jon abbey:
that was very similar to what people were saying about Billy Beane, until out of nowhere he has a team with 14 rookies competing for the AL title.

baseball and basketball are completely different in that sense, there is a lot more variation in player’s performance in baseball than in basketball, it seems to me.

Juany8: How many teams have competed for the playoffs after simply losing their franchise player? Morey didn’t tank like a lot of other teams do, is it his fault the current system rewards either incompetence or location more than anything else? Hell, he even made a great move and got Pau Gasol for Kevin Martin and Luis Scola. It was a brilliant trade that was freaking veoted by the commissioner. I suppose that was a terrible move on his part too….

it was a brilliant move, and Houston has stayed pretty competitive for all the terrible stuff that happened to them, but to treat Morey like he’s some kind of genious is not real imo.

he has more than his fair share of mistakes also, and of all the 1 billion young, presumably high potential players he got, how many panned out? Lowry and Dragic? and those two are pretty debatable and are no longer with the Rockets, getting Morey pretty much nothing in return other than a protected 1st rounder from Toronto.

and after all those moves, Houston is still terrible 3 years after T-Mac left, will start the year with a Lin / Martin / Parsons / Patterson / Asik lineup, and if the rookies don’t pan out immediately, they’ll suck again.

I like Morey too, but I can’t see how he’s “brilliant” or above criticism like some people think.

Bruno Almeida: oh, that makes a lot of sense, specially because Morey’s teams have been FANTASTIC since he started in Houston, right… hmm, no.

and about ruruland, he’s one of the reasons I haven’t posted here anymore in a long time, it’s just incredibly tiresome to see someone defending 95% of the moves this team has made in the last 2 years and look at the “awesome” results we got from them.

and when we crash out of the playoffs again this season with this fantastic and top 3 or whatever team, it will be the same tiresome speech again about one million extra factors that are pure unluck.

How many teams have competed for the playoffs after simply losing their franchise player? Morey didn’t tank like a lot of other teams do, is it his fault the current system rewards either incompetence or location more than anything else? Hell, he even made a great move and got Pau Gasol for Kevin Martin and Luis Scola. It was a brilliant trade that was freaking veoted by the commissioner. I suppose that was a terrible move on his part too….

I just wish the Knicks would sign Tracy McGrady and Josh Howard so we could have the best 2005 team to never play a minute. I wish we could have had Kidd, McGrady, Howard, Wallace, and Camby back then. But in these new uniforms.

Juany8:
Just want to point out that it is absolutely laughable that David Berri thinks he is doing better basketball analysis than David Morey. Morey spends millions each year gathering meaningful data for his games. I would bet my life savings that Morey is not relying on linear regression and excel to come to his conclusions. It’s just sad to think people actually consider the box score scientific data….

oh, that makes a lot of sense, specially because Morey’s teams have been FANTASTIC since he started in Houston, right… hmm, no.

and about ruruland, he’s one of the reasons I haven’t posted here anymore in a long time, it’s just incredibly tiresome to see someone defending 95% of the moves this team has made in the last 2 years and look at the “awesome” results we got from them.

and when we crash out of the playoffs again this season with this fantastic and top 3 or whatever team, it will be the same tiresome speech again about one million extra factors that are pure unluck.

sideQuest: Always with the argument from authority with you.
And it’s very clear that your interested in arguing, not discussing. Is there anything that could be said to you to convince you that wp48 is a very useful stat, and that yes, so far for most of his career, Melo has been an about an average player?

Just consider that question, and really consider it. Is there any argument that could actually be made to you to make you realistically…

I know you didn’t ask me, but there is nothing that would convince me that WP48 is any more useful than WS or even PER. They’re all basically advanced fantasy basketball, none of them make any serious effort to analyze what actually goes on in a game when reaching their conclusions. An online stat I actually have respect for is DVOA from football outsiders, which attempts to look at football games play by play to make it’s conclusions. Even then, when analyzing the game with much more effort and level of detail than Berri, they do not have half the confidence or arrogance of Berri, and they never go around acting like they’re doing scientific research…

Furthermore, a little misconception that I see THCJ constantly parroting on this board is that the average of a set of data actually tells you anything meaningful about said data. An average is only a meaningful description of a set of data if the data is completely normally distributed. What this means is that the performance of the average player only means anything if for every Lebron (or all-NBA caliber player) getting serious minutes in the league, there is a Brian Scalabrini (or other crappy player) matching those minutes at the same time. If a few star players are having a disproportionate impact on the outcome of games (which Morey seems to think is the case) then I seriously doubt you could derive ANYTHING meaningful from comparing the stats of those elite players to that of the average player. Basically, you have to segregate your analysis by roles, the TS% of a ball dominating forward cannot be directly compared to the efficiency of a garbage bucket big man or a three point specialist. Otherwise you end up reaching the conclusion that Tyson Chandler would be a superstar even if he played defense like Amar’e…. Or that Kenneth Faried is the second best per minute player in the league despite playing worse defense than Amar’e….