in these, the waning days of stern: 2013-2014 NBA regular season thread (part 1)

only good teams ever have it, bad teams to not, is it a resutl of winning, is it a cause, is it just general winningness, no one really knows

teams often attribute it to liking each other, except when they dont, see kobe/shaq, bird/mchale

or they say its cause theyve got a lot of quality guys, except when there best players are psychopathic egomaniacs kobe/jordan

looool dude u realize anecdata is a satirical term for the tendency to draw overarching conclusions from anecdotal evidence not one thats used as part of that process, and who exactly is saying hard work doesnt exist? what are you talking about

― lag∞n, Monday, December 23, 2013 12:44 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Figured "anecdata point" was kinda driving the point home that I'm talking about something that can't be quantified / verified w/ hard statistical data. It's almost as if I were lightly using it ... satirically.

I'm basically talking about these intangible things things being waaaaay undervalued.

Ha, kinda case in point.

you are talking about something that you have absolutely no working definition for

... or the problem is that working definitions of stuff like this happens to be way more complicated to work out than someone's TS%.

you cannot begin to define what you mean because u dont mean anything

chemistry is something that all good teams have and that no bad teams have is it something different that just being good at basketball

lagoon do u honestly want to read a 20¶ post trying to work toward a definition of good team chemistry? Seems like a losing prop for all involved.

and idk I think the Celtics look like a shitty team with good chemistry, which is why I'd bet on them to overperform, same goes for Bulls this season and last.

so chemistry is what we call the amount a team over performs its projection

in which case the pacers have no chemistry?

Also kinda weird that you're strawmanning intangibles as The Only Important Things when really they couple along w/ all the other fun stuff like mid-range FG% and TO/assist ratios.

oh my fucking lol god at straw man accusations from buy who claims people thing hard work doesnt exist

Ha yes it would be crazy to posit that these things are undervalued, where could I ever get that impression.

yeah everyone is always shitting on hard work around here im sure we all think you dont have to work hard to be good at the nba lol wtf r you talking about

just saying 'i think intangibles are really important' is the most meaningless thing, its like saying 'ghosts control the nba'

people talk about things that cant be measured all the time, like damn kevin love has really good hands, maybe that can be measured now but w/e, chris paul seems like he would be very easy to play on a team with, or even like this team seem like they really like each other, or the coach has these guys playing very freely, but just saying theres stuff going on that cant be measured thats really important like locker room speeches or having high character players or whatever is just like ok sure how would you know anyway, just the same old cliched stuff of the worst hack sportswriters

the taming of lance stevenson by some guy who works for a newspaper in indiana and secretly thinks he could write a pretty good novel one day

its like when everyone was talking about how paul pierce reformed himself and grew up and became a leader all magically right around the time he got good teammates, before that he was a malcontent chucker, a very convenient sports narrative for lazy writers and fans who dont care to understand the game

sure development matters and maybe lance wouldntve worked out somewhere else, theres literally no way to know, and yet now its some article of faith, lance was doomed now hes saved, what about if he was on the spurs could pop have gotten through to him, maybe doc, what would his stats be with a players coach

its kind of funny how it gives lance himself exactly zero credit in his success, his inferior character was molded by indianas powerful character, praise jesus bird

i only wish bird had given me a talking to and then i wouldve been in the nba

I 100% totally agree that this kind of stuff is totally the domain of hack sportswriters etc., but that seems like a really dumb reason to just throw your hands up and say lol doesn't exist. It makes sense for them to lean on it so much because their job is to weave narrative stuff in their coverage; but like hack writers will write hacky things.

It's funny that the people closest to the game -- players, coaches, orgs -- spent a shitload of time and effort considering how certain intangibles play out, while otherwise really sharp sports fans totally discount them. Like, there is enough room for both hard stats and intangibles to play roles in teams' fortunes.

you are still totally missing the point

saying coaches focus on certain intangibles is a completely substance free statemnt

then you say chemistry when you have no definition for chemistry, its literally meaningless

if you wanted to say the coach makes sure this team works harder than the other teams we can watch the games and say hmm yes they do seem to work harder or no i dont think they work harder

scotty brooks thinks its really important to play derick fisher so that his incredible locker room speeches will have the force of experience, i personally think scotty brooks is a fucking idiot

people like to tell themselves all sorts of stories about how things work

including athletes and coaches and sportswriters, athletes and coaches like to tell sportswriters things sportswriters like to hear too, and sportswriters like to tell us things we like to hear

... please don't stop, I'm enjoying and learning a lot from your good-faith, charitable, chill discussion / masterclass on how none of this stuff exists and how dumb someone could be to actually spend time considering it.

There are a lot of athletes out there who believe in intangible, meaningless things and by believing them they give them meaning and tangibility. Pete Maravich wore the same two socks in every game he played in for more than a decade, because they were his lucky socks. You can bet that if a teammate of his had burned those socks, it would have fucked up the team's chemistry pretty badly.

... please don't stop, I'm enjoying and learning a lot from your good-faith, charitable, chill discussion / masterclass on how none of this stuff exists and how dumb someone could be to actually spend time considering it.

― Call me Shitmael (CompuPost), Monday, December 23, 2013 2:12 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"stuff"

and thank you for bring so much to the table and only engaging more fully than "stuff" when sarcastically accusing someone of being mean, very fitting for a student of the religious intangibles

Two hours later and you've finally bothered to read me clearly lag∞n, I take it all back, you do care.

well it was about time for a new thread anyways

Is it really that hard to define chemistry?

nba's possible solution for tanking -- good-bye to lottery; hello to the wheel.

Is it really that hard to define chemistry?

― tsrobodo, Monday, December 23, 2013 7:03 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dont think its that hard, people mean lots of different things by it and some of those things are purposely vague

like why compupost doesnt want to define it is because the whole point of chemistry in his argument is to exist in this this nebulous region called intangibles where he can be all this stuff is more important than you stats guys think

even tho if defined a lot of of the stuff would turn out to be either tangible or things that everyone agrees are important like hard work

nba's possible solution for tanking -- good-bye to lottery; hello to the wheel.

― Daniel, Esq 2, Monday, December 23, 2013 10:07 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah idk it obvs a pretty tuff question, this proposal has a high danger of constructing super teams, the other one described in there about using a three year average of record for the lottery maybe also does too im not sure or maybe it just prolongs teams awfulness and then gives them quicker growth, i liked the idea of having a cut off date for lottery positioning so that the last ~third of the season doesnt count for lottery purposes and teams finish strong

the worst possible solution http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/23/nba_draft_is_absurd_end_tanking_by_ending_drafting.html

at least the knicks would be good again i guess

there's always gonna be a faction of advanced stats inclined types who say the draft should be abolished (in any sport) because so many of them have economics backgrounds

oh cool great let the market solve it, just let the market solve everything

the problem w/ eliminating the draft is that the presence of the salary cap would essentially eliminate the free market ideals behind it

like it's great that the knicks could drop $75 million on andrew wiggins next year but they've already maxed out their cap so how would that even work. would teams be trying to get down to the salary floor just to blow 75% of their cap on a rookie?

yeah i just assumed from a quick scan that he was proposing eliminating the cap too, if he's not then that's just dumb.

i feel like in baseball it could make sense because there's already the international market and the nature of baseball prospects is so much different than basketball or even football

yeah assume youd have to eliminate the cap and max individual player salary limits too

xp yes--it is really silly that the int'l and domestic processes are completely different in baseball