Why Richard Jefferson was guarding LaMarcus Aldridge

Posted on Wed 22 February 2012 in Uncategorized by Alex Dewey

Here's a speculative answer, Matt:

I've been reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, and here's one of my takeaways so far: Modern psychology - as Popovich likely knows from the advanced psychological methods of the U.S. military - has identified dozens of heuristics that cloud and guide the judgment of experts and novices alike. These heuristics all exploit the tension between the intuitive and rational minds and thereby allow - to use the simplest examples - irrational methods of advertisement and rhetoric to pierce into the rational mind, even to the point of predictability. What's more, the heuristics may be based on absolutely nothing: When you are asked to make an estimate of a quantity and an experimenter puts a totally random number on the sheet of paper before your estimate, your estimate is going to be heavily weighted by this, again, totally random number. This is just one example of how the mind is led astray by diversions to the fickle intuition, both in the random ether-streams of words and numbers of the Internet and deliberate attempts to sow the mind with messages by advertisers and public figures. Complicating matters even further is that (according to Kahneman) this tension between the intuitive and rational is also central to the great power of the mind.

I speculate then that Popovich deliberately tries to navigate this reality of the mind, and so gravitates toward incredibly intelligent, driven, attentive role players like Matt Bonner, TJ Ford, and Kawhi Leonard and gives them simple expectations and tasks that they can focus on with every fiber of their being while on the floor. It's no coincidence that the Spurs' execution seems so crisp: Popovich makes a constant effort to ameliorate the diversions to the intuition and to highlight the strengths of the prepared player's intuition. Popovich has incorporated the power and the frailty of human intuition into his every decision as a leader and demanded in turn that his players do the same.

This is why (for example) Popovich will stress repetition and practice and patience: there are all sorts of perfectly valid short-term reasons why his players may fail to execute or fail to learn or fail to be attentive in a small sample. Popovich doesn't - can't - control these myriad short-term factors, and in fact it's his counterpart's job on the other team to create as many of these short-term problems as possible for the Spurs. So he ignores them to some extent, chooses his battles, makes his rotations when he sees something disturbing, and then goes back to the film room.

Crucially, Popovich recognizes that he himself is subject to the same forces, and that he's not just playing a game of rationality: while his performance as a coach must not be guided unaided by his own brilliant intuition, he is subject to the same flaws as a decision-maker. He recognizes that the lifers in the coaching profession (such as Larry Brown and Hubie Brown) - for all their intelligence and experience - have a fatal flaw: They will often stress most about the things they can't control, whether or not those things are actually the most germane to focus on in scouting and winning games. And this stress will guide their intuition and advice and decision-making, creating an irrational bias: Coaches would rather lose on the randomness of 3-point shots than of a long train of creative mistakes such as turnovers and other "easy stuff" such as missing foul shots and layups, even if the probability of winning is higher for a given team with the latter mistakes. This isn't because the coaches are wrong or misguided: It's just that they're coaches by calling and approach their duty with a solemn conviction that if their players listen and execute the coach's best-laid plans, their teams will either win or only botch games for want of talent or luck.

Popovich (I imagine) has no such faith, and while he regards various coaches as being elite (take his effusive praise for Rick Carlisle, for example), he will also acknowledge at every stage of the game that it's a players' league, and will credit Tim Duncan et al. with the vast majority of his own success, and when Popovich actually brings up his own role, it's usually to apologize to his team for failing to give them a good or clear enough gameplan in some sense. What's more, he effusively acknowledges the power of random chance in determining outcomes: While he'll give credit to a team that wins on good shooting, he won't put much stock in the victory (or loss) if the shooting was pretty demonstrably a fluke.

And so with this fundamental skepticism and self-effacing attitude, we have finally that Popovich has no mystical beliefs about his role or the power of his intuition as a coach, which is minimal: to tinker with lineups, to bring the very best players to the front of the rotation, and to find an offense and a system of roles that allows his players to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses while allowing Popovich himself maximal flexibility to handle various game situations. That's the whole endgame: He uses games as practices for his players so that he can see what situations various players are most comfortable in, what tandems are most germane to winning, and how to approach his potential opponents in the playoffs.

And just as surely, Popovich uses these games as practices for himself, for his own intuition as a coach, because he realizes that his view of the game is as susceptible to the transient short-term stimuli of the moment as his most cherished theories of work and and basketball and effort. As much as any doubt he could ever cast towards his players, Popovich therefore has no problem casting the same amount on himself. After all, he is just a person that - like his players - is trying to maintain focus as a lot of people and things deliberately conspire to obscure this focus on the simple truths of a simple game.

• • •

With this speculation established, we come to Matt Moore's question. As part of Popovich's belief in the long haul and the approach of gradually developing the intuition, we might also suppose that the coach (before every season) gets his staff together and considers a whole lot of possible game and pre-game situations - for example, down by 12 against an inferior team with 15 minutes left or facing a mid-level non-divisional West team on a back-to-back on the road. Then Popovich and his coaching staff - along presumably with an in-house statistician - build a reasonable model for how they should respond to a large proportion of game situations. Then, an hour before tip-off and the media session, Popovich defines the sample space of the game before him and then draws from the I Ching 10-15 times, with more draws for back-to-backs and injuries and near the end of the season. Then - guided by this psychological anchor - the coach uses his intuition and what he knows about the situation to make slight tweaks to the result of the drawing and calls this a game-plan, which he then explains to the media as condescendingly as possible as if it were the product of incredibly simple and obvious planning.

There are 64 separate hexagrams in the I Ching. For Popovich, that great historian - who even encourages his team to discuss the State of the Union in team meetings - the I Ching is an obvious, well-trodden device for introducing randomness, with none of the dull silvery novelty of the Twitterverse. By weighting the hexagrams by the various distributions established before the season (and re-weighting at a mid-season team meeting), Popovich manages to maintain in a powerful tension the placidity and focus of a rational mind and the relentless unpredictability of an unhinged, creative intuition.

• • •

Or maybe it's that Tim Duncan's 35 and Tony's been logging a lot of minutes recently and Pop wanted to give them a lighter load especially on a back-to-back against a Portland team that's historically especially dangerous at home so that when the Spurs come back from All-Star Weekend the Big Three and Tiago are mostly healthy and ready to dominate or slog through the stretch run.

Whatever, something like that. He probably knew what he was doing.


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Jeremy Lin and Comfortable Silence

Posted on Sun 19 February 2012 in Uncategorized by Alex Dewey

At the Mavs game, they took some time to interview Jeremy Lin's high school coach. They tell him that Lin had described himself as arrogant and selfish before an ankle injury in high school changed his whole outlook. This self-effacement is too much for his astonished coach, who replies that - as you might expect - Lin was never arrogant in high school. Lin's being too hard on himself, his coach says. And you just shrug your shoulders and smile at another wonderful paragraph in an already wonderful story. Tim Duncan is my favorite athlete, and these are the stories that come out about Tim. And about Dirk. And about Nash. These are the good old stories we've already heard, presented in the expansive wonder of the new world that Lin has created.

Now, we know that interesting mini-story with Lin and his coach only because the crew at ESPN has interviewed the coach in the midst of a game and told him what Lin had said in another interview. The media is inextricable party to this story: They've aggressively found something by pitting two accounts against one another. This is the trend: People at ESPN and bloggers and beat writers have done the research and made the calls and done the interviews, and in doing so have created the contours for a phenomenon as surely as Lin's play itself has. The personal and cultural angles that bloggers have found in the past few weeks have been nothing short of tremendous, testifying successfully to the childlike wonder of sports.

What's more, it's an incredibly direct phenomenon, without gatekeepers to stop or redirect it. The quality of the best stories are now relentlessly pushed up to the front pages through endless links and discussions. It's all about the eternal search for good content. It's all about quality, readability, and clarity now, and the power of one's subject matter. It's all about honesty now, and the time spent with drafts. And in Jeremy Lin we've found the perfect story: Lin as subject matter has revitalized this narrative-filled-but-often-tedious midseason stretch in sports media. An incredible, singular feat. And it's why we've all fixated on how many angles there were: Because we knew intuitively that sports media would thrive in proportion to the incredible number of perspectives to write from.

But I think we're collectively at a different stage now.

• • •

I used to feel uncomfortable at parties. I used to feel that the brilliant lights of a dozen pairs of eyes were too bright for this pair, and I didn't want to wear shades. I would overthink and magnify tiny concerns. I would think myself right out of a social experience and I could hear the disappointment on the other end of the line when I said I wouldn't be going out. Even at this stage of my life, I feel the same sort of pressures at first: I literally close my eyes when I enter the room. This difference is that now - after a ten-minute perplexed silence - I open my eyes, I explore the angles and the people, and I find common ground and shared past with people I've known. By the end of a party I am enthusiastic. I am one of the contributory lights. I am a spotlight on the others, bright even to a fault, and they shine on me in turn. These days I drink a little bit more and I talk a little bit louder than I used to, but it's alright because I wake the next morning, revitalized by a full experience, and I don't need to go to a party again for awhile, because I am satiated, and there is no better feeling. It's a feeling I'm expressing now, hours later, but it was wonderful precisely because I didn't need to say anything, could acknowledge my happiness in comfortable silence, could simply feel that love of life with eyes closed and another day ahead of me.

Lin is going to run the point in the second half against Dallas, which will be starting in a moment. I'm getting chills, and I'm excited to see where this goes. I do believe we're reached that point with him, where we've drunk of the story and found words and a shared past, and we've probably talked a little too much. But it's alright, because of this perfect, comfortable feeling that has followed. That feeling is fullness, is satisfaction. But now I feel that we risk becoming oversaturated to the point of sickness. So let's keep a relative silence and see where the crafty point guard with so many angles takes us next. Oh, new stories will arise, new angles about Lin will come up, not all of them with such a fairytale quality. And we need to talk about them. That's what we do. But as the phenomenon becomes an established part of our culture and what is brilliant now becomes standard high-quality fare later, let's simply take these new angles as they come. Let's allow the story to develop with measured, contented patience, rather than in an active search for another plane of bliss. Let's stay where we are, because this is as good as it gets. Let's try to hold on to this feeling, to what we have.

Because we're no longer living in a world of novelty, of struggling to open our eyes to face the truth in its perplexing surprise. No, we've opened our eyes, and we're waking to the good old days of the future, and the next time a phenomenon happens, these are the days, this is the feeling we'll compare it to.


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Jeremy Lin: the Anatomy of a Phenomenon

Posted on Fri 10 February 2012 in Uncategorized by Aaron McGuire

I wasn't really planning on watching Jeremy Lin's whole game tonight, if I'm honest. I've missed much of his play this week with a tough slate at work and a lot of extracurricular preparation for Valentine's Day next week. My intention was to watch the first quarter, wait for the inevitable letdown, and switch to Cavs-Bucks or Clips-Sixers or another game I expected would be competitive and interesting. But the game began and Lin's insane start essentially broke my ability to cognitively process what was before me. Jared knows. Watching Lin play wasn't simply like watching a player in the midst of a strong and inspired hot streak. It wasn't like watching Earl Boykins light up the defending champions for a new career high. It was different. Strange. Foreign. And I realized I was watching something that -- even if it was the only great game of Lin's NBA career -- was going to be deserving of analysis and introspection. So let's dig into the curious game and talents of one Jeremy Lin.

• • •

Lin's game isn't particularly inexplicable. This is what troubles many about him. He's got decent size for an NBA point, suitable passing skills, and a talent for driving lanes. He's a good slasher who sticks the finish more often than he shanks it, and seems to have a decent control over the glass with his shot. Which is good, because if you're a slashing point who can't bank, you're bound to get shut down as soon as teams start playing you tightly -- his banking skill will become more and more relevant as defensive bigs sag to him and try to lessen his space. His percentages will drop off as he regresses to his mean talent level, but I could see him remaining a 10-15 point scorer with the skillset he's displayed to date. But one thing that's bugged me in the prevailing Lin hype is the assessment that he's got a cerebral and incredible passing talent just because he came from Harvard and is a "student" of the game. That's too simplistic, too easy, and far too lazy. There's more to it than that. Just because he went to Harvard doesn't mean he always makes the smartest play, or has the best passing talent. He certainly doesn't.

Lin tries for the highlight pass more often than not when the lunch-bucket pass would do just fine, and while he's decent at seeing opportunities, he distinctly lacks the passing talent of a young Kyrie Irving or Ricky Rubio type point guard. Don't get me wrong, his passes are almost always the correct pass, in terms of correctly assessing the options on the floor and running an offense. And in the D'Antoni system that's going to lead to a lot of decent offense. But Lin's not a master of the on-target pass. As a teaching example, take some time to watch Kyrie and Rubio pass around the offense. Keep track of where the ball lands off their passes. More often than it doesn't, it lands precisely where they want it to land -- Kyrie's assist totals aren't fantastic yet, but if you watch how he aims his passes and how targeted they are in their release, you see the ball reaching his target's palm in motion, shadowing his target with an exceptional fluidity. You watch how he can get the pass to where the player barely needs to move to gather it. That's what Kyrie does, when his passing is on -- and while it hasn't led to gaudy assist totals, he's far beyond the passing talent his numbers would indicate. Rubio is on another level. I don't really think we need to discuss that. Lin's passing isn't really like that.

It's effective so far, but it's not entirely Lin's doing in the same way Rubio and Kyrie take full responsibility for their incredible passes. In the D'Antoni system players drill heavily on how to trick defenses into getting them open. Players in a D'Antoni offense tend to be more open than players on any other type of offense with the possible exception of the current twilight Spurs for that very reason -- it's by design. His passes aren't on target, necessarily, nor are they as fluidly attuned to the motion of his shooter. But they're the right passes in the macro sense of his spur-of-the-moment choice, and in a good offense, that's all that really matters. Which is the real key, and the reason this is so odd to watch. The reason his passing is effective in the Knicks offense is rooted in something utterly unrelated to his schooling, and a talent that can't really be taught -- it's the split-second decisionmaking. Utterly disparate from intelligence, his degree, his background, et cetera. It's rooted in his ability to make snap decisions. You don't really develop that from intellectual rigor, you develop that from hard work and twitch-trigger practice until you naturally attune yourself to making the right play.

• • •

In short, his intelligence has little to do with it. It's instinct. Perseverance. That sort of thing. The players that tweet about it and talk about it seem to understand -- Kobe isn't a man who tends to stray far from the narrative, but he too understands the basic fact that Lin's talent has little to do with his schooling and everything to do with the work he put in to get his game up to par. The "Harvard" narrative is a lazy one from a lazy media conglomerate that adores lazy thinking. But Lin's play is certainly interesting, respectable, and as a rotation player in the NBA it looks quite sustainable. The thing that really confuses me, and gets me scratching my head is the heights to which he's soared in a single week.

After the game, I checked my Facebook -- twenty of my 469 friends had already posted something about Lin, and at least three of those twenty were people who I'd never seen watch a game of basketball in their life (and no, none of those three were asian). There's something about Lin that's galvanizing to those who watch him, some special aspect that pervades his play and allows him to rise from his status as a human being into a concept. A physical manifestation of hope. The Obama of hoopin'. After all. It wasn't just the Facebook bomb I saw when I checked my feed. It was the litany of athletes (Tiago Splitter, Steve Nash, Manu Ginobili, Danny Green, Kobe Bryant, David Robinson, and many others) who are talking about him. With David Robinson -- a man who still goes to tons of Spurs games and stays involved in the organization -- openly stating that Lin has supplanted any Spur as his favorite NBA player. What the hell are we watching? I don't really know. It's Lin's world, we're living in it, and I know for certain I'll be watching this a lot closer going forward.

I'm so glad this season exists.


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Respecting the League: Love's Botched Suspension

Posted on Mon 06 February 2012 in Uncategorized by Adam Koscielak

In a two part series, Adam and Aaron are going to examine two aspects of Kevin Love's 2-game suspension following the inglorious footwork he employed against Houston Rockets forward Luis Scola last Saturday. For today's half, we'll examine the hypocrisy of the NBA's incessant emphasis on "respect for the game" when a player mouths off to the refs that becomes curiously absent when the livelihood of a player comes to call.

When the NBA assesses technical fouls, how often does it cite "respect of the game?" Remember all of Dwight Howard's technicals last year? When asked to explain the one game suspension Dwight received for angrily chucking the ball at the refs, all we could hear echoing from the office of the Commissioner was “respect." Me, personally, I never really understood what agreeing with every call the refs make has to do with respecting the game. The refs are the authority, but even the best authority makes mistakes. The NBA's response to players trying to express their unhappiness in an emotionally charged moment is basically akin to the “Say what again!” scene in Pulp Fiction.

Nobody can forget the epic Sheed techs for virtually nothing, everyone's seen the infamous Duncan technicals, and we’ve all seen an aggravated Dwight have to leave the game early because he’s had it with the zebras. And I don’t think a single person among us knew what this all had to do with respect. And now the NBA has lost another part of it’s credibility, demonstrating how respect for another player has nothing to do with their particular definition of "respect." Personally? I'm a bit disgusted.

• • •

Kevin Love has been suspended for 2 games for what I would describe as one of two things. Either an outrageously bush league stomp on Luis Scola’s face, or — if Love’s “accidental” version is the case — a careless, dangerous play that should be seeded out of this league for the same reason calling foul on a ref warrants a technical, in Stern's eyes. Respecting the league. Respecting the other player’s career, respecting his health, and respecting his life. Love did not just push his leg off of Scola gently, he kicked back with a lot of strength, causing Scola’s head to fall back, hit the court, and bounce. He also made big time contact with his chest, as though the face stomp wasn't enough. Scola may not have been hurt, and as he played 36 minutes that night (many after the offending incident), he probably wasn't. But this could’ve been a concussion, a broken nose, a broken jaw, if Scola’s not lucky even a broken rib. All because of one careless play.

I’d like to believe Kevin Love didn’t do it on purpose, I really would. He’s a nice guy who doesn’t bear much resemblance to the bush league virtuoso I initially wanted to compare him to -- Andrew Bynum -- in terms of how he plays in a general sense, or how reckless he is on the court. And yet, that play seemed everything but unintentional. Love must’ve known Scola was under him. I mean, you feel things like that, it’s not hard to notice that there’s a 6’9” guy lying on the floor under you. And then, when you first make contact with his body, in this case his head, why would you follow through with your step after looking down? Why would you strengthen it? Why not just take the fall forward, a la ninja Blake Griffin and James Posey. I just don’t see any excuse for Love to do what he has done, and yet his suspension is 2 games. Robin Lopez got 1 game for brushing with an official earlier this season, and given he was also ejected from the game where the incident occured, I’d say that he served just as much time as Love will. Now, why the hell would a little brush be worth as much as a stomp?

Perhaps what I’m getting at here is that the NBA needs a reformed thinking about penalizing players. A little brush, a few spur-of-the-moment shouts don’t hurt anyone. Stomping on someones face does. I don’t care if it was intentional, and to an extent neither should be the NBA. A reckless move is sometimes as bad as an intentional move, and if you enable players to get away with bad plays just because they look unintentional, this league is going in the wrong direction.

Perhaps, the NBA should take inspiration from a league ran by David Stern’s former protege, Gary Bettman. The NHL has realized that reckless plays are as bad as intentional plays, and launched a new platform to explain to the players and fans the cause for suspension through a video narrated by NHL Vice-President (and former player) Brendan Shanahan, or his deputy (and former player) Rob Blake. Personally, I’d like to know how the Love suspension wasn’t worth 3 games. Yes, I know it’s a one game difference, but the NBA should draw a line, a bare minimum on someone’s carelessness, to be upgraded in case of evident malice.

Times like these are the times when this league shows it’s inexplicably bad judgement, protecting its officials from the most minor and meaningless wrongdoings by the players, all the while not protecting the players from their peers. I can't think of the last time a hockey player was suspended for insulting an official, and believe me, they yap a lot. And they’re not nice about it either. What I did see, however, were players suspended for reckless play early in the season. The suspensions were harsh, unforgiving and well explained. And guess what? There hasn’t been a suspension in 2 weeks now in the NHL. Perhaps it’s time for basketball to realize what their real treasure is. Not the refs, not the people who don’t want to hear “shit” uttered on their TV screen, but players. It's players who make this game great. And it's players who aren’t protected adequately from the recklessness of their peers.


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If Tim Duncan were a Hawk...

Posted on Wed 01 February 2012 in Uncategorized by Alex Dewey

Eric Freeman of Ball Don't Lie talks about Tim Duncan's awesome, comic-book-vintage knee brace. Freeman reflects on Duncan's personality, and then on his marketability:

"The easy answer is that he doesn't want it to be out there. And yet Duncan did in fact star in several national ads in his first few years in the league, so clearly he's not totally averse to getting media attention. What's more likely is that Duncan's personality, as nerdy as it is, was decided to be too out there for a basketball star. His media anonymity might not have been self-imposed, but rather decided by the companies who need to project a particular image when they hire athletes as endorsers.

That's fine, obviously: Duncan's doing fine for himself. But it's a reminder that what we know of players' personalities often isn't decided entirely by them. Sometimes it's up to the corporate gatekeepers who decide which players fit their needs."

There are niche actors all over Hollywood that exist specifically to play a single role in commercials. Basically Freeman is telling us that professional advertisers can't find such a role for a nerdy, iconic (apparently willing) basketball player with MVP-type credentials for the better part of a decade with a more-or-less impeccable public record. According to this narrative, Duncan didn't tempt large advertising firms enough to offer him a big ad campaign because his nerdy personality is too out there. And that just doesn't add up to me.

I'm definitely not trying to idealize Duncan or insulate him from the forces of economic motivation just because he is a class act on my favorite team but Freeman's unqualified cynicism seems to follow incredibly specious logic here. If Sprite, Edge, and adidas were willing to sponsor him and give him national exposure when he was a rookie (and when he was writing weird stuff like this), why wouldn't they be willing to continue that exposure as Duncan built the Spurs into a dynastic force as the foundational force? Duncan - for all the talk about the Spurs being boring, dirty floppers - has always been fairly well-regarded, especially in terms of character and consistency. The question I have for Freeman is: Did "corporate gatekeepers" overlook that? Are you seriously telling me that with all the weird, abstract ads from the last decade that an ad firm couldn't find a national spot for Duncan selling something "boring but dependable" like insurance or something "fun and nerdy" like sports video games or something "with a quiet tenacity" like batteries using Duncan's reputation?

Yeah, I'm a big Duncan fan, so maybe I'm just overestimating the imagination of ad men and Duncan's Q rating. But I find Freeman's explanation incredibly tenuous, especially when there's a much more likely explanation: Rookie contracts and the economic uncertainty of injury, and those rationally explain Duncan's increased willingness to seek an ad campaign early in his career far better than a Mad Men-esque box-out of a willing Duncan. See, Tim Duncan was on a rookie contract for his first few years in the league, when he had a much less comfortable and uncertain amount of wealth (according to Basketball-Reference, Duncan earned a relatively paltry $3.4M for leading the Spurs to the title in 1999, and less than $4M the *next year*). If he had gotten a career-ending injury early in his career (before the big paychecks), it's possible the next few years of public commercials could have offered him a tenable, remarkably wealthy start to the next part of life. Being an intelligent guy around wizened veterans like Sean Elliott, Avery Johnson, Steve Kerr and David Robinson, it seems absurd that Duncan wouldn't be aware of the ways in which a basketball player's fortunes can change with a single injury, and so he might have chosen those spots on the sheer level of ameliorating that financial uncertainty a little bit. What's more, even though he stayed healthy, Duncan's short-term contract was absurdly below his market value (thanks to the NBA's cartel and the most recent CBA that had altered rookie contracts into their less lucrative form), and these spots also served to compensate Duncan with an income much closer to his true market clearing price and a decent amount of unqualified positive public exposure. Personally, that seems to me an economic explanation that doesn't rely on unfalsifiable hypotheses about faceless corporate gatekeepers.

Finally, well, by all accounts any of Duncan's apparent "nerdiness" (which Freeman aptly gets at in the article) comes in at least equal measure with a taciturn, understated, stoic personality that sees both rising and falling fortunes as transient and imperfect, which is a picture you'll get (often in those literal terms) from any interview Duncan has done in the last 15 years. With Duncan's personality as it is (or at least as it appears by all accounts), it's pretty plausible to say he's somewhat reluctant to endorse companies for massive national exposure as a sort of "victory lap" for his successes, when he knows an athlete's fortunes are always trending downward with the ultimate (and swift) passage of time. Maybe he's just a quiet guy that wants to hold up the trophy this year and go at it again next year until he can't anymore, as he's specifically said in multiple interviews.

Freeman is giving us an interpretation that Duncan's image is low-profile because his "nerdy" personality was not picked up by unnamed "corporate gatekeepers". But this interpretation is specious, given any interview, profile, or secondary account of Duncan's life and personality, which has him as genuinely avoiding the spotlight and the transient joys and pain of victory of defeat. And Freeman's only evidence to overturn this large body of evidence seems to be two commercials that Tim filmed during Duncan's insanely below-market rookie contract. But once you can account for this below-market contract, then everything else is consistent with someone that genuinely wants a low profile. Duncan was well-compensated after his rookie contract and the ads stopped for the most part, except for the occasional well-written and funny ads (Sprite, edge), in-depth profiles (adidas), and local shilling for his owner that's redeemed by humor (HEB). Father Time is undefeated, and Duncan knows it, so maybe a completely financially taken-care-of individual decides instead to make his few moments in the advertising sun about mentoring, reflecting, and laughing. I don't know but that seems far more likely_._


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The STEVE NASH Power Rankings: Week #5

Posted on Mon 30 January 2012 in Uncategorized by Aaron McGuire

Hey, everybody! This is the fifth edition of the STEVE NASH Power Rankings. The object of these Power Rankings is rather simple -- STEVE NASH is my statistical model for making team projections the season, and STEVE gave us some results about teams' SRS projections before the season. So -- during the season -- we've been updating these SRS predictions to reflect the week's results. Our new results are a rather simple re-weighting of STEVE's projections and the actual results of the season. These new results are then run through a Gibbs sampler to predict playoff probabilities, projected records, and other various stats. I apply the mean-regressed HCA estimates from Evan of The City to these new projections to calculate predicted home wins and road wins remaining in the season and add them to the team's current record. Keep in mind (once again) these are completely and utterly automated -- there's no human input on these rankings, at all. So don't lynch me, Bobcats fans. Without further ado, here are the rankings as of the close of all games played on January 25th.

• • •

Courtesy of (again) Evan, I now know how to embed spreadsheets. This week's spreadsheet:

Today, we're going to go over how the Eastern Conference picture has changed (in the view of NASH) since the start of the season, using sets of three. Next week? We'll cover the West. Today is the East's time to shine, though. If... if "shine" is really a word that can describe this Eastern Conference. (Spoiler alert. It isn't.)

THE REELING ATLANTIC
Dec 24: #1 BOS (40), #2 NYK (38), #3 PHI (36), #4 TOR (29), #5 NJN (23)

The main story in the Atlantic, to this point, is simply how indefensibly uncontested the Atlantic has been. Preseason, virtually everyone was talking about how this was going to be an interesting divisional title race between the Celtics and the Knicks, with the Sixers as a possible intriguing wildcard. Instead? The Sixers have been the only decent team in the division, and unlike the Northwest Division (the only division in the league that currently projects to have every single team over 0.500), the Atlantic may very well end up with only one over 0.500. While the Sixers have stayed relatively consistently around 44-46 wins since their rise peaked around January 10th, the Celtics and Knicks have hemorrhaged terribly since the season's start, and at this point, the Celtics project out as a barely 0.500 team and the Knicks project even worse. A sad projection for a division that looked to be full of interesting teams at season's start.

THE SURGING CENTRAL
Dec 24: #1 CHI (40), #2 MIL (33), #3 IND (32), #4 DET (30), #5 CLE (23)

Chicago is great, Indiana is good, the Cavs are recouping, and the Pistons are straight up atrocious. These are all facts. A lot of us were very high on this Pistons team, even thinking they had an outside chance to break .500 behind a Greg Monroe breakout season. We were half right, let's put it that way. On the other end of things, the Bulls' prospects are very good. Bullish, even. A tight loss to Miami showcased how far along Derrick Rose really is, and if you haven't seen him lately, well, it's a treat, and the Bulls' endless train of stat-stuffing bigs is always an defense aficionado's delight. And of course we have the Cavs, in a season that could alternately be termed a slide and a fantastic over-achievement in the same sentence. Kyrie Irving (instant offense, ROY favorite) has been mindblowingly good and Anderson Varejao has shown himself as simultaneously one of the fastest centers in the league, one of the best defensive bigs in the league, and perhaps the single best offensive rebounder in the league (or he's right behind K-Love). The Cavs might sneak into the playoffs. With the Bogut injury, I think the Cavs are the prohibitive 9th seed at least. Right now NASH has them at 10th.

Here's where STEVE NASH breaks down a little from insufficient data: The Bucks are on a two-game winning tear (including a remarkably scrappy dismantling of the Lakers) but losing Andrew Bogut never helped anyone. One expects their 51.7% chance of making the playoffs to drop dramatically. Losing George Hill never helped anyone either, as the Pacers don't need to be told -- Alex and I are both Spurs fans who have been sort of watching the Pacers for George's greatness alone, and his ankle fracture makes this a really sad day. Still, the Pacers have plenty of depth and the Bucks don't look catastrophically bad even without a true C.

THE CONFUSING SOUTHEAST
Dec 24: #1 MIA (44), #2 ORL (40), #3 ATL (31), #4 CHA (27), #5 WAS (27)

As for Orlando? Well, they got bitten by the newly-christened Lowe curse. You see, on January 23rd, Zach Lowe pronounced the Magic the strongest fringe title contender in the league. At the time, NASH projected the Magic for 41 wins. Since then? They lost to Boston by 31 points on the night of his pronouncement, crushed the Pacers, and proceeded to hemorrhage in the NASH standings ever since on a 1-5 slide. They've gone from 41 predicted wins 9 days ago to just 34 wins today -- the equivalent of going from a projected 50 win team to a projected 43 win team. Their playoff percentage is still high, but as of today, they're projected to end up with the 17th best record in the NBA, a negative SRS, and a snowball's chance in hell of anything good happening. I don't really know what happened. I don't think anyone does. But really, if Zach Lowe finds himself forever banned from the Amway center, I'm not gonna be shocked.

 

• • •

So overall, the East looks kind of pitiful, but there are also some pretty good teams in there. The Atlantic Division is hilariously bad, the Central projects to be about average, and the Southeast is so polarized that Orlando was up 27 in a game, en route to HCA in the first round before taking a six-minute rotation off and suddenly finding themselves in the second circle of Hell, populated only by Bobcats, destined for an 8 seed or the lower tiers of the lottery.

Thanks for reading.


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The Gothic's 1st Quarter All-Stars: Western Edition

Posted on Thu 26 January 2012 in Uncategorized by Aaron McGuire

For the Eastern Conference edition of our 1st quarter all-stars, click here.

A common refrain among those in my twitter feed, for anyone watching, has been that this season makes no sense whatsoever. I have to agree. The season has been unfathomably odd so far. I was going to do a freeform piece on the subject, but quickly realized there was a simpler way to go. Given that All-Star voting has begun, why not give you my first-quarter All-Stars? After all, we're already voting. And the game is in about a month. It's closer than you think, in other words. I'm not really doing statistical rankings here -- these are based on a combination of their stats (mostly documented here so we can look back later), what I've seen from watching them, and where the conference stands. It's a long look, so let's get to it. Keep in mind we'll be going with the infuriating All-Star positional designations; that is, guards, forwards, and centers. Four guards, four forwards, two centers, and two wildcard slots. Go.

• • •

WESTERN GUARDS

  • STARTERS: Kyle Lowry, Kobe Bryant

The west is much more talent-rich than the east. Enough so that two or three of the definitive eastern all-stars to this point of the season -- namely Anderson, Jennings, and Lou Williams -- wouldn't even sniff the game if you traveled westbound. Trying to figure out who deserves to start and who's playing the best at the point out of all the western guards is immensely tricky, and I wouldn't really blame you if you threw up your hands and said "Alright! Fine! Give it to Chris!" I mean, really. Chris Paul is the league's best, by default -- he's one of the five best players in the league, surely he deserves to start, right? Well, yeah. Maybe. By the actual game, it's certainly possible that averages will descend to the mean and the superior talent between Paul and Lowry will even out. I'd argue it's even likely. But in the early going, although it's been close, I'd have to tip my hat to Lowry as the starting point for the West, even if this makes me a bit uncomfortable given the allegations swirling around him right now.

As for their play? Lowry has an edge on Paul in three key respects. First, I have to give Lowry a nod for his health -- Lowry has played in 16 of 18 games for the Rockets, while Paul has played in 10 of 15 for the Clippers. Assuming they're giving their teams roughly equally as much, a few extra games is a big deal. Second, his rebounding -- Lowry is averaging more rebounds per-36 minutes than any other point guard in the league right now, at roughly seven per game. On a team that starts Luis Scola, the extra rebounding is completely and utterly necessary, and Kyle's work on the boards helps make up for the team's current lack of big men. Third? His defense. Synergy lets me down, here, so I'm not really working off solid numbers -- I'm working off a feeling. I get the sense, when I watch Lowry, that his man works quite a bit harder for his points than Paul's man does. It doesn't hurt that I feel as though Paul gets dirty on defense a bit more often than Lowry, who (in my view) tends to run a pretty tight ship in terms of avoiding dirty defensive plays. Still, the Synergy stats do disagree -- CP3 allows 0.75 PPP to Lowry's 0.79 PPP. Both good, neither transcendent, and Lowry's ranked a tad lower. But I still can't shake the feeling he does a better job, and perhaps these are just confirmation biases at play. Now, these are only three things -- Paul is still a superior scorer, a superior passer, and an overall superior player to Lowry. But Lowry has played above his head and Paul has played a bit below his. Sometimes that's enough. For what it's worth, if Lowry doesn't break out of his current slump soon (he's shooting 32.3% in the past 5 games, and his numbers have tanked considerably from early season highs), there's a slim likelihood of him MAKING the all-star game, let alone deserving to start. There are simply too many qualified guards in the west. Really.

As for Kobe, I think we all know what we're getting from him. Relatively inefficient scoring, dependent on drawing a lot of free throws and taking a ton of shots. The thing is? He's been legitimately quite good this year. He ranks 35th in the league at isolation scoring with 0.8 PPP, 26th in P&R Ball Handler scoring (0.88 PPP), 18th in post-up efficiency (0.95 PPP), and 2nd in the entire league off screens with 1.15 PPP. The problem with Kobe is that he takes so many isolations that his overall scoring output -- 0.93 PPP -- ends up being 105th in the league when you account for the terrible distribution of his shots. Realistically, though, he's been about as good as a man can expect him to be at this stage of his career. Better, in fact. He's played the 5th most minutes per game of any player in the league, and at he time of posting, the most minutes to this date of any NBA player. His per-36 numbers of 28-5-5 are roughly at his career averages, and while you don't really want Kobe taking 23 shots a game, you can't deny that 28 points on 23 shots really isn't all that bad in the context of a Mike Brown offense. No, it isn't exactly MVP-caliber scoring -- but it's decent, and in a conference devoid of healthy star shooting guards, getting 38 minutes a night (every night) of production like that is a huge boon for a team.

  • RESERVES: Chris Paul, James Harden
I talked about Paul above, but again, he's not having a strictly poor CP3 season. He's merely having a worse season than Lowry so far, and if I'm honest, I see that changing right quick. What with Lowry's current slump, CP3's natural talent being so far ahead of Lowry, and the fact that he's still figuring out how to work with his pieces in LA. Even at a less-than-Lowry level, though, Paul deserves the game -- he's one of a select 7 players who are currently sporting assist rates above 40%, and he's got the 2nd best TS% (behind Steve Nash) and the lowest TOV% of the lot of them. He's not having a bad season, really -- it's just that Lowry is currently having a ridiculous season, and that deserves to be called out. As for the other backup guard slot? It's tricky to say. There are so, so many deserving all-star caliber guard talents in the west

So, why not James Harden? Here are the facts, for James. He's averaging 17-4-3 in just 30 minutes per game, and on less than 10 shots per game. He's playing reasonably solid defense, to these eyes, and Synergy stats would tend to agree -- he's ranked 87th in the league, allowing his man 0.76 PPP. He doesn't guard the opponent's best player, no -- but he doesn't do a strictly poor job against the players he's given to stop, and he recovers very well on the pick and roll. And offensively? He's essentially lights out from every position on the floor -- he can shoot the three (extremely well), finish in traffic (expertly), pull up, spot-up, and manage the ball in transition. I'd stop short of calling him Manu-lite, because that's not really true -- his passing is about 200x worse than Manu's, and his defense is nowhere at Manu's pesky level. But this season, he's been the spark for the best team in the West, and he deserves at least some sort of nod for his excellent play. And with Westbrook playing poorly enough to not-really-deserve a spot? He's their second all-star, easily.

• • •

WESTERN FORWARDS

  • STARTERS: Kevin Durant, LaMarcus Aldridge

Durant is definitely going to start in the game, and quite frankly, he completely deserves it. Durant is putting up an effortless 25 points on 18 shots a night, seven rebounds, three assists, a steal, a block, and leading his team well. His advanced stats are fantastic, leading his team with a TS% of 60.2% despite a usage rate of 31.7%. His defense this year has been much improved, partly because he's getting a whole season with Perkins, Collison, and Ibaka manning the middle and allowing him more leeway to play his man close. With his size, he's always had the ability to be a positive defensive contributor -- this season he's beginning to make that a reality, and that's a scary thought for the league. He excels in defending in isolation and in recovering on his spot-up shooters -- mostly because of his size and long arms, he simply covers distances quicker than most shooters expect and what they thought was to be a wide-open jumper turns into a brutally covered quick shot. The evolution of Durant into a star who can be counted on to keep his man from going crazy is one of the underrated developments that have pushed the Thunder from the plucky and intrinsically good team they've been for the last few years into the odds-on favorite to win the western conference. I mean, really -- if Durant was playing the same defense he has the last few years, I'm guessing the Thunder lose at least 2 or 3 of the close games they've won to date. It's that important.

And then we get to LaMarcus. You can argue that Love or Millsap deserves this spot. You won't be wrong, strictly -- Kevin Love and Paul Millsap have both played some amazing basketball this season and certainly deserve the all-star spots I assign them in a paragraph or two. But Aldridge has been the rock for a surprisingly good Blazers team. They've lost games they shouldn't have lost, but this Blazer team really does look like it has a fringe shot of coming out of the West, and that's something you couldn't really say about the last few years without Roy. The ascendency of LaMarcus is one of the nicer stories of recent years -- always a disappointing not-quite-good-enough player, last year LaMarcus' offense finally decided to match his defense (which had been elite for a year or two before that) -- this year, he's continuing the hot streak and as we enter play for tonight's games LaMarcus has hit a lot of key career highs. He's maintained a TS% above his career average despite the highest usage rate of his career, and is demolishing his career highs in assist percentage and steal percentage. He's rated as the 14th best isolation defender in the league by Synergy, and although his spot-up numbers are relatively awful (and drag down his overall Synergy stats), he spends a lot of the game helping on defense to try and keep to Nate's system and he's one of the key cogs that makes it work. He's got an unguardable bank shot and has one of the best pick and roll games in the entire league. He's fantastic, a superstar, and deserves an entire boatload of superlatives for what he's doing in Portland right now. So he takes my starting spot. Tenuously.

  • RESERVES: Kevin Love, Paul Millsap

The only reason LaMarcus is in here tenuously is because the West's depth at the forward position is absolutely insane. Any of LMA, Love, or Millsap would be starting for the East's team -- instead, two of them have to be reserves. Sad. But Kevin Love is quietly having an even better season than last year, at least as a complete player. Adelman isn't crazy enough to really match Love on players on the defensive end, but he has Love playing a floating post defense that he's actually not all that bad at. Not to say he's really a defensive asset, mind you -- his help has been as awful as we've come to expect from Love, but his voracious rebounding and his bulk really do wonders to help him effectively defend players who try to post him up. Which isn't to say he's really a shutdown post defender, because he isn't -- fundamentally, his defensive game is as lacking in polish as Dwight's offensive game was 3 years ago (which, by the way, it isn't anymore -- the "Dwight has no post game" meme needs to die a painful death, and should've died a painful death back during the Magic's 2009 playoff run) and while it's effective, it seems like it's primarily the system that did it. Is that bad? Not really. Now that he's no longer quite the sieve he used to be, Love's numbers mean a bit more to me. And they're absolutely insane numbers -- 40% from three on five threes a game, a rebound rate of 19% (fifth in the league, behind Dwight, Varejao, Bynum, and Humphries) translating to 13 boards a game, atop 23 points a night? That's some crazy stuff. Love is a great player, and now that Adelman has found an effective way to hide him on defense, there's nothing really tangible separating the words "all-star" and Kevin Love's name.

As for Millsap, this is another crazy small-season selection, but it's a strong one. Although he plays fewer minutes than Love, Aldridge, or Durant, he's putting up similarly impressive per-36 numbers -- 20-10-2-2 for Millsap to LMA's 22-9-3 and Love's 23-13-1. He's shooting 55% from the floor and finds himself far less involved in the Utah offense than LMA or Love -- he's sitting at a usage rate of 24%, quite a bit less than Love and LMA's 28% apiece. And the way he's scoring has been somewhat impressive. He's been absolute garbage spotting up and isolating, as you'd reasonably expect -- he is not a good shooter. He's been a bullish beast in the post, though, ranking 24th in the league at 0.92 PPP generated from the painted area. And he's been the league's top cutter at this point in the season, generating a completely absurd 1.65 PPP on cutting plays despite the Utah lack of a good passer. And he's been similarly excellent off the boards, having scored 1.42 PPP on offensive rebound attempts with 20 FGM and 3 And-1s on the year. Millsap has been completely beasting it this year, and while 20-10 may not look strictly wondrous, take a look at the Utah roster. Look at the pace they play at (markedly slower than the Blazers or Wolves, I might note). Look at their personnel. And tell me why that's not incredibly impressive. If you're coming up blank, that's sort of the point -- Millsap has been wonderful this season, and if we were choosing the team today, he'd be a must-pick.

• • •

WESTERN CENTERS

  • STARTER: Marc Gasol

Marc Gasol got off to a relatively poor start this year, which is what makes my choosing him as a starter so insane to me. I'd essentially pencilled Bynum into this spot from the first day of the season, and didn't really expect it to change. The reality? Bynum has been good -- very good, even -- but in terms of overall value, Gasol has been the player I'd take nine times out of ten, this year. Gasol has been virtually unguardable in the post this year, not really by talent but sheer bulk -- watching footage of him in the post is like watching a tank run over a hobbit village populated by baby Koalas. It's brutal. And defensively? Good luck getting any space whatsoever when you're trying to post him up, and good luck swarming the rim when you know you have Marc there to erase your shot. He's been Memphis' rock this year, and has been better than anyone had any right to expect coming into this season. He's doing to everyone in the league what he did to Tim Duncan last year. And it isn't pretty, if you aren't a fan of his.

  • RESERVE: Marcin Gortat

I really oscillated on this one a lot. The way I look at it is this -- in a fair world, the Suns would be an Eastern team and it'd be an easy call to put both Gortat and Nash on the team. They're equally as important to the success of their team. Nash makes the offense run, and Gortat makes the defense -- insofar as it exists at all -- function like an actual NBA defense. Gortat is also an excellent roll man, a great teammate, and one of the best cutting bigs in the league. He's a classical big man's center, and he's probably the best offensive weapon besides Amare that Nash has ever had backing him up. Nash is certainly helping Gortat out quite a bit, when they're on the court together. They have an exquisite two-man game that has the same qualities of the Nash-Amare game that enhanced both their talents.

In this case, though, I have to give the nod to Gortat above Nash. Not because he's a better player, per se, but because he simply means a little bit more to the Suns right now than Nash does. Not much, just a tiny bit -- when Gortat is on his game, though, the Suns defense looks positively average. His offensive game helps keep Nash's passing alive, as Nash symbiotically improves his offensive game with his passing. But the Suns offense looks to me to be about the same as their defense (and ratings hear me out -- they're 19th in the league on offense, and 19th in the league on defense) and Gortat gets criminally too few minutes. He's been great for them, absolutely all-star level, and (after a short period of disappointing games) Nash has been too. But on a team that's 6-11, in the west? You can't get two all-stars on that team. You just can't. So I'd pick Gortat, knowing full well that Nash deserves it just as much. It's a tough life out here for a blog, guys.

• • •

WILDCARDS

  • ANDREW BYNUM: Given the incoherent ESPN debate about whether Bynum or Howard are better players, it probably isn't much of a surprise that Bynum's on this list. It probably is a bit of a surprise that I'd wildcard him, though, instead of letting him hash it out as a starter or a reserve. I may be alone in this (and I probably am!), but I really think Gortat and Gasol (Marc, of course) have played significantly better ball than Bynum, on both ends of the floor this year. Bynum is dominant and effective, but he often takes an extremely conciliatary role in the Laker offense -- gets the ball in the post, glances, then passes up an almost-open post shot in favor of another Kobe two. I'd like to see Bynum get a bit more aggressive in calling his own plays, and a bit more defensively active -- lost in the Laker's great defense this year is that Bynum hasn't exactly been playing the soul-crushing defense he played last year and the year before. He's been really, really good -- shutdown for the most part -- but he hasn't been the same kind of "system in a box" (as I like to call them) defender in Brown's system, yet. My guess? He figures out the system around halfway through this season, beasts it for the rest of the season, and leads the Lakers to a nice long playoff run that validates the incoherency of the ESPN commentariat that seems to think he's as good as Dwight. As of yet, though, I feel he's been less valuable to his team than Gortat and Gasol are to theirs. And the Lakers have been a bit disappointing so far, both because of it and because of the elder Gasol's heretofore poor season.

  • TY LAWSON: This last spot was probably the absolute hardest pick out of all of these. I ended up going with Ty Lawson for two reasons. First, I feel like he's Denver's most important player. Best? No, that'd probably be Nene or Gallo, but in terms of the player that defines the team, I think Lawson's never-say-die spirit and flawless command of his teammates' offensive execution has to win out in the end. The creative ways he creates for himself, his ball-handling might, his prowess at killing all comers in transition -- at some point, that has to be worth something, and on a Denver team that is absolutely crushing most people's expectations (and is currently in pole position for a #2 overall seed in, again, a tough Western Conference) that's worth a hell of a lot. Second, and probably most importantly? It gives me a prime opportunity to re-link an incredibly old GG piece that virtually nobody has ever read, detailing how much of a hilarious badass Ty Lawson is through a story from my years at Duke. READ IT.

• • •

SNUBS

Where the hell do I start? How about at center, where Samuel Dalembert and Nene are both out of my chosen all-star game despite playing at a level that's usually all it'd take to get an all-star selection at their position? Or at forward, where Blake Griffin, Gerald Wallace, Danilo Gallinari, James Doakes, and Dirkus Circus all would merit serious consideration (or an automatic pick) in the east and make few bones about making the game in the west, to date? A list of all-star snubs in the west is less a list of snubs and more a list of "yeah, you could probably swap a few of these with my picks and I'd have no way to argue against it" type of list. Really.

I mean, point guard is a great example. At the point you have Russell Westbrook (having a disappointing season, but could turn it on at any time), Mo Williams (a serious 6MotY candidate who -- if not deserving of an all-star spot -- would at least merit consideration), Ricky Rubio (a rookie phenom who is certainly on the fringe and would occupy the same space as Kyrie in the East), Andre Miller (technically eliminated by Ty making the team, I suppose, but he's never had an all-star selection and he damn well still deserves one) and (finally) Tony Parker, who's putting up better numbers than virtually any of the non-starting Eastern picks I offered in my Eastern post a few days ago, and who has recouped from an awful start to posting a career high in assists per game despite below-average minutes per game, and back to a solid 18 points a game besides. Look. Name a random Western star. He was probably snubbed.

Except Derek Fisher, who was not snubbed. Sorry, Derek, you're just not that good anymore.

• • •

Well, that was an excruciating process. Getting posts like this right is virtually impossible. There's always going to be room to criticize. I hope, regardless, you found fewer things to criticize than you could've. I more thoroughly understand how hard it is for KD to be consistently getting things right, and keeping it proper. I endeavor to do the same, but damn, it's hard out here for a man straight keeping it real. I'm white. Sorry. Thanks for reading anyway.


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The STEVE NASH Power Rankings: Week #4

Posted on Wed 25 January 2012 in Uncategorized by Aaron McGuire

Hey, everybody! This is the fourth edition of the STEVE NASH Power Rankings. The object of these Power Rankings is rather simple -- STEVE NASH is my statistical model for making team projections the season, and STEVE gave us some results about teams' SRS projections before the season. So -- during the season -- we've been updating these SRS predictions to reflect the week's results. Our new results are a rather simple re-weighting of STEVE's projections and the actual results of the season. These new results are then run through a Gibbs sampler to predict playoff probabilities, projected records, and other various stats. I apply the mean-regressed HCA estimates from Evan of The City to these new projections to calculate predicted home wins and road wins remaining in the season and add them to the team's current record. Keep in mind (once again) these are completely and utterly automated -- there's no human input on these rankings, at all. So don't lynch me, Wizards fans. Without further ado, here are the rankings as of the close of all games played on January 25th.

• • •

Courtesy of (again) Evan, I now know how to embed spreadsheets. This week's spreadsheet:

Instead of our customary thoughts, here's a chart, and some other related words.

Click the chart for a larger view.

If you look at this and wonder what it means, well, good on you, because that's a good question. Essentially, from here on out, I'll be collecting data daily and running NASH updates on my computer. With this will come updated playoff percentages, estimated win totals, et cetera. The end goal (one that we aren't quite near, yet, but will be at eventually) is to automate the process and give you -- our readers -- an interactive graphic that allows you to see the NASH projected wins at any date of the season (as you can see, I haven't back-filled in the data for the first three weeks of the season -- I may not be able to do so easily, so I might punt on that). This is about as readable as I can make the chart going from excel directly. A few notes on format -- Western conference teams get a diamond as their bullet, Eastern teams get a square. Western teams get a dashed line, Eastern teams get a solid.

So, yeah. End state architecture here (can you tell I've been putting in long hours at work?) would be a chart that lets you track either playoff percentages, projected wins, or projected end-season SRS in a convenient, easy-to-navigate interface -- allows user gaming, sorting, team-by-team views, et cetera. I'm still searching for an online interfaced stats package that gives me the flexibility I need to put this up. Current idea is to use SciViews-R and try my luck at that, but lord knows if I can really get that to do what I want. My hope is that something perfect will reveal itself to me soon, and I'll be able to use that. Worst case scenario, I probably drop a fully updated framework for presenting the NASH model output during the all-star break. Best case, probably in the next two weeks. Get excited! Maybe! If you like this sort of thing! But regardless. There aren't many takeaways from this past week, but I can point to a few interesting tidbits.

The Southwest Division -- excepting the Spurs and Hornets -- is collectively on a ridiculous streak right now. The Mavs went from a 58.8% chance at making the playoffs one week ago to a 73.5% chance now. The Grizzlies went from 56.5% to 77.7%. The Rockets went from 51% to 66% -- and collectively, they've gone from a predicted 106 wins over the season to 112. A pretty huge swing. The West is looking about as wide open as it did last week, and it's become a real possibility that the winner of the Pacific Division won't actually get homecourt in a 4-5 matchup -- currently, the Lakers project out as the 4th seed in the West despite having the 6th best record. (And, yes, the Clippers project to miss the playoffs -- partly an artifact of their soft schedule, partly an artifact of the massive amount of games they have left to play -- as we enter play tonight, the Clippers and Jazz have played markedly fewer games than the average NBA team. This will obviously round itself out as the season comes to a close, but something to think about when considering the decreased rest time and the fact that the Clippers have already had some trouble with injuries.

As for personal thoughts, I can't really fault any of NASH's current predictions, though I think the Spurs may continue their slow descent from their peak back in preseason at #1 in the West. They're currently at #3, but it's not exactly #3 with a bullet (i.e., a solid third) -- only two wins separate them from the 8 seed, and only three wins separate them from being out of the playoffs entirely. The Spurs have played well, so far, and the model is adjusting for their currently putrid road record. Which has taken them down a tad from the last few weeks. Regardless, though, with Manu gone and one of the most hellish stretches of games the Spurs have seen in years coming up, I see them underperforming these projections by a win or two -- enough to be the difference, this season, from a 2-3 seed and a 7-8 seed. It's going to be a crazy playoffs, guys. For real.

• • •

I'd write more, but I need to get to sleep because I had dental surgery today and I have a splitting headache. Join us tomorrow for my western all-stars, and Friday for a freeform post starring... well, not really sure yet, but it's going to be pretty awesome (whatever it is). Sorry for the short post. Hope you're having a great week, y'all.


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The Gothic's 1st Quarter All-Stars: Eastern Edition

Posted on Sun 22 January 2012 in Uncategorized by Aaron McGuire

A common refrain among those in my twitter feed, for anyone watching, has been that this season makes no sense whatsoever. I have to agree. The season has been unfathomably odd so far. I was going to do a freeform piece on the subject, but quickly realized there was a simpler way to go. Given that All-Star voting has begun, why not give you my first-quarter All-Stars? After all, we're already voting. And the game is in about a month. It's closer than you think, in other words. I'm not really doing statistical rankings here -- these are based on a combination of their stats (mostly documented here so we can look back later), what I've seen from watching them, and where the conference stands. It's a long look, so let's get to it. Keep in mind we'll be going with the infuriating All-Star positional designations; that is, guards, forwards, and centers. Four guards, four forwards, two centers, and two wildcard slots. Go.

• • •

EASTERN GUARDS

  • STARTERS: Derrick Rose, Rajon Rondo

The starters are relatively obvious. Rose hasn't been having his best season -- inefficient, 31% from three, injured, etc. -- but he's still played like one of the best players in the East. Not MVP ball, but certainly ASG starter quality ball. The stats back me up on this -- Rose has the 3rd best PER among guards right now, the second most win shares (despite missing five games), and is 8th in the NBA at wins above replacement. He belongs here, and he belongs starting. Rondo, as well, has been a bit disappointing this season but still ranks as an ASG starter compared to his closest competition -- despite turning the ball over way the hell too much, he's been the Celtics' MVP so far this year. He's 17th overall in wins above replacement to Derrick Rose's 8th, has the highest PER on his team by a mile, and he's their most invaluable player right now -- the one thing that gives me any pause about him is how atrocious the Celtics are. They've played like the 7th worst team in the East, and while he's their best player, poor teams don't tend to get starting All-Stars. Then again, the East has been incredibly thin on guards this year, and Rondo qualifies.

  • RESERVES: Brandon Jennings, Dwyane Wade

I have Wade backing up Rose and Rondo for two reasons. First, he's simply played worse than either -- he's sporting a poor look this season. He's putting up an incredibly underwhelming <0.500 TS% (for the first time in his entire career, mind you), and it's not an empty number -- he's ranked 206th in the league in points per possession according to Synergy numbers (scoring at an abysmal 0.85 PPP rate). That offensive horror show is backed up by solid defense (currently 90th in the league via Synergy, though that's below his usual rank), but when you're playing offense as poorly as Wade has been this season while using up as many possessions as he has been, you have some issues. (To their credit: Rose's defense has been above average but not to last season's high, ranked 126th in the league -- Rondo's however has been sterling, 35th overall and as far as I can tell the best among all Eastern guards.) Due to the fact that he's the only shooting guard playing anywhere near ASG-level ball in the East (other than perhaps Lou Williams, who's going to get his own look in the wildcard section), he deserves the nod.

And then... Brandon Jennings. Wait, what? This is one of those "are you kidding me" moments where you'll need to see the stats before you're convinced, especially if you haven't seen 4 or 5 Bucks games. Or maybe even if you've seen them. I get that. So here are the facts. Jennings currently has the 12th highest PER recorded by a guard this season, and has played the 11th most MPG of any guard in the league to get there. For all the mentions of him as a chucker (which I normally would find valid), via Synergy, Jennings is sporting the 77th highest PPP in the league (0.96) and currently ranks out as the 9th best isolation scorer in the NBA (1.00 PPP). He has a higher true shooting percentage than Rondo, Rose, or Wade -- and every guard in the East playing 25+ MPG outside of the fearsome fivesome of Kyrie Irving, J.J. Redick, Jodie Meeks, George Hill, and Mario Chalmers. We'll get to Kyrie later. He has the lowest turnover percentage of every point guard in the Eastern conference, and he's the only player on the Bucks who's doing much of anything on offense right now. The Bucks have been dismal this year, and they look like a long shot for a playoff bid, but Jennings has been one of the 3 best guards in the East this year (better than Wade, in my estimation, quite frankly). Based on his play up to now, he's a deserving All-Star. And now that I've written this paragraph, he'll proceed to have a catastrophic late-season swing to completely erase my perception that he's getting everything together. I can just taste it.

• • •

EASTERN FORWARDS

  • STARTERS: LeBron James, Ryan Anderson

Remember how I said it's been a weird season? Well, it has been. LeBron James has been the presumptive MVP of this first quarter of the season -- he's been good for 30-8-7 a night on a human video game-esque true shooting percentage of 63% (and, again, 33% usage). He's been Miami's rock and he's been absolutely phenomenal this year. He's scoring 1.07 PPP at this point in the season, and that's actually understating how offensively valuable he is. If he wasn't a 75% free throw shooter, teams might very well be better off fouling him every time up the court. That's how potent he's been on offense. On defense, though? I may be the first and only person to say it, but I think he's been pretty disappointing this season. Perhaps I've simply been watching the wrong games, but as I've seen it, LeBron's been cherry picking more this season than he has in the last few seasons. He was a shutdown perimeter defender last year -- this year, he's playing off his man and slow to close out, and overly aggressive in pursuit of the steals and blocks in lieu of pure defensive stoppage.

Synergy backs up this assertion WAY more than I expected when I first typed it, as he's gone from 21st overall in PPP allowed in 2011 to his current spot of 267th overall in PPP allowed in 2012 -- primarily off of, as I was expecting, a dramatically worse performance on sticking to spot up shooters. He's been shiftless on defense, and that's hurting his game. Still, even despite the poor defensive game, LeBron has been on a godly streak on offense enough so that he's still the most deserving All-Star in the East, and the best player besides. As for the other starter? Ryan Anderson has been playing absolutely insane ball this year. Seriously. Among forwards, he's 2nd in the league in Win Shares, 4th in PER, and putting up some crazy pills level averages of 18-7-1 in 31 minutes per game. Does he defend? Not particularly well, no -- though he's doing marginally better than LeBron is in my eyes. And Synergy again backs me up, rating him as the 206th best defender -- pretty poor, but at least he's not in the bottom 25%, right? Like LeBron, his offense is fantastic enough to make up for his awful defense -- he's scoring 1.19 PPP, highlighted with a very high 41.1% from three.

  • RESERVES: Carmelo Anthony, Andre Iguodala

Melo is going to be a starter. Let's get that straight now -- we've pretty much got our ASG starters picked out, as there isn't really a competitive race left with the voting. And Melo has roughly a 500,000 vote lead on the 3rd place forward (Amare Stoudemire). He'll be starting. And he does, honestly, deserve to make the game. If barely. He's shooting atrociously so far this year, at 40% from the field and 32% from three (on a criminal 21 shots per game). His defense is as bad as ever. But on the plus side? He's drawing a ton of free throws (hence his 26 points per game), fifth overall in wins above replacement (at 3.22), and the 8th overall ezPM100 score in the league (at 7.58). He's playing well, even if it's for a terrible, horrible Knicks team so far. He's deserving of the spot, even if his team is pretty heavily letting him and Tyson down right now. And Andre? Well... he deserves it, probably more than Melo.

Andre is rated the 7th most valuable player in the league in wins above replacement, currently sitting at 3.01 wins above replacement for a team that has won 11. His defense is only rated 94th overall by Synergy, but please, don't let that fool you. For the last several years, Andre has gotten the toughest perimeter assignment of any Sixers. Night in, night out. And he shuts them down. Last year was his coming out party -- he was the best shutdown defender in the league. And frankly, in 2011, there wasn't another player I'd rather have out there guarding the other team's best. Look at the numbers. They'll make you weep. This year, he's kept his momentum going -- not once this year has Iggy let his man put up gaudy numbers, and the "worst" defensive performance he's had (to these eyes) was when he allowed Carmelo to drop 27 points on 26 shots in a close loss to the Knicks. That's a stopper. And while he rarely has gotten All-Star dap for his All-World D? He deserves it this year. His offense is just fine, right now -- he's in the top 100 in PPP, a place he hasn't been in a while. He's playing fewer minutes but still putting up the customary Iguodala line -- 15 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals, and the best defense that money can buy. Iguodala is an All-Star, right now. Take it how you will.

• • •

EASTERN CENTERS

  • STARTER: Dwight Howard

He's the best big man in the league.

... Christ, sometimes things are just that simple.

  • RESERVE: Tyson Chandler

It's kind of funny -- so far, 4 of the 10 players we've highlighted are from losing teams. Really. That's a strange number, because generally, very few players make the team from losing squads. This year, though, the East finds itself sort of screwed. There are only 6 winning teams in the entire conference, and two of them (Atlanta and Indiana) are winning in a rather team-centric effort that doesn't really lend itself to any easy ASG picks. On the other hand, you have your Knicks and Celtics and Bucks, where most of the team is playing like trash but one or two guys are absolutely killing it. In that kind of a landscape, who's an All-Star? Do you take the perfunctory Pacer or Hawk over the players who are beasting it on bad, low-tier playoff teams? Good question. It's a definition that becomes ever-more nebulous as time goes on. And you can have many opinions on it -- most people do.

I think it's a mix. And with the Knicks, as bad as they've been, I think they have two players who are putting up AS-caliber numbers. Carmelo is one, and Tyson is the other. He's doing his best on defense, and he's changed the culture on defense in New York to the extent he can. He's been efficient when he touches the ball (1.21 PPP, 4th in the league -- mainly off his 76.2% true shooting percentage) and his defense has been superb. The Knicks have been playing him strangely on the defensive end, with D'Antoni commonly forcing him to close out on spot-up shooters and defend sweet-shooting stretch fours instead of locking down the paint. He's doing relatively well, though his spot-up defense has been predictably bad -- that's not his game, and D'Antoni should probably figure that out at some point. Maybe. Regardless, for a team that's pretty damn bad this year, Chandler has done everything expected of him and then some. And he wasn't really a deserving All-Star last year, despite the Dallas protestations that he was. But this year, he should have his spot.

• • •

WILDCARDS

  1. LOU WILLIAMS: This may seem kind of odd, but Lou Williams is probably my pick for the one-quarter 6MoY. It's him, James Harden, Mo Williams, or Al Harrington -- nobody in the league has been as impactful off the bench on a great team as those four have been to this point of the season. Lou is currently sporting a PER of 22.6, which puts him at 14th on Hollinger's PER leaderboard. He's got one of the lowest turnover percentages in the league this season, and if he keeps it up, he's going to end up with one of the 50 best seasons -- historically -- in preventing turnovers. He's currently turning it over on 7.4% of his possessions -- that's 38th all-time among guards that played 20+ MPG in a season. Amazingly, there are only two players above him on that leaderboard with a higher usage percentage than Lou has this season. Jeff Malone and Michael Jordan. Just insane numbers. He's scoring rather efficiently -- 16 points a game on 12 shots, which doesn't sound wonderful, but he's scored more points than any other Sixer this year. He's done it on 41% from three, along with a small-sounding two rebounds, three assists... but that's in 24 minutes a game! His per-36 numbers are a much more impressive 23-3-5 with a steal, on 17 shots. That's over 50% better than his per-24 numbers, and it suddenly makes his All-Star campaign a lot more reasonable. In a compressed season and a thoroughly disappointing East, there aren't a lot of truly deserving candidates. Out of the fringe guys, Lou stands out. He deserves it. (... You know. 16 games in. He may not -- and probably won't, as this turnover thing is kind of the definition of a fluke -- deserve it by the actual game, but right now, damn right he deserves it!)

  2. ROY HIBBERT: I can't believe I'm honestly tabbing Hibbert as an All-Star caliber player right now. Really. I realize I just watched him completely take apart Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol, but dear God, an All-Star? If this was the West, I mean, damn: He wouldn't be considered. But that's the world we're living in: In the East, a center averaging 14-10 with a PER of 20 on a winning team is probably enough to get you in. Don't get me wrong, Hibbert's numbers aren't strictly poor. He's Synergy's 44th ranked defender, and while I think that may overrate him a bit, he's been far better on that end this year than I've tabbed him for in his career so far. Not a shutdown guy, but a good guy. He's been a bit hard to tab on offense as well -- not particularly good, nor efficient, nor someone you really want to give the ball to. But that's sort of how every Pacer has seemed this year -- nobody's really been automatic, everyone's been equal parts disappointing and promising, and they're managing to eke out the wins anyway. That's basketball for you. Sure, it may not last very long, but I'm liking this Pacer team and it deserves an All-Star.

• • •

SNUBS

Alright. Snub is an incredibly loose definition, because frankly, if you couldn't crack an ASG roster that includes Brandon Jennings, Lou Williams, and Roy Hibbert you really aren't an ASG-caliber player. In the West, there are at least 3 snubs that would've made this Eastern Conference list if they'd been in the East. So I have some real problems shedding crocodile tears for players who -- while among the best at their position in their conference -- couldn't crack this list. Regardless, there are a few who deserve mention as being right below Lou and Roy for those last two wildcard slots.

First up, a few solid players who are putting up good numbers and are the best player on their respectively horrible teams -- Kyrie Irving, Gerald Henderson, and Greg Monroe. Kyrie has been a super elite scorer (yes, he's a rookie, but he's also already flirting with the 50-40-90 club. Nor does it hurt that he's currently sporting the 4th best PER for a rookie guard of all time), Gerald is an elite defender (to these eyes there isn't a single non-Iguodala perimeter defender in the league that does a better job than Gerald -- impossibly feisty, and his offensive game has evolved from a horror show into a pretty blend of old-school basketball that's light on the free throws and heavy on the fundamentals), and Monroe is an elite do-it-all guy (he's currently leading the Pistons in PPG, RPG, and SPG... and he's 2nd in assists and blocks -- he may very well lead the team in all five categories if he ends the year hot, and I honestly can't think of the last time a player had a ghost of a chance of accomplishing that). If their teams were better, any of those three would probably pole-vault one of their counterparts on this list. They aren't, though, and those three aren't really putting up numbers good enough to throw any of the aforementioned folks out. So, sorry, guys.

And then the decent players who are playing above-average ball on above-average teams, but really, aren't having an individual year good enough to truly warrant a selection. Yet. All of these guys are basically on-call for the game assuming that someone on the list drops out. In this category, we have Josh Smith, Chris Bosh, Luol Deng, Carlos Boozer, and Joe Johnson. I'm not going to go over these guys point-by-point, because there's really no point. We all know what kind of players these guys are. Solid folks. Decent players. And not really a chance in hell that they'd sniff an ASG if they weren't having the seasons they're having right now on teams that aren't contending, or overachieving. In particular, Josh Smith is probably the most deserving of these five -- he's putting up excellent numbers and is without question the Hawks' best player with Horford benched. And they keep winning, which is mostly a credit on Smith and Larry Drew. Regardless -- as I said before, I don't really feel there's a serious "snub" on my list. Because the East is bone-bare of talent right now.

(And no, Deron fans. He is simply not an All-Star right now. I'm sorry.)

• • •

Our first quarter Western All-Stars will be posted on Tuesday. Thanks for reading.


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Stretching The Pantheon Out #1: Spurs upon Spurs upon Spurs

Posted on Sat 21 January 2012 in Uncategorized by Alex Dewey

For an explanation of what this is about and a full listing of the Pantheon thus far, go here.

We're updating The Pantheon today with eleven links. Fun times for all. An important note that we'd like to emphasize is that we are really, really open to suggestions (discovery-wise, the list is about 40% Aaron-40% Alex-20% later suggestions at the moment), even to your own pieces. Really, we don't mean to be biased or terribly exclusive: I mean, it *is* meant to be a textual highlight reel, yes, but as we're trying to exhaust the list of the very bets, we're realizing that it's essentially inexhaustible. When we want to include something on the basis of supreme quality, we can usually find room for it. Because of this, The Pantheon is becoming more and more of a library for great pieces than anything else. We're keeping the name, and the attitude of timelessness (because all the pieces are truly timeless, and the additions are no exceptions), but we recognize the subtle Borgesian shift from pantheon to great library. And we're cool with that.

I say this because we are quite aware that the additions are mostly Spurs pieces. We're called "The Gothic Ginobili" and this is what we're familiar with. Now, we're pretty confident that other fan bases are producing content every day as hilarious and brilliant as Popovich giving Vampire Beno Udrih a withering stare that causes Udrih to impale his own heart in shame while "Luke Walton's smile supernovas into escalating sobs". We just haven't seen it. Sorry. Tell us if you do see something great (especially one that speaks to you personally as a fan of one of the teams/players), preferably in the comments of The Pantheon. This is best because it saves us the trouble of adding it directly/filtering them/until an update while still allowing readers to check it out. If you'd prefer more privacy or a longer explanation than a post or a link dump? Then try droping us a line through our staff email. We'll read it, and probably even respond!

I realize there's something inherently normative about making a freaking Pantheon (and naming it that), and every time we update it I feel a certain (kind of obsessive) pressure against the normative, the biases, and the urge to promote based only on preference in subject matter. Why? Well, because sometimes that normative part is the ugly stuff of exclusion in selection of material and a cheap delineation of what is high art and what is not, and it's kind of endemic to the human mind to compartmentalize these sorts of things. But it's not our purpose, and we're aware of the problem. Note it. Thanks. New links after the jump.

• • •

TABLE OF CONTENTS (for pieces in 1/20 update only)

• • •

The Riverwalk Conspiracy by Rand - Maybe I'm revealing my bias for fiction here, but I just love a hilarious, well-characterized thought experiment. This piece (written in the midst of the 2010 playoffs) captures a strange, mystical caricature of Spurs' Coach Gregg Popovich and his methods, mid-flight. Owner Peter Holt acts as the perfect comic foil. [Note: Owes a lot to another PTR piece of fiction, the longer Ginobili vs. Dracula. I didn't include it here because it's mostly too contextual for a general NBA fan to enjoy, but I love this chapter which I think holds up pretty well without context.]

• • •

The Pathology of Manu Ginobili by sungo - This is one of those pieces where the sentences get better and better and the focus becomes clearer and clearer as the piece goes on. By the end it's something to behold, and to hold on to. You could change the tenses and adapt some stuff and it could be a HOF introduction or an epitaph, but it could never be changed to suit anyone else. Why? Well, because there will never be another Manu Ginobili. And I don't know if there's a better description of Manu out there.

• • •

David Robinson was a Fine Role Player by Timothy Varner - This is one of the most accurate explorations of the strange, unselfish culture of the San Antonio Spurs over the last two decades. Tim Varner (of 48 Minutes of Hell) traces the Spurs' culture directly to the contributions of one David Maurice Robinson. With every playoff exit by teams he had carried at an MVP level, Robinson saw all that was missing and tried again and again to be those things the next year. But Robinson found out that he just couldn't be all the that his team needed, not with Jordan there, not with Hakeem lurking in Jordan's shadow with a great supporting cast and an otherworldly 15-month stretch. So, when Tim Duncan came along, Robinson (with some early disdain and wounded pride) easily, unselfishly sacrificed his touches and his accolades in order to help the Spurs to win two championships and to create a great legacy and a long-lasting culture of character. And in doing so, the Admiral created the template for a different kind of legend: a different kind of star. Varner's title is ironic in the best sense and helms a piece that builds to an overarching narrative that anyone who has followed the Spurs to any degree will understand.

• • •

John Wooden and the Culture of Ought and On Johnny “Red” Kerr by Timothy Varner - You know, looking over the Pantheon so far, I notice that the criteria that seem to dominate our selections are depth of insight, passion, journalism, and imagination. But at the end of the day, it's probably Tim Duncan - along with his subtle virtues of integrity, intelligence, and competition for its own sake - that I'm tuned in to watch every night. It's our deep respect and admiration for Tim Duncan that motivated the existence of the Gothic Ginobili more than anything else (if you want to know second place, just look up at the banner/name). The same is true of sportswriting. We look first for writing that dazzles our imaginations, then for writing that expands our minds, then - without exception - we look for writing that stirs our souls and affirms our values. If you understand all of that, then the inclusion of Varner's pieces is obvious.

• • •

The City’s Advanced Stats Primer and EZPM: Yet Another Model for Player Evaluation by EvanZ - Math recognize math. I don't know enough about basketball statistics to really give you an unbiased, objective opinion on which stats and approaches are best. If ezPM is the best single-number statistical APBRmetric on the Internet I have no idea, and if it's hopelessly dated, well, I don't know that, either. I'm not a big stats guy. What I do know (from decades learning math and from reading about some of these statistics over the past few years) is that ezPM is a fine metric, and takes Dave Berri's already decent but flawed (no, really, it is) "Wins Produced" metric to yet another level of insight.

But more than anything pertaining to the ezPM stat itself, I'm mostly linking to this pair of pieces for the mental process behind them, the story told by EvanZ in the "Primer" of finding an abundance of these already-decent metrics like WP, building something a bit better in ezPM, and - in the scientist's dismal, grinding, purposeful way - in the end still not being totally satisfied with the outcome. After all, every scientist worth their salt understands intuitively and concretely that there are always more avenues for improvement, and there are always thoughts that can be re-thought, as history (and math especially!) suggests. It's a story that for the most part Berri frustratingly and oddly omits from his own work, and that we'd love to hear. Because (speaking not as a scientist but as a happy consumer of its products) the honest stories of science not only bring cultural exchange (as in the "Primer") but also tangible improvements in the science itself (as in ezPM).

• • •

Regarding Moses by Matt Moore - On the blogosphere, we talk so much about upsides, breakout stars, and devastating disappointments. Most of all, we talk about the nebulous, dynamic legacies of our stars, young and old. Our era has more upsides than it has downsides, and I'm not really complaining. But it was so refreshing when Matt Moore took an afternoon to do some research and reflect on Moses Malone. Moore comes away with a simple portrait of Malone, who knew he was great, had a lot of fun, and then got on with his life. Set against a modern pace of sports media constantly massaging and shaping legacies with each game, the article is well-done and neat. While the prospect of a book about Mo would be nice, this article is a fitting send-off in its own right - simple, enjoyable, important without being heavy. Strawberry soda pop.

• • •

Tracy McGrady, 'freakish' talent and the peril of ease by Dan Devine - When someone makes a good argument that carries with it the sketches for a much broader frontier of understanding, then they've "stretched the game out," quite literally. In Devine's piece, we get a stern deconstruction of the expectations that coaches, fans, and management place on their stars and the laments that follow when those expectations aren't met. And, as a result, we learn to undervalue what we have and overvalue what we could have but never might. On some level much of sports fandom is predicated on the hope that our teams and our players will do unreasonable things: Performance - even to the crustiest statistician or historian - is not the whole story. The missed shots, the skills that inexplicably don't take to a player, the rotations that could have been made: these expectations all matter, of course. But it's worth taking a step back, and that's exactly what Devine's thoughtful piece does.

• • •

Two last additions: to our description of Traveling West Finds Cleveland by David Campbell, we're adding the following two articles which give additional background and broader context about Delonte to Campbell's piece. They're The Real Mr. West by Tzvi Twersky and A Teachable Moment by Angelo Benedetti, and they're both fantastic and worth reading in their own right.


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