Process Brain is the Scourge of Our Time (Or. why the Rockets should WIN NOW and forever)

Fellows, I come here in admission of error. I have followed the Rockets for many years, as a child in the waning days of Moses Malone through the glory years of the 1990’s to He’s coMING to the (underrated, I daresay) Harden era.

The Rise of Process Brain

For many years in the halls of these fora, I used to pile on as the sporting establishment entered the information age. I thoroughly enjoyed positioning myself with the quants, despite having base-level excel skills, as the old-line jockocracy-industrial complex was upended by various Moreii, Prestii and Hinkieii - the acolytes of what I call Process Brain. The empty Jim Beam bottle-wielding scouts and their disheveled Denny’s grand slam breakfast-stained legal pads replaced with PERs and VORPS and Winshares and Second Spectrum and other such concoctions with which I could smugly smite my bbs enemies. It was glorious, and pathetic.

But now, things have changed, or I have matured, or not, or both or neither. One, is that part of the fun of these things was the ego-boost that having some sort of hacked, secret knowledge quickly dissipates as it becomes common knowledge.

Into the Takeoverse

The second, and far more pervasive development, is that NBA Takes have outgrown the NBA itself - it was one thing when NBA takes were purveyed in limited quantities, in limited places. Newspapers. Magazines. A brief segment on the national show. Your local AM radio guys and various Homers and Bills calling in from Pasadena on a mobile. At that point, the games took primacy. The takes were limited. We spent more time watching, listening, and seeing actual basketball, and less time take-having

The other thing about takes is that they are invariably negative; as takes are creatures of social media, their foundation is anger and insult to “maximize engagement” and sell you things. That’s the way the system is built.

Houston and the Rockets in particular seemed to be particularly prone to the most negative aspects of take-dom, with the Harden era coinciding with the meteoric rise in takeology typified by “voices of the fan” like multi-hundred millionaire Bill Simmons and other such luminaries. Ringz culture, legacy conversation (legacy is imaginary people); Heated MVP debates - these are all fruit of this same poisonous tree.

Inevitably these two streams converged, and takes now incorporate vast quantities of Process Brain conventional wisdom from team composition to play style to team building philosophy. Add 3 & D players, maximize rookie deals, trade down for more value, draft younger players, etc ad nauseum.

We are told on this forum that we must suffer, and suffer, the Process way, for there is an omnipotent moral arbiter on top who sees our suffering and will one day reward us with glory. PUt up a 20 win season? Fine, you’ve tanked and set yourself up for the lottery. Another one? Stay the course, it takes time, they’re just 19. Another? Rome wasn’t built in a day. Oceans rise, empires fall, we will see each other through it all.

This is all there is. There is no next thing.

Gentlemen, I suggest to you that this is flawed. The God of Process Justice does not exist.

I originally decided to watch the Houston Rockets basketball club to see them try to win basketball games. Because it was fun. Not as a real life exercise in optimizing a simulated outcome given a zillion other unpredictable variables that mostly depend on random chance.

Each wasted season may launch a thousand posts by me, but those are ultimately just compensatory due to the fact that we fundamentally have a team and an organization that is devoted to Process Brain (which, btw, also makes the already obscenely-weealthy inherited owner and his children even more money in the short term) for the ostensible greater good.

I would like the Rockets to try to be competitive and win games. Not to position themselves for a theoretical championship in 2030. It frankly reminds me of the transparent garbage of Long-Termism - a maximum copium movement dreamed up to allow the ultra wealthy to plow their wealth into vanity projects for fun in order to maximize injustice and cruelty today to “prevent” utterly unforeseeable future harm.


TL;DR - Rockets should try to sign Harden or trade for established vets, going into the season with a team that is going to lose 70% of the time makes me not want to watch after 3 years of this ****.

 

There's another part to my original hypothesis that i forgot to include that relates to this:.

How the Takeoverse drives Process Brain

One of the ways in which the primacy of the NBA takeoverse exerts itself over fans watching and enjoying basketball is that many of our thought leaders in takedom (zach Lowe, KOC, etc) frequently infuse process brain into their takes to assure us we're on the right track.

The difference is, those guys are not fans of teams rather they are assiduously devoted at least to the self-belief of neutrality (which is probably a delusion, but that's another thread).

Accordingly it's very easy for them to say "Houston is on the right track, trust the process" as they frequently do, because they never actually have to watch. The ironic part is when they do actually have to watch they pronounce the Rockets -- and this is a direct quote from Lowe multiple times this season -- to be "absolutely unwatchable "

.... and they're right!
.... they were!
.... and we as fans had to watch, when they didn't.

I actually find myself now closer to the Takeology of Jeff Van Gundy - who regards not even attempting to field competitive teams and more importantly - the general acceptance of it in the name of Process Brain, to be an insult on a fundamental, irreparable level.

He probably says this at least in part because as a coach - he has to watch. He didn't have the luxury of dreamcasting nebulous future glory in the service of present day misery - he was miserable enough already!

If we as fans of a team, and not Age of Ultron Process Brainiacs, are going to gravitate to a bald white guy's take, I'd rather it be acerbic as hell Jeff Van Gundy than smug ass Patagonia vest Sam "Longest View in the Room" Hinkie.

This ain't the quarterly strategy meeting. It's supposed to be fun!

 

"I enjoy having Process Brain"

That's fine, you can continue to enjoy it!

You can also read the opinions of those who don't - it's not going to hurt you.

I do think though this post is indicative of the smug implied morality of having Process Brain.

Like, if you don't trust the process, you end up as the morally reprehensible (from the process brain moral universe ( Knicks (cue the iconic picture of Daryl in the front row at MSG)

Buddy, i went to Knicks games alot from 2000-2015 or so. Maybe 5x a year The fans that were there went because they were fans of the team. They weren't lesser people than you because their GM was Phil Jackson or Isiah Thomas. They had nothing to do with JD & the Straight Shot.

They were fans of the team. They went there to see the team win.

There's something to be said for that.

 

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We're about to enter the 4th straight year of being a 20-30 win caliber team.

I know that people like to subtract a year from the Tank clock and argue it really starts at year 1, not year 0, but we had to live through that year.