Yao has been battling back for a while now. The problem is, when he does fight for position, Nesterovic, Vlade, and even Alton freakin Ford flop and get the call every time. We're not even talking much contact here. And if they don't get the foul call, they call Yao for a travel, like we saw tonight. Yao takes a lot of abuse (got pulled down to the floor 3 times when going for rebounds), and the refs still don't really let him dish it out. Hopefully that will change, but thats what i've said all last year.
Uh, yeah. My point is, when he fights fire with fire, they call weak fouls on him. So he stops. Before he fouls out.
Go back and re-read KeepKenny's post, Eienstein. You've got reading comprehension deficiencies. When Yao knocks dudes on their asses, the refs call these ridiculous offensive fouls. Geno himself mentioned the questionable calls against Yao numerous times on radio broadcast.
He is going through the same thing Hakeem did when he was younger (ever read the autobiography by the way?). I think it's because both can't effectively argue with the refs that some time the ref doesn't call the game as evenly as possible. Ofcourse, Hakeem solution (once again going by what's in the book) to that problem was knock the f*cker down when the ref wasn't looking. Somehow I don't see Yao doing that. On second thought, I think someone should send Yao Dream's autobiography, I think he can learn a lot from it. For example, Hakeem said that "the coaches don't like the fact that I shot fade aways but want me to be close to the basket, but as I developed that shot and can make it with good percentage, I was like why not shoot a fadeaway" or something along those lines.
Exactly...ok let's recap: 75 % that Yao gets the ball. Then 30 % that he turns it over. So there is a 25 % chance that Yao never gets the ball and if he gets it, a 30 % chance that he turns it over? That would mean there is a 47.5 % (25 + 75 x 30) chance that a pass results in a turnover, not a 55 % chance.
Jeff you are wrong It is universally agreed here that Jeff wanted Francis to fast break more even though he had long developing plays Rocket River that was sarcasm . . . excellent post
Jeff - Excellent post / analysis. I definitely think you're right, but clearly there are still a lot of problems. The main one I see so far is that the play(s) you are describing aren't nearly being run effectively enough - you can tell because Yao only had 7 shots. Fortunately, the other obvious thing this post-season is that Yao IS posting a lot deeper. Instead of being 2-3 feet out of the lane, he seems to be posting just one foot out of the lane. Turnovers are part of the formula for a guy who is 7'6 and has to dribble. There is a reason the turnover statistic is calculated as it is (it's the passer's turnover) - throw a good pass into the big fella - especially when throwing a post entry pass, the passer knows exactly who he is passing to, who is defending him, where the other defenders are on the court, etc. Plus, Yao is the "beneficiary" of turnovers that aren't his fault either (Jimmy, why would you bring Manu Ginobili, of all people, right up behind Yao like that?). At the end of the day, JVG is definitely running new plays this year that seem to be successfully getting Yao good position, but are unsuccessfully getting Yao the ball in that position. JVG's most obvious frustration with the way they were running the plays was the two post timeout plays in the 4th where he finally just said to screw it and have Yao just post-up - Yao posted deep and scored twice. Yao played a great game last night. The difference between the team's defense with him and without him is like night and day. He rebounded well. He shot well. He passed well. He just didn't get the ball on offense enough.
The thing is Van Gundy's offensive style sucks and is boring as hell to watch. I can't stand watching him with that sourpuss look on his face during timeouts. His offensive system is the problem as much as the players not executing his system.
I dunno if anyone has responded to this yet, but I absolutely had to after seeing it. Let A and B be the following events: A: Yao gets the ball from teammate B: Yao holds onto the ball From the probabilities you mentioned, we can define: P(A) = 0.75 P(B given A) = 0.7 From here you can just use a variation of Bayes Theorem: P(B given A) = P(A and B both occur)/P(A) P(A and B both occur) = 0.7 * 0.75 = 0.525 So, if we pass to Yao, there's a 52.5% chance both A and B happens (he'll get the pass and hold onto it). So, there's only a 47.5% chance it'll result in a turnover, NOT 55%. Yeah I'm an engineer. So sue me. EDIT: Oops, after reading the rest of the thread, it looks like Sir Jackie Chiles got to the explanation before I did.
Your calculation is wrong. You treated conditional probability like unconditional. Assuming the 25% and 30% numbers, there is 47.5% chance for TO. Kyrodis, didn't see your reply before I post my reply. But your calculation is right.
Kyrodis and canoner, SJC did the correct calculation way before you guys. Now let's calculate the probability of the defender flopping on Yao when he's fighting for position. Anyone?
this is definitely one thing that is MASSIVELY unfair to yao. he takes the punishment like shaq but isn't allowed to dish it out. it's ridiculous what will earn him an offensive foul as well. you'd think yao being a star would help us out here but it seems to have the opposite effect. he gets picked on. maybe adding tmac will help. whatever the case, it is extremely unjust to call off. fouls on yao while allowing guys to wrestle with and claw him relentlessly.
