ya i have access to a few things. there is so much in the public domain now that it hardly matters tho. if you don’t have any ins via team/media the $$ services are totally not worth it (i mean just to nerd out, it’s different obv if you’re srsly betting), and all their plans are incredibly low value to price (ie synergy’s base retail subscription is something like $50 a month but excludes by far its most important value-add: the linked video clips). that excludes cleaning the class which isn’t really that useful but it’s at least priced for retail. as you imply, it’s more about having the beautiful bill james geekenergy than access to anything.

Nerlens Noel will make season debut tonight in Indy.

that’s some really good news…

Clyde might get his wish soon.

They are saying he has some kind of non Covid related illness (as opposed to an injury) but he was supposedly seen at Nets practice in street clothes. So whatever is going on is apparently not contagious.

Mike Kurylo:
My worry is that if the offense grows a bit, and the defense slips a bit, then we’re likely to be around where we ended up last year.

That was or at least should have been the consensus view.

I think the “rose colored glasses” conclusion was that both Payton and Bullock were overrated defensively. That could be the case, but imo Kemba and Fournier were still a net downgrade. So we were dependent on RJ really stepping up defensively. I also happen to think Nerlens isn’t fully appreciated here because people like Mitch, but Nerlens was terrific last year except when he was less 100% in the playoffs. He was an impact defender on some nights. He won games.

All that said. I think the biggest issue is that people are underestimating just how much better the east is this year compared to last year. IMO, there was a huge leap. Even most of the bad teams aren’t as bad as they used to be. That’s going to show up somewhere in the data.

kevin5318:
@NYPost_Berman
Nerlens Noel will make season debut tonight in Indy.

It’s probably going to take awhile for him to be effective consistently, but sometimes the adrenalin gets you through the first night. We could use his energy.

I wish I had the energy I did 15 years ago to dive into all the new data available. It’s pretty exciting. The comp to baseball numbers is becoming real it seems, though I am sure it’s still a ways off.