Lol guys, try being a fan in Houston. Damaged fan bases my ass, rooting for the Rockets, Texans, and Astros is simply painful, there’s huge reasons for optimism every year before they are crushed in the most painful possible way. The only sports fans that get any pity from me are Cleveland fans, they just get boned for fun it seems like. Houston fans only have to deal with things like every star player going down with major injuries… every year. Yao Ming was so much better than Dwight Howard it’s actually kind of sad, and yet here’s Dwight getting major media attention for being the best big man in the league

Yeah, a good friend of mine is a transplanted Houston fan in New York and, well, yeah, you guys are quite tortured. Then again, he (and you, I am sure) have that back-to-back title to look back on. We have a title from…39 years ago!

Talking about the physicality Jordan faced in previous thread. The spots Jordan operated from are exactly where Melo operates from now— both are really good spots to both create and defeat double teams.

max fisher-cohen:
@ruru, I agree. I guess that’s what distinguishes Knick fans from those of most sports teams. We’re damaged. I tried to hope thing so many times. If you go back to the middle of this past decade, I used to come on KB (under a different handle) and defend Eddy Curry. I really wanted to believe he could be great. Again, not saying Melo and Curry are equals. They absolutely aren’t. However, a lot of that hoping has been sucked out of me because my hopes have continually been undermined.

I hear you, Max, but I don’t know why Knicks fans think they are special in this way ( And I recognize you guys are by and large great fans)

Born a die-hard Denver fan, I know what it feels like to be in a city championship drought. Denver used to have multi-generational, blue-collar fans that filled all of the pro stadiums, set virtually all of the major attendance records in all the major sports. They waited over 40 years to win a championship. They saw their greatest sports hero get embarrassed 3 consecutive Super Bowls. They saw their basketball team get demolished year after year in the playoffs. There was plenty of heartbreak. But, to me, their was never self-pity or loss of hope. I just think it’s an attitude thing. I don’t think I’d want to be a fan of any team if I felt that I DESERVED to have a champion. Being a fan is about investing your emotions, even if it means there’s a good chance you’ll be disappointed. When you do get to follow a team that goes all the way, it makes you feel as though you somehow played a part in it. AS a fan, that’s what we all want to feel in some way or another.

That, to me, is what it’s all about.

Owen:
I again agree with Max.

Ruruland –

And here is my tip of the day for you. Take a read. I read this a long time ago. Might help with the Melo defending.

Tip of the day for me?? Look I appreciate you trying to reach out a little bit, but I don’t want to talk about Melo more than anyone else.

I mean, I’ve talked about this for a long time (the Melo effect). So why do you argue with me when we talk about interaction effects and how Melo improves his teammates efficiency through attention and shot creation???

I don’t know why you’d post this article when you’ve spent so much time refuting the author’s arguments (without data).

What is that about, Owen??? Was all of this just a ruse?

“Using plus-minus statistics provides another way of checking Anthony’s impact on the Denver offense……. Prior to this year, Denver’s Offensive Rating was at least 2.0 points better per 100 possessions in every year of Anthony’s career. The average impact in this span was +4.6 points per 100 possessions. Despite the fact that his own efficiency has been middling at times, Anthony has consistently lifted the Nuggets’ offense with his ability to create shots.”

“The Carmelo effect appears to create 9.3 wins per 82 games, or 7.5 over the 66 games Anthony actually played last season–a figure 50 percent higher than the value WARP assigns his usage.”

Ruruland – Look, just try to keep it fair and balanced. I honestly think if you could just keep from putting Melo on the pedestal you do all the time, it wouldn’t really be such an issue.

And here is my tip of the day for you. Take a read. I read this a long time ago. Might help with the Melo defending.

http://basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1412

And also, a long time ago, I didn’t want to trade David Lee for Kobe. And it has not escaped my notice that David Lee’s numbers, upon switching to a totally different context, haven’t quite matched up to expectations. Just a thought the next time you want to shut me down.

That’s a great line, but I think, to me, that’s the beauty of being a sports fan.

Expectations don’t mean much if emotion is all we are vesting. If you can handle disappointment in that way, so long as we’re dealing with things that are possible, then I think that’s the way to do it.

Look, if you are telling me that Melo is going to be our Ewing and someday down the road luck into an title run and come tragically but gloriously short of the title I can deal with that…..

“Re: melo’s career high averages, I bring up my favorite quote about averages: If you have one foot in a bucket of ice water and one foot in a fire, on average, your feet are comfortable.”

That’s a good one.

Last word on this (at least for a week or two!): I guess it’s time for another morbid father analogy. You’re the father of a fuck up kid named Knick. Knick does great every time he takes a standardized test — he clearly has a lot of talent — but he spends his days both in school and after, experimenting with various illegal substances. Then he gets arrested for possession and spends a year in juvey, and when he comes out, re-enrolls in high school and for three weeks just gets A after A!

Put yourself in Knick’s dad’s position. First, you are absolutely enthralled with the progress. You have real hope for the first time in a while. However, do you BELIEVE now, after those 3 weeks, that all of Knick’s problems are in the past, that they’ll never come up again? I highly doubt it. You’ve dealt with him his whole teenage trainwreck of a life, and you still haven’t seen evidence that his social anxieties and self-destructive behavior aren’t sitting there just beneath the surface, waiting to be triggered.

I don’t mean to say this team is drug addled, just that it’s been dysfunctional for a while, and it’s not clear to me that the causes of that dysfunction are gone.

IMHO, it’s fine to hope, and it’s not even irrational to have hope. What’s irrational (and dangerous when we’re talking about people and not sports) is to transpose your hopes with your expectations.