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1. Graham Posted: June 25, 2012 at 12:27 AM (#4165408)Where does Bayless rank among other sports media putzes in incompetence? I dislike Cowherd the most, but Bayless is right there. Those are the two national guys that stick out the most to me. McCarver, Buck, and any other terrible announcers would be next. When you start including more regional guys, you get Francesa, Paige, Mariotti, and Shaughnessy. Compared to this group, "Hawk" Harrelson looks pretty good. I'll take blind optimism, homerism and annoying enthusiasm over the negativity and self-righteousness of the other guys. Harrelson, while annoying, clearly enjoys what he's doing, and that's worth something to me.
But Bayless is kind of amazing in that clip. LeBron can cut up a defense whenever he "feels" like it? Early Cuban pulls out the "generalities" card and the "you don't deal in facts" card and Bayless responds with something like "LeBron was under the most intense pressure of any player ever in a final..."
And neither seems to tolerate the notion of randomness (luck, unexplainable bits that will remain unexplainable). To Cuban, LeBron can't just have a few bad games, his performance is due to the Mavs. To Bayliss, LeBron can't just have a few bad games, it has to be due to his effort/desire. Possibly Cuban avoided that line for "presentation" purposes -- i.e. "stuff happens" is not a particularly persuasive argument even if it is correct. But that does make it a rather "un-saber" sort of argument from Cuban. I felt he was at his strongest when he did brush up against that -- this year the Heat hit their shots; we wanted him to be Jordan feeding Kerr (it's the Paxson one that still makes my heart stop); why do you play a zone Skip?
Here's an article that included limited vs. zone stats for the Heat.
From this article, written around the same time:
"The Heat are ranked 20th against the zone, according to Synergy. They are No. 4 against a man-to-man."
Cuban wasn't wrong to point out how much the Dallas defense had to do with LeBron's performance.
Oh I agree. I'm nitpicking. It's good to see somebody challenge the "choke" arguments as BS so that's worth celebrating (or whatever). I just don't find it that celebratory from a "saber" perspective per se. Cuban's argument is eseentially "strategy matters dumb ass" which is a pretty valid argument. :-) That strategy may or may not have been "saber-based" -- I guess he came close to that with his "90% of the plays go to the left" but that sounded like a made-up fact to me ... it can't really be 90% can it?
I'm just wishing it had been a better takedown. It really could have been a "Skip, do you know that about 2/3 of LeBron's drives to the left are successful but only 45% of his drives to the right? Did you notice that we always brought the double team from that side? Did you notice that whenever he came across the free throw line on the dribble, our center stepped in to clog the lane? Did you know we usually only play zone about 30% of the time but in that series we did so 62% of the time LeBron was on the floor? No, you didn't. All you noticed was LeBron stuck on the perimeter but you had no idea WHY he was stuck on the perimeter."
Not that I could have come up with that on the fly nor would I expect Cuban to.
Bayless was even worse prepared though. He should have at least had his "LeBron only scored X points in the 4th quarter" facts ready to go.
Total mismatch. Skip had that same look in his eyes that Jim Cramer had when Jon Stewart took him down.
I also meant to be gender neutral, though that doesn't affect Cal and Billy.
It confirms for me that I know as much about basketball as Skip Bayless does. The difference is that I don't say stupid stuff like "Miami wanted it more."
I never before put together, prior to the Lounge discussion of this video last week, that Skip and Rick were brothers. Rick Bayless is one of my favorite "celebrity" chefs (such as that is). His cookbook is excellent, as is his PBS series.
Are there any comparable sibling pairings, where one is a public figure deservedly at the top of his field, and the other is a public figure among the very worst at what he does?
I assume we throw out Roger and Bill Clinton, or Billy and Jimmy Carter? The brothers in those cases were public figures only by virtue of being related to the more famous one. Tough enough to find two siblings who are both famous in different fields (most of the sibling pairs I can think of are either in sports or acting).
If you stretch it a little bit - Bruce Jenner and Kim Kardashian?
Pretty good stuff, pretty good graphics. What I think it needs to add is info on "drives." I assume a lot of LeBron's shots near the hoop started with LeBron driving in from the perimeter (and fast breaks) and so it's not necessarily the case that the change is due to his new post game (although that's the most obvious explanation). In short, Bayless could look at those charts and say "see, I told you that LeBron was too passive, not getting to the hoop and creating enough. He was spending too much time on the perimeter." Those charts aren't necessarily consistent with Cuban's argument (not necessarily inconsistent either). Those charts suggest pre-2012 LeBron has always had the wrong mix of shots and stayed on the perimeter too often. Did the Mavs force him to the perimeter or did LeBron take his usual mix of shots or was LeBron happy to stay out there when pushed because he didn't realize how less effective he was out there (although how could he not, it's basketball 101).
Anyway, I don't think "saber" was Cuban's point, I think he was trying to make the "it's not choking" and "strategy" points. But a lot of this looks pretty simple. It's not that LeBron wanted it more. It's that LeBron used to play in a sub-optimal style (for his skillset) and the Mavs knew this and took advantage of it. This year*, LeBron played a smarter game (and improved his mid-range shooting).** Why don't you tell your readers that instead of all this psychological/moral garbage Skip?
* Assuming the charts in the article are representative. They're comparing several years to one year. Buried in the several years data could be an evolution towards LeBron 2012 rather than a sudden shift; also the sudden improvement could possibly be random (although it doesn't look that way).
** Again is that distribution of shots really the same? It could be that in earlier years a higher percentage of those mid-range shots were under pressure -- i.e. drives that got stopped and he put up an unbalanced runner under pressure -- rather than improved shooting percentage.
I agree, though I will note that the Mavs were an early adopter of 'saber style analytics' and have put significant resources into hiring stat-y types to assist the organization.
LeBron and A-Rod each took a lot of 'heat' that was undeserved, no question.
But post-2004, when A-Rod was made a scapegoat because - well, Jeter has da ringzz - he eventually really was unable to perform to his standards in the postseason.
And last year in the Finals, LeBron really did not seem ready to handle the pressure. The Mavs' D was very good, but LeBron seemed like a guy who did not want the ball, either, in the biggest spots. As the Finals rolled around ths year, LeBron pretty much admitted as such - just as A-Rod eventually did before finding his own postseason redemption.
A-Rod noticed, in the wake of LeBron's title:
excerpt
"I know exactly how he felt, and I was very happy for him," Rodriguez said. "I know he's going to take a deep breath now and really enjoy the rest of his career. We probably haven't seen the best of him, and I think we will now."
Rodriguez has followed the Heat closely and tries to make it to a few games during the baseball offseason, but he especially sees parallels between himself and James, who has been a popular target after leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for a huge contract in Miami.
"Playing the villain is never fun, and it's tiring," Rodriguez said. "It's definitely not exciting. It's not all it's built up to be. I think for me, everything changed in '09 and I really had a chance to just enjoy the game again; more so now than ever."
.........
and yes, Bayless is an idiot.
for this crowd: how about Randy Wolf and Jim Wolf. Not necessarily at the 'top of their professions', but each has reached the highest level of their respective professions.
siblings Billie Jean King and ex-Giants pitcher Randy Moffitt.
Jeb and George W. Bush.
So LeBron will be even better now, like ARod has been since 2009?
Maybe it's the same as it ever was - I don't mean this to be an old fogeyist rant - but it's as true at CNN and their ilk as it is at ESPN. At the highest levels, our discourse is run by complete morons, or at least people who are willing to pretend to be complete morons once they go on the air.
He meant Bill and George Clinton.
At the time they merged about 12 years ago, the then CEO of US Bancorp and then Firstar Bank were brothers, Jack and Jerry Grundhofer. Pretty impressive accomplishment for the siblings to reach that high of a level in banking.
Agreed. That was great.
Was I the only person who read Dick Groat's Link in No. 4 and couldn't, regardless how much the Deadspin guy tried to pile on Marriotti, get past the fact that they first offered him $1,000 per column? If you're interested in having sports media's most wretched figure* write for you, you've forfeited the right to the haughty attitude.
* An amazing distinction, considering the field.
It's the result of writers not understanding what they're seeing, so they fall back on unprovable assertions about the character of the players wearing the uniforms.
And again, play any Diamond Mind type of game, and you'll see the same sequences of blown leads or blown saves or what not. But if you try to construct the narrative of "Team X didn't want it enough" in DMB, you will look foolish and everyone will notice, while if you try to do it with real players you will look just as foolish but nobody will notice.
Actually, I think it's the result of writers desperately wanting the winning and losing to be due to something other than which team has the superior combination more talent, skill, strategy, and luck. So they seize on unprovable assertions of character, and their heads explode when guys previously determined to lack the proper character attributes have success.
ARod couldn't win, until he won.
Peyton Manning couldn't win, until he won.
Dirk Novitsky couldn't win, until he won.
Bonds choked in the postseason (well, not really), until he had one of the best postseasons ever.
Etc.
These people have nothing of any value to add.
I'm blanking, of course.
I know that was the point; I couldn't think of one either. Then again, in most fields (punditry and pop music would be two notable exceptions), it isn't terribly easy to become well known while being atrocious at the task at hand.
Tom Skilling
Jeff Skilling
John and Jim Belushi. But I think the point was to get siblings in different fields - its hard to think of any notable siblings in different fields of work. Here is a good discussion on famous siblings in different fields, but I don't find any of the pairs to fit the above description.
Yes, except for the last part: their heads don't explode unless and until they're confronted directly on their unprovable assertions.
Then they exhibit some combination of anger, frustration, and goalpost-moving.
It's not even just big-time sports, of course. I used to run into this stuff from a rec-league slow-pitch softball manager, who'd talk about guys who were "clutch" or "not clutch" and how we needed to "step up our game to a higher level" for the playoffs, how it goes to the team who "wants it more"... all that [stuff]. This guy kept meticulous stats going back literally decades. I tried once pointing out that most guys with any significant history on the team showed pretty much the same "playoff" stats as "regular-season" stats (within 10% or so either way; I wouldn't expect anyone at BBTF to be surprised by this), but a couple - specifically the manager himself and one of his bobos - had significantly worse playoff stats.
His response was... Baylessian? Hopeless.
You guessed it - Frank Stallone.
The only pair of brothers with totally unrelated claims to fame I can think of are Doug Fieger, the frontman of The Knack, and Geoff Fieger, famous crazy defense lawyer. But they are both equally atrocious.
The former is now dead.
Hey, hey, let's be fair now--they BOTH made horrible fake music.
1. DM used to have a "clutch" setting you could turn on or off. (Maybe still does)
2. This is easy and means nothing. All DM is doing is reproducing the empirically observed distribution. You don't need to identify the source of the variation to be able to recreate it at a sufficiently aggregate level. Monopoly can produce tycoons and paupers through a mostly random process too, that doesn't make it a good model of the economy.
3. You can't use DM for things like this. For example, you can't use DM to test a theory that modern bullpens would be better if the multi-inning fireman role returned because no current relievers are used that way and DM will have them tire rapidly after 5 batters or so. You could change their durability ratings but that's just assuming what you're trying to prove.
For all we know, half of all blown saves are due to "choking." For all we know, that good set-up guy doesn't have the mental makeup to be a good closer and that, not random variation, is why he specifically sucked in his 10 save chances.
With large enough samples, you could start looking for individual effects (i.e. the same guy choking year after year) but few players get large enough samples and that's based on past performance such that only good, generally non-choking players are going to reach that point anyway (selection bias).
As the data gets more detailed (mainly pitch/FX, etc.), we are getting closer to being able to measure individual behavior. But sabermetrics remains mainly actuarial in its statistical approach. The projection systems offer virtually no insight into who will improve/decline from year-to-year but instead apply aggregate aging models and such. That might be reality but likely isn't. That might be a good approximation to reality (I think it probably is). Or it could be missing lots of relevant factors that are (currently) unmeasured.
And I think they both had horrible fake reality shows. The only real difference is one of them obviously had tons of plastic surgery and the other didn't (unless they had a different biological mom or dad).
Dwight Eisenhower and Milton. Milton had a number of jobs in US govt and I think was pres. of Kansas st.
does that count for something?
There's a famous joke at columbia that the trustees said in the late 40's "we need Eisenhower!," and someone accidentally offered the president's job to Dwight.
Which one had the surgeries?
i've always wondered what that household was like. i also read somewhere that their father was in showbiz.
There are the trio of Emmanuel brothers.
Rahm - mayor of Chicago
Ari - big shot Hollywood agent. Model for a character on a show I've never seen called Entourage
Other One - some high profile doctor of some sort.
Michael and Sean Penn.
Is that the guy who plays Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm?
Bayless...Bayless is a malicious, malevolent sort. He's the guy who tells you that Joe thinks you're a jerk, and when you say, "Joe? I hate that ####### guy," he loudly shouts, "Hey, Joe, guess what this guy said about you?" And then he watches the ensuing fight with a really creepy kind of glee.
I'm genuinely not sure whether Bayless believes everything he says, which would make an hateful idiot, or if he's just a really evolved troll. There's probably no difference at this point.
Ezekiel. He writes a lot of columns for the Times' website. Incredibly smart fellow. Was dragged into the spotlight during the health care fight when Sarah Palin called his philosophy "basically evil."
Sometime in the 60s Carl Reiner was on The Tonight Show, and Carson asked who were the two funniest people he knew; Reiner answered, "Mel Brooks and a 12-year-old kid named Albert Einstein."
He performed under the name "Parkyakarkus." It was back in the days when someone whose act was "pretending to talk in Greek" could have a long, prosperous career!
Sheez, really? Is this Skip Bayless himself writing ridiculous narrative?
Basketball is a team sport like baseball, maybe more so, your team-mates don't get to set you up for easy at bats like a great passer can setup a teammate for a layup or dunk.
Kobe Bryant lives for pressure, he's always ready to take the last shot, in fact he demands it. And because of this eternal ego driven readiness, he almost always refuses to pass the ball to teammates with better opportunities, so he can take often ludicrously horrible shots. And because of that, his clutch time shooting percentage is terrible.
LeBron is great at a diverse set of basketball skills, one of his bet is his passing ability. He will always be the more valuable clutch time performer than a ball hog like Kobe, due to his ability and willingness to find and get the ball to his team-mate with the best opportunity to score.
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