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Sunday, March 03, 2013
OT: NBA Monthly Thread - March 2013
I estimate only 10-12 Primates care about the NBA, but with our own thread, we won’t detract from what this site is really about: hunting and apostrophes.
The District Attorney
Posted: March 03, 2013 at 04:37 PM | 843 comment(s)
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Meanwhile, the Rockets look like they're about to seal the coffin on the Jazz's season.
Maybe the Heat are trolling everyone.
Wow, Cleveland was down by 27(!)
Utah lost despite the Rockets shooting 26% from 3, Lin and Harden basically just layup them to death.
starting backcourt Utah 11 points Rockets 51.
Also Royce Young pointed out that OKC had a 20 left. 0.8 left on the clock, you gotta call that time out. When you have Durant, 0.8 secs might be all you need.
Seriously. If the 4-5 matchup, both second round series and the WCF don't all go 6 or 7, I will be a bit surprised.
I would say the odds are better than 50/50 that two of them will.
Would it even be worth it though? With 34 wins, they'll have one of the best records of the lottery teams, even if they lose out the rest of the season. The chances of a worthwhile pick for their efforts aren't very good.
Really? I think GSW/HOU/LAL are clearly on a lower level than any of the top 5.
Yeah, I don't think so either. Realistically, I am doubtful they can get underneath anybody but Dallas and Portland. They're just a game back of LAL in the loss column. The way things have been going, it probably ain't happening, but hell who knows? Might as well try.
Yes, but as tshipman is probably getting at, I think all 3 top seeds have to be about 80% favorites for what he said to not be true mathematically. If SAS and/or OKC are even bigger favorites than that, then the 2 and/or 3 seeds could be a little less so, but for the odds to be above 50% that all 3 top seeds win in the 1st round, they need to be pretty enormous favorites.
I'd argue that they should be considered exactly that.
Well, how enormous? The calculation is pretty simple.(If I screw this up off the top of my head, I'm going to be pretty angry.) P(No Top-3 seed Loses) = 1-P(All Top-3 seeds win) = 1-[(P(1-seed wins) * P(2-seed wins) * P(3-seed wins)].
Tell me what your estimates are of each top 3 seed winning in the first round, and I can tell you what is probability that at least 1 of them loses.
Note: I'm not totally sure you're wrong as 1-seeds have traditionally not lost very often at all in the first round and both OKC and SAS are very close to normal 1-seed strength, and right now the 3-seed would play the easiest matchup in the first round. But you have to be really damn sure that each of them will win for tshipman to be wrong.
P(All Top-3 seeds win)
Those are the same thing. (P(1-seed wins) * P(2-seed wins) * P(3-seed wins) is all you need.
Smart cokes all around.
You're right, I was making this more complicated in my head for some damn reason. I forget why.
Edit: I was trying to answer the question of how likely it is that at least one of them loses which would be P(at least 1 loses) = 1-P(all Top-3 seeds win) but then I screwed up what I called it.
Yeah, but that doesn't matter in this scenario. What we care about is how favored SAS, OKC, and whichever of MEM/DEN/LAC is the 3 should be over whichever of GSW/HOU/LAL/UTA is 6-7-8. Forget the 4-5 game, it doesn't matter for these purposes.
I think most would agree that if Hou / GSW were in the east, they're probably a #2 or #3 seed team. (hell both might still finish with better record than the eastern #2 seed.)
I'm not sure I would agree about GSW. I'm unconvinced that they are actually much good rather than a middling team riding a hot 2 month start all the way in (it's arguably unfair and bad analysis to parse the season up like that however). They have gone like 18-11 against the East if I did the math right, which is ~.620 basketball, so maybe so. I don't feel like looking at who from the East they played though. Hmm, their overall strength of schedule is the 4th toughest in the league according to BBref so maybe I'm underrating them. They would be 5th in the East in SRS.
I buy Houston a bit more, I think. They are actually 5 games under .500 against the West but have played ~.700 against the East. I also don't feel like checking which teams in the East they've played. Now that I looked at conference splits, honestly, it seems like GSW playing better against the West should be more impressive than who beat up the East more. Their SOS is 10th in the league. They would be 3rd in the East in SRS.
In conclusion, I think 2 seed probably not, Indiana is probably better than either. Maybe.
When you look at the SOS, you really see the difference in conferences. The hardest schedule of an Eastern team is Charlotte at 12th. I assume one thing that makes Charlotte's schedule the hardest in the East is that they don't get to play themselves. A similar dynamic may be part of why OKC and SAS are the lowest ranked Western teams. There are 10 Eastern teams with easier SOS than any Western team.
Well "tanking" for Corbin would lead to more wins since it'd presumably lead to more minutes for the young players.
At least this one wasn't the playoffs.
Golden State is weird since they have had a huge peak and valley type of season. Though I'm intrigued by Bogut now finally playing with a semblance of health this month , though the stats haven't bare it out yet, and the GSW's recent small surge may be more due to weak schedule then not. But Curry's basically a top 5 PG this season, when he's on he'll set the world on fire and if they get a semblance of D presence with Bogut they certainly should be as good as any second teir team.
They're actually not bad defensively in terms of challenging shots. They hold opponents to a pretty reasonable fg% (both on 2s and 3s). I think their big weaknesses are that they don't cause a lot of turnovers or grab a lot of offensive rebounds, and they give up a bunch of both. Bogut should help some with the rebounding, but the turnovers are still going to be a big problem (especially when they run into good and intense playoff defense).
Definitely not.
Hou / LAL / GSW all seem to be teams that have the talent to go insane for a couple games and knock guys off.
Lakers, yes. Rockets and Warriors, no.
---
My wife is going to the Bulls game tonight. I'm going to be pretty pissed if Rose wakes up today and decides he's ready to play.
No offense to our resident Rockets fan, but no. They might (might) be a 4.
I agree with that. When the Lakers got Howard and Nash I had them down for dominating the west, on par with the way San Antonio and OKC have played. Obviously that has not happened, with this team becoming the poster boys for how bad chemistry and poor coaching can mitigate great talent.
At this point though, I'm locked in, I'm going down with the team. I still think the talent is there to the point where if they gel and get healthy (very big ifs) they can play on a level of the top 2 and be better than LAC/DEN/MEM. Kind of a moot point though, as it's unlikely they'll play any of the 3-4-5 teams. They'll be playing SAN or OKC in the first round, and without home court. Even being as good as the top 2 is not enough, they need to be better. Their upside is probably a valiant 6-7 game losing effort with a bunch of close games.
The Knicks are the likely 3 seed and as someone who has watched most of both team's games I'm confident when I say the Rockets are, at worst, just as good.
In the middle they had a 48 win season, went to the finals to lose to Boston, with pretty much the exact same roster.
But yeah, unless Knicks suddenly return to 1st Month Knicks, I also don't see how they're better than the Rockets right now. even if they're mostly healthy (which they aren't and is rather unlikely to be this year).
Memphis actually match up very poorly against the Rockets for a variety of reason too, if that's the matchup there is a outside chance of the Rockets taking them down, then again, it looks like the 3rd seat now might end up being the Nuggets. so who knows.
Realistically, if the Rockets make the playoff this season it's already a wild success, anything after that is just gravy.
Sad but true.
Eh, math is hard. And mathematically tshipman is probably right. I just don't see it happening in real life. And AROM and Moses have a good point - MAYBE the Lakers could pull an upset if they hit the playoffs on a hot (and healthy) streak and got to face the 3rd-5th seeds. But they won't. They'll face #1 or #2 without HC, and I don't see an upset happening in that scenario (and I think HOU and GSW just plain aren't good enough to beat their first round opponents).
Based on what? I'll grant Indiana, but what reason is there to think that New York or Brooklyn are better than the Rockets?
They're .700 against the East. Everything I can think to check about team quality(SRS, Efficiency margin, regular point differential) other than just plain record has them above everyone but MIA and IND in the East. They are 10-2 against the 3-8 seeds in the East, including 8 wins by 10+. 3-4 by 20+.
It's enough of a counter-factual that I can see that it's not totally clear cut, but I really don't see how anyone could be remotely confident that the Rockets are worse than New York, much less Brooklyn.
On a side note, HOU's poor half court game partly explain why they don't do as well as their SRS suggest, because in close and late situation when all the fouls and time outs slows down the pace by default, their main weapon simply have no way of working. They need to run better half court sets to be sure. (or like, any half court sets would help.)
But here's a hilarious quote from Lin on the Rockets offense last night on exactly that.
http://www.nba.com/rockets/news/nothing-random-about-it
I agree, they'd be in the mix for #3. Not clearly better or worse than the NY teams. But I'd trust the numbers more than any conclusion gained by looking at the rosters - I'm a Laker fan.
Yeah, I was mostly just bringing that stuff up as additional color. All the full season stats and team quality indicators point the same direction.
In part. My Pringles experience has been paradoxical, in that I think he has done a pretty crappy job but I have still defended him at times.
One key point that I think gets overlooked is this:
PER/WS/48
Howard 2013
19.1/.129
Bynum 2012
22.9/.183
Bynum, as the pic on the lead-in shows, has become even more of a punchline than he already was, but he played 60 of 66 games last year, missing 4 for the suspension and game 66 with the Lakers locked in. There is noise in that data, but it tells you something. 2013 Howard has not IMO really been a notable upgrade on 2012 Bynum. Also, there are other basic roster construction issues that I have discussed before.
That said, the Lakers are 3rd in the NBA in Pace Factor, and 3rd in 3PA. They are 15th in 3P%. Hombre read the MDA hire better than I did, pointing out at the time that the Lakers have neither the speed nor the shooters to play SSOLball. I thought MDA would adapt more than he has.
The guy who runs the ESPN Lakers True Hoop site, anticipating the possibility of Kobe and Pau returning tomorrow, added his voice again to the many calling for a two-star platoon system, with a Nash/Howard team and a Kobe/Pau team. I do not think MDA will do that, but if the nine guys he is willing to give run to, including Earl Clark, are all available, I still think it should be tried.
As to the playoffs, as I said, I was not anticipating Utah having problems to this extent, but I do think the Lakers will get in now, and if all nine guys are healthy, they will be dangerous with no back-to-backs. But "dangerous" is a ways away from actually being good enough to beat SA, OKC, LAC, MEM or DEN four times without HCA.
To be fair, he did have a string of about 3-4 good games before this and most of that horrific PER was the result of his first 3-4 games.
But yeah, it's been a fugly disastor so far, Mark Cuban said in sloan conf that he would have taken him if the Rockets didn't and handled it better... I wonder how really.
Still, looking at his few good games in the RGV it's not hard to see why people would take a gamble on him, his passing and court vision is really something else.
But at the end of the day, if he or any NBA player really, doesn't want to play, no one can really make them.
I don't know that want to play is the real problem. Clearly he has issues though.
he's an interesting guy to follow, sure, but he's too short to be a 4, too slow to be a 3, he doesn't rebound all that well, he's a terrible shooter, a mediocre defender and he turns the ball over a ton. there's noone who looks like him or plays like him, but i don't think that's a particularly positive thing in white's case.
also, the denver nuggets (who are 30-3 at home) are down 5 to the sixers (who are 6-23 on the road) with about 14 seconds left in the 4th quarter despite the sixers being terrible and denver having a 14 game win-streak and philly being on the second half of one of those dreaded B2Bs that end in denver.
They seem to be competing with the Heat for highest degree of difficulty.
it's pointless to debate this if he isn't even on the floor, but I'd hazard to say that the NBA these days position is no longer strickly defined as it use to. and on the Rockets your not even sure who's what except for Omer as the C , both Lin and Harden are basically 1+2 , Parsons's mostly 3 but also a bit of 4 etc..
Guys who can pass really well is hard to overlook. In his few good games in the later RGV season he looked like he was pretty agressive down low, not flashy moves but were getting it done, and also grabbing a good number of boards. but yeah it's the D-League.
IN short. he's got issues, if he work very hard he probably should be able to play in the NBA to some extend. but again, if he's acting like this, even if he's Lebron James the second he's still not going anywhere.
The Flyers , the Sixers, Phillies, Eagles, all the same. well the Phillies in 08 was kinda of the rare exception I guess.
But look at the Flyers, they're one of the highest winning % team in the NHL of all time, and they havn't won a cup in like 40 years.
My Minnesota fandom snears. Without the twins and their brief moments in the sun in 87 and 91 MN would only have its four super bowl losses to define it*. At least I am also a fan of San Fransico teams (grew up there) to consol me.
EDIT: * And pof course the "well run" Timberwolves. Pleh.
Sorry, as someone with no dog in the fight, Cleveland will always win here. That's kind of what you'd get without those WS championships, except they have an even longer history of failure, both heartbreaking and abject.
Basketball: 43 seasons, no titles. Most relevant historically for the Stepien rule, Jordan's shot against them, and a historically great player dicking them over by announcing a move to warmer climates on national TV.
Football: Post-merger, 42 seasons, no titles. "Highlights": Elway's Drive against them, Byner's goal-line fumble, losing their team for 4 years and having the team that moved win two Super Bowls while the Browns have not gotten back off the ground in the 15 years since their new team.
Baseball: Won a title! 65 years ago. Since then, one finish above 4th in a 34-year period (1960-93), ten-cent beer night, Mesa's blown WS game 7.
Yeah, Cleveland wins.
Well yeah. I assumed we were arguing for second place, like you do for greatest musical group.
1. Steelers have emerged as one of the NFL's flagship brands, and have now passed SF and DAL for number of Super Bowl Titles with six. The Browns have never even appeared in the Super Bowl.
2. The two guys who are arguably the two greatest basketball players ever both specifically F'd Cleveland in different ways. "The Decision" was unprecedented, and in view of the shitt James caught for it, will probably never be repeated.
Plus, Cleveland is a Rust-Belt city that some people make fun of anyway.
As someone who is from Cleveland, I don't see James as effing us. If people in town weren't such jersey-burning crybabies about it, it would be treated similar to Howard (who did try to eff his team by demanding a trade to one specific team). Sure, it was a spectacle, but that's because everyone wanted a spectacle. Yeah, it sucked that he left, but that was always a very real possibility, and part of the reason it stung so much was that the team didn't have that talent to get Lebron a ring or be competitive without him on the roster.
Also, "f'd" was being used colloquially. Jordan didn't F Cleveland either, unless he drew up the 1989 playoff schedule himself.
And, yes, I know f'd was colloquial; and maybe I'm just seeing it differently. Lebron didn't screw over the fans (except those who viewed him as their personal property) or cost this team a championship, he carried a mediocre roster kicking and screaming to 60 wins, and that they never won it all was on the front office (namely the Paxson one who traded away the 2005 and 2007 first round picks for garbage before Lebron was ever on the roster).
Heat trolled us some more, give up some early leads to the Piston and then obviously steamrolled to victory.
Utah holding a small lead on the Spurs in the 4th... hmm
A. lost to a completely depleted Knicks, most notably 40 year old Kurt Thomas playing on a completely broken body somehow demolished their front court.
B. went into Houston and got beaten by the Rockets, especially exposing their weak backcourt
C. Now lost to the Spurs in OT in a game where the Spurs weren't really playing well.
Bad loss for LA. Granted two key guys are hobbled, but that was a very bad loss for the Lakers. The funny thing is, given how well Washington's played lately, you could totally kind of see this coming. After the first quarter, LA looked very old and very slow compared to Washington. It's impossible to believe that this group was supposed to dominate anything this season.
And I just want to add: I'm so sick of watching MWP in a Laker uniform.
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