Since I had a "Twitter discussion" about this last week (which consists of me stating facts and someone just replying "false") I thought I would do a little confirmation of my position that Hillary Clinton just got killed in rural areas in 2016.
This fact is confirmed by the counties listed here: https://ballotpedia.org/Pivot_Counties:_The_counties_that_voted_Obama-Obama-Trump_from_2008-2016 who went Obama-Obama-Trump. 206 counties, almost all of which are rural counties. Just amazing, for example, that Hillary could not only lose voters in the counties where Obama won by 5-10-20%, but Hillary managed to outright LOSE a majority vote in these counties to Trump.
Now, think about this for a second - counties in Iowa, Minnesota, upstate NY -- happy to vote twice for the black guy. Could not stand Hillary Clinton. Rural Iowa voters gave their votes to Barack Obama, crazy black Kenyan communist. But not Hillary Clinton.
If you review the big city votes in the key Obama states that Hillary lost, the states and city counties are as follows (I will name the city, not its county but I am using county totals):
Pennsylvanis (Philly and Pittsburgh) -- Hillary outperformed Obama
Iowa (Des Moines) -- Hillary underperformed by 6,000 differential (almost statistically insignificant)
Michigan (Detroit) -- Obama did much better (91K differential better)
Florida (Miami and Palm Beach County) - Hillary did better (82K better differential)
Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee) -- basically a push.
It is worth mentioning that in 2016 the cities saw a shitload of 3rd party votes (Pittsburgh 30K, Des Moines 18K, Detroit 12K, Florida cities 48K, Milwaukee 26K). It is hard to say whether these were potential Republican voters who hated Trump or whether they were Dem voters who hated Hillary. In any event, while she blew it in Detroit, she did better in Florida, so the cities didn't cost her the election as a whole.
What is really remarkable is the northern states bloodbath that Hillary suffered in county after county. See, for example, this map: https://www.cnbc.com/heres-a-map-of-the-us-counties-that-flipped-to-trump-from-democrats/ Again, this is someone polling 5-10-20% worse than Barack Obama (supposedly the divisive candidate).
Look at Mower County, Minnesota -- it went from 60-37% Obama to 50-42% Trump. And it could have been worse, as the county registered an 8% third-party vote.
Wisconsin Counties like Barron, Buffalo and Fond du Lac showed enormous vote differential swings to Trump and away from Obama's party (those 3 counties alone going +14,000 differential for Trump).
And even these results understate what a terrible candidate Hillary Clinton was in rural areas. Many rural areas had 4-6-8% third party voting, where Obama's elections had seen far lower thrd-party figures. The lesson there being that people either felt so disenchanted with both candidates that they punted, or they hated Hillary, or they hated Trump and Hillary should have actually lost by much MORE against a decent candidate. Any of those scenarios is a nightmare for Hillary.
And by stating the counties which switched heavy to Trump, we ignore the counties which were already Republican strongholds and went even harder to Trump. It is estimated Hillary lost rural America 3-1. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-rural-voters-trump-231266 I will concentrate on a rural part of the country with which I am most familiar - western NY.
Wyoming County is blood red Republican. It generally goes 63-36 Republican. Trump went 72-22%, gaining 3,500 votes in this tiny county.
Livingston County went from 54-44% county to a 58-36% county. Plus 4,000 votes.
Steuben County -- 57-41% to 64-30%, plus 5,000 votes.
In upstate NY, this won't matter since NYC is so huge and can carry the state for a Democrat barring some horrific collapse. But the point here is this. Obama was at least maintaining a traditional Democratic level of loss in these counties. Hillary was venturing into McGovern 1972 territory. She was just super distatsteful to rural voters. And, again, it could have been FAR worse if the traditional GOP voter had all voted for Trump. These rural counties were seeing 5% 3rd party voting. Had that simply been split 60-40% Trump (doubtful it was that low) the bloodbath becomes even worse.
In short - Hillary just got killed in the rural areas, no matter what some idiot on Twitter tells you.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Greatest NBA Finals' Performances Since 1984, Sorted by Average "Game Score"
"Game Score" is a statistic that tries to evaluate how effectively and efficiently a player plays. So, by plugging in certain statistical game inputs, https://captaincalculator.com/sports/basketball/game-score-calculator/ you come up with a "Game Score."
Generally, 60+ is almost impossibly great, 50+ is phenomenol, 40+ is great, 30+ is generally the best 1-2 scores of a given regular season night, 22.5 is a very good productive starter game, 15 is a good starter game, 10 is an OK game or a good game in limited minutes. Anything below 10 - you haven't contributed much.
So, I saw a tweet today where a guy said that Dwyan Wade's 2006 NBA Finals performance was the greatest Finals performance of all-time. Well, since 1984, our friends at www.basketball-reference.com have caluclated NBA Finals Games Scores, and, in fact, have included an "average Game Score" for the series for each player! So, comparing apples to apples (we're using the exact same stats, calculated the same way), lets' see who has the highest Game Score Average for a Finals series since 1984.
35th Place - Tony Parker 16.2 - 2007 Spurs
34th place -- Ray Allen 16.7 - 2008 Celts
33rd -- Chauncey Billups 17.3 - 2005 Pistons (team lost)
32nd -- Shaq 18.7 - 2004 Lakers (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to #31)
31st -- Kobe 18.7 -- 2010 Lakers (teammate Pau Gasol = 18.6)
30th - Shawn Kemp 18.9 -- 1996 Sonics (team lost, but his AGS > Jordan's 18.5)
These 6 are the Worst Efforts to lead the Finals. All under 20.
Next category 20-24.99999
29th -- Hakeem 21.0 -- 1994 Rockets
28th -- Clyde Drexler 21.3 -- 1990 Blazers (team lost)
27th -- Jordan 21.4 -- 1998 Bulls
26rh -- Kareem 21.7 - 1985 Lakers
25th -- Dumars 22.4 -- 1989 Pistons
24th -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2014 (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to himself)
23rd -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2013
22nd -- Duncan 22.6 -- Spurs 1999
21st -- Wade 22.7 -- Miami 2011 (team lost)
20th -- Kobe 22.8 -- Lakers 2009
19th -- Jordan 23.4 -- Chicago 1997
18th -- LeBron 23.6 -- Miami 2012
17th -- Bird 23.7 -- Boston 1984
16th -- Bird 23.9 -- Boston 1986
15th -- Duncan 24.1 -- Spurs 2003
14th -- Magic 24.4 -- Lakers 1988
13th -- Hakeem 24.5 -- Rockets 1995
12th -- LeBron 24.6 -- Cavs 2015 (team lost).
TOP 11 -- Average Game Score Over 25
11th -- Wade 25.4 -- 2006 Heat
10th -- Jordan 25.8 -- 1992 Bulls
9th -- LeBron 26.5 -- 2016 Cavs
8th -- Shaq 27.4 -- 2001 Lakers
7th -- LeBron 28.3 -- 2018 Cavs (team lost, so loses tiebreaker to Magic)
6th -- Magic 28.3 -- 1987 Lakers
5th -- Jordan 29.4 -- 1991 Bulls
4th Jordan 29.6 -- 1993 Bulls
3rd -- Shaq 30.1 -- 2002 Lakers
2nd -- Kevin Durant 30.3 -- 2017 Warriors
1st -- Shaq 30.6 -- 2000 Lakers
So, of the 35 Average Game Score leaders, 8 were on losing teams (Chauncey, Kemp, Shaq, Clyde, Wade, LeBron 3x).
The best non-winners I saw on this inquiry were:
Durant 30.3 beats LeBron 29.6 in 2017 -- LeBron's greatest ever Finals Average Game Score.
LeBron 28.3 beats Durant 26.9 in 2018 -- Durant's play got him MVP.
So, if we include LeBron's losing 29.6, here are the raw numbers for these top 8 guys:
Magic 1987 - 26-8-13, shot 54%
LeBron 2018 - 34-10-8, shot 53%
Jordan 1991 31-7-11 shot 56%
Jordan 1993 41-8-6 shot 51%
LeBron 2017 33-12-10, shot 56%
Shaq 2002 36-12-4, shot 59.5%
Durant 2017 35-8-5 shot 56%
Shaq 2000 -- 38-17-2, shot 61%
Of the top 35, Most Times Having Best Average Game Score
1 Season -- Parker, Allen, Billups, Kemp, Drexler, Dumars, Durant, Kareem
2 Seasons -- Duncan, Magic, Bird, Kobe, Wade, Hakeem
4 Seasons - Shaq
5 Seasons - Jordan
6 Seasons - LeBron
Generally, 60+ is almost impossibly great, 50+ is phenomenol, 40+ is great, 30+ is generally the best 1-2 scores of a given regular season night, 22.5 is a very good productive starter game, 15 is a good starter game, 10 is an OK game or a good game in limited minutes. Anything below 10 - you haven't contributed much.
So, I saw a tweet today where a guy said that Dwyan Wade's 2006 NBA Finals performance was the greatest Finals performance of all-time. Well, since 1984, our friends at www.basketball-reference.com have caluclated NBA Finals Games Scores, and, in fact, have included an "average Game Score" for the series for each player! So, comparing apples to apples (we're using the exact same stats, calculated the same way), lets' see who has the highest Game Score Average for a Finals series since 1984.
35th Place - Tony Parker 16.2 - 2007 Spurs
34th place -- Ray Allen 16.7 - 2008 Celts
33rd -- Chauncey Billups 17.3 - 2005 Pistons (team lost)
32nd -- Shaq 18.7 - 2004 Lakers (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to #31)
31st -- Kobe 18.7 -- 2010 Lakers (teammate Pau Gasol = 18.6)
30th - Shawn Kemp 18.9 -- 1996 Sonics (team lost, but his AGS > Jordan's 18.5)
These 6 are the Worst Efforts to lead the Finals. All under 20.
Next category 20-24.99999
29th -- Hakeem 21.0 -- 1994 Rockets
28th -- Clyde Drexler 21.3 -- 1990 Blazers (team lost)
27th -- Jordan 21.4 -- 1998 Bulls
26rh -- Kareem 21.7 - 1985 Lakers
25th -- Dumars 22.4 -- 1989 Pistons
24th -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2014 (team lost, so he loses the tiebreaker to himself)
23rd -- LeBron 22.5 -- Miami 2013
22nd -- Duncan 22.6 -- Spurs 1999
21st -- Wade 22.7 -- Miami 2011 (team lost)
20th -- Kobe 22.8 -- Lakers 2009
19th -- Jordan 23.4 -- Chicago 1997
18th -- LeBron 23.6 -- Miami 2012
17th -- Bird 23.7 -- Boston 1984
16th -- Bird 23.9 -- Boston 1986
15th -- Duncan 24.1 -- Spurs 2003
14th -- Magic 24.4 -- Lakers 1988
13th -- Hakeem 24.5 -- Rockets 1995
12th -- LeBron 24.6 -- Cavs 2015 (team lost).
TOP 11 -- Average Game Score Over 25
11th -- Wade 25.4 -- 2006 Heat
10th -- Jordan 25.8 -- 1992 Bulls
9th -- LeBron 26.5 -- 2016 Cavs
8th -- Shaq 27.4 -- 2001 Lakers
7th -- LeBron 28.3 -- 2018 Cavs (team lost, so loses tiebreaker to Magic)
6th -- Magic 28.3 -- 1987 Lakers
5th -- Jordan 29.4 -- 1991 Bulls
4th Jordan 29.6 -- 1993 Bulls
3rd -- Shaq 30.1 -- 2002 Lakers
2nd -- Kevin Durant 30.3 -- 2017 Warriors
1st -- Shaq 30.6 -- 2000 Lakers
So, of the 35 Average Game Score leaders, 8 were on losing teams (Chauncey, Kemp, Shaq, Clyde, Wade, LeBron 3x).
The best non-winners I saw on this inquiry were:
Durant 30.3 beats LeBron 29.6 in 2017 -- LeBron's greatest ever Finals Average Game Score.
LeBron 28.3 beats Durant 26.9 in 2018 -- Durant's play got him MVP.
So, if we include LeBron's losing 29.6, here are the raw numbers for these top 8 guys:
Magic 1987 - 26-8-13, shot 54%
LeBron 2018 - 34-10-8, shot 53%
Jordan 1991 31-7-11 shot 56%
Jordan 1993 41-8-6 shot 51%
LeBron 2017 33-12-10, shot 56%
Shaq 2002 36-12-4, shot 59.5%
Durant 2017 35-8-5 shot 56%
Shaq 2000 -- 38-17-2, shot 61%
Of the top 35, Most Times Having Best Average Game Score
1 Season -- Parker, Allen, Billups, Kemp, Drexler, Dumars, Durant, Kareem
2 Seasons -- Duncan, Magic, Bird, Kobe, Wade, Hakeem
4 Seasons - Shaq
5 Seasons - Jordan
6 Seasons - LeBron
Friday, February 08, 2019
Happy Moses Malone Day
OK, since it is Moses Malone Day in Philly, let's go through some Moses Malone love.
1) Most importantly,
Moses is my #18 player of all-time. Since I spend weeks on that analysis every 3 years, and I rank Moses so high, I think it is pretty egregious that Moses is only now getting his number retired in Philly.
2) Moses Malone was so physically dominant as a high school player that he was told to go home early from Five Star Camp. As recently as 2016, Hubie Brown stated that Moses was the greatest player ever at Five Star Camp.
Moses once stated of his own physical dominance that he and any 4 guys he could pick off the street in Petersburg, VA could win NBA games.
3) Moses Malone in 1979-83, finished 1-9-4-1-1 in MVP voting:
1979 -- Beat George Gervin 112-35
1980 - received a first-place vote (Magic did not)
1981 - finished behind Dr. J, Bird and Kareem
1982 - beat Bird 40-20 in first place votes
1983 - had 69 out of 75 first-place votes. (defeating Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem)
So, over a 5 year stretch, Moses did better in MVP balloting than 4 of the top 20 players of all-time - Dr. J, Magic, Bird, Kareem).
3) Over this same stretch of time, Moses' Houston team went to the Finals from the West in 1981 (displacing Magic/Kareem - something that was not done again in the Western Conference until 1986)
Moses led the NBA in playoff Win Shares in 1981 and 1983. Again, this means he had more playoff WS than Bird in 1981 and more playoff WS than Magic or Kareem in 1983.
There is a solid argument that from 1979-1983, Moses Malone was the #1 player in all of basketball. Certainly he destroyed Kareem in head-to-head competition on a regular basis, taking him out in 1981 as a Rocket and then sweeping the Lakers in 1983. In 1983, Moses was so head and shoulders above his competition that he stated his classic "Fo-Fo-Fo" boast before the playoffs, and, but for a long Sidney Moncrief buzzer beater, would have gone 4-4-4. As it was, teams got exactly 1 game off the Sixers, and the Magic/Kareem Lakers were swept.
CAREER STATS
4) Moses
-- #2 in career FT made and attempted
-- #9 all-time in career points
-- #3 all-time in career rebounds
-- #14 in Win Shares
Only Russell and Wilt have more rebounds.
5) 4X first-team all-NBA, 4X second team all-NBA The league did not go to 3 teams of all-NBA until 1988-89.
Moses was a 13x all-star, so he was really good for 13 years, even though only 8 of them resulted in all-NBA honors.
6) Moses was the greatest offensive rebounder since offensive rebounds were counted as a statistic in the NBA in 1973-74.
NBA Seasons with over 330 Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 14, Rodman 7, no one else more than 5.
NBA Seasons with over 400 offensive rebounds
Moses 6, Rodman 3, Drummond & Larry Smith 2. No one else with over 1.
Seasons with over 500 offensive rebounds.
Moses 3, Rodman 1 (end of list)
Career Total Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 7382
Gilmore 4816
Now, imagine that there is some statistic that has been around for 45 years and you are number one by roughly 50% in excess of the 2nd place guy.
The active leader is Dwight Howard. If Dwight Howard gets 22 more offensive rebounds, he will have 50% of Moses Malone's career rebounds.
7) Moses Was the greatest Offensive Rebounder/Scorer Ever, By a Huge Margin.
Games With 40+ Points and 10 Offensive Rebounds - Moses 5, Shaq 3
30/10 - Moses 29, Barkley 10, Shaq 8, David 7, Hakeem 7
25/10 - Moses 40, Barkley 17, Shaq 13, Hakeem 12, David 10.
8) How great was Moses as a 30 points/20 Rebound Player?
For seasons after 1973:
Moses -- 36 Such Games
Kareem 27
McAdoo 22
Barkley 20
Shaq 18
Hakeem 15
Cousins 10
Big E 10
Ewing 8
Dwight Howard 8
9) 24 Point and 12 Rebound Seasons
Wilt 10
KAJ Baylor Pettit 9
Moses 6
McAdoo 5
Bellamy Hayes Shaq 4
Hakeem 3
10) Moses Had 3 MVPs, and a Finals MVP, and was regular season and Finals MVP in the same year, in a year where he led the league in both regular season and playoff WS and WS/48.
This has been done as follows:
1971 - Kareem
1983 Moses
1991 Jordan
1996 Jordan
2000 Shaq
2012 LeBron
Worthy of a Note:
In 1967, Wilt won the MVP and his team won the title and he won WS and WS/48 for the season and the playoffs. But there was no Finals MVP formally awarded.
In 2013, LeBron waon MVP, Finals MVP, WS and WS/48 in the season and WS in the playoffs - but his temmate Chris Anderson had the best WS/48 at .303, playing roughly 300 minutes. Chris Paul also had a higher WS/48, playing around 200 minutes.
CONCLUSION -- Moses was awesome. Happy Moses Malone Day!!!
1) Most importantly,
Moses is my #18 player of all-time. Since I spend weeks on that analysis every 3 years, and I rank Moses so high, I think it is pretty egregious that Moses is only now getting his number retired in Philly.
2) Moses Malone was so physically dominant as a high school player that he was told to go home early from Five Star Camp. As recently as 2016, Hubie Brown stated that Moses was the greatest player ever at Five Star Camp.
Moses once stated of his own physical dominance that he and any 4 guys he could pick off the street in Petersburg, VA could win NBA games.
3) Moses Malone in 1979-83, finished 1-9-4-1-1 in MVP voting:
1979 -- Beat George Gervin 112-35
1980 - received a first-place vote (Magic did not)
1981 - finished behind Dr. J, Bird and Kareem
1982 - beat Bird 40-20 in first place votes
1983 - had 69 out of 75 first-place votes. (defeating Bird, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem)
So, over a 5 year stretch, Moses did better in MVP balloting than 4 of the top 20 players of all-time - Dr. J, Magic, Bird, Kareem).
3) Over this same stretch of time, Moses' Houston team went to the Finals from the West in 1981 (displacing Magic/Kareem - something that was not done again in the Western Conference until 1986)
Moses led the NBA in playoff Win Shares in 1981 and 1983. Again, this means he had more playoff WS than Bird in 1981 and more playoff WS than Magic or Kareem in 1983.
There is a solid argument that from 1979-1983, Moses Malone was the #1 player in all of basketball. Certainly he destroyed Kareem in head-to-head competition on a regular basis, taking him out in 1981 as a Rocket and then sweeping the Lakers in 1983. In 1983, Moses was so head and shoulders above his competition that he stated his classic "Fo-Fo-Fo" boast before the playoffs, and, but for a long Sidney Moncrief buzzer beater, would have gone 4-4-4. As it was, teams got exactly 1 game off the Sixers, and the Magic/Kareem Lakers were swept.
CAREER STATS
4) Moses
-- #2 in career FT made and attempted
-- #9 all-time in career points
-- #3 all-time in career rebounds
-- #14 in Win Shares
Only Russell and Wilt have more rebounds.
5) 4X first-team all-NBA, 4X second team all-NBA The league did not go to 3 teams of all-NBA until 1988-89.
Moses was a 13x all-star, so he was really good for 13 years, even though only 8 of them resulted in all-NBA honors.
6) Moses was the greatest offensive rebounder since offensive rebounds were counted as a statistic in the NBA in 1973-74.
NBA Seasons with over 330 Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 14, Rodman 7, no one else more than 5.
NBA Seasons with over 400 offensive rebounds
Moses 6, Rodman 3, Drummond & Larry Smith 2. No one else with over 1.
Seasons with over 500 offensive rebounds.
Moses 3, Rodman 1 (end of list)
Career Total Offensive Rebounds:
Moses 7382
Gilmore 4816
Now, imagine that there is some statistic that has been around for 45 years and you are number one by roughly 50% in excess of the 2nd place guy.
The active leader is Dwight Howard. If Dwight Howard gets 22 more offensive rebounds, he will have 50% of Moses Malone's career rebounds.
7) Moses Was the greatest Offensive Rebounder/Scorer Ever, By a Huge Margin.
Games With 40+ Points and 10 Offensive Rebounds - Moses 5, Shaq 3
30/10 - Moses 29, Barkley 10, Shaq 8, David 7, Hakeem 7
25/10 - Moses 40, Barkley 17, Shaq 13, Hakeem 12, David 10.
8) How great was Moses as a 30 points/20 Rebound Player?
For seasons after 1973:
Moses -- 36 Such Games
Kareem 27
McAdoo 22
Barkley 20
Shaq 18
Hakeem 15
Cousins 10
Big E 10
Ewing 8
Dwight Howard 8
9) 24 Point and 12 Rebound Seasons
Wilt 10
KAJ Baylor Pettit 9
Moses 6
McAdoo 5
Bellamy Hayes Shaq 4
Hakeem 3
10) Moses Had 3 MVPs, and a Finals MVP, and was regular season and Finals MVP in the same year, in a year where he led the league in both regular season and playoff WS and WS/48.
This has been done as follows:
1971 - Kareem
1983 Moses
1991 Jordan
1996 Jordan
2000 Shaq
2012 LeBron
Worthy of a Note:
In 1967, Wilt won the MVP and his team won the title and he won WS and WS/48 for the season and the playoffs. But there was no Finals MVP formally awarded.
In 2013, LeBron waon MVP, Finals MVP, WS and WS/48 in the season and WS in the playoffs - but his temmate Chris Anderson had the best WS/48 at .303, playing roughly 300 minutes. Chris Paul also had a higher WS/48, playing around 200 minutes.
CONCLUSION -- Moses was awesome. Happy Moses Malone Day!!!
Tuesday, February 05, 2019
50 Most Rat-Infested Cities 2019. Have I Been? Do I Like Them?
- Chicago - have been many times, love the city
- Los Angeles (+1) love
- New York (-1) love
- Washington, DC (+1) love
- San Francisco (-1) love
- Detroit (+1) some good, some bad
- Philadelphia (-1) some good, some bad
- Cleveland, OH (+5) yes, I like Cleveland
- Baltimore (-1) some good, some bad
- Denver (+1) like a lot
- Minneapolis-St. Paul (+1) my home
- Dallas-Ft. Worth (-2) do not like Dallas
- Boston (+2) some good, some bad
- Seattle (-5) like a lot
- Atlanta (-1) terrible city
- Indianapolis (+3) - it is a nice little town
- Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (+1) don't love
- Hartford, CT (-2) - terrible
- Pittsburgh (+3) some good some bad
- Cincinnati (+4) same
- Milwaukee same
- Charlotte, NC (+6) do NOT like Charlotte, almost mugged there
- Houston (-3) terrible
- Portland, OR (-7) really like
- Columbus, OH (+6) it is fine, nothing to write home about
- San Diego (+9) mediocre, not great
- Raleigh-Durham (+6) has come a long way, would say like alot
- Buffalo, NY (+2) - my home town, its struggles continue, but it is OK.
- New Orleans (-6) - I love the outlaw nature of NO
- Norfolk, VA (-1) - only driven through
- Richmond, VA (-6) - same
- Albany, NY (+4) -- I like Albany, kind of a sleepy quiet town
- Kansas City, MO (-6) - has some really nice things, I'd go with really like
- Portland, ME (+19) -- basically a poor man's Boston
- Nashville, TN (+5) - love
- St. Louis, MO (-4) - terrible city
- Sacramento (-11) - never been
- Greenville, SC (+4) - driven through only
- Grand Rapids, MI (-5) - driven through only
- Phoenix (+4) -- can be OK, not great
- Orlando (+6) - can be Ok, not great
- Tampa (-4) -- traffic is insane, if you lived way out on the water it would be cool
- Burlington, NY (+11) -- I imagine they must mean VT - went 30 years ago - pretty
- Champaign, IL (-3) - not much to recommend here, where I was born
- Rochester, NY (-6) - it's fine, getting smaller and smaller
- Syracuse (-1) - nice Italian food, little else
- Charleston, WV (+17) - never been
- Dayton, OH (+7) - driven through only
- Memphis (-6) -- I like Memphis to visit, pretty crappy town though
- Flint, MI (-1) - driven through only/ They have to be happy to finally find out that the absolute bottom of some list is sometimes preferable (since they are at the bottom of so many).
Wednesday, January 09, 2019
Tom Thibodeau Fired - My Thoughts.
Tom Thibodeau was fired and he has been replaced with Ryan Saunders. I have been a Timberwolves season ticket holder for 30 years now. I am one of under 200 individuals who can say that. I have seen an awful, awful lot of bad things and terrible basketball. I have seen many people come and go. With that perspective, my thoughts on the Thibs Era:
The Good
1) Thank you Thibs for the one playoff appearance. The Wolves had not reached the playoffs since 2004. They managed to win game 82 against Denver and make the playoffs. I went out to a bar and bought random people drinks after Game 82. Why? Did I view this as a step to an NBA title? No.
I viewed the playoff appearance as a way to avoid the laughingstock label that has plagued this franchise for so long. (I will note here that the people I know on the non-basketball side are excellent at their jobs, but the on-court product they sell is the worst in the history of professional sports, at least last I looked at winning percentages - it is possible that the new Browns are worse.) When you see the graphic go up, "Have not made the playoffs since George W. Bush's first term" you cringe.
So, thanks Thibs. That was worthwhile.
2) Thibs was a pretty good evaluator of talent. Look, he knew Butler was good, and Butler was very good for us (on the court). He knew that Jeff Teague was an above average PG who had gas left in the tank. Same with Taj Gibson (old, but still good). He drafted Okogie, who has been good for a low #1. He drafted Bates-Diop, who has been good in the G League for a mid-low #2. He acquired Tolliver, who (when played, see below) has been a worthwhile player.
He dumped Kris Dunn and LaVine and passed on Markkanen. Sure he had missed on his odd love of Dunn originally (passing over Jamal Murray and Buddy Hield - who both were better players and filled a huge need). But if you could say you would have one really good year of Butler and then get Saric and Coveington and not have signed LaVine to an $80M deal, I'd take that deal any day.
3 Thibs has a concept of what he wants to do, and he does it. There is some benefit to this. I mean, Kurt Rambis's players would say "We hate having to run the Triangle Offense" and he'd respond, "85% of what we run isn't the Triangle Offense." OK, so that is WORSE! Your players do not even know what they are being asked to do. Thibs' players at least knew what they were being asked to do, and, quite frankly, they were often pretty good at it. For example, while the Wolves ran a caveman style offense, they were in the upper echelon of the league in Offensive Rating. This would be like an NFL team running th ball 75% of the time in today's game and still scoring 24 points a game. Odd, illogical, but I guess it works.
The Bad
4. Thibs' defense, his alleged calling card, never worked. Whether it was (as most believed) because it was horrifically outdated, or whether it was (as Thibs believed) that his players were too bad or dumb to figure it out, what does it really matter? When you run a scheme that makes you a bottom 20% defense (sometimes worse), how do you just blindly stick with it? If you were teaching someone math, and they had the same blank stare at you for 2 years, would you show up every day and continue to use the same exact teaching method? One would hope not.
This, of course, goes to Thibs' personality -- when something is wrong, it cannot be his fault. "I know this defense works. It worked in 2008 and 2011. It works still today." Well, here is an example of actual coaching -- I coached an 8th grade B team for my daughter. We were pretty bad. We started like 3-8. So I had a sitdown with the girls and I said, "Look, what do you LIKE about what we do and what do you NOT like about what we do?" Got input, heard things about how we could do better. Where it made sense, I added more stuff they liked and reduced the stuff they didn't like. Ended 15-15. That is the sort of stuff you need to do. Thibs was completely unable and unwilling to adjust his defense to his players or to the modern game. In his defense, it appears that no player or coach or owner was willing to suggest that either.
5. Thibs hitched his wagon to different guys, generally not corectly. Look, Taj is a very good player. He shouldn't be getting 36 minutes a night. Wiggins played 36 a night, regardless of whether he was good, bad, indifferent, or VERY indifferent. There were absolutely no consequences for bad play if you were one of the guys Thibs liked.
It took me all of one scrimmage to recognize that Jamal Crawford was a horrific defensive player and would give you almost zero rebounds a game. Thibs played him a lot (from what I gathered, less than Crawford was promised, but way too much for what he was giving you). Crawford averaged more shots per 36 than Towns.
Thibs' reliance on Derrick Rose (who has completely re-worked his shooting and become a good shooter) appeared to some to be a great idea. But if basketball-reference.com has him at 116-116 ORtg/DRtg, what is he really giving you? A lot of difficult isolation scoring which he gives back on the other end? Thibs also was so happy to be correct about Rose that he literally played him to exhaustion, to the point where he was too tired/sore/injured to play! I mean, a fair evaluation is that the guy is either a guy you trade and get value for ("sell high") or he is a guy you play fewer minutes (15-24) and prolong his career and what you can get out of him both during a single seaon and in the long run. Thibs played him 30+ minutes, often over 34.
6. Thibs had a weird habit of signing players (Cole Aldrich, Anthony Tollver) and then not playing them. While these guys are just role players, why spend money on them if you are just going to have them ride the pine? You'd be better off signing no one and then acquiring prospects that other teams had to cut at the end of training camp. It is cheaper, and there is probably a higher ceiling for some of these guys.
Weird.
The Ugly
7. Thibs's primary weakness was that he could never take a long-term view and try to develop the franchise. He viewed every game, even every possession, as the end of the world. If someone literally told Tom Thibodeau within two minutes of the end of the Hawks game, "You better get Rose out or there is a 75% chance he gets hurt and is out for a week" Thibs would take the 25% chance. He needed the Hawks win that badly. To make matters worse, the risk did not always result in a reward.
Up 25, down 25, the starters were running the last 3 minutes of the game. There might be a 2% chance that the bench could blow that lead or the starters might come back. All that really mattered was the one single game. Every game was Game 7 of the Finals.
Imagine if you had to drive 3,000 total miles in 10 days. On day 4 you are sick and throwing up. You'd spend that day in bed, maybe drive more the next day. Thibs would get a bucket and throw up in it as he ground out his 300 miles. It would be 100% completely unnecessary to do so, and it probably would endanger the entire trip and maybe his life, but he'd do it anyway, because it wasn't the trip, it was the day that mattered.
8. Thibs was a horrific micromanager. It is almost impossible to play excellent basketball if you do not enjoy it. I would tell my players when I coached, "Look, if you cannot find joy in basketball, you ought to consider some other sports." Now, I had a coach in 11th grade who screamed at us and constantly had us do sprints in practice and who employed a full-court press against every opponent (we were very white and very slow and small). We had the #1 player in the three-county area. We went 7-11. The next year we lost our best guy, got a new (more rational) coach, and went 12-6.
It just isn't any fun to play basketball when your every move is scrutinized. It sucks. So when a player is a bench guy getting maybe 15 minutes and he gets pulled for his first mistake, you have now effectively lost him as a player. He will not provide you with much value.
To make matters worse, some players were micromanaged and punished for errors, while others (see #5 above) were micromanaged but never disciplined for anything.
9. Thibs alienated his players and did not understand how to play to their strengths,
Towns - 3rd Team All-NBA, 4th on the team in shots per minute. How does that possibly occur? Towns at the end of a game stepped in-bounds while throwing in the ball. Thibs, "You stupid motherfucker!" Now, this is inappropraite coaching or teaching at any level. If your 15th guy got in and forgot to dribble the ball, you'd treat him better than this.
Right before Thibs' firing, he was willing to say that Towns had played "the best he has played." Well, wow! Alert the media! Towns had gone 28-12 for 6 straight games, the longest such streak since Moses Malone in 1982. Thibs phrased this once in a generation streak as, basically "Towns is playing better." Towns' reply, "He said something nice about me!?!? Wow."
Tyus Jones - as I have said numerous times, Tyus Jones is a great "with the ball" player. he SUCKS as an "off the ball" offensive player. Where does Thibs insist on playing him? With DRose and Jamal Crawford getting huge Usage and Tyus standing in the corner waiting for the ball. So, you are taking guys with MAYBE a 2-1 assist to turnover ratio and having them handle the ball while your 6-1 assist-to-turnover guy (who is a very poor spot-up shooter) stands in the corner. If you are going to operate with this strategy, then you need to not play Tyus at all. Play an off guard or just play a huge defensive lineup. Play someone who will compensate defensively for how terrible Crawford and Rose have been as team defenders (and Crawford as an individual defender).
And can we pry ONE positive comment from Thibs abaout Tyus? I mean, here is a guy who you don't value (he wants to play him 12-16 minutes a game) and when forced into action as a starter (due to injury) he was one of your best plus-minus players (generally the best) and was a key to several winning efforts. Answer - no, that will not occur. In one such game earlier this year, Tyus was a key to victory, when asked about Tyus, Thibs said "I thought Jarryd Bayless played very well." Um, OK.
Wiggins -- now, it may be that no one can ever unlock Andrew Wiggins, but I can assure you this - playing him as a standstill "end of the play" spot up shooter - this is not his highest and best use. So, again, if you believe that he can only be used in that role, you need to cut his minutes and play Tolliver or Bjelica instead. Same as the Tyus example. If you have a car that will go 120 miles per hour and rides rough when under 40 mph, don't drive it the 5 miles to and from work. Drive it on long trips.
What is really clear is that Towns hated Thibs, Tyus resented Thibs, Teague regularly tried to embarrass Thibs with the media, Bjelica couldn't wait to get away from Thibs, Butler knived Thibs in the back (maybe in the front), Gorgui almost had a mental breakdown playing for the guy, Crawford felt lied to and betrayed. And those are the guys I, as a fan, know about.
10. Thibs' Behavior Was Unprofessional
Look, we all wish we were king. And I think Thibs figured he was king. Great. But if you really ARE NOT the king and you have a boss of any kind, then you need to build up some relationships and gather some relationship "chits" you can cash in later when things go poorly.
-- When your boss asks you to a barbecue, go.
-- When you are the coach of a team, appear in the media and do some PR. If you come off poorly in person, have someone write you some B.S. emails to the fans, or recite some text written for you on video..
-- Do not lock employees from one side of the business out of your side of the business.
-- Do not throw a laptop through a glass conference room wall.
-- Do not tell free agents you want them and then don't play them as you said you would.
-- When your owner tells you to trade a guy, do your effing job and trade the guy.
-- Don't call your superstar a "stupid motherfucker" for committing a turnover.
-- Reward consistently good play and punish consistently poor play with minutes.
-- Talk to your players.
-- Say nice things about your best players or guys who give a lot of effort, even if you don't want to.
-- Don't scream and micromanage every possession.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't panic.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't demonstrate by your body language that you are disgusted/worried. Instead, put up an aura of "we know how to recover from this".
These are 13 things that, again, I know about just as a fan. Imagine the plethora of other terrible unprofessional things I am forgetting or that I am unaware of right now.
Conclusion
Grading on the very kind grading curve that is Wolves Coaches, Thibs was not terrible. He had a team that made the playoffs and he was almost .500 overall. So, I'd place him here:
1) Flip
2) McHale
3) Adelman
4) Dwane Casey
5) Thibs.
Thibs defeats Musselman, Lowe, Blair, Rodgers, Wittman, and Rambis, Sam Mitchell and anyone else I am forgetting.
(For you Muss defenders, he was crazier than Thibs when it came to lack of player development, lack of professionalism, and winning at all costs. For Sam fans, Sam understood player development, but his teams were very poorly prepared and he could never adjust in-game).
So, how terrible has the Timberwolves franchise been? Thibs is clearly a top-half coach in their history!
Ryan Saunders -- long-time assistant. Will undoubtedly have better relationships with the key Wolves players and is an immediate huge upgrade on professionalism. His dad was an offensive genius, but didn't give a damn about defense (Garnett was basically the eraser for all of Flip's defensive indifference, with mixed results). Hopefully Ryan will take the good of his dad and find some way to care more about defense.
As someone who has seen 30 years of basketball and yet only 1 year where we won any playoff series, obviously I am rooting for Ryan very hard.
HM
The Good
1) Thank you Thibs for the one playoff appearance. The Wolves had not reached the playoffs since 2004. They managed to win game 82 against Denver and make the playoffs. I went out to a bar and bought random people drinks after Game 82. Why? Did I view this as a step to an NBA title? No.
I viewed the playoff appearance as a way to avoid the laughingstock label that has plagued this franchise for so long. (I will note here that the people I know on the non-basketball side are excellent at their jobs, but the on-court product they sell is the worst in the history of professional sports, at least last I looked at winning percentages - it is possible that the new Browns are worse.) When you see the graphic go up, "Have not made the playoffs since George W. Bush's first term" you cringe.
So, thanks Thibs. That was worthwhile.
2) Thibs was a pretty good evaluator of talent. Look, he knew Butler was good, and Butler was very good for us (on the court). He knew that Jeff Teague was an above average PG who had gas left in the tank. Same with Taj Gibson (old, but still good). He drafted Okogie, who has been good for a low #1. He drafted Bates-Diop, who has been good in the G League for a mid-low #2. He acquired Tolliver, who (when played, see below) has been a worthwhile player.
He dumped Kris Dunn and LaVine and passed on Markkanen. Sure he had missed on his odd love of Dunn originally (passing over Jamal Murray and Buddy Hield - who both were better players and filled a huge need). But if you could say you would have one really good year of Butler and then get Saric and Coveington and not have signed LaVine to an $80M deal, I'd take that deal any day.
3 Thibs has a concept of what he wants to do, and he does it. There is some benefit to this. I mean, Kurt Rambis's players would say "We hate having to run the Triangle Offense" and he'd respond, "85% of what we run isn't the Triangle Offense." OK, so that is WORSE! Your players do not even know what they are being asked to do. Thibs' players at least knew what they were being asked to do, and, quite frankly, they were often pretty good at it. For example, while the Wolves ran a caveman style offense, they were in the upper echelon of the league in Offensive Rating. This would be like an NFL team running th ball 75% of the time in today's game and still scoring 24 points a game. Odd, illogical, but I guess it works.
The Bad
4. Thibs' defense, his alleged calling card, never worked. Whether it was (as most believed) because it was horrifically outdated, or whether it was (as Thibs believed) that his players were too bad or dumb to figure it out, what does it really matter? When you run a scheme that makes you a bottom 20% defense (sometimes worse), how do you just blindly stick with it? If you were teaching someone math, and they had the same blank stare at you for 2 years, would you show up every day and continue to use the same exact teaching method? One would hope not.
This, of course, goes to Thibs' personality -- when something is wrong, it cannot be his fault. "I know this defense works. It worked in 2008 and 2011. It works still today." Well, here is an example of actual coaching -- I coached an 8th grade B team for my daughter. We were pretty bad. We started like 3-8. So I had a sitdown with the girls and I said, "Look, what do you LIKE about what we do and what do you NOT like about what we do?" Got input, heard things about how we could do better. Where it made sense, I added more stuff they liked and reduced the stuff they didn't like. Ended 15-15. That is the sort of stuff you need to do. Thibs was completely unable and unwilling to adjust his defense to his players or to the modern game. In his defense, it appears that no player or coach or owner was willing to suggest that either.
5. Thibs hitched his wagon to different guys, generally not corectly. Look, Taj is a very good player. He shouldn't be getting 36 minutes a night. Wiggins played 36 a night, regardless of whether he was good, bad, indifferent, or VERY indifferent. There were absolutely no consequences for bad play if you were one of the guys Thibs liked.
It took me all of one scrimmage to recognize that Jamal Crawford was a horrific defensive player and would give you almost zero rebounds a game. Thibs played him a lot (from what I gathered, less than Crawford was promised, but way too much for what he was giving you). Crawford averaged more shots per 36 than Towns.
Thibs' reliance on Derrick Rose (who has completely re-worked his shooting and become a good shooter) appeared to some to be a great idea. But if basketball-reference.com has him at 116-116 ORtg/DRtg, what is he really giving you? A lot of difficult isolation scoring which he gives back on the other end? Thibs also was so happy to be correct about Rose that he literally played him to exhaustion, to the point where he was too tired/sore/injured to play! I mean, a fair evaluation is that the guy is either a guy you trade and get value for ("sell high") or he is a guy you play fewer minutes (15-24) and prolong his career and what you can get out of him both during a single seaon and in the long run. Thibs played him 30+ minutes, often over 34.
6. Thibs had a weird habit of signing players (Cole Aldrich, Anthony Tollver) and then not playing them. While these guys are just role players, why spend money on them if you are just going to have them ride the pine? You'd be better off signing no one and then acquiring prospects that other teams had to cut at the end of training camp. It is cheaper, and there is probably a higher ceiling for some of these guys.
Weird.
The Ugly
7. Thibs's primary weakness was that he could never take a long-term view and try to develop the franchise. He viewed every game, even every possession, as the end of the world. If someone literally told Tom Thibodeau within two minutes of the end of the Hawks game, "You better get Rose out or there is a 75% chance he gets hurt and is out for a week" Thibs would take the 25% chance. He needed the Hawks win that badly. To make matters worse, the risk did not always result in a reward.
Up 25, down 25, the starters were running the last 3 minutes of the game. There might be a 2% chance that the bench could blow that lead or the starters might come back. All that really mattered was the one single game. Every game was Game 7 of the Finals.
Imagine if you had to drive 3,000 total miles in 10 days. On day 4 you are sick and throwing up. You'd spend that day in bed, maybe drive more the next day. Thibs would get a bucket and throw up in it as he ground out his 300 miles. It would be 100% completely unnecessary to do so, and it probably would endanger the entire trip and maybe his life, but he'd do it anyway, because it wasn't the trip, it was the day that mattered.
8. Thibs was a horrific micromanager. It is almost impossible to play excellent basketball if you do not enjoy it. I would tell my players when I coached, "Look, if you cannot find joy in basketball, you ought to consider some other sports." Now, I had a coach in 11th grade who screamed at us and constantly had us do sprints in practice and who employed a full-court press against every opponent (we were very white and very slow and small). We had the #1 player in the three-county area. We went 7-11. The next year we lost our best guy, got a new (more rational) coach, and went 12-6.
It just isn't any fun to play basketball when your every move is scrutinized. It sucks. So when a player is a bench guy getting maybe 15 minutes and he gets pulled for his first mistake, you have now effectively lost him as a player. He will not provide you with much value.
To make matters worse, some players were micromanaged and punished for errors, while others (see #5 above) were micromanaged but never disciplined for anything.
9. Thibs alienated his players and did not understand how to play to their strengths,
Towns - 3rd Team All-NBA, 4th on the team in shots per minute. How does that possibly occur? Towns at the end of a game stepped in-bounds while throwing in the ball. Thibs, "You stupid motherfucker!" Now, this is inappropraite coaching or teaching at any level. If your 15th guy got in and forgot to dribble the ball, you'd treat him better than this.
Right before Thibs' firing, he was willing to say that Towns had played "the best he has played." Well, wow! Alert the media! Towns had gone 28-12 for 6 straight games, the longest such streak since Moses Malone in 1982. Thibs phrased this once in a generation streak as, basically "Towns is playing better." Towns' reply, "He said something nice about me!?!? Wow."
Tyus Jones - as I have said numerous times, Tyus Jones is a great "with the ball" player. he SUCKS as an "off the ball" offensive player. Where does Thibs insist on playing him? With DRose and Jamal Crawford getting huge Usage and Tyus standing in the corner waiting for the ball. So, you are taking guys with MAYBE a 2-1 assist to turnover ratio and having them handle the ball while your 6-1 assist-to-turnover guy (who is a very poor spot-up shooter) stands in the corner. If you are going to operate with this strategy, then you need to not play Tyus at all. Play an off guard or just play a huge defensive lineup. Play someone who will compensate defensively for how terrible Crawford and Rose have been as team defenders (and Crawford as an individual defender).
And can we pry ONE positive comment from Thibs abaout Tyus? I mean, here is a guy who you don't value (he wants to play him 12-16 minutes a game) and when forced into action as a starter (due to injury) he was one of your best plus-minus players (generally the best) and was a key to several winning efforts. Answer - no, that will not occur. In one such game earlier this year, Tyus was a key to victory, when asked about Tyus, Thibs said "I thought Jarryd Bayless played very well." Um, OK.
Wiggins -- now, it may be that no one can ever unlock Andrew Wiggins, but I can assure you this - playing him as a standstill "end of the play" spot up shooter - this is not his highest and best use. So, again, if you believe that he can only be used in that role, you need to cut his minutes and play Tolliver or Bjelica instead. Same as the Tyus example. If you have a car that will go 120 miles per hour and rides rough when under 40 mph, don't drive it the 5 miles to and from work. Drive it on long trips.
What is really clear is that Towns hated Thibs, Tyus resented Thibs, Teague regularly tried to embarrass Thibs with the media, Bjelica couldn't wait to get away from Thibs, Butler knived Thibs in the back (maybe in the front), Gorgui almost had a mental breakdown playing for the guy, Crawford felt lied to and betrayed. And those are the guys I, as a fan, know about.
10. Thibs' Behavior Was Unprofessional
Look, we all wish we were king. And I think Thibs figured he was king. Great. But if you really ARE NOT the king and you have a boss of any kind, then you need to build up some relationships and gather some relationship "chits" you can cash in later when things go poorly.
-- When your boss asks you to a barbecue, go.
-- When you are the coach of a team, appear in the media and do some PR. If you come off poorly in person, have someone write you some B.S. emails to the fans, or recite some text written for you on video..
-- Do not lock employees from one side of the business out of your side of the business.
-- Do not throw a laptop through a glass conference room wall.
-- Do not tell free agents you want them and then don't play them as you said you would.
-- When your owner tells you to trade a guy, do your effing job and trade the guy.
-- Don't call your superstar a "stupid motherfucker" for committing a turnover.
-- Reward consistently good play and punish consistently poor play with minutes.
-- Talk to your players.
-- Say nice things about your best players or guys who give a lot of effort, even if you don't want to.
-- Don't scream and micromanage every possession.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't panic.
-- When your team is playing poorly, don't demonstrate by your body language that you are disgusted/worried. Instead, put up an aura of "we know how to recover from this".
These are 13 things that, again, I know about just as a fan. Imagine the plethora of other terrible unprofessional things I am forgetting or that I am unaware of right now.
Conclusion
Grading on the very kind grading curve that is Wolves Coaches, Thibs was not terrible. He had a team that made the playoffs and he was almost .500 overall. So, I'd place him here:
1) Flip
2) McHale
3) Adelman
4) Dwane Casey
5) Thibs.
Thibs defeats Musselman, Lowe, Blair, Rodgers, Wittman, and Rambis, Sam Mitchell and anyone else I am forgetting.
(For you Muss defenders, he was crazier than Thibs when it came to lack of player development, lack of professionalism, and winning at all costs. For Sam fans, Sam understood player development, but his teams were very poorly prepared and he could never adjust in-game).
So, how terrible has the Timberwolves franchise been? Thibs is clearly a top-half coach in their history!
Ryan Saunders -- long-time assistant. Will undoubtedly have better relationships with the key Wolves players and is an immediate huge upgrade on professionalism. His dad was an offensive genius, but didn't give a damn about defense (Garnett was basically the eraser for all of Flip's defensive indifference, with mixed results). Hopefully Ryan will take the good of his dad and find some way to care more about defense.
As someone who has seen 30 years of basketball and yet only 1 year where we won any playoff series, obviously I am rooting for Ryan very hard.
HM
Friday, January 04, 2019
Tucker Carlson's Speech On How America Is Going Wrong
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tucker-carlsons-galvanizing-speech/
This is an interesting speech to give. Carlson, apparently upset by Mitt Romney's disagreement with Donald Trump's behavior, basically goes after the Rich Wing of the Republican Party and states that the only way to a happier and healthier America is the abandonment of tax cuts and wars and finding some way to increase pay for men, particularly for men in rural areas.
The part of the speech that is getting criticized is the call for women to stop working so much, go back to making less money than men, and (for God sake) please stop having kids out of wedlock. Do like the wealthy do -- get married first and only then have kids.
The difficulty with this approach is that it lumps in every sort of person into the category of "single parenthood is bad." Is a woman who makes $200,000 and who has never been married going to be a worse parent than a "2 parent family" where one works, or neither works, or both cannot afford daily necessities for themselves or the child? Certainly not. And if you have a child out of wedlock, is that worse than the person who has a child in wedlock and then divorces when the child is 5-8-10 years old? We know that 50% of marriages end in divorce. We also know that many middle-income and lower-income non-custodial parents do not pay their child support. How is that child better off?
I think that what Tucker Carlson is really describing is the lower-middle-class or poor 16-22 year old woman who gets pregnant by an acquaintance and decides to have the child and not give it up for adoption. Yes, that generally ends poorly because the child lacks both attention and money. This is the worst of al worlds.
But Carlson uses the terrible results of this sort of relationship/condition to justify his position that women should stop making so much more than men -- since these men are not marriage material, and the wealthy women just have a kid on their own. Again, I refuse to believe that a child raised by an affluent single mom is generally in a worse situation than a child raised in a divorced family, a family where a parent dies, or any of a number of abusive two-parent families. I guess we could see the data, but you'd have to convince me that is true.
I'd like to say one last thing on that topic. I grew up in a lily white county in western NY. In the 1970s and early 80s, we were #1 in NY in per capita teen pregnancy. #1. And 90% of the teen preganancy was due to poor to lower middle class guys having sex with poor to middle class women. It had nothing whatsoever to do with these teenagers seeing men as unworthy of marriage. They lived a shitty life, they wanted something to do, they had unprotected sex. We also know that out of wedlock pregnancies exist in poor urban areas where a majority of the population has never had any decent job. So to blame women having kids out of wedlock on men having fewer manufacturing jobs seems like an awful stretch.
Anyway - Tucker Carlson's other points are rather weird ones for a Republican to be making: 1) Mitt Romney doesn't get taxed enough; 2) the tax code favors the wealthy, 3) government should do something to make sure working men get fair wages (he really doesn't say what, other than to say he opposes socialism or libertarianism).
; and 4) we should stop waging foreign wars.
The Republican Party, as long as I have been alive (since 1964) has done everything in its power to defeat every single one of these things. It is the party of huge tax cuts, huge favors for the wealthy, union busting, and endless foreign wars. Every truly wealthy person I know is a Republican. Every one. There are some people who are worth $1-2M who hang in there as Democrats, but the people I know who are worth $5-500M are all GOP, and strong GOP. I have attended conventions where these people gather. The things I have heard just absolutely shock me. I attended one presentation where the presenter bragged that he had convinced a group of minimum wage workers that their wages should never go up or they would all be fired. He had them fill out form letters to send to their elected representatives arguing that any increased wages would cost them all their jobs. I know people who make $10M a year and yet fight a $1 minimum wage increased because (they say) it would "bankrupt" them. Again, these are all Republicans.
The things that most help raise wages for the bottom rung of wage earners are 1) unionization, 2) minimum wage increases. The GOP opposes these as if they were a bill to endorse widespread introduction of The Plague. So, exactly what Republican position is the GOP going to take that would make it so the white male in Lewiston, Maine who Carlson cares so much about can make more money? Well, he needs givernment "help." What is that? That is unclear. But we know that Carlson can no longer stand a world in which the millions of people who live in NYC and LA get more done for them than the 40,000 people who live in Wyoming County, NY.
This seems an unbelievably odd position for anyone (Democrat or Republican) to take. As someone from the sticks, I realized early on in my life that if I wanted to make something of myself that I needed to 1) do well in school, 2) get higher edication, and 3) take advantage of any scholarships or loans that favored me. Then I had to move to a growing area where jobes were plentiful and my acquired knowledge would be worth money.
I was born into a family that made about $25-40,000 during my K-12 years. My parents had five kids. That was my life. I had a better life than 98% of people I knew where I grew up. But that was not a life I wanted for myself. I wanted out. Everyone knew that, and many people sneered at that idea, that I was not content with my place in life and did not want to stick around and make the best of the area where I grew up. But I really could not see myself ever being that person. I got scholarships, I borrrowed money, I left.
I cannot accept, then or now, that as a lower-tier economic person I had some obligation to stay in a rural area where no one made any money. While I am fully 100% aware of the derogatory manner in which city people treat rural people, and it sucks, I would never, as an educated person, suggest that the government owes my 40,000 person county the attention that it owes the 30,000,000 people in metro L.A. and NYC. Carlson's suggestion that the person in a rural area should be given a greater chance than the people in areas close to jobs and industry is nonsensical. It is like someone saying that 5'8" white guys from rural areas need a chance at the NBA, not just the much taller and more athletic players found almost entirely in the city and surrounding suburbs.
So, if what Tucker Carlson is suggesting is that men need higher wages and more manufacturing jobs, he needs to support unions, increased minimum wage laws, and government requirements upon industries to keep and create jobs. None of these are Republican positions. If he wants tax increases on Bain Capital, that is a VERY easy fix. There are under 20,000 people who game the system that way. They have 20,000 votes. If you pass a law, there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop it. Again, the GOP under Trump passed an enormous tax cut. Had they wanted to pass an enormous tax INCREASE on the super welathy and private equity companies, they could have done that in a snap of their fingers. They did not, nor will they ever.
While I agree that the Poor Wing of the GOP should draw more attention from elected reprsentatives than the Rich Wing of the GOP, the only attention that Wing has received is tacit or not-so-tacit support for their rampant racism, and maybe a bone thrown to them for reduced sentences for opiod crimes. Great. Where are the jobs promised to these poor unfortunate rural white guys? There are none. And Tucker Carlson's proposal appears to be that we get General Motors to build plants it doesn't need in poor white rural areas......hiring only men. Therefore, the guys I went to high school with, who had sired three children by the time they were 23, will now suddenly be deemed to be desirable target for marriage. Their wives will agree to stay home and not work, and the world that has sucked since the steel industry went under in 1977 will suddenly srping to a glorius life.
(Or else the company will pay them $10/hour, no benefits, and the sole shareholder will make $300,000,000 and ship their jobs to Mexico when they unionize. One or the other.).
This is an interesting speech to give. Carlson, apparently upset by Mitt Romney's disagreement with Donald Trump's behavior, basically goes after the Rich Wing of the Republican Party and states that the only way to a happier and healthier America is the abandonment of tax cuts and wars and finding some way to increase pay for men, particularly for men in rural areas.
The part of the speech that is getting criticized is the call for women to stop working so much, go back to making less money than men, and (for God sake) please stop having kids out of wedlock. Do like the wealthy do -- get married first and only then have kids.
The difficulty with this approach is that it lumps in every sort of person into the category of "single parenthood is bad." Is a woman who makes $200,000 and who has never been married going to be a worse parent than a "2 parent family" where one works, or neither works, or both cannot afford daily necessities for themselves or the child? Certainly not. And if you have a child out of wedlock, is that worse than the person who has a child in wedlock and then divorces when the child is 5-8-10 years old? We know that 50% of marriages end in divorce. We also know that many middle-income and lower-income non-custodial parents do not pay their child support. How is that child better off?
I think that what Tucker Carlson is really describing is the lower-middle-class or poor 16-22 year old woman who gets pregnant by an acquaintance and decides to have the child and not give it up for adoption. Yes, that generally ends poorly because the child lacks both attention and money. This is the worst of al worlds.
But Carlson uses the terrible results of this sort of relationship/condition to justify his position that women should stop making so much more than men -- since these men are not marriage material, and the wealthy women just have a kid on their own. Again, I refuse to believe that a child raised by an affluent single mom is generally in a worse situation than a child raised in a divorced family, a family where a parent dies, or any of a number of abusive two-parent families. I guess we could see the data, but you'd have to convince me that is true.
I'd like to say one last thing on that topic. I grew up in a lily white county in western NY. In the 1970s and early 80s, we were #1 in NY in per capita teen pregnancy. #1. And 90% of the teen preganancy was due to poor to lower middle class guys having sex with poor to middle class women. It had nothing whatsoever to do with these teenagers seeing men as unworthy of marriage. They lived a shitty life, they wanted something to do, they had unprotected sex. We also know that out of wedlock pregnancies exist in poor urban areas where a majority of the population has never had any decent job. So to blame women having kids out of wedlock on men having fewer manufacturing jobs seems like an awful stretch.
Anyway - Tucker Carlson's other points are rather weird ones for a Republican to be making: 1) Mitt Romney doesn't get taxed enough; 2) the tax code favors the wealthy, 3) government should do something to make sure working men get fair wages (he really doesn't say what, other than to say he opposes socialism or libertarianism).
; and 4) we should stop waging foreign wars.
The Republican Party, as long as I have been alive (since 1964) has done everything in its power to defeat every single one of these things. It is the party of huge tax cuts, huge favors for the wealthy, union busting, and endless foreign wars. Every truly wealthy person I know is a Republican. Every one. There are some people who are worth $1-2M who hang in there as Democrats, but the people I know who are worth $5-500M are all GOP, and strong GOP. I have attended conventions where these people gather. The things I have heard just absolutely shock me. I attended one presentation where the presenter bragged that he had convinced a group of minimum wage workers that their wages should never go up or they would all be fired. He had them fill out form letters to send to their elected representatives arguing that any increased wages would cost them all their jobs. I know people who make $10M a year and yet fight a $1 minimum wage increased because (they say) it would "bankrupt" them. Again, these are all Republicans.
The things that most help raise wages for the bottom rung of wage earners are 1) unionization, 2) minimum wage increases. The GOP opposes these as if they were a bill to endorse widespread introduction of The Plague. So, exactly what Republican position is the GOP going to take that would make it so the white male in Lewiston, Maine who Carlson cares so much about can make more money? Well, he needs givernment "help." What is that? That is unclear. But we know that Carlson can no longer stand a world in which the millions of people who live in NYC and LA get more done for them than the 40,000 people who live in Wyoming County, NY.
This seems an unbelievably odd position for anyone (Democrat or Republican) to take. As someone from the sticks, I realized early on in my life that if I wanted to make something of myself that I needed to 1) do well in school, 2) get higher edication, and 3) take advantage of any scholarships or loans that favored me. Then I had to move to a growing area where jobes were plentiful and my acquired knowledge would be worth money.
I was born into a family that made about $25-40,000 during my K-12 years. My parents had five kids. That was my life. I had a better life than 98% of people I knew where I grew up. But that was not a life I wanted for myself. I wanted out. Everyone knew that, and many people sneered at that idea, that I was not content with my place in life and did not want to stick around and make the best of the area where I grew up. But I really could not see myself ever being that person. I got scholarships, I borrrowed money, I left.
I cannot accept, then or now, that as a lower-tier economic person I had some obligation to stay in a rural area where no one made any money. While I am fully 100% aware of the derogatory manner in which city people treat rural people, and it sucks, I would never, as an educated person, suggest that the government owes my 40,000 person county the attention that it owes the 30,000,000 people in metro L.A. and NYC. Carlson's suggestion that the person in a rural area should be given a greater chance than the people in areas close to jobs and industry is nonsensical. It is like someone saying that 5'8" white guys from rural areas need a chance at the NBA, not just the much taller and more athletic players found almost entirely in the city and surrounding suburbs.
So, if what Tucker Carlson is suggesting is that men need higher wages and more manufacturing jobs, he needs to support unions, increased minimum wage laws, and government requirements upon industries to keep and create jobs. None of these are Republican positions. If he wants tax increases on Bain Capital, that is a VERY easy fix. There are under 20,000 people who game the system that way. They have 20,000 votes. If you pass a law, there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop it. Again, the GOP under Trump passed an enormous tax cut. Had they wanted to pass an enormous tax INCREASE on the super welathy and private equity companies, they could have done that in a snap of their fingers. They did not, nor will they ever.
While I agree that the Poor Wing of the GOP should draw more attention from elected reprsentatives than the Rich Wing of the GOP, the only attention that Wing has received is tacit or not-so-tacit support for their rampant racism, and maybe a bone thrown to them for reduced sentences for opiod crimes. Great. Where are the jobs promised to these poor unfortunate rural white guys? There are none. And Tucker Carlson's proposal appears to be that we get General Motors to build plants it doesn't need in poor white rural areas......hiring only men. Therefore, the guys I went to high school with, who had sired three children by the time they were 23, will now suddenly be deemed to be desirable target for marriage. Their wives will agree to stay home and not work, and the world that has sucked since the steel industry went under in 1977 will suddenly srping to a glorius life.
(Or else the company will pay them $10/hour, no benefits, and the sole shareholder will make $300,000,000 and ship their jobs to Mexico when they unionize. One or the other.).
Thursday, October 25, 2018
The Weird Trend to Overrate Hakeem Olajuwon in All-Time Rankings
Look, I have Hakeem in my top 20 players of all-time. But the recent lists I have seen from younger guys all seem to put Hakeem as a top 10 or even (egad) top 5 player of all-time.
While overrating a great player such as Hakeem is nowhere near the sin that wildly overrating merely good players is (like Isiah Thomas and Kevin McHale - another recent trend, I see many lists with these guys ranked above Bob Pettit), I really cannot understand the trend.
First, it appears that the "Dream Shake" really has the young guys excited. Yes, Hakeem had a move that no one else has been able to exactly duplicate since. Great. So did George Gervin with his extreme finger roll and Bernard King with his half-beat jumper. OK, Does not make you a top 5 or top 10 player.
To place Hakeem as a top 10 player, you'd need to place him above guys like Bird, Magic and Bill Russell. If you look at the stat "MVP Award Shares" - Bird has 5.6, Magic 5.1, Russell 4.7. Haleem is 19th with 2.61, slightly behind Bob Pettit's 2.67.
Hakeem was only consider by voters to be a top 3 MVP candidate...........twice. 1992-93 and 1993-94. The year David supposedly "stole" his MVP, Hakeem actually finished 5th in MVP balloting. He never led the league in Win Shares or WS/48, he never led the league in VORP. He is not in the top 10 all-time in any of these stats.
The true argument that should be raging for or against Hakeem is whether he deserves to be higher on the all-time list than Bob Pettit, Moses Malone and/or David Robinson. This is the strata of player that Hakeem should be compared with. There is nothing at all in his record (either peak level or consistency over time) that suggests that he should be a top 10 or top 5 player.
So why the sudden surge in overrating? I would imagine it is because the young guys know that when Michael retired Hakeem won an MVP and won two titles. Well, the 1994 Rockets would have lost to a pretty average Knicks team had John Starks been able to make any wide open shot. And the 1995 Magic just collapsed after Nick Anderson blew game one by going 0-4 in the closing seconds of the game. Neither the Knicks nor the Magic were dynasties or dynasties in the making. Second, Michael Jordan has reportedly been recorded as saying that he feared Hakeem because he knew he couldn't stop him. That seems like an odd comment for Jordan to make, so it was probably just a subtle intended slam at some other player.
Of all-time playoff performers, Hakeem is 15th in Playoff Win Shares and tied for 16th in WS/48: http://bkref.com/tiny/kBCEW Of First-team all-NBA players, Hakeem has the 20th most Win Shares as a First-team all-NBA player: http://bkref.com/tiny/VpDUu Again, admirable. But when you have 73 Win Shares as an all-NBA player and Magic and Bird have over 120, how do you get ranked higher on all-time lists than they do? Because you were greater for a short period of time? That is not true either. Bird had 2 seasons better than Hakeem's best season; Magic had 4. Moses Malone had 4 seasons where he finished in the top 2 of MVP balloting, including three wins.
If we are judging players by team playoff success (an area where John Stockton and Karl Malone generally get killed in ratings) Hakeem's teams' career record in playoff series was 16-13. In 94 and 95 he was a combined 8-0, so the entire remainder of his career he was 8-13, including 9 first round exits and 3 failures to make the playoffs (including 1991-92 where Hakeem was 29 years old).
Stop and consider that for a second -- Hakeem played 18 seasons; his team reached the second round of the playoffs or better in only 6 of those seasons. Imagine the torching LeBron James would receive if two out of every three years his team was sitting home by Round 2. he would not be considered by some worthy of being even a top 50 player. Chris Paul has played 14 seasons and made the second round or better 5 times.
Karl Malone and Stockton were together for a 16 win and 18 loss playoff series record, and Karl added 3 wins and a loss for the 03-04 Lakers, so Karl was 19-19 in playoff series. Hakeem is not appreciably better.
(Bird's teams, BTW, 24-10 in playoff series).
So, anyway, I have no problem with Hakeem as a top 20 or even arguably top 15 player. He is not a top 10 player and certainly has no good argument to be a top 5 player. Let's PLEASE put an end to this one, and then we can move on to address the ridiculous overrating of Isiah and McHale.
While overrating a great player such as Hakeem is nowhere near the sin that wildly overrating merely good players is (like Isiah Thomas and Kevin McHale - another recent trend, I see many lists with these guys ranked above Bob Pettit), I really cannot understand the trend.
First, it appears that the "Dream Shake" really has the young guys excited. Yes, Hakeem had a move that no one else has been able to exactly duplicate since. Great. So did George Gervin with his extreme finger roll and Bernard King with his half-beat jumper. OK, Does not make you a top 5 or top 10 player.
To place Hakeem as a top 10 player, you'd need to place him above guys like Bird, Magic and Bill Russell. If you look at the stat "MVP Award Shares" - Bird has 5.6, Magic 5.1, Russell 4.7. Haleem is 19th with 2.61, slightly behind Bob Pettit's 2.67.
Hakeem was only consider by voters to be a top 3 MVP candidate...........twice. 1992-93 and 1993-94. The year David supposedly "stole" his MVP, Hakeem actually finished 5th in MVP balloting. He never led the league in Win Shares or WS/48, he never led the league in VORP. He is not in the top 10 all-time in any of these stats.
The true argument that should be raging for or against Hakeem is whether he deserves to be higher on the all-time list than Bob Pettit, Moses Malone and/or David Robinson. This is the strata of player that Hakeem should be compared with. There is nothing at all in his record (either peak level or consistency over time) that suggests that he should be a top 10 or top 5 player.
So why the sudden surge in overrating? I would imagine it is because the young guys know that when Michael retired Hakeem won an MVP and won two titles. Well, the 1994 Rockets would have lost to a pretty average Knicks team had John Starks been able to make any wide open shot. And the 1995 Magic just collapsed after Nick Anderson blew game one by going 0-4 in the closing seconds of the game. Neither the Knicks nor the Magic were dynasties or dynasties in the making. Second, Michael Jordan has reportedly been recorded as saying that he feared Hakeem because he knew he couldn't stop him. That seems like an odd comment for Jordan to make, so it was probably just a subtle intended slam at some other player.
Of all-time playoff performers, Hakeem is 15th in Playoff Win Shares and tied for 16th in WS/48: http://bkref.com/tiny/kBCEW Of First-team all-NBA players, Hakeem has the 20th most Win Shares as a First-team all-NBA player: http://bkref.com/tiny/VpDUu Again, admirable. But when you have 73 Win Shares as an all-NBA player and Magic and Bird have over 120, how do you get ranked higher on all-time lists than they do? Because you were greater for a short period of time? That is not true either. Bird had 2 seasons better than Hakeem's best season; Magic had 4. Moses Malone had 4 seasons where he finished in the top 2 of MVP balloting, including three wins.
If we are judging players by team playoff success (an area where John Stockton and Karl Malone generally get killed in ratings) Hakeem's teams' career record in playoff series was 16-13. In 94 and 95 he was a combined 8-0, so the entire remainder of his career he was 8-13, including 9 first round exits and 3 failures to make the playoffs (including 1991-92 where Hakeem was 29 years old).
Stop and consider that for a second -- Hakeem played 18 seasons; his team reached the second round of the playoffs or better in only 6 of those seasons. Imagine the torching LeBron James would receive if two out of every three years his team was sitting home by Round 2. he would not be considered by some worthy of being even a top 50 player. Chris Paul has played 14 seasons and made the second round or better 5 times.
Karl Malone and Stockton were together for a 16 win and 18 loss playoff series record, and Karl added 3 wins and a loss for the 03-04 Lakers, so Karl was 19-19 in playoff series. Hakeem is not appreciably better.
(Bird's teams, BTW, 24-10 in playoff series).
So, anyway, I have no problem with Hakeem as a top 20 or even arguably top 15 player. He is not a top 10 player and certainly has no good argument to be a top 5 player. Let's PLEASE put an end to this one, and then we can move on to address the ridiculous overrating of Isiah and McHale.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
My 9-Day Business Trip -- Top 10 Moments
I will save my pat-down experience at DFW for another Blog entry. It didn't occur outside the U.S., and it, in any event, deserves its own entry.
10. Met someone in Europe who sold military product to North Korea in 1988. Discussed Kim Jung-Il's claim to have shot an 18 on an 18-hole course.
9. Ate at an Italian restaurant where the owner knew my client -- received at least $200 worth of free food and drink (plus we paid for more than that). Probably the friendliest restaurant experience I have ever had.
8. Set foot in Iceland on a layover -- the forecast for the entire 10-day period was 40 and raining. They had us walk off the plane, outside, through a steady rain, no cover, no umbrellas to a bus 30 yards away. Unclear why they could not move the bus closer to us. I can add that every building I saw in Iceland was made of some sort of corrugated metal. Apparently since there are no forests on Iceland they ship in as much corrugated metal as they can.
Reykjavik from the air resembled Madison, Wisconsin in size.
7. Flew over the tip of Greenland on the way home -- awfully cool to see a place basically no one will ever go to.
Foreign travel features a lot of heart-stopping moments, which will be featured in items 6-5-4
6. Reached Iceland, walked through the steady rain to the bus, entered the terminal and got in line for the flight that the board says is "London Heathrow". About 75% of the way to the gate the sign changed to "Tel Aviv." Now, it would be cool to go to Tel Aviv, but it is a ways from London. I just stayed in line - F it, London or Tel Aviv here I come! It was London.
5. In Dublin when they give me a boarding card, unnoticed by me was that while my flight left at 3:40 p.m. the boarding card says "Gate Closes at 2:05 p.m." I first notice this warning at 2:10 p.m. while having a snack. I sprint to the security line, sweating profusely, hoping no one notices that I cannot go forward to the gate. No one mentions anything at all. I am at the gate by 2:18. I stop sweating around 2:30. I have no idea whether the "Gate Closes" time was merely advisory, an error, or just not enforced.
4. At Gate 402, PA announcement, "For those Americans traveling to Chicago, please go to U.S. pre-screening by Gate 408." Now: a) I had been through pre-screening back around Gate 301; b) every video board in the place says "Chicago - Gate 402"; and c) I doubt there is even pre-screening down by Gate 408. I walk up to the gate agent - "Um, pre-screening at Gate 408?" Reply - what are you talking about? "The announcement said...." Reply - there was never any such announcement. Walk back to my seat, confused, 4 different Americans ask me, "So, do we go down to Gate 408?" Sorry folks, no, we are all just sharing a mass hallucination. Stay here.
3. I ate at a London restaurant that is considered the best/most popular new restaurant in London -- it was very good, not super awesome. But the two things that will stick with me are: a) every guy was 20+ years older than his date; b) every guy was a 4-6 out of 10 and his date was an 8-10. I am not sure you could attend a Miss USA pageant and see this many beautiful women in one location. Client had to guaranty that the table would spend 600 pounds or we couldn't get a table.
2. I am pretty sure my town car driver on the way back was either a spy or a representative of the Russian government, but he thought I was HILARIOUS (which further aroused my suspicions). And he also loved 1980s-90s NBA basketball. We talked Jordan/Shaq/Barkley for 15 minutes. At the end of the drive, he gave me his card and said, "Man, if you are ever in London again, I really want you to call and I will drive you around again. We can talk some NBA." The guys was like 40 years old.
1. I met up with an old law school friend, which I always enjoy. Her husband was SUPER pissed that his train was late and it took him 2 hours to reach the restaurant. But he bought me dinner anyway, an offer which I probably should not have accepted so quickly (but sometimes my dad's cheapness really comes out of my DNA).
"HM, let us buy you dinner."
Me - Really?
"Sure. Why not?"
Me - OK.
Lesson for all those who interact with me - never offer me free stuff. I will take it.
HM
10. Met someone in Europe who sold military product to North Korea in 1988. Discussed Kim Jung-Il's claim to have shot an 18 on an 18-hole course.
9. Ate at an Italian restaurant where the owner knew my client -- received at least $200 worth of free food and drink (plus we paid for more than that). Probably the friendliest restaurant experience I have ever had.
8. Set foot in Iceland on a layover -- the forecast for the entire 10-day period was 40 and raining. They had us walk off the plane, outside, through a steady rain, no cover, no umbrellas to a bus 30 yards away. Unclear why they could not move the bus closer to us. I can add that every building I saw in Iceland was made of some sort of corrugated metal. Apparently since there are no forests on Iceland they ship in as much corrugated metal as they can.
Reykjavik from the air resembled Madison, Wisconsin in size.
7. Flew over the tip of Greenland on the way home -- awfully cool to see a place basically no one will ever go to.
Foreign travel features a lot of heart-stopping moments, which will be featured in items 6-5-4
6. Reached Iceland, walked through the steady rain to the bus, entered the terminal and got in line for the flight that the board says is "London Heathrow". About 75% of the way to the gate the sign changed to "Tel Aviv." Now, it would be cool to go to Tel Aviv, but it is a ways from London. I just stayed in line - F it, London or Tel Aviv here I come! It was London.
5. In Dublin when they give me a boarding card, unnoticed by me was that while my flight left at 3:40 p.m. the boarding card says "Gate Closes at 2:05 p.m." I first notice this warning at 2:10 p.m. while having a snack. I sprint to the security line, sweating profusely, hoping no one notices that I cannot go forward to the gate. No one mentions anything at all. I am at the gate by 2:18. I stop sweating around 2:30. I have no idea whether the "Gate Closes" time was merely advisory, an error, or just not enforced.
4. At Gate 402, PA announcement, "For those Americans traveling to Chicago, please go to U.S. pre-screening by Gate 408." Now: a) I had been through pre-screening back around Gate 301; b) every video board in the place says "Chicago - Gate 402"; and c) I doubt there is even pre-screening down by Gate 408. I walk up to the gate agent - "Um, pre-screening at Gate 408?" Reply - what are you talking about? "The announcement said...." Reply - there was never any such announcement. Walk back to my seat, confused, 4 different Americans ask me, "So, do we go down to Gate 408?" Sorry folks, no, we are all just sharing a mass hallucination. Stay here.
3. I ate at a London restaurant that is considered the best/most popular new restaurant in London -- it was very good, not super awesome. But the two things that will stick with me are: a) every guy was 20+ years older than his date; b) every guy was a 4-6 out of 10 and his date was an 8-10. I am not sure you could attend a Miss USA pageant and see this many beautiful women in one location. Client had to guaranty that the table would spend 600 pounds or we couldn't get a table.
2. I am pretty sure my town car driver on the way back was either a spy or a representative of the Russian government, but he thought I was HILARIOUS (which further aroused my suspicions). And he also loved 1980s-90s NBA basketball. We talked Jordan/Shaq/Barkley for 15 minutes. At the end of the drive, he gave me his card and said, "Man, if you are ever in London again, I really want you to call and I will drive you around again. We can talk some NBA." The guys was like 40 years old.
1. I met up with an old law school friend, which I always enjoy. Her husband was SUPER pissed that his train was late and it took him 2 hours to reach the restaurant. But he bought me dinner anyway, an offer which I probably should not have accepted so quickly (but sometimes my dad's cheapness really comes out of my DNA).
"HM, let us buy you dinner."
Me - Really?
"Sure. Why not?"
Me - OK.
Lesson for all those who interact with me - never offer me free stuff. I will take it.
HM
Monday, October 15, 2018
Ariana Grande Dumps Pete Davidson
http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/inside-ariana-grande-and-pete-davidsons-split-he-is-incredibly-heartbroken-exclusive/ar-BBOqqNC?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP17
When I was 25, I met a woman named Jordan. Absolutely gorgeous, absolutely a gold digger. I always say, "We met in an elevator - she was wearing a swimsuit, and I was wearing a suit and tie. We both saw what we really were interested in seeing."
Anyway, whatever I am, I am. If I am in decent shape, I can be a good solid 7. If not, well, 5. She was a 9 or 10.
We dated for three weeks. Then she just absolutely dumped me. "This is ridiculous; it is going nowhere. We are done." The funny thing about it is, this 3 week experience does not make anywhere near close to my 10 worst experiences with females I dated. Why? Well, who could possibly expect that this would ever occur. It always hurts to be bumped, but I can tell you that in two weeks Pete Davidson will be 100% fine. He played a starring role in the NBA. So now he might have to go back to being a 9th man in the Spanish League, but you cannot take that brief moment of stardom away from him.
HM
When I was 25, I met a woman named Jordan. Absolutely gorgeous, absolutely a gold digger. I always say, "We met in an elevator - she was wearing a swimsuit, and I was wearing a suit and tie. We both saw what we really were interested in seeing."
Anyway, whatever I am, I am. If I am in decent shape, I can be a good solid 7. If not, well, 5. She was a 9 or 10.
We dated for three weeks. Then she just absolutely dumped me. "This is ridiculous; it is going nowhere. We are done." The funny thing about it is, this 3 week experience does not make anywhere near close to my 10 worst experiences with females I dated. Why? Well, who could possibly expect that this would ever occur. It always hurts to be bumped, but I can tell you that in two weeks Pete Davidson will be 100% fine. He played a starring role in the NBA. So now he might have to go back to being a 9th man in the Spanish League, but you cannot take that brief moment of stardom away from him.
HM
Wednesday, October 03, 2018
22.5 Plus and 30 Plus "Game Scores" -- Who is the Best?
The idea of a "Game Score" statistic is basically to determine whether someone had a good game or not (rather than me searching through the box score, what generally would these stats, when combined, say about a player.
A Game Score is calculated as noted here https://captaincalculator.com/sports/basketball/game-score-calculator/
That calculator will also allow you to plug in some standard values for a player and figure out what that guy is probably doing on a nightly basis. For example, LeBron so uniformly goes 27-7-7 with a steal and a block that the people have lobbied to have the 27-7-7 part called a "LeBron." So if you plug in those values and have him shoot 50% from the floor and 70% from the line and turn it over 4 times, that is a 20.1 Game Score.
It is fair to say that a typical LeBron "Game Score" would be pretty welcome news to any coach in the league for any guy he had. The inventor of Game Score says he intended for 10 to be a "good" starter Game Score. I would consider the scale (based upon reviews I have done) to be as follows:
Good bench Game Score - 7
OK Starter Game Score - 10
Good Night for a Starter - 15
Very Good - 22,5
Outstanding (top 2 in the league that night) - 30
Superstar Level (rare for even great players) - 40
Call the Media - 50
Historically great 60 (it has happened 3 times)
With that as a baseline, I considered this question -- what NBA greats have had the most 22.5+ and 30+ games, and, more importantly, what percentage of their overall games were at these levels?
There were 23 guys who appeared on at least one of the "most total games" lists, limited to the top 20 in either category.
Of these 23 guys, here are how they did in percentage of regular season games over 22.5 Game Score
1. Jordan 53%
James 51.3%
Durant 41.1%
Barkley 38.5%
David Robinson 35.6%
Karl Malone 35.5%
Larry Bird 34.3%
Shaq 34%
Hakeem 33.6%
Harden 33.5%
Curry 33.3%
Magic 33.2%
Iverson 31.2%
Nique 30.55%
Westbrook 30.3%
CP3 - 30%
Kobe 29.9%
Wade 29.8%
Clyde Drexler 25.7%
Dirk 21.5%
Stockton 20.2%
Garnett 19.9%
Duncan 19.3%
So, we should probably stop here. Basketball-reference.com has records back to 1980. So Bird and Magic are all in. Kareem only gets the declining part of his career, Wilt, Oscar, West, Mikan, Pettit get nothing.
And what we see is that Good Team Defense is not generally rewarded (Duncan, KG, Stockton, Wade, Kobe, CP3 all plus defenders) while big scoring generally is rewarded (Iverson and Dominique Wilkins are not better players than KG or Duncan).
But, if you do a grading curve and say 10% get A's, 25% get B's, 35% get C's, 20% get Ds and 10% get Fs, you'd have
2 As - Jordan, James,
1 A minus -- Durant
1 B+ Barkley
6 Bs -- David, Karl, Bird, Shaq, Hakeem, Harden
8 Cs - Curry, Magic, Iverson, Nique, Westbrook, CP3, Kobe, Wade
1 D+ Drexler
2 Ds - Dirk, Stockton
1 D minus - Garnett
1 F - Duncan
On the 30 Plus Game Score, Michael Jordan so completely dominates this stat that he gets an A+ and literally no one else deserves an A. Michael destroys the curve.
1 A plus -- Jordan 24%
1 B+ - James 14.3%
8 Bs - Barkley 13.2%, Harden 12.95%, Bird 12.5%, David 11.6%, Curry 11.4%, Durant and Hakeem 10.5%, Shaq 10.3%
5 Cs - Magic 9.7%, Karl Malone 9.4%, Iverson 8.9%, Westbrook 8.8%, Kobe 8.3%
4 D's -- Wade & Nique 7.8%, Clyde 7.5%, CP3 7.3%
4 Fs -- Dirk, Stockton, KG, Duncan (all under 4%).
The lesson here is that a Game Score of 30 is pretty rare, even for great players. Jordan did it every 4 games, James every 7 games, but generally doing it even once out of every 8 games is pretty awesome and every 10 games is hard to do even for all-time greats.
If you drop down to 15+ as a Game Score, you will see that Jordan and James and Durant all are "good" or better 80% of the time (Jordan and James 81%, Durant 79%). Charles and Karl are in the 70s and then everyone else is in the 60s or 50s. Remarkably, Bird only had a 15+ Game Score 53% of the time, next to last after Stockton (50%).
We can examine that another time, but what is the answer here? Who are the best and most consistent in the 22.5 and 30 Game Scores?
The guys who are top 12 players in those categories combined:
12th - Magic (ekes in, by far the least consistent of these 12)
11th - Shaq
10th - Curry (wins tie with Shaq as Curry has a 7th place v. Shaq's 8th)
9th - Karl Malone
8th -- Hakeem
7th - Harden
6th - Durant
5th - David Robinson
4th - Bird
3rd - Barkley
2nd - James
1st - Jordan
Upside surprises - Harden, David, Barkley
Downside surprises - Kobe, Russ, CP3.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Serena Williams - Has Only Herself to Blame
In response to:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/tennis/serena-williams-us-open-controversy-comes-down-to-these-two-questions/ar-BBN6f6F?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP17
"This happens to me all of the time here!" wailed Serena Williams as she was given code of conduct penalties. Serena has played at the U.S. Open since 1998. She has had 4 incidents in which she thought she was wronged. In that same time period, she has won 6 U.S. Open titles.
So, to state that she has had bad things happen to her "all of the time" is ridiculous. If you play 20+ years, you are going to have 4 rough calls that you think are against you.
What do all of Serena's incidents have in common? 1) They occur when she is struggling or feels she is going to possibly lose. 2) They are made far worse than they need to be by her subsequent behavior.
In her 2018 incident, Serena's coach is called for illegal coaching. She says he never coached her. He says he always coaches her illegally, but it is a rule that is never called. So this is sort of like an offensive lineman arguing that he wasn't holding and his coach saying, "Of course he was holding, that is how we teach them to block - it is never called."
Now, let's assume that we can trust Serena's coach and he was coaching but it is never called. What occurs here is basically like LeBron James early in a Finals game being called for a touch foul when guarding a guy out front. It is either a bad call or a call that is just never made. LeBron now has two choices - he can either lose his mind or he can say "Geez, come on" and adjust his play accordingly. I'd strongly suggest option #2.
Asked after the match whether the chair umpire and she had run-ins in the past, Serena said no. She said the umpire had actually done many of her matches and performed quite well. Therefore, based upon her own words, she has no reason to suspect person bias or animus against her. What happened is you had a good referee make a bad call against you.
Serena is struggling with Naomi Osaka. Serena is concerned she is going to lose. She makes a bad shot. She then absolutely crushes her racket. This is, 100% of the time, a code violation. The refs will look the other way if you just skim the ground or abuse the racket a little. If you crush it and break the frame, that is a code violation 100% of the time. Serena now loses a point.
This is where things get weird. Serena thinks it should be a warning. No - you got the coaching warning for your warning, this is now a point. WHAT!?!? I got a coaching warning? Look, if you got a coaching warning; that was the time to contest that issue. Now that you have lost a point, you suddenly feel offended? "I have a kid. I don't cheat." Huh? What sort of claim/statement is that? I know a lot of players with a lot of kids. Many of those players cheat.
But now Serena (again, who is losing) suddenly sees the world is against her. She demands an apology.
This is sort of like LeBron in my example above walking up to the ref in the 3rd quarter after foul #4 and saying, "You owe me an apology for foul #1. Remember back them? I don't cheat; I have three kids." That sort of exchange would be unthinkable. But Serena is losing; she is melting down; the world is against her. She oddly pulls out the "I am a mom" argument.
The chair umpire, unsurprisingly, fails to provide the requested apology. This further angers Serena. Now she sees a vast conspiracy against her to deny her the title she wants. But we know at this point that Serena has two conduct violations; this is basically playing with four fouls. This is not the time to tempt fate. Serena now pushes her chips all in, "You are a thief. You stole a point from me."
Now, I have played a lot of sports and coached a lot of sports. I have had CONSTANT problems with officials. All of the time. You want to know what "all of the time" is? Basically every game. I don't care for officials, and I generally think they don't do a great job. That said, the general thing I would do in these situations is complain and complain and complain and then if the official told me to shut up, I'd shut up. I only have ever received two technical fouls. I have complained to referees 5,000+ times.
And I can tell you this - other than swearing at an official, the one thing they do NOT like is if you question their integrity. You can get away with saying a call was awful or hurt your club or saying "how can you possibly miss that?" What you cannot get away with - stuff like "Call it both ways" and "We all know who is supposed to win here." They do NOT appreciate that. And for good reason. As a general rule, they are trying. They may be bad, but they are trying. So if you state or imply that they are dishonest or biased, you're treading on very thin ice. If you call someone a mother-fucker or say they suck, that, in a way, is better than saying/implying that they are cheating against you.
Against that background, Serena should have known that she shouldn't have impugned the integrity of the umpire. The umpire in that situation now has been called a thief - dishonest, biased. He now has three options - 1) pretend he didn't hear it; 2) issue what James Blake calls a "soft warning" (hey, don't say that again); or 3) give a code violation (1 game penalty).
Now, since the whole thing is being recorded and the sound amplified, it is hard to do #1, particularly when Serena has been in your face about it already and demanded that you apologize for trying to do your job. If you do #2, you know what happens? Serena says, "Yeah? Well, you're a thief." and after the match she says "He baited me! I was just minding my own business and he knew I was upset and he baited me!" The chair umpire, eschewing these two worse options, did #3.
Now, the defenses of Serena are:
(A) She was treated unfairly because she is a woman. McEnroe did basically the same thing in a 1990 Australian Open match that he was LEADING in, and he was straight out defaulted.
Since Serena's opponent was, herself, a woman, it is a miracle that she somehow was able to abide by the conduct rules during such an unfair, anti-woman job of refereeing. Yet, like Michael Scott, Somehow She Managed.
It really does a huge disservice to women to claim that when a ref doesn't officiate as you want that he is somehow anti-woman. That sort of claim actually sets women back and separates them from men in a negative manner. I saw Anthony Davis get ejected from an NBA game last year. He deserved it. I wanted to watch him play, but he was gone; straight tossed. But he deserved it. He felt he was getting a raw deal and he said too much. Why should Serena get a pass because she is a woman?
(B) She should have been treated differently because she was Serena. Um, what do people CONSTANTLY bitch about with the NBA? Star players getting star treatment. Look, there is no evidence this umpire hated her. She herself said she'd never had any issues with him. So what the umpire was supposed to do (if we assume the coaching call was wrong) was spend the remainder of the match ignoring further violations? Because she is Serena Williams? I mean, wow. Come on.
(C) Tennis has always rewarded bad behavior. What I found most amusing about this defense is that it refers to incidents back in 1977-87 to state that this has always been the case in tennis.
As someone who was around back in 1977-87, I can assure you that there were multiple calls in the media and elsewhere to outright ban McEnroe for his tantrums. Conners was given a little more leeway since people liked him more, but certainly no one in the media ever stood up and said, "Geez, that John McEnroe/Ilie Nastase, we really admire them! Good for them for sticking up for themselves!"
(It should be noted here that McEnroe's dysfunction was really a terrible anger management problem. It made no difference whether he was winning or losing, he was just a dick on the court. If he were up 5-0, 30-love and the linesman missed a call, he'd lose his mind. (See his default at Aussie 1990, where he was actually ahead). Similarly, being hopelessly behind didn't calm him either. McEnroe viewed a missed call as a personal affront, thus rendering the time or circumstances of the call irrelevant. McEnroe lobbied endlessly for instant replay, way back in the late 70s early 80s.
In any event, since McEnroe's last Grand Slam win in 1984, 34 years ago, who have been the non-Serena standard bearers for tennis? Lendl was constantly carping about calls, but he never really did anything that caused a scene (he was once given a misconduct warning by an umpire who explained that "3 hours of constant bitching and moaning, even without profanity, adds up to a warning") Sampras (deadly boring, hardly spoke), Agassi (flashy and trash talking to his opponent, did some complaining but certainly not anywhere near McEnroe's class), Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray. Absolutely none of these guys is known as someone who constantly confronts umpires. Djokovic and Nadal can be a tad whiny when things don't go their way, but they push the envelope VERY little. Federer, as a general rule, doesn't even like to challenge obvious missed calls.
On the women's side, Navratilova could be a little testy, but Evert was not, Graf was not, Seles was not, Hingis was not, Clijsters was not, Henin was not. So, again, we have to harken back 35 years to find someone who is a star tennis player who is a problem or who is "glorified" for abusive behavior.
This defense of Serena is apparently that Serena's behavior could have been a LOT worse. OK, granted. Roberto Alomar once spit on an umpire and he is now in the Hall of Fame. So what? Serena reached the point where she should have known under any reasonable review of the situation that she should have kept quiet. She did not. When you reach that point as an athlete, you are playing with fire and you might get burned. She got burned.
If Serena really felt she had to call the umpire a "thief" to "stand up for what she believed in (which is a ridiculous position to take), then she should be ecstatic that she was sanctioned for it. You really cannot have it both ways. If I go into court as a lawyer and get so screwed over by a judge that I say, "Your honor, you are corrupt," then I better mean it and I better be willing to go to jail for contempt. If, instead, I just don't like that I lost and I just am blowing off steam and saying something to make myself feel better, I then have............only myself to blame.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/tennis/serena-williams-us-open-controversy-comes-down-to-these-two-questions/ar-BBN6f6F?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP17
"This happens to me all of the time here!" wailed Serena Williams as she was given code of conduct penalties. Serena has played at the U.S. Open since 1998. She has had 4 incidents in which she thought she was wronged. In that same time period, she has won 6 U.S. Open titles.
So, to state that she has had bad things happen to her "all of the time" is ridiculous. If you play 20+ years, you are going to have 4 rough calls that you think are against you.
What do all of Serena's incidents have in common? 1) They occur when she is struggling or feels she is going to possibly lose. 2) They are made far worse than they need to be by her subsequent behavior.
In her 2018 incident, Serena's coach is called for illegal coaching. She says he never coached her. He says he always coaches her illegally, but it is a rule that is never called. So this is sort of like an offensive lineman arguing that he wasn't holding and his coach saying, "Of course he was holding, that is how we teach them to block - it is never called."
Now, let's assume that we can trust Serena's coach and he was coaching but it is never called. What occurs here is basically like LeBron James early in a Finals game being called for a touch foul when guarding a guy out front. It is either a bad call or a call that is just never made. LeBron now has two choices - he can either lose his mind or he can say "Geez, come on" and adjust his play accordingly. I'd strongly suggest option #2.
Asked after the match whether the chair umpire and she had run-ins in the past, Serena said no. She said the umpire had actually done many of her matches and performed quite well. Therefore, based upon her own words, she has no reason to suspect person bias or animus against her. What happened is you had a good referee make a bad call against you.
Serena is struggling with Naomi Osaka. Serena is concerned she is going to lose. She makes a bad shot. She then absolutely crushes her racket. This is, 100% of the time, a code violation. The refs will look the other way if you just skim the ground or abuse the racket a little. If you crush it and break the frame, that is a code violation 100% of the time. Serena now loses a point.
This is where things get weird. Serena thinks it should be a warning. No - you got the coaching warning for your warning, this is now a point. WHAT!?!? I got a coaching warning? Look, if you got a coaching warning; that was the time to contest that issue. Now that you have lost a point, you suddenly feel offended? "I have a kid. I don't cheat." Huh? What sort of claim/statement is that? I know a lot of players with a lot of kids. Many of those players cheat.
But now Serena (again, who is losing) suddenly sees the world is against her. She demands an apology.
This is sort of like LeBron in my example above walking up to the ref in the 3rd quarter after foul #4 and saying, "You owe me an apology for foul #1. Remember back them? I don't cheat; I have three kids." That sort of exchange would be unthinkable. But Serena is losing; she is melting down; the world is against her. She oddly pulls out the "I am a mom" argument.
The chair umpire, unsurprisingly, fails to provide the requested apology. This further angers Serena. Now she sees a vast conspiracy against her to deny her the title she wants. But we know at this point that Serena has two conduct violations; this is basically playing with four fouls. This is not the time to tempt fate. Serena now pushes her chips all in, "You are a thief. You stole a point from me."
Now, I have played a lot of sports and coached a lot of sports. I have had CONSTANT problems with officials. All of the time. You want to know what "all of the time" is? Basically every game. I don't care for officials, and I generally think they don't do a great job. That said, the general thing I would do in these situations is complain and complain and complain and then if the official told me to shut up, I'd shut up. I only have ever received two technical fouls. I have complained to referees 5,000+ times.
And I can tell you this - other than swearing at an official, the one thing they do NOT like is if you question their integrity. You can get away with saying a call was awful or hurt your club or saying "how can you possibly miss that?" What you cannot get away with - stuff like "Call it both ways" and "We all know who is supposed to win here." They do NOT appreciate that. And for good reason. As a general rule, they are trying. They may be bad, but they are trying. So if you state or imply that they are dishonest or biased, you're treading on very thin ice. If you call someone a mother-fucker or say they suck, that, in a way, is better than saying/implying that they are cheating against you.
Against that background, Serena should have known that she shouldn't have impugned the integrity of the umpire. The umpire in that situation now has been called a thief - dishonest, biased. He now has three options - 1) pretend he didn't hear it; 2) issue what James Blake calls a "soft warning" (hey, don't say that again); or 3) give a code violation (1 game penalty).
Now, since the whole thing is being recorded and the sound amplified, it is hard to do #1, particularly when Serena has been in your face about it already and demanded that you apologize for trying to do your job. If you do #2, you know what happens? Serena says, "Yeah? Well, you're a thief." and after the match she says "He baited me! I was just minding my own business and he knew I was upset and he baited me!" The chair umpire, eschewing these two worse options, did #3.
Now, the defenses of Serena are:
(A) She was treated unfairly because she is a woman. McEnroe did basically the same thing in a 1990 Australian Open match that he was LEADING in, and he was straight out defaulted.
Since Serena's opponent was, herself, a woman, it is a miracle that she somehow was able to abide by the conduct rules during such an unfair, anti-woman job of refereeing. Yet, like Michael Scott, Somehow She Managed.
It really does a huge disservice to women to claim that when a ref doesn't officiate as you want that he is somehow anti-woman. That sort of claim actually sets women back and separates them from men in a negative manner. I saw Anthony Davis get ejected from an NBA game last year. He deserved it. I wanted to watch him play, but he was gone; straight tossed. But he deserved it. He felt he was getting a raw deal and he said too much. Why should Serena get a pass because she is a woman?
(B) She should have been treated differently because she was Serena. Um, what do people CONSTANTLY bitch about with the NBA? Star players getting star treatment. Look, there is no evidence this umpire hated her. She herself said she'd never had any issues with him. So what the umpire was supposed to do (if we assume the coaching call was wrong) was spend the remainder of the match ignoring further violations? Because she is Serena Williams? I mean, wow. Come on.
(C) Tennis has always rewarded bad behavior. What I found most amusing about this defense is that it refers to incidents back in 1977-87 to state that this has always been the case in tennis.
As someone who was around back in 1977-87, I can assure you that there were multiple calls in the media and elsewhere to outright ban McEnroe for his tantrums. Conners was given a little more leeway since people liked him more, but certainly no one in the media ever stood up and said, "Geez, that John McEnroe/Ilie Nastase, we really admire them! Good for them for sticking up for themselves!"
(It should be noted here that McEnroe's dysfunction was really a terrible anger management problem. It made no difference whether he was winning or losing, he was just a dick on the court. If he were up 5-0, 30-love and the linesman missed a call, he'd lose his mind. (See his default at Aussie 1990, where he was actually ahead). Similarly, being hopelessly behind didn't calm him either. McEnroe viewed a missed call as a personal affront, thus rendering the time or circumstances of the call irrelevant. McEnroe lobbied endlessly for instant replay, way back in the late 70s early 80s.
In any event, since McEnroe's last Grand Slam win in 1984, 34 years ago, who have been the non-Serena standard bearers for tennis? Lendl was constantly carping about calls, but he never really did anything that caused a scene (he was once given a misconduct warning by an umpire who explained that "3 hours of constant bitching and moaning, even without profanity, adds up to a warning") Sampras (deadly boring, hardly spoke), Agassi (flashy and trash talking to his opponent, did some complaining but certainly not anywhere near McEnroe's class), Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray. Absolutely none of these guys is known as someone who constantly confronts umpires. Djokovic and Nadal can be a tad whiny when things don't go their way, but they push the envelope VERY little. Federer, as a general rule, doesn't even like to challenge obvious missed calls.
On the women's side, Navratilova could be a little testy, but Evert was not, Graf was not, Seles was not, Hingis was not, Clijsters was not, Henin was not. So, again, we have to harken back 35 years to find someone who is a star tennis player who is a problem or who is "glorified" for abusive behavior.
This defense of Serena is apparently that Serena's behavior could have been a LOT worse. OK, granted. Roberto Alomar once spit on an umpire and he is now in the Hall of Fame. So what? Serena reached the point where she should have known under any reasonable review of the situation that she should have kept quiet. She did not. When you reach that point as an athlete, you are playing with fire and you might get burned. She got burned.
If Serena really felt she had to call the umpire a "thief" to "stand up for what she believed in (which is a ridiculous position to take), then she should be ecstatic that she was sanctioned for it. You really cannot have it both ways. If I go into court as a lawyer and get so screwed over by a judge that I say, "Your honor, you are corrupt," then I better mean it and I better be willing to go to jail for contempt. If, instead, I just don't like that I lost and I just am blowing off steam and saying something to make myself feel better, I then have............only myself to blame.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Sorting Through Old NBA MVP Award Voting Results
Sorting through some old MVP voting results on basketball-reference.com, I came up with some interesting tidbits:
1) Not all MVP balloting is the same. For example, many years only First Place ballots were requested. So, someone like LeBron James in 2017-18 got a higher "share" of potential "points" than did George Gervin in 1977-78, even though Gervin got more first place votes.
2) Voters have always been weird. In 1956-57, 12 guys received first place votes. Now, I realize that a league might be fairly even in talent level, but it seems hard to believe that 12 guys were deserving of 1st place MVP votes. Were people really uncertain as to whether Mel Hutchins was a better player than Cousy or Pettit? Cuz, ya know, Pettit lost by 2 votes, so maybe he could have used Hutchins' vote and/or Ray Felix's vote?
Similarly, in 1979-80, a voter split his vote between Julius Erving and Gus Williams, thus leaving Doc with 31.5 first-place votes. There appeared to be absolutely no good reason for doing this, but it was done. Similarly, were there really 2 people in 1979-80 who believed Dan Roundfield was the best player in the entire league?
Kelvin Ransey in 1980-81 received a first-place vote. He received no other votes. He had 2.8 Win Shares. Someone apparently believed he was more valuable than either MVP Julius Erving or runner up Larry Bird. Ransey's season was roughly half as good as the season of Caldwell Jones, who received one 11th place vote that same year
.
3) The stretch of MVP balloting from 1968 to 1979 is awfully rough to look at. Winners include Wes Unseld, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, and Bill Walton. None of these players had particularly great years (McAdoo in 1975 and 1976 when he finished 1-2 at least had historically great years).
A fairly good argument could be made that Kareem (won in 1971-72-74-76-77) should have won 3 or 4 MORE MVPs than he did! (Kareem's 1972-73 season he went 30-16-5 and had 22 Win Shares, He finished second to Dave Cowens' 20-16-4 with 12 Win Shares).
4) Wilt had ridiculous seasons where he failed to win MVP. Wilt went 50-25 in 1961-62, finished 2nd. Wilt followed that up with a 44-24 and finished.......7th (0 first-place votes). But 1963-64 is the true crime. Wilt posted arguably the best season of all-time - 37 points, 22 rebounds, 5 assists, 25 Win Shares, .325 Win Shares per 48. Won their division, reached the Finals, second best player was Tom Meschery.
Wilt posted the only season to that point (he later had another) where a player had over 10 offensive WS and over 10 defensive WS. Wilt finished second to Oscar.
It was seemingly the case that when Wilt had huge numbers the voters felt huge numbers did not matter, but when other posted huge numbers, suddenly huge numbers mattered.
5) There is a belief on Twitter that somehow "Steve Nash screwed Kobe out of the MVP" in two straight years. This is simply false. In 2004-05, Nash probably should have lost to Miami Shaq, that is true, but Kobe received 0 votes. Not 0 first-place votes.....0 votes. Not top 15 in balloting. In 2005-06, look, it was a terrible season overall (Heat beat Mavs in Finals). But Kobe did not lead the league in WS or WS/48 (he was 4th in both) and he finished 4th in balloting. His team was 45-37 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Sorry, he was not "screwed". Now, should Nash (8th in WS, 8th in WS/48) have won? Probably not, but.......
6) It is a common thread running through MVP results that point guards are generally overrated and get more MVP votes/awards than they deserve based upon their production. Evidence?
Cousy in 1956-57 was a far worse player than Bob Pettit - Cousy won
Oscar should have lost to Wilt 1963-64
Magic probably should have lost to Jordan in 1989 and 1990 (or Barkley 1990)
Iverson was 8th in WS and 9th in WS/48 when he defeated Duncan and Shaq in 2000-01
Jason Kidd finished 2nd to Tim Duncan in 2001-02 when Kidd was 13th in the league in WS and 14th in WS/48
Nash probably did not deserve to win either 2005 or 2006 and Nash finished SECOND AGAIN in 2007! In none of those years was Nash top 4 in Win Shares.
Derrick Rose in 2011 was 4th in the league in WS and 6th in WS/48. Not only did he defeat LeBron,
Dwight Howard and Kobe, but he absolutely DESTROYED them in MVP balloting - 113-4-3-1 in first place votes. So, in other words, while Rose was probably a top 5 player, voters treated his season as if it were Jordan 1996. It wasn't.
Curry and Harden had roughly the same season in 2014-15. Curry smoked Harden 100-25 in MVP balloting
Harden was the better player in 2016-17, but Russ' triple double gained him the nod over Harden.
7) The decision of voters to register a single vote for Carmelo in 2013 (over LeBron) and for Iverson over Shaq (2000) can only be seen as incredibly vindictive and designed just to hurt the legacies of those two winners. These were two of the greatest seasons of all-time, yet one voter felt the need to somehow poke his finger in the eye of the winner.
Even odder in the case of these two votes? The decision to vote for Melo/Iverson could have been better handled by voting for some more deserving player. For example, a Garnett/Durant set of votes in 2000/2013 would have looked far less like a "screw you" to LeBron/Shaq.
Similarly, the decision of voters to give 2 votes to Jermaine O'Neal and 1 vote to Peja in 2004 denied Garnett what should have been a unanimous MVP (Duncan only played 69 games, he finished 2nd overall in the race).
8) My list of the 36 best players of all-time generally contains the 1st and 2nd place winners of every year, except for the following:
Winners not in my top 36 -- Wes Unseld, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, Bob McAdoo, Bill Walton, Iverson, Rose, Westbrook.
2nd place guys not mentioned above and not in my top 36 -- Dolph Schayes, Nate Thurmond, Lenny Wilkens, George Gervin, Bernard King, Nique, Clyde Drexler, Alonzo Mourning, Jason Kidd, Dwight Howard, Kawhi Leonard.
Winners and Runners Up Since 1956-57 (controversial results in my opinion are listed in ALL CAPS)
1955-56 Petit over Arizin
56-57 -- COUSY over PETTIT
57-58 Russell over Schayes
58-59 Pettit over Russell
59-60 Wilt over Russell
60-61 Russell over Pettit
61-62Russell over Wilt
63-64 Russell over Baylor
1963-64 OSCAR OVER WILT
64-65 Russell over Oscar
65-66 Wilt over West
66-67 Wilt over Nate Thurmond
67-68 Wilt over Lenny Wilkins
1968-69 UNSELD OVER REED (Unseld not top 5 in WS)
69-70 Reed over West
70-71 Kareem over West
1972-73 COWENS OVER KAREEM
73-74 Kareem over McAdoo
74-75 McAdoo over Cowens
75-76 Kareem over McAdoo
76-77 Kareem over Walton
1977-78 WALTON OVER GERVIN (Walton played 58 games and had 8 WS, David Thompson or Gervin should have won MVP....or Kareem)
78-79 Moses over Gervin
79-80 Kareem over Doc
80-81 Doc over Bird
81-82 Moses over Bird
82-83 Moses over Bird
83-84 Bird over Bernard King
84-85 Bird over Magic
85-86 Bird over Dominique Wilkins
86-87 Magic over Jordan
87-88 Jordan over Bird
88-89 Magic over Jordan (this vote also involved 1/2 votes for MVP - a voter split his vote between
Johnson and Jordan)
1989-90 MAGIC OVER BARKLEY - Magic actually had fewer first-place votes than Barkley!!
(27-38) but the presence of Jordan (21 firsts) gave Barkley enough bad ballots that he lost, becoming the only MVP loser to get the most first-place votes - something that in many years was not possible, because only first-place votes were cast.
1990-91 Jordan over Magic
91-92 Jordan over Clyde Drexler
92-93 Barkley over Olajuwon
1993-94 HAKEEM over DAVID ROBINSON - while the urban legend is that David stole Hakeem's MVP in 1995, the fact is that David had 20 WS to Hakeem's 14 here. In fact, Shaq had a better year than Hakeem and also would have been a better regular season MVP.
1994-95 David over Shaq (again, note, this is where lore states that Hakeem was screwed and got revenge in the playoffs; Hakeem's 1995 wasn't a great year, 9th in WS, received one 1st place vote.
1995-96 Jordan over David
1996-97 KARL MALONE OVER MICHAEL JORDAN
This certainly is not a hugely controversial result (Malone had a HUGE year) but Jordan was still the better player and he had the slightly better year. Certainly when you consider that Jordan would fall one MVP short of Kareem, this one and 1989-90 have to sting.
97-98 Jordan over Karl Malone
98-99 Karl over Zo (50 game year - was a weird year, Karl deserved the award)
1999-2000 Shaq over KG
2000-01 IVERSON OVER DUNCAN -- Shaq, Duncan and Garnett were the league's 3 best players
2001-02 Duncan over Kidd (very weird that this was a close vote, Duncan the far superior player)
2002-03 Duncan over KG (note - this was the MONSTER year for Tracy McGrady, didn't do much for him - he finished 4th)
2003-04 KG over Duncan (worthy of note how great of a year Peja Stoyakovic had - roughly 30% better than any year he ever had. This is the only year he ever had where he was top 10 in either VORP or WS....still didn't deserve his one first-place vote)! Jermaine O'Neal received one of his 2 first-place votes because a writer felt "I don't like how KG treats us in the locker room"
2004-05 NASH OVER MIAMI SHAQ (note the number of times Shaq gets under-voted)
2005-06 NASH OVER LeBRON (probably should have been Dirk or LeBron)
06-07 Dirk over Nash (as stated above this was actually Nash's best year)
07-08 Kobe over CP3
08-09 LeBron over Kobe
2009-10 LeBron over Durant
2010-11 DERRICK ROSE OVER DWIGHT HOWARD (three best players were James, Howard, CP3) The denial of LeBron here prevented him from winning 5 straight, no one has ever won even 4 straight.
11-12 James over Durant
12-13 James over Durant (this is the bizarre Melo first-place vote year)
13-14 Durant over James ("the real MVP" speech)
14-15 Curry over Harden (two guys had almost the same stats, HUGE blowout win for Curry)
15-16 Curry unanimous over Kawhi -- now, Curry had a top 15 all-time season, but that does not answer the question of why he was suddenly unanimous MVP when others had had similar seasons before:
http://bkref.com/tiny/rzugk and not only NOT been unanimous winners, but had even lost!! with similar stats.
2016-17 WESTBROOK OVER HARDEN -- simply put, Harden had a better year than Westbrook, and Harden's team was better than Westbrook's. This is the triumph of Usage Rate over careful consideration. To make matters worse, the vote was not particularly close (69-22 in first-place votes)
finally
2017-18 Harden over LeBron
The end....for now.
1) Not all MVP balloting is the same. For example, many years only First Place ballots were requested. So, someone like LeBron James in 2017-18 got a higher "share" of potential "points" than did George Gervin in 1977-78, even though Gervin got more first place votes.
2) Voters have always been weird. In 1956-57, 12 guys received first place votes. Now, I realize that a league might be fairly even in talent level, but it seems hard to believe that 12 guys were deserving of 1st place MVP votes. Were people really uncertain as to whether Mel Hutchins was a better player than Cousy or Pettit? Cuz, ya know, Pettit lost by 2 votes, so maybe he could have used Hutchins' vote and/or Ray Felix's vote?
Similarly, in 1979-80, a voter split his vote between Julius Erving and Gus Williams, thus leaving Doc with 31.5 first-place votes. There appeared to be absolutely no good reason for doing this, but it was done. Similarly, were there really 2 people in 1979-80 who believed Dan Roundfield was the best player in the entire league?
Kelvin Ransey in 1980-81 received a first-place vote. He received no other votes. He had 2.8 Win Shares. Someone apparently believed he was more valuable than either MVP Julius Erving or runner up Larry Bird. Ransey's season was roughly half as good as the season of Caldwell Jones, who received one 11th place vote that same year
.
3) The stretch of MVP balloting from 1968 to 1979 is awfully rough to look at. Winners include Wes Unseld, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, and Bill Walton. None of these players had particularly great years (McAdoo in 1975 and 1976 when he finished 1-2 at least had historically great years).
A fairly good argument could be made that Kareem (won in 1971-72-74-76-77) should have won 3 or 4 MORE MVPs than he did! (Kareem's 1972-73 season he went 30-16-5 and had 22 Win Shares, He finished second to Dave Cowens' 20-16-4 with 12 Win Shares).
4) Wilt had ridiculous seasons where he failed to win MVP. Wilt went 50-25 in 1961-62, finished 2nd. Wilt followed that up with a 44-24 and finished.......7th (0 first-place votes). But 1963-64 is the true crime. Wilt posted arguably the best season of all-time - 37 points, 22 rebounds, 5 assists, 25 Win Shares, .325 Win Shares per 48. Won their division, reached the Finals, second best player was Tom Meschery.
Wilt posted the only season to that point (he later had another) where a player had over 10 offensive WS and over 10 defensive WS. Wilt finished second to Oscar.
It was seemingly the case that when Wilt had huge numbers the voters felt huge numbers did not matter, but when other posted huge numbers, suddenly huge numbers mattered.
5) There is a belief on Twitter that somehow "Steve Nash screwed Kobe out of the MVP" in two straight years. This is simply false. In 2004-05, Nash probably should have lost to Miami Shaq, that is true, but Kobe received 0 votes. Not 0 first-place votes.....0 votes. Not top 15 in balloting. In 2005-06, look, it was a terrible season overall (Heat beat Mavs in Finals). But Kobe did not lead the league in WS or WS/48 (he was 4th in both) and he finished 4th in balloting. His team was 45-37 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Sorry, he was not "screwed". Now, should Nash (8th in WS, 8th in WS/48) have won? Probably not, but.......
6) It is a common thread running through MVP results that point guards are generally overrated and get more MVP votes/awards than they deserve based upon their production. Evidence?
Cousy in 1956-57 was a far worse player than Bob Pettit - Cousy won
Oscar should have lost to Wilt 1963-64
Magic probably should have lost to Jordan in 1989 and 1990 (or Barkley 1990)
Iverson was 8th in WS and 9th in WS/48 when he defeated Duncan and Shaq in 2000-01
Jason Kidd finished 2nd to Tim Duncan in 2001-02 when Kidd was 13th in the league in WS and 14th in WS/48
Nash probably did not deserve to win either 2005 or 2006 and Nash finished SECOND AGAIN in 2007! In none of those years was Nash top 4 in Win Shares.
Derrick Rose in 2011 was 4th in the league in WS and 6th in WS/48. Not only did he defeat LeBron,
Dwight Howard and Kobe, but he absolutely DESTROYED them in MVP balloting - 113-4-3-1 in first place votes. So, in other words, while Rose was probably a top 5 player, voters treated his season as if it were Jordan 1996. It wasn't.
Curry and Harden had roughly the same season in 2014-15. Curry smoked Harden 100-25 in MVP balloting
Harden was the better player in 2016-17, but Russ' triple double gained him the nod over Harden.
7) The decision of voters to register a single vote for Carmelo in 2013 (over LeBron) and for Iverson over Shaq (2000) can only be seen as incredibly vindictive and designed just to hurt the legacies of those two winners. These were two of the greatest seasons of all-time, yet one voter felt the need to somehow poke his finger in the eye of the winner.
Even odder in the case of these two votes? The decision to vote for Melo/Iverson could have been better handled by voting for some more deserving player. For example, a Garnett/Durant set of votes in 2000/2013 would have looked far less like a "screw you" to LeBron/Shaq.
Similarly, the decision of voters to give 2 votes to Jermaine O'Neal and 1 vote to Peja in 2004 denied Garnett what should have been a unanimous MVP (Duncan only played 69 games, he finished 2nd overall in the race).
8) My list of the 36 best players of all-time generally contains the 1st and 2nd place winners of every year, except for the following:
Winners not in my top 36 -- Wes Unseld, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, Bob McAdoo, Bill Walton, Iverson, Rose, Westbrook.
2nd place guys not mentioned above and not in my top 36 -- Dolph Schayes, Nate Thurmond, Lenny Wilkens, George Gervin, Bernard King, Nique, Clyde Drexler, Alonzo Mourning, Jason Kidd, Dwight Howard, Kawhi Leonard.
Winners and Runners Up Since 1956-57 (controversial results in my opinion are listed in ALL CAPS)
1955-56 Petit over Arizin
56-57 -- COUSY over PETTIT
57-58 Russell over Schayes
58-59 Pettit over Russell
59-60 Wilt over Russell
60-61 Russell over Pettit
61-62Russell over Wilt
63-64 Russell over Baylor
1963-64 OSCAR OVER WILT
64-65 Russell over Oscar
65-66 Wilt over West
66-67 Wilt over Nate Thurmond
67-68 Wilt over Lenny Wilkins
1968-69 UNSELD OVER REED (Unseld not top 5 in WS)
69-70 Reed over West
70-71 Kareem over West
1972-73 COWENS OVER KAREEM
73-74 Kareem over McAdoo
74-75 McAdoo over Cowens
75-76 Kareem over McAdoo
76-77 Kareem over Walton
1977-78 WALTON OVER GERVIN (Walton played 58 games and had 8 WS, David Thompson or Gervin should have won MVP....or Kareem)
78-79 Moses over Gervin
79-80 Kareem over Doc
80-81 Doc over Bird
81-82 Moses over Bird
82-83 Moses over Bird
83-84 Bird over Bernard King
84-85 Bird over Magic
85-86 Bird over Dominique Wilkins
86-87 Magic over Jordan
87-88 Jordan over Bird
88-89 Magic over Jordan (this vote also involved 1/2 votes for MVP - a voter split his vote between
Johnson and Jordan)
1989-90 MAGIC OVER BARKLEY - Magic actually had fewer first-place votes than Barkley!!
(27-38) but the presence of Jordan (21 firsts) gave Barkley enough bad ballots that he lost, becoming the only MVP loser to get the most first-place votes - something that in many years was not possible, because only first-place votes were cast.
1990-91 Jordan over Magic
91-92 Jordan over Clyde Drexler
92-93 Barkley over Olajuwon
1993-94 HAKEEM over DAVID ROBINSON - while the urban legend is that David stole Hakeem's MVP in 1995, the fact is that David had 20 WS to Hakeem's 14 here. In fact, Shaq had a better year than Hakeem and also would have been a better regular season MVP.
1994-95 David over Shaq (again, note, this is where lore states that Hakeem was screwed and got revenge in the playoffs; Hakeem's 1995 wasn't a great year, 9th in WS, received one 1st place vote.
1995-96 Jordan over David
1996-97 KARL MALONE OVER MICHAEL JORDAN
This certainly is not a hugely controversial result (Malone had a HUGE year) but Jordan was still the better player and he had the slightly better year. Certainly when you consider that Jordan would fall one MVP short of Kareem, this one and 1989-90 have to sting.
97-98 Jordan over Karl Malone
98-99 Karl over Zo (50 game year - was a weird year, Karl deserved the award)
1999-2000 Shaq over KG
2000-01 IVERSON OVER DUNCAN -- Shaq, Duncan and Garnett were the league's 3 best players
2001-02 Duncan over Kidd (very weird that this was a close vote, Duncan the far superior player)
2002-03 Duncan over KG (note - this was the MONSTER year for Tracy McGrady, didn't do much for him - he finished 4th)
2003-04 KG over Duncan (worthy of note how great of a year Peja Stoyakovic had - roughly 30% better than any year he ever had. This is the only year he ever had where he was top 10 in either VORP or WS....still didn't deserve his one first-place vote)! Jermaine O'Neal received one of his 2 first-place votes because a writer felt "I don't like how KG treats us in the locker room"
2004-05 NASH OVER MIAMI SHAQ (note the number of times Shaq gets under-voted)
2005-06 NASH OVER LeBRON (probably should have been Dirk or LeBron)
06-07 Dirk over Nash (as stated above this was actually Nash's best year)
07-08 Kobe over CP3
08-09 LeBron over Kobe
2009-10 LeBron over Durant
2010-11 DERRICK ROSE OVER DWIGHT HOWARD (three best players were James, Howard, CP3) The denial of LeBron here prevented him from winning 5 straight, no one has ever won even 4 straight.
11-12 James over Durant
12-13 James over Durant (this is the bizarre Melo first-place vote year)
13-14 Durant over James ("the real MVP" speech)
14-15 Curry over Harden (two guys had almost the same stats, HUGE blowout win for Curry)
15-16 Curry unanimous over Kawhi -- now, Curry had a top 15 all-time season, but that does not answer the question of why he was suddenly unanimous MVP when others had had similar seasons before:
http://bkref.com/tiny/rzugk and not only NOT been unanimous winners, but had even lost!! with similar stats.
2016-17 WESTBROOK OVER HARDEN -- simply put, Harden had a better year than Westbrook, and Harden's team was better than Westbrook's. This is the triumph of Usage Rate over careful consideration. To make matters worse, the vote was not particularly close (69-22 in first-place votes)
finally
2017-18 Harden over LeBron
The end....for now.
Friday, June 29, 2018
Whether He Stays Or Not, LeBron James' Return to Cleveland Has Been A Stroke of Genius
After the Heat lost to the Spurs in 2014, LeBron figured (correctly) that Dwyane Wade as a player was shot, Chris Bosh wasn't going to get the job done as a reasonable #2 option, and LeBron had no chance to contend for a title in Miami.
Chris Bosh, post-LeBron, would play two years, register a total of 10 WS, and would be forced out of basketball due to health issues.
Dwyane Wade, since the 2014 Finals, has only put up 12.9 WS in 4 seasons and his best WS/48 season has been a .105 effort for Miami. He is now, for lack of a better word, terrible and should, if his name were not Dwyane Wade, be out of the league.
By joining the Cavs, James went to a club whose 3 best returning WS players (on a 33-49 club) were:
Kyrie 6.7
Tristan Thompson 5.7
Varejao 5.4
and no one else above 3 WS/
In 2014-15, James added his 10.4 WS to the mix, and he was able to get the Cavs to trade for Kevin Love.
This gave the Cavs (between LeBron and Love) 19.1 WS they did not have (James 10.4 and Love 8.7). Kyrie played better than he ever had (10.4 WS, up from 6.7) and the Cavs got 8 WS from players they eventually traded for (Mozgov, JR Smith).
Result - the 33 win Cavs become the 53 win Cavs and went to the Finals. Remarkably, in hindsight, the Cavs probably should have won that 2015 Finals series, except Kevin Love was assaulted by Kelly Olynyk in the playoffs and Kyrie Irving was physically shot by the end of Game 1 of the Finals and did not play again after Game 1. Looking at the 2015 and 2016 Finals, it is altogether possible that the Cavs with a healthy Kyrie and a healthy Kevin Love actually win both series (recall that Love had nagging injuries on and off through the 2016 playoffs as well). Perhaps the greatest confirmation of this fact is that the Warriors understood that a healthy James, healthy Kyrie and healthy Love might be too much for them and acquired the #2 player in all of basketball - Kevin Durant.
In any event, it really cannot be disputed that the 2014-16 Cavs were far superior to any team the Heat could have fielded in that time perios, and the 2015-16 Cavs actually defeated the 73-win Warriors.
So, at this point in the evaluation, we have to say that LeBron did pretty well for himself in The Return.
The 2016-17 Cavs lost in 5 to the Warriors, blowing a game in Cleveland they could have won, The 2017-18 Cavaliers were forced into a Kyrie Irving trade they never should have made (taking on a still sub-par physically Isaiah Thomas) and picked up a worthless Dwyane Wade. LeBron still led that team to a 50-32 mark and an Eastern Conference title, only to be swept in the Finals.
I heard a person on the radio the other day saying that the constant pressure on the Cavs to keep LeBron happy has "cost the club the ability to build with young players for the future." As a matter of fact, the Cavs have managed to acquire Rodney Hood and Jordan Clarkson, two younger players who have played at a WS/48 rate in their careers (outside the playoffs) that is perfectly acceptable. Same can be said of Larry Nance, Jr. So, basically the Cavs have three decent younger players and George Hill, plus whatever Colin Sexton brings them (the #8 pick in the draft). They also have a 30 year old Kevin Love who has been an all-star multiple times (certainly Love is not a top 10 or top 12 player, but he is still a low-level all-star when healthy, so, a 30 year old player who is a top 25 player in the league.
The cupboard is not bare for Cleveland. If Sexton is good, they have adequate players at PG and SG, a top-25 PF, and an adequate (albeit overpaid) center in Tristan Thompson. The Cavs are not trotting out multiple 35 year olds like the 2012 Brooklyn Nets or the Barkley/Hakeem/Pippen Rockets.
The Cavs have gone 211-117 (.643) with a title and 4 conference titles during the Return. They have an OK base to be a .500 team in the East, even if they get ZERO when LeBron leaves. The Return has been a grand success for Cleveland Cavaliers fans. More to the point of the title of this item, The Return has been great for LeBron James. He took a chance on turning around Cleveland, kept Dan Gilbert's feet to the luxury tax fire and came out looking good.
Chris Bosh, post-LeBron, would play two years, register a total of 10 WS, and would be forced out of basketball due to health issues.
Dwyane Wade, since the 2014 Finals, has only put up 12.9 WS in 4 seasons and his best WS/48 season has been a .105 effort for Miami. He is now, for lack of a better word, terrible and should, if his name were not Dwyane Wade, be out of the league.
By joining the Cavs, James went to a club whose 3 best returning WS players (on a 33-49 club) were:
Kyrie 6.7
Tristan Thompson 5.7
Varejao 5.4
and no one else above 3 WS/
In 2014-15, James added his 10.4 WS to the mix, and he was able to get the Cavs to trade for Kevin Love.
This gave the Cavs (between LeBron and Love) 19.1 WS they did not have (James 10.4 and Love 8.7). Kyrie played better than he ever had (10.4 WS, up from 6.7) and the Cavs got 8 WS from players they eventually traded for (Mozgov, JR Smith).
Result - the 33 win Cavs become the 53 win Cavs and went to the Finals. Remarkably, in hindsight, the Cavs probably should have won that 2015 Finals series, except Kevin Love was assaulted by Kelly Olynyk in the playoffs and Kyrie Irving was physically shot by the end of Game 1 of the Finals and did not play again after Game 1. Looking at the 2015 and 2016 Finals, it is altogether possible that the Cavs with a healthy Kyrie and a healthy Kevin Love actually win both series (recall that Love had nagging injuries on and off through the 2016 playoffs as well). Perhaps the greatest confirmation of this fact is that the Warriors understood that a healthy James, healthy Kyrie and healthy Love might be too much for them and acquired the #2 player in all of basketball - Kevin Durant.
In any event, it really cannot be disputed that the 2014-16 Cavs were far superior to any team the Heat could have fielded in that time perios, and the 2015-16 Cavs actually defeated the 73-win Warriors.
So, at this point in the evaluation, we have to say that LeBron did pretty well for himself in The Return.
The 2016-17 Cavs lost in 5 to the Warriors, blowing a game in Cleveland they could have won, The 2017-18 Cavaliers were forced into a Kyrie Irving trade they never should have made (taking on a still sub-par physically Isaiah Thomas) and picked up a worthless Dwyane Wade. LeBron still led that team to a 50-32 mark and an Eastern Conference title, only to be swept in the Finals.
I heard a person on the radio the other day saying that the constant pressure on the Cavs to keep LeBron happy has "cost the club the ability to build with young players for the future." As a matter of fact, the Cavs have managed to acquire Rodney Hood and Jordan Clarkson, two younger players who have played at a WS/48 rate in their careers (outside the playoffs) that is perfectly acceptable. Same can be said of Larry Nance, Jr. So, basically the Cavs have three decent younger players and George Hill, plus whatever Colin Sexton brings them (the #8 pick in the draft). They also have a 30 year old Kevin Love who has been an all-star multiple times (certainly Love is not a top 10 or top 12 player, but he is still a low-level all-star when healthy, so, a 30 year old player who is a top 25 player in the league.
The cupboard is not bare for Cleveland. If Sexton is good, they have adequate players at PG and SG, a top-25 PF, and an adequate (albeit overpaid) center in Tristan Thompson. The Cavs are not trotting out multiple 35 year olds like the 2012 Brooklyn Nets or the Barkley/Hakeem/Pippen Rockets.
The Cavs have gone 211-117 (.643) with a title and 4 conference titles during the Return. They have an OK base to be a .500 team in the East, even if they get ZERO when LeBron leaves. The Return has been a grand success for Cleveland Cavaliers fans. More to the point of the title of this item, The Return has been great for LeBron James. He took a chance on turning around Cleveland, kept Dan Gilbert's feet to the luxury tax fire and came out looking good.
Friday, June 22, 2018
Trump Suporters Dating in D.C.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/22/trump-millennial-supporters-washington-dc-218833
The article has been read as saying Trump supporters/workers are having a tough time dating in D.C. My general thought after reading the whole article is, "Not really." Most of the people in the article don't really seem to care, and,like any good religion/cult, they have opportunities to hang out together and they take advantage of that. I don't see this article as really reflecting any huge problem or huge internal concern as a general rule.
Now, what are my thoughts outside of this article? Well, I am a moderate Democrat. I despise Trump, but I have some beliefs that are not consistent with the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. But as anyone who reads my Twitter feed (@hoopsmavenhm) knows, I am probably on the 70th percentile for liberal beliefs. As a white guy, that places me among the top 30% of the 38% of white men who voted against Trump, so of white guys who vote, let's assume I am top 13% liberal -- 87% of white guys in the U.S. who vote are probably more conservative than I am.
My belief (again, outside of this article) is that women who work for the Trump Administration will have absolutely no problem dating. First, they can pick from the 62% of the white male dating pool who voted for Trump (plus anyone who did not care enough about politics to vote against Trump).
Second, would I date Tomi Lahren? Yes. Britt McHenry? Yes. Would a young me date a young Ann Coulter? Yes. A young Michelle Malkin? Yes. A young Sarah Palin? Yes. Michele Bachmann - OK, close call, the wild eyes and religious fervor scare me.
So, what I am saying is that I REALLY doubt women who work for Trump are being rejected for dates solely or primarily due to their Trump affiliation.
Now, on the other hand, are there liberal women who will not date guys who are not SUPER liberal? Oh yes. Again, I am a fairly liberal guy. In 1988, working as a law clerk, I was telling a story at lunch about how I went to the bank and the "girl behind the counter gave me an umbrella for opening an account." Outrage follows -- The What? "Girl behind...." Uh, woman!! WOMAN!! NOT a girl!!!! "Well, she was younger than I...." WOMAN! Do not make me turn you in to Human Resources. The two law clerk women (see, lesson learned) did not go to HR, but did report me to the recruiting coordinator who had a partner sit me down and explain to me that to survive the summer I needed to be more sensitive and stop offending people. Again, this was 1988. The two women at issue never spoke to me again for the remainder of the summer.
Now, imagine we have moved forward 30 years and you are a male Trump supporter. The idea that you are actually a Trump supporter itself is probably a "microaggression," even if it is never announced. Now, consider beyond THAT all of the anti-liberal things that Trump has stated and stands for. He literally has admitted that he had sexually assaulted women for many years because he could get away with it! You WORK for him? Recall that two 24 year old women in 1988 literally would not SPEAK to me and wanted me fired for telling a story at an informal lunch calling a 21 year old woman a girl. (I am not kidding about this, this happened). What could the possible reaction be from women of this sort 30 years later when a dating candidate announces "yeah, the Bible says we need to put all Mexican children who are infesting our country in cages." I would suggest the reaction is not a good one.
I would also add that I knew some liberal women in law school who HATED me for not agreeing with 100% of what they said. One such person, at a law school reunion, was chatting with a close friend of mine. He stated, "Yeah, I have been hanging out with [Hoops Maven]." Reply? "Oh, wow, OK. Yeah, moving on."
So, I would estimate that being a female Trump supporter reduces your dating options maybe 2%. I would say being a male Trump supporter reduces your dating options 20-35%
That is just my opinion.
The article has been read as saying Trump supporters/workers are having a tough time dating in D.C. My general thought after reading the whole article is, "Not really." Most of the people in the article don't really seem to care, and,like any good religion/cult, they have opportunities to hang out together and they take advantage of that. I don't see this article as really reflecting any huge problem or huge internal concern as a general rule.
Now, what are my thoughts outside of this article? Well, I am a moderate Democrat. I despise Trump, but I have some beliefs that are not consistent with the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. But as anyone who reads my Twitter feed (@hoopsmavenhm) knows, I am probably on the 70th percentile for liberal beliefs. As a white guy, that places me among the top 30% of the 38% of white men who voted against Trump, so of white guys who vote, let's assume I am top 13% liberal -- 87% of white guys in the U.S. who vote are probably more conservative than I am.
My belief (again, outside of this article) is that women who work for the Trump Administration will have absolutely no problem dating. First, they can pick from the 62% of the white male dating pool who voted for Trump (plus anyone who did not care enough about politics to vote against Trump).
Second, would I date Tomi Lahren? Yes. Britt McHenry? Yes. Would a young me date a young Ann Coulter? Yes. A young Michelle Malkin? Yes. A young Sarah Palin? Yes. Michele Bachmann - OK, close call, the wild eyes and religious fervor scare me.
So, what I am saying is that I REALLY doubt women who work for Trump are being rejected for dates solely or primarily due to their Trump affiliation.
Now, on the other hand, are there liberal women who will not date guys who are not SUPER liberal? Oh yes. Again, I am a fairly liberal guy. In 1988, working as a law clerk, I was telling a story at lunch about how I went to the bank and the "girl behind the counter gave me an umbrella for opening an account." Outrage follows -- The What? "Girl behind...." Uh, woman!! WOMAN!! NOT a girl!!!! "Well, she was younger than I...." WOMAN! Do not make me turn you in to Human Resources. The two law clerk women (see, lesson learned) did not go to HR, but did report me to the recruiting coordinator who had a partner sit me down and explain to me that to survive the summer I needed to be more sensitive and stop offending people. Again, this was 1988. The two women at issue never spoke to me again for the remainder of the summer.
Now, imagine we have moved forward 30 years and you are a male Trump supporter. The idea that you are actually a Trump supporter itself is probably a "microaggression," even if it is never announced. Now, consider beyond THAT all of the anti-liberal things that Trump has stated and stands for. He literally has admitted that he had sexually assaulted women for many years because he could get away with it! You WORK for him? Recall that two 24 year old women in 1988 literally would not SPEAK to me and wanted me fired for telling a story at an informal lunch calling a 21 year old woman a girl. (I am not kidding about this, this happened). What could the possible reaction be from women of this sort 30 years later when a dating candidate announces "yeah, the Bible says we need to put all Mexican children who are infesting our country in cages." I would suggest the reaction is not a good one.
I would also add that I knew some liberal women in law school who HATED me for not agreeing with 100% of what they said. One such person, at a law school reunion, was chatting with a close friend of mine. He stated, "Yeah, I have been hanging out with [Hoops Maven]." Reply? "Oh, wow, OK. Yeah, moving on."
So, I would estimate that being a female Trump supporter reduces your dating options maybe 2%. I would say being a male Trump supporter reduces your dating options 20-35%
That is just my opinion.
Thursday, June 14, 2018
The Top 36 NBA Players of All-Time (as of April 2018)
36. James Harden
35. Steph Curry
34. Steve Nash
33. Gary Payton
32. Patrick Ewing
31. Dwyane Wade
30. Bob Cousy
29. Scottie Pippen
28. John Havlicek
27. Chris Paul
26. John Stockton
25. Rick Barry
24. Elgin Baylor
23. Dirk Nowitzki
22. Kevin Durant
21. Kevin Garnett
20. Charles Barkley
19. Julius Erving
18. Moses Malone
17. Hakeem Olajuwon
16. Bob Pettit
15. David Robinson
14. George Mikan
13. Karl Malone
12. Kobe Bryant
11. Oscar Robertson
10. Jerry West
9. Larry Bird
8. Shaquille O'Neal
7. Bill Russell
6. Magic Johnson
5. Tim Duncan
4. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Wilt Chamberlain
2. LeBron James
1. Michael Jordan
35. Steph Curry
34. Steve Nash
33. Gary Payton
32. Patrick Ewing
31. Dwyane Wade
30. Bob Cousy
29. Scottie Pippen
28. John Havlicek
27. Chris Paul
26. John Stockton
25. Rick Barry
24. Elgin Baylor
23. Dirk Nowitzki
22. Kevin Durant
21. Kevin Garnett
20. Charles Barkley
19. Julius Erving
18. Moses Malone
17. Hakeem Olajuwon
16. Bob Pettit
15. David Robinson
14. George Mikan
13. Karl Malone
12. Kobe Bryant
11. Oscar Robertson
10. Jerry West
9. Larry Bird
8. Shaquille O'Neal
7. Bill Russell
6. Magic Johnson
5. Tim Duncan
4. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Wilt Chamberlain
2. LeBron James
1. Michael Jordan
Thursday, May 31, 2018
The 51 Worst Statistical Games of 2017-18
Well, try as I might to get the list down to 50, it appears that we have a 6-way tie for 46th worst Game Score (around Negative 4.8) , so we have to go with 51.
Here you go: http://bkref.com/tiny/Eno78
Congrats to the SUPER overrated...
Kristaps Porzingis for winning "worst Game Score of 2017-18" (pre-NBA Finals Edition)
by posting a ridiculously terrible Negative 8.5. In a home Knicks WIN(!!!) against the Celtics, Porzingis played 23 minutes, was 0-11 including 0-3 from 3-point range, 1 of 2 from the line. He did manage to put up 5 rebounds and 1 assist (to 2 turnovers and 4 fouls). 0 steals, 0 blocks.
Josh Jackson's terrible 22 minute effort in a loss to Houston narrowly lost out to Kristaps (only Negative 8.1), probably because Jackson was 2-2 from the line and only had 3 fouls.
Some other notable efforts:
-- Dennis Smith makes the list while actually making 5 shots and having 5 assists, but that was not enough to offset his 5-17 with 9 turnovers and 6 fouls.
-- Of the bottom 51 performances, only 3 were in the playoffs thus far
-- Trevor Ariza's recent Negative 5.3 (0 points, 0-12 including 0-9 from 3, did have some other positive stats)
-- Paul George against Utah (2-16, 6 turnovers, 5 fouls) for Negative 5.5
-- Tying with PG13, Bojan Bogdanovic (1-9, 0 rebounds, 3 turnovers, 5 fouls).
FOLKS APPEARING ON THE LIST MORE THAN ONCE
Dragan Bender 2x
Josh Jackson 3x
Kyle Kuzma 2x
Frank Ntilikina 2x
Garrett Temple 3x
Those are your Final 4, so, who did the worst in those sucky games?
Bender had the 6th and 44th worst games
Josh Jackson had the 2nd, 30th and 38th worst games
Kuzma had the 7th and 37th worst games
Ntilikina 8th and 20th worst
Temple had the 3rd, 17th and 46th worst games.
On the basis of more terrible games (3 versus 2), I give Temple the win - his average terrible game was the 22nd worst while Jackson's were, on average, the 23rd worst.
Congrats Garrett Temple.
Here you go: http://bkref.com/tiny/Eno78
Congrats to the SUPER overrated...
Kristaps Porzingis for winning "worst Game Score of 2017-18" (pre-NBA Finals Edition)
by posting a ridiculously terrible Negative 8.5. In a home Knicks WIN(!!!) against the Celtics, Porzingis played 23 minutes, was 0-11 including 0-3 from 3-point range, 1 of 2 from the line. He did manage to put up 5 rebounds and 1 assist (to 2 turnovers and 4 fouls). 0 steals, 0 blocks.
Josh Jackson's terrible 22 minute effort in a loss to Houston narrowly lost out to Kristaps (only Negative 8.1), probably because Jackson was 2-2 from the line and only had 3 fouls.
Some other notable efforts:
-- Dennis Smith makes the list while actually making 5 shots and having 5 assists, but that was not enough to offset his 5-17 with 9 turnovers and 6 fouls.
-- Of the bottom 51 performances, only 3 were in the playoffs thus far
-- Trevor Ariza's recent Negative 5.3 (0 points, 0-12 including 0-9 from 3, did have some other positive stats)
-- Paul George against Utah (2-16, 6 turnovers, 5 fouls) for Negative 5.5
-- Tying with PG13, Bojan Bogdanovic (1-9, 0 rebounds, 3 turnovers, 5 fouls).
FOLKS APPEARING ON THE LIST MORE THAN ONCE
Dragan Bender 2x
Josh Jackson 3x
Kyle Kuzma 2x
Frank Ntilikina 2x
Garrett Temple 3x
Those are your Final 4, so, who did the worst in those sucky games?
Bender had the 6th and 44th worst games
Josh Jackson had the 2nd, 30th and 38th worst games
Kuzma had the 7th and 37th worst games
Ntilikina 8th and 20th worst
Temple had the 3rd, 17th and 46th worst games.
On the basis of more terrible games (3 versus 2), I give Temple the win - his average terrible game was the 22nd worst while Jackson's were, on average, the 23rd worst.
Congrats Garrett Temple.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
How Could Cleveland Possibly Win Against Golden State
The way to bet here is Cleveland to lose in 4 or 5 games. The Warriors have 4 all-star level players including two of the top 7 players in the league. The Cavs have LeBron and.....well, not much else (the concussed Kevin love being their second best player).
So, let's try to imagine a scenario for a Cleveland win.
1) LeBron needs to be the best guy 4 times, and by a lot. I really cannot see the Cavs winning unless BOTH of these things occur at least 4 times: LeBron gets a 35 point triple double every night shooting 50% plus AND Neither Durant nor Curry are particularly good.
LeBron's Finals losses involved the following:
2007 -- the famous picture is the Spurs simply swarming around LeBron with 4 guys. They basically demanded that others beat them, and the others could not do so (second best player Larry Hughes, while hardly a great player, was hurt in the Finals).
2011 - Mavs went zone and Dirk Nowitzki had insanely good Finals games. LeBron did not and deferred to Dwyane Wade - an enormous error.
2014 - Kawhi Leonard played well enough that :LeBron did not enjoy an enormous advantage. Kawhi named Finals MVP.
2015 - Iguodala gave LeBron enough problems and hit enough open shots that he was named Finals MVP (a ridiculous decision, but if the strategy is to try to limit LeBron, the guy who limits LeBron gets the award).
2017 - Durant plays LeBron even and wins the Finals MVP.
This strategy and result is similar to the Celtics' ability to have Bill Russell play Wilt down to below his average for points and rebounds and then the rest of the Celtics would outplay the rest of Wilt's teammates.
James cannot have this happen. He needs to go 35-11-11 and then hope that for 4 games these two guys are just OK.
2) Someone like Jordan Clarkson or Rodney Hood needs to play well. Look, Jordan Clarkson in the playoffs has been SUPER terrible. But here is some food for thought for you.
Klay Thompson regular season, "Game Score" 10 or better - 49 games
Jordan Clarkson -- 42 games.
There is no good reason for Clarkson to be SOOOO wretched as a player. Similarly, Hood has had some decent NBA seasons. He and Clarkson are both .070 or so WS/48 players. Why couldn't they have 15-20 points in 2 games? I mean, I am not expecting Kyrie Irving level stats, but geez, they should not be SOOOOO awful.
3) The Cavs' 2-6 Players Need to play up a little and the Warriors 3-7 Players need to play down a little.
Best WS players in 2017-18 for each team (with NBA overall rank for Win Shares)-
1) James #3 in the league
2) Durant #9
3) Curry #19
4) Love #46
5) Draymond #51
6) Klay #84
7) Green #117
8) David West #138
9) Korver #141
10) Tristan Thompson #209
If #1 above occurs (James badly outplays Durant and Curry) then the rest of the equation isn't that impossible. A good Love could outplay a disappointing Draymond, A good Jeff Green could play the bad version of Klay Thompson even. David West and Korver could offset each other for overall production.
Look at some other possibilities - is Larry Nance definitely worse at this stage of his career versus 400 year old David West?
Do we really think that Kevon Looney and Jordan Bell and Quinn Cook are that great?
Shawn Livingston didn't have much of a year. Is he WAY better right now than George Hill? Not that I have seen of late.
4) Some bad luck for GState -- For example, Iggy has to be out for the series. He absolutely cannot recover and be healthy for any games.
Also, maybe one of the Warriors' better guys can turn an ankle or get a medium severity injury that puts him out 2-3-4 games. If Curry steps wrong on his ankle and is out for Games 2-5, that makes a big difference.
Conclusion
Look, having this all happen require a near miracle. First of all, averaging 35-11-11 is an insane 'ask" of anyone. Then you need both GS guys who are top 7 NBA players to play just "OK," and then you need unexpected help from someone(s) who up until now has sucked, and you need your other guys to play 10% better and their other guys 10% worse, and then you need luck.
Is it doable? Well, in the 1975 NBA Finals the 48-34 Warriors were heavy underdogs to a Washington Bullets team that had won 60 games and eliminated the defending champion Celtics. Rick Barry averaged 29-5-4 and led the Warriors to a sweep of the Bullets, winning games by 6, 1, 8 and 1 points. So, I suppose it could happen.
That is, however, not the way to bet.
So, let's try to imagine a scenario for a Cleveland win.
1) LeBron needs to be the best guy 4 times, and by a lot. I really cannot see the Cavs winning unless BOTH of these things occur at least 4 times: LeBron gets a 35 point triple double every night shooting 50% plus AND Neither Durant nor Curry are particularly good.
LeBron's Finals losses involved the following:
2007 -- the famous picture is the Spurs simply swarming around LeBron with 4 guys. They basically demanded that others beat them, and the others could not do so (second best player Larry Hughes, while hardly a great player, was hurt in the Finals).
2011 - Mavs went zone and Dirk Nowitzki had insanely good Finals games. LeBron did not and deferred to Dwyane Wade - an enormous error.
2014 - Kawhi Leonard played well enough that :LeBron did not enjoy an enormous advantage. Kawhi named Finals MVP.
2015 - Iguodala gave LeBron enough problems and hit enough open shots that he was named Finals MVP (a ridiculous decision, but if the strategy is to try to limit LeBron, the guy who limits LeBron gets the award).
2017 - Durant plays LeBron even and wins the Finals MVP.
This strategy and result is similar to the Celtics' ability to have Bill Russell play Wilt down to below his average for points and rebounds and then the rest of the Celtics would outplay the rest of Wilt's teammates.
James cannot have this happen. He needs to go 35-11-11 and then hope that for 4 games these two guys are just OK.
2) Someone like Jordan Clarkson or Rodney Hood needs to play well. Look, Jordan Clarkson in the playoffs has been SUPER terrible. But here is some food for thought for you.
Klay Thompson regular season, "Game Score" 10 or better - 49 games
Jordan Clarkson -- 42 games.
There is no good reason for Clarkson to be SOOOO wretched as a player. Similarly, Hood has had some decent NBA seasons. He and Clarkson are both .070 or so WS/48 players. Why couldn't they have 15-20 points in 2 games? I mean, I am not expecting Kyrie Irving level stats, but geez, they should not be SOOOOO awful.
3) The Cavs' 2-6 Players Need to play up a little and the Warriors 3-7 Players need to play down a little.
Best WS players in 2017-18 for each team (with NBA overall rank for Win Shares)-
1) James #3 in the league
2) Durant #9
3) Curry #19
4) Love #46
5) Draymond #51
6) Klay #84
7) Green #117
8) David West #138
9) Korver #141
10) Tristan Thompson #209
If #1 above occurs (James badly outplays Durant and Curry) then the rest of the equation isn't that impossible. A good Love could outplay a disappointing Draymond, A good Jeff Green could play the bad version of Klay Thompson even. David West and Korver could offset each other for overall production.
Look at some other possibilities - is Larry Nance definitely worse at this stage of his career versus 400 year old David West?
Do we really think that Kevon Looney and Jordan Bell and Quinn Cook are that great?
Shawn Livingston didn't have much of a year. Is he WAY better right now than George Hill? Not that I have seen of late.
4) Some bad luck for GState -- For example, Iggy has to be out for the series. He absolutely cannot recover and be healthy for any games.
Also, maybe one of the Warriors' better guys can turn an ankle or get a medium severity injury that puts him out 2-3-4 games. If Curry steps wrong on his ankle and is out for Games 2-5, that makes a big difference.
Conclusion
Look, having this all happen require a near miracle. First of all, averaging 35-11-11 is an insane 'ask" of anyone. Then you need both GS guys who are top 7 NBA players to play just "OK," and then you need unexpected help from someone(s) who up until now has sucked, and you need your other guys to play 10% better and their other guys 10% worse, and then you need luck.
Is it doable? Well, in the 1975 NBA Finals the 48-34 Warriors were heavy underdogs to a Washington Bullets team that had won 60 games and eliminated the defending champion Celtics. Rick Barry averaged 29-5-4 and led the Warriors to a sweep of the Bullets, winning games by 6, 1, 8 and 1 points. So, I suppose it could happen.
That is, however, not the way to bet.
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