Knicks Morning News (2019.03.12)

  • [NYDN] Knicks legend blasts ‘bully’ James Dolan
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 9:10:00 PM)

    Former New York Knicks star Charles Oakley says team owner James Dolan is a “bully” for threatening to ban fans from Madison Square Garden.

    Oakley, a longtime NBA enforcer and rebounding machine, said Dolan was wrong to mouth off at a fan who told him to sell the team during a loss at MSG.

    Oakey…

  • [SNY Knicks] Charles Oakley on Knicks owner James Dolan: ‘He just tries to bully everybody’
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 11:03:07 PM)

    Knicks legend Charles Oakley was critical of James Dolan after the franchise owner threatened to ban a fan from Madison Square Garden.

  • [SNY Knicks] Latest on Knicks target Kyrie Irving: Star apologizes for how he’s handled himself
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 3:06:11 PM)

    Kyrie Irving can be a free agent after the season, and the idea that he could team up with fellow free agent Kevin Durant on the Knicks this summer has picked up steam. Here are the latest rumors…

  • [SNY Knicks] Who should players currently on Knicks roster model their games after?
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 10:30:34 AM)

    It’s no secret the Knicks are a young team. Here are some NBA veterans the players on their roster should model their games after.

  • [ESPN] Oakley calls Knicks’ Dolan a bully for fan incident
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 10:24:54 PM)

    Charles Oakley called out Knicks owner James Dolan for threatening to ban fans from Madison Square Garden, saying “it just doesn’t make sense.”

  • [NYPost] Knicks brass planning on up-close look at Zion Williamson
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 11:50:26 PM)

    INDIANAPOLIS — Knicks general manager Scott Perry always travels with the club but is not on this three-game trip that began Sunday in Minneapolis — site of this year’s Final Four. It’s high time for Perry. The Post has learned Perry attended the Ohio Valley Conference tournament where he got to see Murray State and…

  • [NYPost] Time running out for Knicks enigma to prove he should be back
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 10:47:59 PM)

    INDIANAPOLIS — Super Mario doesn’t lack for confidence in himself despite a season that lacks victories. On the surface, it also lacks personal growth. Call him naive or just a pie-eyed optimist, but Knicks forward Mario Hezonja isn’t deterred about having a big NBA future — perhaps even with the 13-54 Knicks. After missing the…

  • [NYPost] Charles Oakley: Dolan handled fan’s comments like a ‘bully’
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 7:59:54 PM)

    Former New York Knicks star Charles Oakley says team owner James Dolan is a “bully” for threatening to ban fans from Madison Square Garden. Oakley, a longtime NBA enforcer and rebounding machine, said Dolan was wrong to mouth off at a fan who told him to sell the team during a loss at MSG. Oakey…

  • [NYTimes] N.B.A. Roundup: Nets Rout Pistons, Moving Up to Sixth in Eastern Conference
    (Tuesday, March 12, 2019 4:29:22 AM)

    Led by Spencer Dinwiddie, who had 19 points, the Nets made quick work of Detroit, going up 61-35 at halftime and then cruising to victory.

  • [NYTimes] A Fan Yells ‘Sell the Team.’ Did Knicks Owner James Dolan Threaten Him?
    (Tuesday, March 12, 2019 4:19:40 AM)

    Dolan called the shouted comment rude and suggested the fan would only be able to watch the team on TV — which might be just as well in an ugly season.

  • [NYTimes] The Warriors Were 97% to Win. But This Was the Other 3%.
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 1:45:58 PM)

    A ho-hum blowout seemed to be in the offing. But the Suns won the game.

  • [NYTimes] On Pro Basketball: Playoff Mode? LeBron James and the Lakers Are Failing to Activate
    (Monday, March 11, 2019 4:38:21 PM)

    A move West came with dire warnings, but the reality is setting in that a James-led team might miss the playoffs.

  • 66 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2019.03.12)”

    @1 you mean unreal plus-minus, the same stat that ranks Mitch 53rd among C’s? ok.

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    Doc Rivers and Jerry West deserve some votes for coach and executive of the year. The Clippers continue to rebuild in brilliant fashion and Doc continues to get more out of them than the talent they put on the court. They are basically a #2 scorer (Gallo), a 6th man of the year (Lou Williams), and a bunch of good cheap young role players. Yet they keep hanging around in the tougher western conference and may be playing their best ball of the year right now. I can’t see how at least one of the superstars doesn’t join that team in free agency.

    Cross post:

    Bol Bol=Luke Kornet with a bad foot

    I realize snark and dick swinging is a lot of what we do here but, cmon….

    Wingspan BB = 7? 8? LK = 7? 2?
    Age BB = 11/15 /99 LK = 7/15/95
    PER BB = 37 LK = 18.1
    3 pt% BB = 52 LK = 32
    TRb BB = 9.6 LK = 4.8
    Blk BB = 2.7 LK = 1.6

    If you want to compare their freshman seasons it looks even sillier………but whatever….

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    NBA PLUS MINUS (like all on/off data) seems to suffer from sample size issues. I suspect they try to overcome that by also partly using either boxscore metrics, Bayesian analysis, or team Net Rating (SRS) to anchor the ratings to something (as far as know it’s not public). I know they also use multiple years and weight it towards recent data.

    That works better “on average” if you are looking at 500 players.

    But the very reason to look at things other than the boxscore, perceptions, or team level data is to try to pick up on all the things an individual player does especially well or poorly that are not in the boxscore, not easy to observe, or that some players on the team are a lot better at than others at on average. Those things will tend to show up over time in raw Net Ratings or via lineup analysis over a large enough sample (the problem being how long and what happens if the player is improving or deteriorating short term).

    The Knicks are a horrible defensive team overall, but the team does have a few very good individual defenders. I suspect ALL them are underrated on NBA Plus/Minus. Perhaps it’s because team level, boxscore, etc.. data is leaking into the individual ratings.

    I suspect ALL them are underrated on NBA Plus/Minus.

    lmao what

    Stop talking to yourself

    This elicited gut laughter for no good reason, thanks

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    @6

    People have been saying the Clippers are the favorites to land Kawhi, but I guess it somewhat depends on how happy he is in Toronto and how far they go this year. I’m not sure why Durant would’t consider them also. He’s already in CA and he’d be “the man” on the Clippers.

    I’d like to see Gallo in his appropriate role for the first time in his career. He’s not rally a #1 guy, yet he was cast in that role in Denver and is in that role now in LA. He’s had a great career on the offensive side hitting 3s, getting to the FT line, and not taking many dumb shots. When you consider how often he’s played with or while recovering from injuries that have surely slowed him down and caused some bad stretches on the court, I don’t think he’s gotten the credit he deserves as a player.

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    lmao what

    If 3 of your players are good defenders and 12 of them suck ass, the defense will be terrible on a net basis and the impact on team SRS very bad.

    If you then use that SRS or team defense to try help assign defense to the individuals, the 3 good ones will be very underrated on the defensive side. Team level data and boxscore data do not tease out individual defense (and other significant contributions) very well.

    That’s a major flaw of defense in Wins Produced and BPM.

    Wins Produced uses team level data and BPM tries to back into defense by measuring individual offense first and then looking at SRS (or something like it) and saying defense must be the remainder .

    On average, that’s better than doing nothing because most players cluster around average. But in some cases it can be VERY wrong. (Robinson, Dotson, and Frank are probably underrated on defense by NBA Plus Minus). I’ve seen examples like this with several teams and players outside of NY.

    I actually think Bol is more like KP, but even better off the dribble somehow.
    The injury is worrisome, sure, but hopefully he’s healed and can fill out a little more. I agree that he’s maybe a reach at 5, but from 7 down, I’d consider him.

    In a trade down from #3 for 2 Boston picks, would you really rather have Bennett than say, Bol and White?

    Strat, respectfully, you don’t understand how any of the models work based on your attempts to describe their shortcomings, including the team adjustments you cite but incorrectly describe. You’re far from alone in that here. Even so, you’re absolutely right that pointing to something like Luke Kornet’s defensive rpm in a few hundred NBA minutes is barely more informative than his zodiac sign. People anchor to these summary stats without really understanding them, though on average this still probably puts them in a better position than typical fans and former video scouting assistants who now tweet for a living, who mostly just want a way to confirm their own personal black box instincts.

    Individual defense isn’t really quite as important as it once was. Today it’s more of a team concept— you want to have switchable wings who can credibly guard guys a little bit bigger and smaller than they are, backed up by the anchor of the defense, the rim protecting/shot blocking center. If your rim protector is a little bit mobile and can also guard a wing out in space (like Clint Capela) then even better.

    Defense is more of a system thing these days. Those wings on the Bucks, they’re all solid defenders. But when you play them together, and they execute a coherent and disciplined defensive system, we’ll then you’ve really got something.

    But you really need some wings with good size and length if you want to pull this off. The Knicks don’t have guys like that. The Knicks need versatile wing defenders in the worst way, which is why I’m okay with Barrett or Culver if a top two pick doesn’t pan out.

    I actually think Bol is more like KP, but even better off the dribble somehow.
    The injury is worrisome, sure, but hopefully he’s healed and can fill out a little more. I agree that he’s maybe a reach at 5, but from 7 down, I’d consider him.

    The injury is a little less worrisome when you look at the stats. Forbes did a piece on navicular fractures in pro basketball players and there have been seven of the total with 6 in very big men. The very long term successes:

    Michael Jordan
    Marc Gasol
    Zydrunas Ilgauskas

    On the way to the HOF

    Joel Embiid

    The only real failure to return was Yao Ming who was 29 years old when injured and 311 pounds with 15,000 NBA minutes on his feet.

    Brendan Haywood was on his way out of the league and had this injury at 34 and never played again. That’s all of them….

    One can only guess that a 19 year old with little wear and tear on his body who had surgery immediately might have an excellent long term prognosis.

    The guy’s stroke is feathery. He has a couple of 180 degree turn around heaves that only tickle the twine amazingly.

    The notion that his dad was besides being a light hearted guy a real humanitarian spending much of his time building schools in his native Sudan before he died probably means he is less of a self absorbed prick than his contemporaries.

    I agree with you JK, and there’s the issue that Bol’s rim protection might be duplicative and hurt his overall value to us (though I’d still consider him lower down because of backup minutes and his top-rate shooting). My concern with Barrett is will he ever even be an average 3pt shooter? If not, that really hurts an offense (see: Celtics when Smart is on the floor).

    @15: bob-that’s some good salesmanship on Bol! Something to consider. I feel you can NEVER have enough rim protection. We will have 48 minutes of rim protection if we draft Bol. No dropoff if Mitch out of game. Not to mention the 2 on the floor at the same time may be the greatest rim protection in league history, minus Russell and Wilt of course 😉 And their offensive games don’t overlap much.

    I have two major concerns with Bol: his health (including his knees, feet, and pretty much his entire body) and his ability to move in concert with the fast-paced NBA game. I see KP with less of the positives and more of the negatives. Let’s not pretend that he will get many of those wide-open deep 3’s in the NBA, or will be able to create shots off the dribble, or defend anyone in space, or box out anyone with a lower center of gravity (look where his hips are.)

    If we draft him at #5, I’ll obviously be disappointed but would hope for a KP-like outcome…high trade value based on hype and flashes of brilliance between long spells of injuries and ineffectiveness.

    My issue with drafting Bol Bol is that no matter how we analyze it, he’s an absolute enigma. Yes, the numbers look good but in small sample sizes, there’s good history for recovery on the injury, but we can’t really know. There’s so much that we have no idea how it’s going to play out.

    I’m tired of picking these unknown quantities. I get that you can never be really sure in the draft, but can’t we pick a guy who’s actually shown production over a sustained time every once in a while?

    I won’t say I’ll be super mad if we draft him, but it will be a huge disappointment if we miss on the top 3 guys after what this season has been.

    Bol Bol is the guy we draft if the sure things are gone. I want upside and Bol Bol has upside.

    To the extent Bol Bol is an unknown quantity–and I’m not sure we’ve drafted many unknown quantities–it’s all good, that can’t be said about Frank Ntilikina.

    On the other hand, Knox and KP were both known quantities. MitchGod was also an unknown quantity. I don’t see the issue here.

    when player I don’t like shoots well in NCAA: it’s only the NCAA, anyone can get a good look against inferior talent

    when player I like doesn’t shoot well in the NCAA: his teammates must not provide adequate spacing, wait ’til he’s surrounded by shooters and the floor opens up

    Stimulating there are sample size issues what exactly did/does KP have over this guy. KP wasn’t and probably isn’t today as good a shooter. KP was a horrible rebounder. KP never showed a nice jump hook over his right shoulder ever that he could use in the post.

    I’m not sure how a 7’3 guy is going to have trouble getting a 3 ball off on the next level in a motion offense (there is only one Mitch Robinson in the NBA). If he can just shoot spot up 3’s and obstruct the rim occasionally( 9’6″ standing reach) he’s a pretty formidable force.

    He’ doesn’t need to be a track star to be a very effective player with his obvious skill set.

    I get that you can never be really sure in the draft, but can’t we pick a guy who’s actually shown production over a sustained time every once in a while?

    You mean like 35 games over 9 games 🙂 🙂

    Individual defense isn’t really quite as important as it once was. Today it’s more of a team concept— you want to have switchable wings who can credibly guard guys a little bit bigger and smaller than they are, backed up by the anchor of the defense, the rim protecting/shot blocking center.

    You’re right, individual defense matters less than it used to. But, perhaps paradoxically, an individual’s inability to defend matters more than ever. You can’t hide bad defenders against good teams any more. The weak link will be heavily exploited.

    Also @22 is right. No one is guarding a 7’3″ player with a 7’8″ wingspan while 23ft from the basket. If someone is, great!! Let’s remove their rim protection.

    Yao Ming was great because his height made his jumpshot unguardable. He made slow, perfect 5 footers like most players take practice shots. That’s what Bol is, except he’ll take 3’s.

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    Strat, respectfully, you don’t understand how any of the models work based on your attempts to describe their shortcomings, including the team adjustments you cite but incorrectly describe.

    Respectfully, I know care about the details of the math. I care about why the math guys are always wrong. BPM and Wins Produced describe what they do in the documentation.

    https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/bpm.html

    After they figure out team level efficiency and what each player contributed on offense, they “back into” the individual defense. As I said, that’s not capturing individual defense well at all.

    “Defensive BPM is simply overall BPM minus offensive BPM”.

    Win Produced also uses team defense, which runs into the same problems.

    What I don’t understand is ESPN’s NBA Real Plus Minus because (as I said) they don’t give any details.

    So what I do is look for players whose ratings I very strongly disagree with based on other statistical data like net rating, general perceptions, visual observation, etc.. and try to find patterns in them. That’s a good way to identify model weaknesses and which players ARE rated incorrectly. That’s what I do for all these models.

    That’s how I knew Kanter was actually a “dog with fleas” when other people thought he was either very good or good. Some models badly overrate bad defenders that score a lot off OREBs.

    The one pattern I’ve seen with ESPN’s NBA Real +/- is on the defensive side.

    If the team sucks defensively but has a few solid individual defenders, those few will tend to be underrated defensively.

    If the team is great on defense but has a few individual mediocre defenders, those few will tend to be overrated defensively.

    I can’t know why that is and said so, but I am speculating it’s because they are using team level data, a Bayesian estimate, or backing into it like BPM.

    So what I do is look for players whose ratings I very strongly disagree with based on other statistical data like net rating, general perceptions, visual observation, etc.. and try to find patterns in them.

    “General perceptions”

    sounds legit

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    Individual defense isn’t really quite as important as it once was. Today it’s more of a team concept— you want to have switchable wings who can credibly guard guys a little bit bigger and smaller than they are, backed up by the anchor of the defense, the rim protecting/shot blocking center. If your rim protector is a little bit mobile and can also guard a wing out in space (like Clint Capela) then even better.

    I agree, but having the size, strength, length, and quickness to make the switch to a bigger or smaller man and still be effective and also having the basketball IQ to make the “right” switch when you are supposed to is not universal. It’s still individual. The defensive strategy is more team oriented, but you need versatile defenders to implement it. The NBA has learned that having that kind of versatility can be important and is valuing it higher as a way of stopping the modern offenses.

    “Basically I start off with whatever I believe, then find some way to discredit any information that doesn’t fit in with my perceptions, also horse racing”

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    “General perceptions”

    sounds legit

    As I said, I am looking for extremes.

    If you tell me Ed Davis is the 9th best player in the NBA now with over 350 minutes, I’m going to start laughing even though I happen to be an Ed Davis fan and think he’s been underrated for years. That’s what Wins Produced says this afternoon. https://www.boxscoregeeks.com/players?sort=per48_wins_produced&direction=desc&minimum=true

    If you find 10 players at one extreme and 10 players at the other extreme using the same model, the pattern will sometimes quickly emerge about where the model is broken. Then you can use that to inform your views further when looking at that model.

    You might think I am, or used to be, a believer in WP48. You’d be wrong. Search the archives.

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    “Basically I start off with whatever I believe, then find some way to discredit any information that doesn’t fit in with my perceptions, also horse racing”

    100% wrong.

    I look at and compare the results of all the models. Then I look at on court results to see if the on court results are reasonably in line with what each model says. When I find things that are way off and inconsistent, I start looking for patterns and explanations. I am looking at multiple sources of hard and soft data and allowing them to tell me what’s reasonable and what’s clearly wrong.

    Horse racing is much easier.

    I start with a concept and then test it against thousands of back races. If it looks promising I may tweak it further as I take a better look at the details. If it remains promising I will slowly test it with real money on live races. If it produces a profitable ROI, I slowly increase my bets.

    If you tell me Ed Davis is the 9th best player in the NBA now with over 350 minutes, I’m going to start laughing even though I happen to be an Ed Davis fan and think he’s been underrated for years.

    It’s pretty weird that a guy in the top 25 in TS% and 3rd overall in TRB% might be considered a productive player by any stat, especially since he’s not a starter. And don’t even get me started on the fake news of his +21 net rating. I mean, if you’re not a starter, how can you claim to be good at basketball?

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    You might think I am, or used to be, a believer in WP48. You’d be wrong. Search the archives.

    No.

    I think you are very insightful. I like you even though you may feel differently about me. 🙂

    I was just explaining the type of thing that raises a red flag with me and how I then use that information to try to find the pattern.

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    It’s pretty weird that a guy in the top 25 in TS% and 3rd overall in TRB% might be considered a productive player by any stat, especially since he’s not a starter. And don’t even get me started on the fake news of his +21 net rating. I mean, if you’re not a starter, how can you claim to be good at basketball?

    As I said, I am an Ed Davis fan and think he’s been underrated for a long time, but if you think he’s the 9th best player in the NBA you are most likely very wrong. I sure hope the Knicks don’t try to build the team around him this off season. 🙂 But I sure as hell won’t mind having him on the team as a high energy role player off the bench.

    I mean, if you’re not a starter, how can you claim to be good at basketball?

    Havlicek stole the ball…… Havlicek stole the ball…….

    You’re a nice guy, Strat, and if it seems like I pick on you it’s because our brains operate in very different ways.

    I really like all the Knickerbloggers, even those I beef with from time to time. I don’t really even remember who I may have beefed with over what issue, because overall I like everybody here.

    Except for reub and the ProjectKnicks dude. Fuck those guys.

    Re: Ed Davis

    Guys like Ed Davis seem to be the equivalent of a high-OBP baseball player in the 1970’s, like say Bobby Grich or somebody. Bobby Grich was indeed one of the best players in baseball, he was routinely a 6-7 WAR player in his prime, but nobody would have said he was a true star player, because he only batted .260.

    Ed Davis is kind of an outlier example, because yeah, he’s probably not a top 10 NBA player. But those grindingly efficient players like him help you win games. We’re now starting to see the Clint Capelas of the world (not so much the Ed Davises) get recognized as really outstanding players, just as guys like Bobby Grich eventually got recognized as outstanding players.

    Also, sometimes the stat guys are kind of wrong, because better stats become available. Like the Fire Joe Morgan guys used to like fun at Tim McCarver for talking about the importance of pitch framing. But then PitchFX came out, and there was a consistent pattern of certain catchers “stealing” strikes. Tim McCarver was right, and Ken Tremendous was wrong, pitch framing is a real thing that has real value.

    Dolan will be on Michael Kay at 5pm. That’s a getcha popcorn interview. Kay will not treat him with kid gloves.

    Respectfully, I know care about the details of the math. I care about why the math guys are always wrong. BPM and Wins Produced describe what they do in the documentation.

    okay, well in case you ever want to sound accurate when criticizing the math guys, here is a brief summary of the popular summary state models, with specific reference to how they might be buffeted by team defense vs. individual defense.

    1. Win Shares. This is the the only legitimate summary stat that heavily assigns team-based defensive results to individual players without exhaustive attempts to extract better information. This is a significant shortcoming.

    2. Box Score Plus Minus. Although this appears to have a “team adjustment” when you read some of the methodology summaries, the adjustment isn’t the same as merely divvying up team defense among the players. Rather, it is a constant that is part of the original regression determining the weight coefficients. The intuition here is that good teams have a bigger pie, but individual players have to compete for that pie in a stronger field based on their own boxscore stats. Notice that many of the obviously silly DBPM results actually come from bad defensive teams, like Kanter’s numbers here. You are seeing imperfection but mistaking the cause.

    3. RPM. I laugh when people wave away RPM as a “black box” but then cite some other stat that is just as much as a black box as far as they are concerned. RPM is opaque in the details. But the basic setup is straightforward & the results can be closely replicated. RPM starts with a BPM-like stat, and uses it as a prior. It then uses regularized adjusted plus minus to adjust that prior. The “adjusted” in adjusted plus minus exactly attempts to undo the problem you are worried about…collinearity problems hurting players with shitty teammates. Regularization or ridge regression tries to further mitigate this problem and the huge sample size problems…

    …but mitigating does not mean eliminating, and you can roll around bare-assed in the data and buy it dinner, there is still going to be a ton of noise in even long-seeming samples of adjusted plus-minus data. You’re trying to extract a very narrow signal from a very noisy ocean of partial data… that’s hard. But there is no evidence that the adjustments systematically under-correct for having bad defensive teammates; there is actually a small amount of evidence the opposite might be true. You are just making up the problem you think you see.

    4. WP. This is not a legitimate summary stat. This is more like what the sokal hoax would be if sokal wasn’t in on it.

    5. Most people sympathize with your revelation that some of the results seem obviously stupid. Had people like Berri not decided to defend the idea that Dennis Rodman was better than Michael Jordan or whatever, you’d be tilting at windmills. But most people understand that these statistics are rife with imperfections. Summary stats are averages and they are absolute, real life has heterogenous distributions and basketball is contextual. But even the methodology can be problematic because coefficients can be overfit and the game can change a lot from the sampling periods.

    A more interesting question is whether people like you, who seem over overrate their personal ability to know it when you see it, do themselves more harm than good by subjectively deciding when to like and when to not like a model in an ad hoc way. But even if the strat algorithm really is a better predictor of NBA productivity on average than BPM/RPM/WS, you’re still wrong about where model biases lie.

    “Defensive BPM is simply overall BPM minus offensive BPM”.

    One last thing. I know they say the above but it isn’t meaningful. The regression was ultimately calibrated to maximize the overall r squared for both offense and defense and then individually. The basketball reference description chooses to present offensive BPM and then describes defensive BPM as the remainder, but it could just has easily led with the coefficients for DPBM and described offense as the remainder. The only operative fact is that OBPM shows a significantly higher r squared in the regression (i.e. with offensive on/off plus minus data) than defensive (no matter what you do), so it almost surely contains more information. But the stat itself is not actually any more derived for offensive than defense.

    Also, sometimes the stat guys are kind of wrong, because better stats become available. Like the Fire Joe Morgan guys used to like fun at Tim McCarver for talking about the importance of pitch framing. But then PitchFX came out, and there was a consistent pattern of certain catchers “stealing” strikes. Tim McCarver was right, and Ken Tremendous was wrong, pitch framing is a real thing that has real value.

    This is a really valuable insight that I do think we should be mindful of. One day, stats are going to evolve and cover what we previously couldn’t. In the meantime, visual observation shouldn’t be so readily dismissed, as long as it isn’t easily refutable.

    On the 3 or 4 occasions where Frank has actually played well in his career, I think he was a good example of this. There was a game against the Celtics in Boston early this year, for instance, where he was an absolute monster on defense. And his box score showed absolutely nothing. I do think we’ll get to a point where impacts like that will be measurable.

    Strat takes something I agree with a little too far. There’s a lot not in the box score, yes. But there’s a lot more in the box score, too! It’s probably like an 80/20 split, and the 80 can’t be dismissed so easily.

    Hey pt, seriously, why are you here? I mean, why aren’t you curing cancer or cooling the globe or something a bit more urgent than explaining advanced NBA stats to a bunch of meatheads?

    @32 okay then mister stratomatic (horse racing enthusiast extraordinaire) – what in the heck is going on at Santa Anita?

    how unusual is that situation, and, is it just a matter of bad weather and lots of rain?

    Dolan will be on Michael Kay at 5pm. That’s a getcha popcorn interview. Kay will not treat him with kid gloves.

    I wonder if he’ll have his binder with him…

    Apropos to nothing, what the hell happened to *March* Madness? This is a mid April tournament now?

    At least thanks to ptmilo’s free day this garbage discussion became a very interesting read, thanks a lot hahahaha.

    I really thought we had come to a conclusion as a collective that stats aren’t perfect but they are useful tools to help us analyze stuff. You got to be extremely naive to think everyone who’s ever dedicated themselves so much to building statistics about a game is clueless and don’t realize there’s stuff that escapes their models.

    after searching through ESPN and Sirius to see how I can listen to the interview with dolan later on – I suddenly realized I have no desire what so ever to hear anything he has to say…

    better ways to be entertained and spend time..

    we’ll see if my curiosity ends up getting the better of me…

    That’s funny, geo, bc I feel the same way about Michael Kay. He could interview a resurrected Abe Lincoln and I’d probably pass.

    “From what we’ve heard (from agents), we’re going to have a very successful offseason when it comes to NBA free agents.”

    You better be right, Dolan!

    This Dolan interview is a total disaster. Dolan is so bad that he really could cost the team max free agents. He’s so arrogant he obviously didn’t even prepare for this interview.

    This Dolan interview is a total disaster. Dolan is so bad that he really could cost the team max free agents. He’s so arrogant he obviously didn’t even prepare for this interview.

    Of course it’s a disaster. He’s a walking disaster. He is the epitome of the guy who thinks he’s too clever to get tripped up on stuff and then, you know, gets tripped on stuff constantly because he isn’t as clever as he thinks he is.

    well, seems like my ability to resist my prurient knickerbocker desires – ain’t so good…

    turns out though the michael kay interview won’t be on sirius until 6pm…most likely I’ll have lost interest by then…

    even with that, I am very sad to confess, more so than anything – I wanted to watch the interview just to observe dolan…

    sort of like one of those old time grotesque shows…

    He’s so arrogant he obviously didn’t even prepare for this interview.

    what?!?!? no binder, no note cards, no illegible ink markings somewhere on his palm or forearm…

    jimmy d must be feeling very bold indeed today…

    I mean, that’s what you get when you put an imbecile into a position where nothing he does pretty much will ever punish him. All he has to do is not get caught on tape saying racist shit and his cash cow is never going away.

    I will say this for Dolan: on a Begley/Lowe podcast the two of them said his image with players is much different than with fans. To Durant, in particular, Dolan is a media giant, something he wants to be. They both suggested the recent rumors about him wanting to sell were coming from teams that were trying to sabotage the Knicks.

    According to Twitter, Dolan confirmed that theory in this interview. Said Ainge is using that twat Bill Simmons to put the story out there.

    I know Dolan has been terrible for two decades but if he actually got the right guy in place (Scott Perry) his image could change very quickly. I saw it with Steinbrenner. For two decades he was reviled, then Gene Michael, Buck Showalter, Joe Torre, and Brian Cashman happened to him.

    Those comments where he’s basically bragging that agents are telling him their players want to come here seem like they shouldn’t have been said out loud.

    There’s a clip on herring’s twitter where Dolan has to consult his notes to remember the names Knox, Robinson, and “Allonzo”.

    While that certainly makes him look like a fool, I’m actually encouraged that he is so detached from the team he doesn’t even know who his players are. That’s the best version of Dolan we can ask for. Just sign the check.

    There’s a clip on herring’s twitter where Dolan has to consult his notes to remember the names Knox, Robinson, and “Allonzo”.

    What are you talking about? He watched every game, you fool! You don’t deserve to be a fan of the Knicks!

    While that certainly makes him look like a fool, I’m actually encouraged that he is so detached from the team he doesn’t even know who his players are. That’s the best version of Dolan we can ask for. Just sign the check.

    Yeah, I’m on board with this. I just find it hard to believe he’ll continue to look away if KD is on the team.

    the complete interview is up on YouTube now…

    he sure does say: “ummmmm”, and “you know” a lot…

    add “right?” to that…

    holy cow it’s like listening to a teenager speak…

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