Look Down That Lonesome Road

(Please read my latest Arenas explication. From Saturday.)

With all the introspection going on last week, I got to thinking about the role of politics and race in FreeDarko discourse. I don't really bring these issues up anymore, and I'm not afraid to say why: discussing them realistically leads to dreary repetition and frustration, more fantastic plans are an insult to social justice. Sports can have political undertones and associations, but rarely lead the way. Certainly, they're more likely to do passive harm or impede individual opinion than provide anyone's vehicle. The NBA may mean something, but that doesn't mean it stands for shit. That has as much to do with the players themselves as the top-down authority of the system.

Thus, it came as a mild shock to read that Tracy McGrady's decided to step up where LeBron once wilted. He first caught wind of the atrocities through "insiders" Mutombo and Deng; then, at the behest of no one whatsoever, T-Mac recently journeyed to refugee camps in Chad to educate himself on the Darfur issue. He also brought a film crew, and plans to help spread the word to the public. Go read the entire article at the Houston Chronicle and then come back here.

On the one hand, this makes me second-guess everything outlined above. Here's a marquee name in the league, taking it upon himself to go hang out in tragic squalor. Ira Newble raising his voice is one thing; actually, it's nothing. Tracy McGrady, though, is a huge name—respected, liked and admired around the league. And perhaps more significantly, he's an authority on such grim matters. T-Mac's got such a personal relationship with death and loss that I can't quite imagine any other star making this trip in the same way. I mean, theoretically any player could, but McGrady's experienced enough death that he's functional around it and, paradoxically, able to really let Darfur register. I think that most humans would go into some kind of shock if faced with that kind of situation, no matter how rough a neighborhood they came from.



Just in: T-Mac's out of media day because his grandfather passed. It's really mind-boggling how much death hovers around the Rockets' number two. For both its friends and foes, the NBA is intertwined with hip-hop; those for and against hip-hop are tapped into its tricky relationship with life cut short. But Tracy McGrady is in an entirely different category, where loss and mourning shed all dissonance, outrage and, well, swagger. I'd say at this point, T-Mac is as attuned to—and conversant with—the value of life and shiver of death as anyone in professional sports.

To really comprehend that scale of slaughter and displacement—and actually open up emotionally to its victims—it would probably take someone like McGrady. To show up in a refugee camp and calmly listen, be available as more than a celebrity observer, requires the kind of perspective T-Mac's got. I also feel like Tracy McGrady has no choice at this point but to throw himself into causes like Katrina or Darfur. He's got to make something constructive out of his misfortune. Or, if you want to be darker about it, he's doomed to follow around death as it has thus far stalked him. Does this set a precedent for LeBron and Carmelo? Superficially, yes. At the same time, it also underscores how unique it is when McGrady takes political action—and how little anyone should want to be able to follow him.

The Dollar With a Donut in the Middle

At this point in his career, a bonkers utterance from Gilbert Arenas counts for very little. I know plenty of weird people; what has always drawn me to Arenas is that his basketball participation smacks of weirdness. Anyone can quip to cameras or come up with internet folk wisdom. There's nothing at stake there. But shit that matters—decisions on the court, mindset going into a game, dynamic of an offense—isn't to be tampered with lightly. It's Arenas's willingness to (or inability to not) see these things as elastic that continually astounds me.

If you had to boil down the professional basketball equation to basic elements, they would be performance and money. Which is why, with these Bonds ball comments, I believe we're turning over a new leaf of Gilbertology, one that could once restore his rightful status as seer and take him off the sideshow circuit. There were inklings of this in his party, even if it stank a little too much of perfectly terrestrial arrogance. Then came the Richard Jefferson naming rights war, and the insanely ornate shoe roll-out plan.

Granted, Arenas didn't even get a bid in on the former, but Jefferson called Gil the catalyst behind his big move. Arenas made him want to put up $3.5 million for bragging rights. The GilIIZero thing, while more nerd-novelty than mainstream gamble, still has him getting almost pointlessly creative (and confusing) with his marketing. If you didn't see it there, which I only partly did, this Bonds ball proposal brings it out into the clearing of the shaved: in a very real way, Gilbert Arenas is not afraid to fuck with his money.



When Arenas first began to generate very, very low-frequency buzz around the league, it was for his perplexing judgment and his hellishly-involved pranks. There's nothing inherently deep about locker room pranks, which are usually just a way of blowing off steam or generating camaraderie. Their instigator is often some fun-loving dude, in the same way that wilin' out in the club says nothing about one's mental stability.

Yet when coupled with Arenas's finest on-court feats, his more pointed, involved pranks seemed like they were out to prove a point. Like he was pushing buttons, seeing if a teammate would punch him in the jaw or follow him into enlightenment. That's not to say that Gilbert Arenas isn't serious. However, an important part of his persona depends on being able to subvert, invert or ignore the standard definition of "serious." His silliness feeds his undeniable seriousness about the sport and his ascent as a business entity—not as distraction, but as an important ingredient in what motivates and sustains him.

Arenas's willingness to turn money matters into recreation sites doesn't show that he's frivolous or spoiled. Instead, it's kind of like capitalist performance art, a way of acting out his most internalized attitudes. Then again, while I know Arenas is perfectly self-aware, I also think he can't help himself. Or has very little interest in learning to play by the usual rules. Gilbert Arenas wants to be weightless with his riches, indulge whims, make statements, and dare us to judge him for it. These aren't publicity stunts or cries for help; they're utterly uncynical, and in keeping with the way of being that's gotten him this far. And somehow, it at the same time makes him a more grandly entertaining and a more profound public figure.

Hey Nebraska!

Allow me to slump out of character for a moment. . .

This afternoon, my cat with a bladder infection ran outside and promptly disappeared. She hadn't taken her antibiotics and I was way too concerned to get anything done, so I read some old FreeDarko. Specifically, I took a look back at this momentous post, and other shit we were doing around this time last year. And then, unexpectedly, I got really fucking sad.

The sports blogosphere has grown like a yeti's breath since then. There's money being made, reputations standing tall, and a real sense that we are somebody. I am eternally surprised that I'm able to support myself writing about basketball, seeing as I only picked it up again at age twenty-one. Blogging isn't perfect, but the difference between it and "real" journalism is like working in bed/cubicle life. We're in what they call a growth industry, which means that, barring public humiliation or sexual harassment suit, I might have even more opportunities in the future.

But when I looked back at those older posts, I suddenly realized how much the game done changed. A year ago, there was this whole pistols-at-dawn feel to the blogosphere, where networking and constant exchange came out of mutual respect. I was in touch with a lot of people I admired, and felt like ours was a community forged out of shared ambition and whip-smartness. Now, it's like everyone doing their thing, or I've just gotten that isolated and paranoid. FD itself was more expansive, less conclusive, and I worry, more vital. Sure, half the things we said were stupid or wrong, but there was that itch to both define ourselves through action and flail around in self-reflection. Increasingly, I feel like it's one or the other.

I know some of you (I see you, SML) are going to try and blame this on FanHouse. Wrong, wrong and wrong. If I weren't writing tons of short posts on the NBA, I'd still be doing band previews and restaurant blurbs for cash. Pumping out words is no problem for me, and this basketball stuff is already in my head to begin with. Some of those Longforms I did last spring are as good as anything that's ever been on FreeDarko, and getting paid by a corporation to write uncompromising columns is pretty much the goal of this whole experiment. Plus I do communicate freely with the people I've gotten to know through "work." It has a lot more to do with the overall shift in sports blog culture—the explosion of participants, endless jockeying for position and niche-ifying, the serial link begging that makes me puke, and the fact that, as never before, there's an element of professionalism seeping in. Or maybe it's always been like this, only I managed to avoid it when this was just a hobby.

Look, I'm perfectly willing to admit I might be overcome with nostalgia, or idealizing a time that never really was. I can still write, and get plenty excited to do so on a fairly regular basis; that Marion thing I did yesterday felt right and summed up something I've wondered about for several years now. And I'm sure that, when it comes down it, I'd rather be thinking about my long-term than being everyone's best friend. But I'd seriously like to know if anyone else feels a chill in the air.

He Should've Been Dracula

This being a League of Psychology and all, it's about high time we got to the subject of Shawn Marion's crippling insecurity. Marion is undervalued, but his non-stop plaints and ever-mounting demands have turned him into an accidental egomaniac. He's driven by the bottomless howl of a wounded, the lack of perspective one sees in cases of stubbed toes or bit tongues. Line up all he's said over the last season: does he really think he deserves to be the Suns' highest-paid player, come hell or high water? Steve Nash gets well below his market value, and giving Amare the max is like dumping virgins in the ocean. Marion may get less high-watt exposure than those two, but that doesn't mean Phoenix has to overcompensate by making him into a behind-the-scenes monarch.

Shawn Marion has been blinded by loneliness. Yet in many ways, he has no one to blame but himself. There is no high-flyer more inconspicuous, no dominant presence more understated, than Marion. His game is self-effacing to a fault, and his instincts on the floor continually push him away from the limelight and into the trenches. Rarely do we see him force a shot, or even look to score when not directed to by the logic of a possession. Perhaps his fragility is what led him to this low-risk line of work; certainly, a man prone to melancholic nerves would do well to avoid game-winning field goal attempts or other lodestars of criticism. And yet one can't help but wonder how it is that, if Marion is so gnawed at by his emotions, he's stayed such a good soldier. Henry's compiled some instances of lapses or petulance, but these are a far cry from attention-getting gestures like tantrums or impulsive offense.



The easy answer is that Marion lacks the skills to act out thus. That's partly the case, but isn't self-deception at the root of all unforgivable basketball? Shawn Marion rarely puts the ball on the floor because his very being won't let him; his recent grotesquerie is in fact tragedy, stemmed from an inability to ever buck the game he loves. If Marion's outrage seems twice what it should be, it's because it combines other-directed aggression with self-loathing. And, to be sure, a good deal of anxiety over the fact that basketball's causing him pain. Marion clearly respects the game; otherwise, he wouldn't be capable of playing with such restraint and selflessness. To have his beloved sport mock him so, forcing him to choose between dignity and devotion . . . it's enough to make a man want to run as far away from his situation, even if it involves the Phoenix Suns.

Big Time in Handyville

AKA Liberated Fandom Pt. 235982.

Sure, the term has been tossed around a lot on these parts, but to be totally honest, I've never been 100% comfortable with the concept. Following and obsessing over particular individuals scattered around the league doesn't quite work for me. As much as I love Zydrunas Ilgauskas, for example, I hate most of the rest of the Cavs team and don't want to have cheer for Larry Hughes in order for Z to do well. Same goes for Udonis Haslem, James Robinson, and Devean George. Love those guys, despise most of their teammates. Of course it's much easier to engage in liberated fandom with players from crappier teams, like, say Joe Johnson, because the teams are in complete disarray and nobody really affects anyone else's play...it's every man for himself.

What's more, with KG and the Timberwolves having existed as a mental cove for me for the past 10-12 years, liberated fandom was never my M.O. I had an allegiance from which I needed no liberation. To be quite honest, with KG gone now, things have changed. IN NO WAY WOULD I EVER JUMP SHIP AT A TIME LIKE THIS...i am as excited about this deranged Timberwolves team as I have been about any team in the past three years. The Timberwolves are always going to be my team and with Big AL-Jezeera leading the way probably even more so. I'm just saying, KG's departure has made liberated fandom more of a possibility, as I no longer feel the presence of the 7'1" dragon watching over me.


So, what is the compromise between pure liberated fandom and pure home-team allegiance? Adopting a team, as I imagine people in Montana, Kansas, and Louisiana are often forced to do. With no regard for the fact that many of my good friends are from Wisconsin, I am arbitrarily thinking about proclaiming the Milwaukee Bucks as my honorary favorite team this year, and following them with the same zeal that Shoals would follow Gerald Wallace, or Gilbert in his pre-Nevermind days and with the same dedication that the Brown Recluse, esq. would follow any number of Tar Heels.

Now, Milwaukee itself I have a lot of mixed feelings about. Actually, screw it. I don't like Milwaukee, and that's based on N = 1 experiences. I've heard tremendous things about Jake's and a lot of other hangouts that I evidently missed during my stay there...but the only time I went to Milwaukee, I ate a terrible sandwich near Marquette, spent most of my time at The Rave, and one of the guys I was robbed for $300. Consider this the second chance I'm giving Milwaukee. There's something about this Bucks team that just gets me.


They don't care. They know what they want, and they go get it. They make the players they want play for them. From the ridiculous Yi Jianlian situation with the Bucks' brass and Senator Kohl writing letters to the Chinese government, to overpaying Mo Williams, to giving the more recent Charlie Bell situation, where Milwaukee matched the Heat's offer sheet for him despite Bell begging them not to. They always seem to have five centers and five point guards on the roster. Desmond Mason is back. Bogut is nuts. Michael Redd is on a mission from God. Plus, I saw Dan Gadzuric chillin out at the Barrington Levy show at Chicago's Caribbean Festival a few weeks ago.


I can't even say whether or not Milwaukee is Freedarko this point (although Yi certainly has potential to be "Darko"). I don't even know if I actually like the Bucks or if I could ever forgive them after they did Terry Porter so dirty a couple years back. I just know I feel affected by them...and I want to know if I can feel any sort of sensation or emotion when Milwaukee wins or loses. Whether I rush to check their boxscores or if I devote significant League Pass hours to them when the Wolves aren't playing. This is an exercise in self-exploration and knowing the boundaries of self. Let the experiment begin.

We Are Scared of Our Love

First off, some final VY words from the man who resurrected my post. He and I have been arguing about the "general" metaphor all morning, mostly because of the decreased responsibilities of the QB. In my defense, I think that Favre, Manning, and Vince Young are anachronistic in that they all in some ways run things. They harken back to how quarterbacks—and generals, actually—used to be. I would also like to wonder aloud if the NFL even wants the West Coast to watch football; I woke up at noon today and had already mostly missed one game. Imagine if I were a churchgoer, or a drunk who always slept in—pray tell, what would football's audience be without these two demographics.

Now, move the curtain aside and find basketball:

About a week ago, Truth in a Bullet Fedora threw up a detailful post about Durant's limitations. Henry linked to it, and I followed suite; last I check, my employer was promoting it like I'd written the actual article, which raises a host of questions that I'm too groggy to get into. What followed next was both flattering and illuminating: the author wrote me, concerned that he'd now forever be defined as Durant-doubter and soldier for evil. He politely demanded that I link to a second, more measured take on the same issue; I assured that him that, with a name like that, no one was ever going to mistake him for Charley Rosen.



Included in said email were these two sentences, which really tied together his whole project for me and got the think-trains running on overdrive:

I questioned Durant not for the reasons that crochety old haters like him doubt players (no outside shot, no defense, no left hand, bad attitude, tattoos, et al.), but for reasons that people like Dick Vitale steadfastly refuse to consider as they pimp Durant endlessly.

I know someone said the other day that imperfection is FreeDarko, and on a host of levels I can't really argue with that. But insofar as perfection is aesthetic dominance, and dominance is totally FreeDarko if it's done without flow charts and ratios, I have to admit a soft spot for the possibility of sui generis perfection. Kevin Durant is far from the perfect basketball player; even his staunchest fans have to admit that he's got miles to go before he's whole, and even then likely might not fill out in the shoulders and command the post. Yet one of the reasons he has struck such a cord across basketball's oft-divided citizenry is because of this prismatic appeal.

If you love basketball, you can find one, maybe many, reasons to gaze longingly at Kevin Durant. The denizens of this site likely regard him as a Garnett-esque stride across time's borders, a quick-fix cyclone that could clear out some of the league's disdainful clutter, or the embodiment of the assassin's brute, goal-oriented elegance. At the same time, as TIABF rightly claims, Durant's strong grasp of the game's mechanics, polite air, focus on winning, and clean-cut image make him the pin-up kid for those still looking for more Duncan. You could apply this same template to Oden: we looked at him and saw a personality-laden, freak athlete giant, while our foes curled their beards at the sight of the next super-stable big man. I was going to say "the next Bill Russell," but you get the same split-object there—and probably more often than you think throughout basketball history, which is both why the games has suffered and why it has survived.



This form of perfection is largely symbolic. I don't think anyone could clam that Durant is the ideal NBA player, and yet he somehow spans two distinct spheres of expectation. In this, he might be best thought of as a peacemaker, an olive branch-shaped olive branch disguised as a double-edged blade. LeBron James, on the other hand, is the closest we have to actual basketball completism. Durant eeks out a definition of the "perfect" based on what his time on the court the stands for; James, on the other hand, is still a marvel primarily for his a priori grandeur. LeBron's combination of size, skill, speed, strength, basketball IQ, court vision and instinct is almost inhuman. Certainly, it's part of what makes him dull to some, or makes others view him as a continual letdown.

LeBron's perfection is a curse; it will never be realized, in that he must constantly make decisions and go one way or the other. Granted, his current situation with the Cavs distorts his inclinations, or at very least makes him appear ragged and impetuous. But even if he were to achieve a Durant-ian balance of edge and wisdom, there would be those disappointed with the particulars: that he wasn't passing more, or posting up, or running the offense as is his birthright. Kevin Durant has given us a version of himself, and it has met with great acclaim. Whatever LeBron gives us is subject to criticism, since he could always do—or be—otherwise.

Ironically, there are no factions in this mob. LeBron unites us all in deifying his spirit at the same time as we shred his flesh.

I Refuse to Die

This might seem like beating a dead horse to death, but I'm going with it anyway. Emboldened by yesterday's definitive FreeDarko manifesto, I'm going to take one more shot at salvaging my Vince Young views. Actually, I'm letting someone else do the work. Here's part of an email I got from one of the proprieters of Just Sayin':

I don't have a lot to back this up, but watching the Indy game last week, I think Vince Young's real innovation is that he's the first qb that has a one-man-team swagger in the history of football. He's the football extension of a generation of self-starting rappers (especially in Houston) whose repeated declarations that they are the truth and a movement become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I'm not quite sure how I got through seven paragraphs without saying it directly, but there it is. I don't mean to be insistent or more condescending than usual; it just become utterly apparent to me that, without those sentences, the whole point was lost at sea. That's fine if you still want to call bullshit on the whole thing, or invoke Steve Young, Favre, and Cunninghman. I hope, though, that you'll reconsider my argument, seeing now exactly why I compared VY to Iverson, why Vick was the failure of this, and just why I overreacted the way I did.

Vince Young isn't just a black quarterback, or a running quarterback, or a ballsy one who doesn't seem to rely too much on systems and others' skills. He's what happens when the old-timey general goes beyond charging with his troops, or even leading the way. Vince Young rides ahead with his sword drawn and expects nothing more than some sympathetic back-up. And somehow, that's a viable strategy for taking down opposing armies.

The internet brings out the worst in people but also sometimes the best. The more time I spend here, the harder it is for me to separate the two.

On Warfare and Mr. Dill

Very early on in the Great Mainstream Stat Wars, Silverbird5000 called me on the phone with misery in his voice. He was concerned that everything he typed for this site ended up flush with Marxist longings, the kind that make pavement crinkle and birds take flight. Silverbird's promising academic career was not built on this sort of celebratory posturing, and the tunnels of his mind are proofed against fire. Yet somehow, FreeDarko brought out the booming rector in him.

There's a good reason for that: since its inception, FreeDarko has been rife with overtones of prophecy, revolution, imminent change, and apocalyptic fervor. Hence the preoccupation with Futurism, the Old Testament, Islamic extremists, the Black Panthers, Heidegger, the First Continental Congress, and Herzog. I can't exactly say what draws me to these things, other than ennui and impatience. And though when I start writing about sports, these are the reference points I glom onto. Part of it is a reaction to the NBA's massive style quotient; the only appropriate response seems to be some mix of nihilism and idealism. But I also should probably confess that, like most people, I like to feel I'm in the presence of important stuff. And nothing dribbles weight quite like imminent upheaval.



This doesn't mean, though, that the tone we take with the NBA is purely satirical or self-serving. There are very real tensions in the Association, and the post-Jordan years set all the known stages for transfiguration: decay, decadence, famine, specters of greatness, virulent quarrels, and strange arrivals. If I sometimes come off as over-invested in LeBron or the Suns, it's partly because of how they arrived on the scene. Say what you will about LBJ's hype, but his first game made it all into truth. And when the Suns unveiled their 2004-05 act, you really had the sense that something qualitative had changed.

What we might routinely over-estimate is how widespread or systemic these movements are, or even how much sense it makes to look on them as movements. In part, I dread turning my fandom into just another snotty critical discipline, where taste governs value and reputation. History's over in art and music, but maybe basketball has yet to ride out that tide. The ripples of team destiny are what every fan's truly after, and I'm stuck trying to do this for the league writ large.



And at the same time, there had to be a counter-argument to critics of the league. They were organized, coherent, and on message (sound familar?); I wanted a response that was equally formal. There were plenty of rational accounts as to why the Right Way was needed, how fundamentals had disappeared, what thugs all players were, and just generally how far the sport had fallen. At least half of the revolutionary impulse is frustration and overthrow, but without the constructive part, that's just name-calling. You need an alternative before you can tell someone they're wrong; you have to tell them they're wrong before you tell them "I hope a bear rapes your mother."

That raises the question, though, of whether FreeDarko-ness beckons because we hate stuffy NBA thinking, or whether we hate that thinking because of a strong allegience to FreeDarko-ness. I honestly couldn't tell you; it's a bit like asking if revolutions are motivated by hatred for the present or hope for the future. FreeDarko walks like it does in part because it needs to dignify its hit-list, but also because we want to believe in basketball's future. And the only way to do that now is to hope for change, to aggressively note it at every turn. If we sometimes force the issue, or appear delusional, it's because someone has to camp at the vanguard for when reality's caught up.

Sometimes I worry that a lot of what we say is fruitless or misleading, that there is no great dawn on the horizon. For instance, the Positional Revolution is constantly stretched and tweaked so it can uphold its good name. I carry within me oodles of doubt, wondering if the linear future is as empty a term in sports as in all other fields of human endeavor. Those demanding redemption are cave-dwellers, but in asserting progress, am I not but a slightly less wretched knave?



Then, this Kirilenko situation. It's been like finding evidence of a furry dinosaur, or uncovering the tomb where Martians fell. Without resorting to any hyperbole, for there is no need for it in the hour of fulfillment: Andrei Kirilenko is the player of tomorrow. More than Garnett or Durant, he marks a turn in the game that is as material as it is conceptual or speculative.

In so many ways, he could not have existed before this exact time-span. Kirilenko plays every positon and yet no position; defies specialization, instead excelling at bundles of pell-mell production; hails from a far-off land and runneth over with cheeky personality; and, in a very real way, is deeply invested in the kind of ball he plays. When Kirilenko was reduced to jumpers and blocks, it produced anguish within him, as if his need to run free were personal, not functional. His basketball being stakes itself on an FD-ish environment, and his emotional well-being follows closesly from that. If Amir Johnson is our Baby Big Bang, Kirilenko is a snapshot from after the asteroid hit.

His problems with Jerry Sloan this year are, quite simply, proof that FreeDarko cries out not in vain. I like watching the Jazz, but with Sloan's preferred style in place they are anything but hospitable to such pure a fleck from beyond. That Kirilenko is so muted, so dismayed by life under this regime is proof that we do have a cause. There are athletes who need defending, flags to be raised, and tyrants to fall. We do this site not to make LeBron richer, or debate the merits of trading Marion, or even gloat when Josh Smith blows up. No, we are advocates for a world yet to come. And only by freeing its displaced kings, or properly memorializing a Warriors-like triumph, can we justify our own existence.

The prophet speaks so that one day he may be silenced, silenced by a world that has made him noble but irrelevant.

Sentiment Rains Attraction

There was this thesis I had been working on for a while that basically said that Sports News websites (Foxsports.com, cbssportline.com, and most notably ESPN.com) focused far too much on negative stories. I had a perfect screen-capture of ESPN's top stories from one day earlier this summer--all of the stories involved either a DUI, an injury, a firing, or some A-Rod-related scandal (I just spent an hour searching for that screenshot on my computer, to no avail). I even had some Silverbird5000-esque statistical evaluation planned in which I had compared the proportion of negative headlines on ESPN.com to the proportion of negative headlines on Google News' general news (my rough analysis proved that negativity in the ESPN headlines far outweighed that of news in general, killing the argument that "if it bleeds, it leads" is just as applicable in sports as it is in world/national news). But then I kind of lost interest. Then I regained interest when I saw Jameer Nelson's father's disappearance as a top story...It made me uncomfortable. Like, I know it's pro athletes, but isn't there a certain amount of respect involved in at least waiting until Nelson's father is confirmed dead to blast the story on the front page? Also, isn't there something sort of odd and insensitive about giving Nelson's father lower billing to "METS SWEEP D-BACKS" ?

These are two completely separate TYPES of news. In Shaq's terms, "apples and pumpkins." The whole format needs a shake-up...NOW, with the OJ bizness in full swing, I am again pissed off at the misguided priorities of these sports moguls. I swear the top stories when I was younger were SCORES. Then everything else. I hate to sound crusty, but Jesus Christ, the baseball races are killing shit right now, and the first thing I see on Sportscenter is Donovan McNabb defending himself about comments that black QBs take more shit than white QBs, which by the way has BLOSSOMED INTO A STORY THAT IS PROVING EXACTLY HIS POINT. (Sorry, another topic for another time).


Now, of course, this was the summer of our discontent. Barry Bonds, Michael Vick, Tim Donaghy, Davydenko, Kobe demanding a trade, the Tour De France, Pac Man Jones, and on and on and on. The fact remains, though, scandal and gloom have been around forever in sports...and only recently has it received such top billing. My solution to all of this is not to thrash ESPN and co. for acting like tabloids or to bury these negative off-field stories. We need this stuff as 21st century consumers of AS MUCH INFORMATION AS POSSIBLE. Rather, the solution is for Sports News outlets to act like General News outlets, and to segment the news into finer categories. Just as the New York Times has travel, world news, business, sports, and arts sections so too should ESPN have theirs. My suggestions for sections are as follows:

Entertainment
Larry Johnson records a rap song, Derrek Lee is on a new episode of ER.

Arrests/Crime/Legal Proceedings
Chris Henry, OJ, Elijah Dukes

Death/Obituary
Eddie Griffin, Bill Walsh.

Injury
Ken Griffey Jr., football players.

Sports scores
~

Variety/humor
A woman that wins a marathon turns out to be a man.

Front office reorganization
Hirings and firings.

Transactions
Your favorite player gets traded from the team he has played on for 12 years.

Performance Enhancement
Wade Wilson, Rodney Harrison, Jay Gibbons, Floyd Landis.

Records/milestones
Glavine's 300th win, no-hitters.



In completely unrelated news, I am posting this MP3 of Company Flow (El-P and Len) and Cannibal Ox performing "Patriotism" at a Madison Square Garden Ralph Nader rally ("Where the Knicks fans at?") back in 2000. For anyone who has ever asked what the term Free Darko means, this is it.

FREE AMIR II

More photos of everyone's new favorite basketball player. These are from China, if you can't tell.



So you're a young dude on the cusp of greatness. You get invited to a far-away land for a Yao Ming-sponsored charity game. What do you wear for your public appearances? Same shirt you rock in the club, even if it's the worst possible garment for an NBA cat to get photographed in.



Amir with a motley bunch of "fans" (HUGE IN BOSNIA AND PAKISTAN?!?!?!?!?). I have no idea how this is the group he came up with in China, or why he had to take a picture with all of them at once. I don't think this is one single crew, unless it's his fan club that follows him everywhere. It's also strange—and refreshing—that this photo was for his own use. Like he was so surprised by his fame that asked its bearers to pose with him.

At this point, I'm convinced that Amir Johnson is the most endearing man in the world, and has already befriended half the league. I also expect him to single-handedly make me watch the Pistons all next season. He's like what Darko would be, if Darko had anything to do with the site he's named after.

Don't Stare at the Forest

I like Skeets a lot, but sometimes his ceaseless Vince Carter bashing renders me glum. I understand why he does it; Skeets rides hard for his Raptors, and Carter very passively tore the throat out of his fair city. But to my set of peculiar biases, it seems excessive: while I would never hold up Vince Carter as the epitome of athletic excellence, it seems almost unfair to expect him to be. Time and time again, Carter's proven that, despite having all the gifts in the country and an irresistible nice guy vibe to him, he just doesn't get basketball. And I don't really know if we can hold him accountable for this.



Case in point: The above video, presented to me by the aforementioned Dino-nut. What's amazing is how breezy and kind Carter comes off as, and yet what an utter, sniveling "fuck you" his actions in the story come off as. Then there's the fact that, for any NBA player with an ingrained sense of identity, the Rucker means something. They go there to prove they're in touch with the raw, to do shit that would get them tossed out of most pro contests. No matter how deft or astonishing one plays, the assumption is that, when he touches down at the Rucker, he's saying he can do more. Vince, though, thinks of it as another goodwill appearance, until he finally wises up and casually brings the house down.

That's the common thread in Carter's career: the paraphrase someone on The Wire (Bodie on Namond?), Vince is just not built for this shit. Which is a puzzling statement to make, seeing as Vince is physically as suited to the sport as anyone in total imagination. Notably absent, however, is that sixth sense for the mores, ways, and means of sports participation. It would be otherworldly if this quality didn't so often lead to disappointment and rancor; as it is, something like the graduation fiasco serves to disqualify Carter from the brotherhood. Once he's retired, he'll immediately become a credit to the sport, and even in Toronto people will line up to touch the hand of the most perfect dunker of them all. Only then will he really make sense, as an outwardly pleasant man who, in some remote sense, is connected with outstanding feats on the hardwood.



For most active players, the converse is true; to some degree, that's the basic assumption of the Lens of Psychology that, practically speaking, our version of fandom depends on. Compare Carter's slightly creepy presence in the league with that of his cousin McGrady, also awash in humanity, also disrupting the usual life/ball balance. But in T-Mac's case, all his pain and weirdness comes rushing back into his game. That Carter is detached, or defines himself outside of basketball (however humbly) gets in the way of his stylistic self-discovery.

Both accidentally and inevitably, McGrady's sports life carries on in the same vein as his personal life. This is the kind of thing that makes us call T-Mac "bottomlessly soulful" and Carter "without a soul," and makes us feel that watching McGrady is not just an exercise in aesthetics and entertainment. And, I would argue, the same thing is true for being McGrady. Vince Carter makes it ruefully clear that to him, basketball is not life, and is in no way intertwined with his deepest self-discussion. It may drive us mad as fans but ultimately, it's more dismal fact than point of contention.

Born to Lathe

The whole three years I was enrolled in UT-Austin, I had only one storming Longhorn sports moment. Oddly, it wasn't Kevin Durant who delivered into the promised land of fan feeling; from the second he touched down in Texas, I figured him as belonging to the Association. No, predictably enough, it was you-know-when in the 2006 Rose Bowl. I had actually been lukewarm on Young up to that point; his dominance was so straightforward that it struck me as facile, and his less-than-sleek passing was the kind of thing that mocked anyone obsessed with ferocious QB mobility. Even his runs, the stuff his legend was made of, seemed to me almost insultingly direct, more a receiver dismissing a corner than a back dissecting the field. With that one play, however, everything fell into place before me: Young was pure, unadorned swag let loose to win football games.

I don't think I've being sulky in admitting that, sorry, Tom Brady doesn't move me. When he marches down the field, I don't see one man facing down hell with his bare hands. Instead, it's a hand-picked manager blessed with bushels of talent and the policy handbook from infinity. There's playmaking involved, but it's anchored in the belief that football wins football games. Across the chasm of uncertainty, the dork bridge of execution always can and always will provide guidance. Winning games in a heroic fashion is a matter of buckling down and applying one's self, not letting the will to power take over. There are always other gods in the way.



Vince Young, on the other hand, makes games his in the most elemental way imaginable. Watching the first half of the Titans game this weekend, I saw little worth remembering. Then, apparently, at some point he sprang to life and manufactured a stark semblance of victory. This is the Tim Duncan principle, but made rad; this is Jim Brown if he controlled the entire offense; this is the unquestionable worth of taking the snap and daring the other team to try and stop you.

Around the time of the '06 Draft, I wanted to write about Vince Young as the NFL's Allen Iverson. My reasoning was pretty shallow; I was in Houston in the time, and it was impossible to avoid just how thoroughly Young was a product of that city at that time. There had been plenty of black quarterbacks, and plenty of joy and anxiety over them. But Young seemed to, for lack of a better word, be the game's first hip-hop quarterback. At the time, I'd already lost faith in Vick as anything resembling a leader or an all-around orchestrator; now, he'll go down in the history as the embodiment of all that, to some fans, was negative about Iverson's arrival in the NBA. AI fazed out the sacred point guard position, refused to stick to scripts, and got a reputation for off-court shenanigans. Vick did all this and more, reinforcing to the choir of hate why someone "that black" couldn't play QB.



But there's another aspect to Iverson's legacy, one that even a semi-hater like myself must acknowledge. Allen Iverson made the game of basketball urgent and culturally relevant again, both on and off the court. He may have scared away scores of potential ticket-buyers, but he also left ab indelible mark on the game, both stylistically and competitively. Why was he able to do so? Because he was that fucking good. Had his style of play been a mere sideshow (Rafer), it wouldn't be so hard to get young players to work within the boundaries of an offense, or run certain ne'er do-wells out of the league. Iverson gave an entire generation of style its foothold in the NBA, through nothing more than his own breath-snatching proficiency.

That's why, on this trembling morn, I propose to you that Young will indeed be what Vick never could be, what Iverson did to benefit each and every man. Vince Young has come to once and for all decolonize the position of quarterback; not to necessarily "make it black" or whatever, but transmute it into something distinct from the Brady's and Palmer's of this world. That's not to say that he stands for one-man football, or could ever effective dislodge all those who came before. However, insofar as the folkways of sport twirl and evolve so that we may all grow wiser, Young's hell-bent determination and muscular simplicity are something worth acknowledging. Vince Young plays the game of football like no one before him, but this is only evident in the gravity of his drives. I hear that the sport has always been about effort and bravery, but to my knowledge, no one's ever shoved a team into competitiveness out of sheer self-assurance.



At the risk of upending this whole thing, that's some serious basketball thinking.

Quick scraps:

-Big surprise: National Public Radio is a friend of mine. So it was both warming and disconcerting to hear the NBA take over their airwaves this weekend. That's a slight exaggeration, but in less than twenty-four hours I heard a lengthy, solemn news story on Greg Oden; a rerun This American Life on meeting one of the non-pro dudes from the Nike freestyle commercial; and then, most perfectly, Chris Paul as a guest on the all-conquering Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I had something brewing about the NBA being NPR's new natural sport friend, but it all just came down to implicity Jewishness and the Knicks, which none of you need a refresher on.

-Generally, Celtics blogs are the worst thing on earth. So it's a bit strange that, for the following gripe, I'm linking up the only one I can stand, Shamrock Headband. But it's because I love them so that I wanted to call them out for falling victim to the inveterate homer-ism that make Celtics blogs such an oozing cottage industry. You know, the Oden/Durant lottery technically belonged to any team out of the playoffs; tanking, too, could've easily been the plot of the Grizz. Yet somehow, both of these were projected Celtics causes. And now, I'm reading more and more insinuation that the Oden injury in some way reflects on the Green Guys; this SH post is only the most read-able example of this. Look, Boston is relevant again. It's not necessary to make everything a Celtics issue out of sheer desperation. To say that Oden's injury proves that the Celtics are now lucky. . . well, you could just as easily make that case for all those teams who drafted ahead of Boston (and weren't Portland).

Fly Into Tomorrow

Ok. Back to what's important.

If you haven’t been following this week's PER debate it probably isn’t worth starting now. And if you have been following it, chances are you’re bored sick. But for those eight or nine of you out there actually looking forward to the next installment, come and join me for one final ride.

When we last left off, the theory of PER inflation was under fire from the gentlemen at BallHype, who put together an impressive study showing that season-to-season increases in minutes actually correspond to increased, not decreased, productivity – even for the subgroups we argue are inflation-prone. The problem with looking for the minutes-productivity relationship in this data is that causation may very well run the other way, like when players get more minutes because they've improved. I originally thought this problem could be avoided by looking at intra-season (i.e. game level) data. But as commenter Brian M wisely points out, the problem remains that coaches generally let players play when they’re hot, and bench them when they're cold - so we still won't know if minutes increase productivity, or the other way around.



Rather than look directly at the mpg-PER relationship, I thought I’d try approaching the problem from another angle. Our original hypothesis was that per-minute productivity will decline with large jumps in mpg because of a) the increased quality of teammates with whom production is shared, and b) the increased quality of defenders. My idea is pretty simple: if we can show the (negative) effect of match-up quality on productivity, and the (positive) effect of minutes-played on match-up quality, this would provide some indirect proof that per-minute adjustment creates inflated PERs.

The raw data I use are from the bizarrely under-the-radar +/- stats website basketballvalue.com. For each game, they provide data on every 5-on-5 combination that takes the floor and the total number of minutes elapsed for each match-up. Thus, for every player-game observation it is possible to calculate the average quality of teammates and defenders in that game- first, by taking each player’s 2006-2007 PER ratings, then multiplying that figure by the fraction of time they share the floor. For example, if Ginobili plays 30% of a 2-on-2 game with Duncan (PER 26) and 70% with Oberto (PER 12), then the average PER of his teammates would be 16.2 (.3*26 + .7*12). By applying the same method to our 5-on-5 data we derive our two independent variables, "Teammate-Per" and "Opponent-PER", for each player, for each game. Then, by linking these match-up variables with boxscore data from the same games, we can analyze the effect of both Teammate- and Opponent-PER on individual game-level production.



The results of our regression analysis are given in the tables below. For the first model, we test the effect of Teammate and Opponent-PER on three different measures of per-minute production (that is, our dependent variable): the NBA efficiency metric (NBA48), a simplified Hollinger metric (Hollinger48), and Dave Berri’s Win Score (WS48), each of which are normalized a la PER. We use a linear fixed effects model to control for both individual and team effects. (Without getting to technical, what this basically means is that we cancel out the effects of fixed differences in individual and team productivity, i.e. the fact that Kobe or the SUNS are more productive on average, and in ways that are unrelated to Opponent-PER.) For the second model, we test the effect of Opponent-PER on WS48 using different subgroups and controlling for minutes played.

We find that the effect of Teammate-PER is weaker than expected, and its significance is sensitive to the metric we select. For both NBA48 and Hollinger48, increasing Teammate-PER has a small and significant negative effect on productivity, but using Berri’s WS48 metric, that significance disappears. (This makes some sense, since Berri’s system emphasizes shot efficiency over point totals, making the benefit of high-quality passing more important than the cost of reduced attempts). Moreover, when included in a model with Opponent-PER, the effect of Teammate-PER drops out entirely (see table 2).

In contrast, the effect of Opponent-PER (i.e. the quality of defenders) is robust for all three performance measures. In the first model, the effect is still quite small – a negative .06 decline in WS48 for every 1 unit increase in Opponent-PER. However, that effect increases significantly with the addition of further controls (i.e. mpg). And when we focus only on our original subgroups - i.e. players with 15+ PERs and high mpg - the effect jumps to –0.20. This means that increasing the average quality of the opposition from 10 to 20 PER – that is, going from a match-up with bench players to a match-up with starters – leads to a 2pt decline in per-minute Win Score (where WS48 is normalized with a mean of 15). Not an enormous decline, but still significant.



Going back to our original theory of PER inflation, we also tested to see if Teammate-PER and Opponent-PER are indeed correlated with the number of minutes an individual plays. As one might expect, we find that yes, the longer a player stays on the floor, the higher the quality of both teammates and defenders. Thus, given the positive effect of minutes-played on match-up quality, and the negative effect of match-up quality on individual production, it seems plausible that – all things really being equal – an increase in minutes will lead to (slightly) decreased productivity, on average. And that this is especially true for above-average bench-players who get a large bump in mpg - that is, the subgroup we originally hypothesized would be subject to inflation. In short, THE THEORY OF INTERTEMPORAL HETEROGENEITY LIVES.




A couple quick caveats- first, these are the results of a pretty quick and dirty analysis, so please judge them accordingly. Also, while I do know my way around this kind of analysis, I'm far from an expert, so consider that as well. Finally, it's true that the problem raised by Brian M still applies: players who are more productive will stay in games longer, and thus face better defenses. However, this just means that if anything, the effect we observe is understated, and so it hardly undermines our case.

Meanwhile, Up At The Leisure Factory

The news is true, and I guess I should be hunched over in stunned disbelief. This does have eerie similarities to Amare, whose abrupt bow-out from '05-06 pained me like few things in this world have. At the same (sorry to reprise something I already told AOL), there's no way this matches that catastrophe. At the time of his injury, Amare was the most delirium-inducing entity in all of the NBA. His playoffs had reduced the most polite men to clothes-renting and bloody foam in the eyes; Stoudemire was poised to give us years of drug-like mayhem and bliss.

Oden, he's yet to even set foot in a second of NBA gametime. We have no feelings for him, beyond the vague sense that he'll benefit the sport; in fact, after a muted freshman campaign notable mostly for one big, bad dunk attempt, the buzz on Oden had mostly to do with his thoroughly engaging personality. On top of all that, he was never going to revolutionize the game. I know that Dwight Howard's a popular guy around here, but he's dull as sin to watch, fast-twitch or no fast-twitch. While Oden may have the motor skills of a guard, make no mistake: He is an orthodox seven-footer, the kind of player everyone wants but no one dreams about.

So while Oden's lowers upon us a mightly symbolic void, I don't feel like anything has been stolen from my bosom, or forcibly unhooked from deep within my heart. Maybe this makes me immature; I also never bother to check how the stock market affects my savings. Or, perhaps, we need to acknowledge that big men like Oden are very much like investments: even at their most glamorous, they will never send the same frisson through us that fleeting bills and coins can. They are more secure, and the right move, and all that. But there's a not-so-fine gulf between even the least responsible dabbling and tossing stacks up to see where they fall.



What this means, then, is that waiting for Oden will not mean the end of the world. The big man narrative isn't going anywhere; it can not be antiquated, outmoded, or otherwise tarnished by progress. Most importantly, though, Oden was never going to surprise us. We could already imagine what dominant Greg Oden would look like; we have also already seen far too many times how a seven-footer goes bust. He would make the Blazers very happy, and enhance the NBA's credibility. Really, though, he wasn't going to teach us anything about the game. And now, he'll sit on the shelf maturing like a very tall African-American bond. When he arrives, we'll appreciate his contribution that much more, because we'll have spent all these months calmly, knowingly prepared for it. If Amare, a far less orthodox big man, could be First Team All-NBA post-microfracture, the outlook is hardly bleak for Oden.

Contrast this with Durant, whose debut should already have all of us scraping the walls with anticipation. We need some answer to the wide-open possibility that is Durant, so that our conversation about him can at least begin in earnest. Right now, he's like a trillion dollars buried off on a desert shore by a pirate who may or may not have seven eyes. No expectation is too outlandish, for we have no idea how successful he'll be: or for that matter, what the fuck he'll even look like out there. Greg Oden is timeless, drawing his sustenance from the tradition. Durant is a dispatch from undiscovered lands, whose mercurial path through the league will write its own tale. That's the one we can't even begin to imagine, and thus, the one we need to hear right away.

Put the Oden in the Deep Freeze

If you spend your days reading about the NBA on the internet (and, since you're reading this, I'll assume you do), then you probably already know that Greg Oden will be out for the entire season. Obviously, this is a tragedy for even the most casual of hoops observers, who have really only seen Oden play one full game at complete strength (his extremely impressive NCAA Championship Game performance). What's pissing me off is that people were already talking Sam Bowie even before the news today, so expect to hear that one a million more times. What all these assholes are missing is that Bowie has nothing in common with Oden other than being tall and having once been injured. Bowie was never the explosive interior presence that Oden is, he was more like a Ralph Sampson type: a monstrously talented center who thought he was a small forward. Oden is more comparable to Amare: explosive, young, and knows where his bread is buttered. Wait, is that an actual expression? Anyway, the point is that, like with Amare, I expect a healthy Oden, and a Portland team bolstered by another high draft pick in 2008, to come out guns blazing in the 08-09 season. Bank on it.

Bank of Maimonides

And so the Great Mainstream Stat Wars of Summer 2007 continue. Ziller fires back with his critique of TOIH, and Silverbird defends our honor thus in the comments section:

A couple of points. First, it seems like you are using season-level data here (please correct me if I'm wrong about this). This presents several problems. One that has been mentioned already is that players improve, so there will be covariance between quality and minutes increased (this is something you try to account for, I recognize). Another reason is that season-to-season increases in minutes often result when players are traded/signed to weaker teams, and thus are sharing the ball with weaker teamates. Likewise, players who join better teams and play fewer minutes may see an increase in efficiency, e.g. Matt Bonner (one of the players on our list) who, when he joined the Spurs, saw his playing time fall sharply but his PER jump 20%. Both of these cases are consistent with our original argument, which is that PER inflation reflects imbalances between teams. Career level data just doesn't work here. Better would be intra-season data on large mpg increases, but here you'd have to control for things like quality of opponent (since bench players generally see more time against crappy teams). Maybe I'll try to do this at some point, when i have the time.

Second- I'm not sure why you restrict your data set only to players whose mpg increase from the previous season. What about the players whose mpg decrease? (i.e. Matt Bonner). Maybe your results will be the same. Regardless, it seems like an odd restriction. After all, the relationship you're testing for is between minutes played and efficiency, not minutes increased and efficiency.

Third- We never claim that "if you increase a player's minutes, his efficiency will suffer". I'm sorry if you interpreted it this way. What we said is that very large increases in mpg - the kind that change a bench player into a starter - will decrease efficiency, all else equal (the "else" here being age, the team played for). Again, the only way to really evaluate this claim is with within-season data.

Finally, since our entire argument was about players with above-average PERs (the group we looked at was the top 150 - that is, players who should be starters, according to Hollinger), it seems a little odd to present your overall coefficients as somehow refuting us us. Your subgroup of players with 15+ PER is really the group we're talking about. And although I certainly wouldn't claim the negative coefficient (-.22) as some vindication - it is, as you say, still very small - it certainly seems important.

This is the part where I admit that I'm beyond my depth. On a common sense level, the original Silverbird/Shoals hypothesis still makes sense to me. On the other hand, it is entirely within the teachings of FreeDarko to think that all benches are stocked with hell-bugs awaiting their moment. I would only be really bummed if NOTHING happened when these players got their added PT.



Another note: Tom and I were talking earlier today about how deadest summer is the perfect time to have this discussion. I'm aware that some people spend all season up in this vein, but here you have minds addressing these issues from a range of perspectives. Super-stats can't wholly supplant subjectivity or intuitions, and most of us involved in this debate want to talk about ways that all these facets of NBA knowledge can co-exist. These forces should feed and learn from each other; when there's a clash, it's time to figure out the interaction between the two realms, not break out the scalp knives.

Against Glop's Grain

Late last night/early this morn, myself and Silverbird threw together this post. It came out of a long conversation that, I'm now realizing, might now have made it into type the way we wanted it to.

The point of this post was not, as some of our feistier readers believe, to deride PER or say "shit is stupid!!!!" In fact, we didn't even pat ourselves on the back for putting the overrating effect in economic terms. Rather, this was intended to bring together two sides of the debate. Like, fine, PER can misrepresent things. But at the same time, it can call our attention to situations demanding attention. We sought to make these problems into something wonderful, not, as some have claimed, point at them and giggle.

"PER Inflation" has not, cannot, and does not mean that "these dudes suck." Instead, it's indicative of a player requiring more minutes, such that a higher caliber of opponent would correct this aberration. If not, and he stays that good, great. In this case, though, PER is qualitative indicator that someone's place in the rotation needs reconsidering. This, of course, is consistent with Ziller's light attack on coaching know-how. Similarly, someone wounded with "deflated" PER tells us either that, according to one viewpoint, he should be considered for demotion. Of course, it could also simply show that his team is barren, or that he has been chosen for a highly-specialized role, one that might not show up all that well in PER.

I don't really like stats, it's true, in part because when I watch a game, I don't see PER and +/-. Ironically, here I was trying to make a peace offering, to unite two warring factions, under the banner of qualitative cues. If I failed, may you all leave tampons in my ear.

The Interpretation of Symbols

A Joint-post by Silverbird5000 and Bethlehem Shoals

Some of you may be following the latest blogosphere contretemps over Hollinger's Player Efficiency Ranking (PER)- that great Rosetta Stone of NBA statistical analysis, whose benevolent tyranny over our league it is our duty as fans to periodically resist. The argument comes down to the wisdom of the per-minute adjustment, which is a central part of PER, along with pretty much every other Ultimate Metric in the marketplace. On the one hand, adjusting for minutes played seems like a good idea, insofar as it immunizes our judgment from the folly of coaches. If a player who should be getting 40 minutes a game only gets 20, his per-game stats will understate his true value. What per-minute adjustments do is control for mismanagement, as Ziller correctly points out.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes the homogeneity of court time. It assumes that if a player scored 20 points in 20 minutes, he would also score 40 points in 40 minutes. That there will by systematic differences between these two situations is almost too obvious to point out. It's the difference between sharing the ball with Jordan Farmar while being guarded by Kenny Thomas, and sharing the ball with Kobe Bryant while being guarded by Ron Artest.

Insofar as the problem here is one of rotation, small-scale adjustments in minutes played shouldn't create major distortions (it isn't unrealistic to think that if Tim Duncan played 5 extra minutes per game, his per-minute production, as influenced by the level defense he'd face, would basically be the same). But when PER catapults bench players into the starting five (or vice-versa), be on the look-out for inflation. Call this the Silverbird-Shoals Hypothesis, or the THEOREM OF INTERTEMPORAL HETEROGENEITY (TOIH).



By way of proof, we propose the following experiment: imagine a league in which the distribution of minutes perfectly reflected the PER rankings, such that the top-ranked player played the most minutes per game (43mpg), the 100th-ranked player played the 100th most minutes (31mpg), and so on and so forth. Now, compare this projected distribution of minutes to that of the actual league. For most players, the difference between actual and projected mpg is fairly small - high PER players play high minutes, low PER players play low minutes. But for a significant minority of players, actual mpg falls far short of what Hollinger's rankings predict. If TOIH is correct, we should observe inflation in the value of these players' PER. We invite you to consider the evidence and decide for yourself.

The following table shows all players (PER rank < 150) whose actual-projected mpg differential is 12 minutes or more:



[That pretty much every player on this list is vastly overrated by PER is, ultimately, a subjective judgment. But it is the kind of subjective judgment only a lunatic doesn't share.]

Note that everyone here ranks in Hollinger's top 150; if PER accurately reflected productivity, then leaving aside issues of position, age, etc., every one of them should be on some team’s starting five. But none of them are, not even Ginobili. Indeed, despite their high per-minute productivity, many of these players see no more than 15 minutes a game. Somewhat paradoxically, this suggests that PER inflation is a matter of being both overvalued AND underplayed; or, more accurately, being overvalued per-minute but under-valued per game.



If PER inflation is basically the problem of over-qualified bench players, it would seem that PER deflation, its counterpart, is somewhat more complicated than just under-qualified starters. Among the worse 150 players in Hollinger’s rankings, the following play significantly more minutes than projected: Bruce Bowen (#372/+19mpg), Speedy Claxton (#371/+14), Adam Morrison (#366/+14), Trenton Hassell (#331/+14), Desmond Mason (#307/+17), Raja Bell (#262/+18), Shane Battier (#261/+17), Larry Hughes (#252/+17), and Marvin Williams (#239/+14). Given our hypothesis, it would stand to reason that all or some of these players have no business regularly facing top-tier competition.

Bowen, Bell, and Hassell can be excluded, for their defensive contributions are partly invisible. But Claxton, Morrison, Mason, Hughes (as currently constituted) and Williams (at this point in his career) are all players who, in a perfect world, would be used more sparingly. That they are not is a function of either missing resources or incompetent coaching. It is interesting to find fantasy and Right Way figurehead Shane Battier on here; 'twould appear that his production is a function of minutes, not value.



To conclude, the virtue of per-minute adjustment is that it adjusts for bad coaches. But in the process it runs afoul of a far greater and more systemic problem: that is, the unequal distribution of talent in the league. In a world of perfect balance, where starters played equal starters, bench players played equal bench players, or everybody just played everybody all at once, then each man’s productivity could be measured under equal conditions, and so without fear of distortion. This world would be called baseball, a sport whose statistical models we have borrowed without regard to their unspoken assumptions. As it happens, our sport is basketball, and its time is ineluctably structured by the inequities below. Whether our statisticians can ever overcome this problem remains to be seen.

Silverbird5000, Bethlehem Shoals
September 10th, 2007
Vienna, AU