https://www.si.com/vault/1989/11/06/8076025/millions-from-heaven-the-atlanta-hawks-jon-koncak-was-a-center-of-little-renown—-averaging-62-points-and-61-rebounds-career—-until-he-signed-a-six-year-contract-worth-13-million-now-other-lesser-nba-players-sh

he would have to be really exceptional to be considered good…. he might be… but his other skills are not that good to make up for it…. he’s not a particular good scorer and he’s atrocious when putting the ball on the floor and he doesn’t pass…. that makes him fairly one dimensional…. and one-dimensional prospects are usually not good….

But despite trying harder than any team in history, even Houston can’t accomplish that.

I mean Houston actually has done that in multiple games, but whatever suits your narrative, I guess.

Houston has never had a game where they shot nothing but corner 3s, lobs, and FTs.

They do an absolutely amazing job of avoiding tough shots (especially long 2s) because they have a genius offensive coach, a GM that understands the game and supports him, and they bring in talent that excels at the things that make sense mathematically. But the defense still wins possessions against them. So sometimes Paul is forced to fake a 3 and shoot a long 2, Harden throws up some trash, etc.. But they are smart enough on those possessions to know they are way better off with one of those guys doing it than allowing Capela to shoot an off the dribble shot from 20 feet. Having Harden do it when they are forced is a value choice even if he’s only 40%-45% to make it because Capela may be 30%. Again, that is not to say that Capela is not adding a ton of value with dunks and lobs. He is. Paul and Harden can’t do that. But Capela is not Shaq. He can’t do it at that super high level of usage (at least yet). If he was forced to up his usage to that higher level by taking some of the broken possession shots, his efficiency would decline.

And if Bamba is there at 7 you have to take him, forget oq

Appealing to authority against Cole Aldrich when he is currently on a three-year/$22 million contract is…well…you know, not a very good appeal to authority.

This reminds me of a debate I once had with a friend that had a theory about horses that suggested that jockeys should always rate their horses to perfectly even fractions to maximize their final time and optimize their chances of winning.

My response was, if that was true, why do most trainers train their dirt horses to run faster than that early and turf horses to run slower than that early and why do jockeys change their level of aggressiveness to match that?

His answer was, “Because they are all stupid”.

To which I said, “Dozens of brilliant hall of fame trainers have been training horses for decades trying every imaginable technique possible to maximize thoroughbred performance. Jockeys do the same thing. They all came to similar conclusions. The results of races verify that speed is more important on dirt than turf. Yet somehow they are all idiots because you have a theory and some math that says they are wrong”.

I had to shake my head.

If your favorite model is saying Cole Aldrich is a very good basketball player, it’s not that every coach, GM, and other player is wrong for barely using him. The problem is with the model.

I would never argue that coaches, GMs, and players are perfect at evaluating talent. Some are better than others and some are not very good. But Aldrich has been on 6 teams and had many chances to demonstrate his ability. Everyone concluded he’s a liability on offense, slow on defense, his rebounding does not make up for it, and he’s only acceptably productive in limited minutes against mostly backups. Experienced people are often wrong, but when many people are actually testing and seeing the results in action, they are not THAT wrong. The problem is the model.

KOQ on the other hand is a pretty good basketball player. The question is whether he could be as productive PER MINUTE starting and playing 35 minutes as he is playing with high energy is short bursts.