning a championship) you can objectively assess the importance of particular moments in achieving that goal. Can you point out what is "subjective" about me observing that if a team scores on a last possession they win, and if they don't score they lose? Please just explain how such an observation derives from my emotions and not my reasoning.
Before the series, yes. But then, you wouldn't even know if there was going to be a game 7. So the choices would be meaningless. Now since you can list out the result of the games, that means the series is over. As an actuality, all of the choices are true. It's like asking the question, "Does durvasa's father nessarily have a son called durvasa?" Well the answer is yes because it is actually the case. And the answer would be no before you were born. But then, we might not know the name durvasa to even ask the question. I did not acknowledge that future events are not predetermined. I only ackknowledge that if a past event was changed, then subsequent events would not have happened exactly the same way. Since we cannot change a past event, we can never know what would have happened. If you believe that there is an unbroken chain of causes and effects linking all events from the beginning of time, then everything that happens happens necessarily. See my later comment below. I agree that the closer to the end, the fewer variables and the less complicated scenarios there are. That does not negate the fact that everything happened before the end, not just the end play, played a part that led up to the end result. I agree that the existence of emotion does not mean there is no objective importance. But it also doesn't mean that there is. We can just agree to disagree here what makes the emotional level so high at the end of close games. Yes it has some importance. That's what I mean to point out in my causal chain statement above. No, you don't have to attach EQUAL importance because it is not the same kind of event as making a shot. Objectively, all things that led up to the end result are necessary for the end result to happen. The amount of importance of each thing depends on how much it contributes to the end result. A made 3 pt shot is more important than a made 2 pt shot because it contributes 1 more point to the end result, regardless of when it is made. I cannot say I totally agree with your philosophy as stated here. Yes, we make decisions based on what we can know. That does not mean that what we can't know, or what we aren't paying attention to, aren't important.
Hey, give my character a bit more credit, will you? I don't marry my girl because of her money. Okay, the problem is the "agreed-upon" part. Yes, IF you have a set of agreed upon criteria, you may be able to measure them objectively. But the setting of the criteria can be subjective. You and I can assign different importance to certain characteristics of a girl. It's all subjective. Who am I to say that my criteria are better than yours? And I haven't even mentioned some unmeasurable criteria, such as beauty. You have to break it up to more sub-criteria, and the setting of the sub-criteria can be as subjective as the thing itself. This is something I think we agree all along. I am not very good at number crunching. But hey, I am a big supporter of using advance metrics to measure basketball performances. As I have explained earlier, I think the emotions at the end of a close game comes from the tension of not knowing the result and the anticipation of knowing the result shortly. durvasa, it's been a great discussion. If you want to have the last word, feel free to do so. I will read it. But this is all I want to say on this subject. I have spent enough time on it already. Good thing nobody is interested in this thread anymore. :grin: So I don't have to worry like in other thread, after I have made a post and return a few hours later, it is buried by several pages of posts.
The length of each post will increase exponentially if I attempt to respond to each point. So, I'll just respond to this one: Define what you mean by "end result". If "end result" is referring to final scoring margin, then you are correct. And as I have said multiple times in responses to you and roslolian, if the goal is only to maximize scoring margin or point differential, then I totally agree that there is no such thing as "clutch" time. Every basket has equal value. However, if "end result" is only referring to the win/loss outcome (i.e. either a WIN or a LOSS), then you are wrong. It is not necessarily true that a 3 point shot contributes "more" to the win than a 2 point shot. What follows is a simple counter example: Last possession, your team is down two. You score 2 points to tie the game and send it into overtime. Huge, huge shot. In overtime, your team blows the game wide open in the first 4 minutes. By the final possession, you're already leading by 20 points. You shoot a meaningless 3-pointer at the buzzer for the hell of it and it goes in. 3 points scored. Can you honestly say that those final 3 points contributed "more" to the win than that game tying 2-pointer at the end of regulation? Do you not yet see how absurd this is?
Baseball. All about the numbers, the situations, the percentages. A player is clutch player when the stats indicate they're clutch. If utility bench player Bill Spiers eats up left hand pitching late in the game, he might get subbed in for Lance Berkman if the pitcher and situation calls for it. Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds. Probably the best 2 hitters of the past 15 years in each league. If MLB did the NBA type approach, they would be put on the clutch pedestal like Kobe. But they're not. Because their numbers in clutch and postseason situations indicates they're not. Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, same thing. All those players posteason numbers are/were in the same level of Kobe's clutch time numbers and they've absolutely gotten bashed for being "chokers". Albert Pujols is a feared hitter. Because he's a bad mofo in the clutch and the stats prove it. That doesnt diminish the accomplishments of the players that much. Just interesting how in baseball its not always about the eyeball test.
