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

anyway compupost i think what you see is when you have to actually flesh out a little what these treasured intangibles are and how they relate to the like actual game of basketball is your analytical/intangibles binary starts to crumble, do you think everyone else itt thinks that ball movement is bad that you should have selfish chuckers or that substitution patterns or developing players is unimportant, or to take it a step further up the intangibles latter that personal relationships on a team dont matter

when you choose to just call that stuff intangibles its very handwavy and lazy, and then to claim that others are really underrating you are only left with the question underrating what

the other reason intangibles are suspect is that you actually have very little to no access to the information necessary to judge them, youre not in the lockerroom, youre just left to read bs articles about leadership and speeches and judge on court body language and listen to teams promotional claims that they really care a lot about character, there incentive for all parties involved to tell the stories that the fans want to hear

its funny cause when you actually do see behind the scenes stuff with teams 99% of it is basketball stuff, practicing watching film w/e looking at diagrams, theyre just professionals going about their business, then occasionally theres a coach yelling about winning while the players who have heard this speech thousands of times over their lives catch their breath

it's not that intangibles aren't important but that it's pretty hard for people on the outside to evaluate w/ any real level of significance that it's kind of pointless to discuss as it pertains to an individual or even really a team

im much more open to the team dynamic chemistry type of arguments about intangibles, especially on court chemistry, then i think once youre winning its pretty easy to like each other and be happy, winning feels really good, but again its pretty hard to get good information past the on court level where you can observe team basketball chemistry with good ball movement and whatnot

im much more suspicious of the whole enterprise at the individual level, like the idea that some players are great leaders, they might be great leaders with the right group of players and coaches where on another team theyre just a blowhard malcontent, eg kg presided over some pretty dysfunctional teams in minny, then once he got to boston the story was that everyone played hard because he did, obvs you had a group of players who were open to the idea of playing hard which is the important part

xp yes, and also intangibles are always used to support some kind of narrative that someone wanted to exist in the first place

then occasionally theres a coach yelling about winning while the players who have heard this speech thousands of times over their lives catch their breath

― lag∞n, Monday, December 23, 2013 1:22 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my wife who doesn't pay attention to sports at all always perks up and gets irritated at mic'd up huddles because she thinks these speeches make coaches seem so dumb

yea theyre totally rote, no one cares

yeah those are so dumb, they really do make every coach seem worthless

especially scotty brooks

its funny because like two seconds before that they were prob diagraming really sophisticated plays that any of us would struggle to understand, except scotty brooks who just called a westbrook/ibaka pnr and then if that doesnt work iso or w/e

I always wondered if that isn't some made-for-tv bullshit schtick that they do, because it seems so unlikely to me that a dude coaching an NBA team sounds that mediocre when he talks.

well obv they can't show anything that shows strategy so we just get "KEEP PLAYING HARD. KEEP GETTING REBOUNDS. WE WANT TO RUN. WE WANT TO RUN. BUT PLAY UNDER CONTROL."

feel like its just a habitual thing they all do from being around basketball their whole lives when theres dead air, get more rebounds play defense run hard, theyve already conveyed the strategic info they want to at that point and theyre just waiting for the game to start again, i mean its prob not totally valueless like maybe the coach says westbrook youre coasting today play harder and westbrook goes oh hey i guess i am or w/e but mostly it seems like no one cares that much and the coach is really just freaking out and talking to himself, can you imagine being around people who yell that all the time yr whole life, at some point it must not really make that much of an impression

coaches are the worst basically

those 21 mins were a slow spiral

haha

Dude you are working incredibly hard to marry things I would never bigup in a million years -- inspirational halftime speeches, coaches yelling about winning during timeouts? -- to what I'm talking about itt. I'm sorry that you read shitty sportswriters who use this stuff as a crutch to humanize the more complicated aspects of the game, maybe if you didn't read shitty sportswriters then maybe you'd be more open to all of this, idk. Like, you're doing an amazing job disagreeing with things I'm not saying / would never say. Stats/Intangibles binary, zuh? It's like you saw me write the word "chemistry" and all the sudden I'm Skip Bayless going on about heart/leadership/etc.

What sucks is that I basically agree with you on most of this stuff; like, "much more open to the team dynamic chemistry type of arguments about intangibles, especially on court chemistry" is basically what I'm talking about!

recall this conversation started with you claiming people dont appreciate intangibles like you do and then hours of you refusing to say what you were even talking about

I always wondered if that isn't some made-for-tv bullshit schtick that they do, because it seems so unlikely to me that a dude coaching an NBA team sounds that mediocre when he talks.

― signed, J.P. Morgan CEO (Hurting 2), Monday, December 23, 2013 1:48 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This, but also there's no chance any coach would be like "Oh you want to mic me up while I diagram our next play, sure go right ahead," which is basically the only thing that would be worthwhile to watch.

Would kill for an on-the-court mic feed, which will never happen, but I wish the NBA crews would integrate the mic'd up stuff the same way NFL does w/ Sound FX.

well obv they can't show anything that shows strategy so we just get "KEEP PLAYING HARD. KEEP GETTING REBOUNDS. WE WANT TO RUN. WE WANT TO RUN. BUT PLAY UNDER CONTROL."

― le goon (J0rdan S.), Monday, 23 December 2013 18:49 (48 minutes ago) Permalink

WE NEED STOPS. IF THE SCORE WERE LESS CLOSE, WE WOULD STILL NEED STOPS, BUT NOT AS BAD. BUT THE SCORE IS REALLY CLOSE. SO WE NEED STOPS.

Then again it's also fun to hear Pop screaming KNOCK THE STUFFING OUT OF THEM in the huddle.

Presumably the phenomenon of "makes everyone around him better" can be captured in stats. I would say that team chemistry is a variant of this, where players are brought together on the court whose specific talents complement each other. For example someone with a great spatial sense for throwing lobs finally lands on a team where another player excels at rubbing off his defender, grabbing anything around the rim and putting it down. Except, on a team with great chemistry, this sort of meshing of skills sets happens in a half dozen ways. Role players especially blossom in this kind of a situation, where their talents and skill set are not good enough to make it happen out of pure ability, but they need the right players around them to bring out their best.

The "everyone feels good on a team with great chemistry" is a byproduct of this, a sense that everything is fitting together beautifully and you are playing much closer to your own capacity than you ever did with a different set of teammates. Not only do more good plays get made, but this leads to more wins, and even more aesthetic gratification during game play. Spectators pick up on this, too, and cheer louder and more happily. When stuff really clicks, everyone is happier.

You can call this "just playing good hoops" if you want, but it doesn't happen all that often.

SportVu statsdump: among league bigs, Vesely is #3 in collected contested rebounds, after Drummond and Bynum.

its interesting to see everyones definition of chemistry, for aimless its about basketball skill fit, for compu its emotional resonnance

this is why its important to not just be all intangibles maan

For me, chemistry is about this:

rubbing off his defender

imho having chemistry with the other team goes against god and nature

Lee found an easter egg.

the heat don't appear to have amazing chemistry to me but they mostly seem like solid proffesionals.

the pacers starters are so good

lance is truly on one this year

Lee found an easter egg.

― Aimless, Monday, December 23, 2013 8:14 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:0

another huge game for Brandon Knight

Lopez is such a boring important piece but bummed Nets won't have him for a big push 2nd half of the season. Lucky that Nets picked up Blatche on that amnestied contract, otherwise ugh lots and lots of Mason Plumlee.

I think you mean lucky that Blatche decided to cut Prokky a bargain deal

21-4-12 in 3 quarters for Brandon Jennings
20-5-11 in 3 quarters for Brandon Knight

i like watching lopez actually

every other nets starter is boring as hell

joe and d williams are hell

wow keep up the good work brandons

lopez is really good injuries are a bummer

joe and d williams are hell

― le goon (J0rdan S.), Monday, December 23, 2013 8:49 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes i hate these guys games

Yeah but Blatche was getting paid either way. I forget the ins/outs of the amnesty particulars, but iirc if, on his next contract, Blatche gets paid a ton, it means the Wiz won't have to pay as much, and Blatche stated straightup that he'll purposely take as little money as possible in order to fuck over Wiz management. Heh, found the quote :)

Blatche even said that gives him incentive to take less money. “If I get a lot (in my next contract), yeah, it’s going to take pressure off the Wizards,” he said. “But that’s why I’m not going to do that."

Could always do w/o Johnson but Williams at least still has consecutive games where he looks like the top-3 pg he was supposed to be.

this whole lance stepback fadeaway thing is getting out of control

the nets suck

meanwhile the knicks have blown a 24 point lead in orlando

hawks are 15-23 from three tonight in miami

paul millsap is 7-8 from three

meanwhile the knicks have blown a 24 point lead in orlando

― le goon (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, December 24, 2013 2:09 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Melo got hurt. Good times in NY.

what happened to oladipo