The Year Glass Broke

Whopper of a Works today, in which I tackle Vick/Gil; Kevin Pelton and TZ tell you what teams are worth watching; and the Works continues its team previews. I learned that Donte Greene is a lost cause (despite what I had believed) and Francisco Garcia is about to blow up (which I had long ago given up on). Glad I could provide the springboard!

Bonus: An earlier FD post about Vick, from last week.

Squishy Kernels

-This video will set you up.

-Here are my thoughts on Game 7. They just happen to have been written by Eric over at The Baseline.

-If you missed Hickory High's award-winning work on how players get going offensively, read it before it's too late.

-Rumor has it that #cuppinit will soon have its own domain name. Stay tuned.

-MORE: If you missed it, don't keep missing Avi/Shoefly's post on boxing/NBA Finals comparisons.

From the Many. . .

Big surprise, in college I was drawn to philosophy early. Eventually, I was bitten by the Continental bug, writing papers about Levinas and improvisation. Meanwhile, some notable percentage of my buddies in arms had gotten all Analytic on me. Those relationships were never the same again.

I've heard that these days, the two sides are trying to patch things up. The flights of fancy and grand systemic thinking that fascinated me decided they needed an anchor; on the other side, the Anglo stuff started to acknowledge stuff like culture, context, history, and the possibility that ratty, wild-eyed "thinking" had a place in methodology. I'm not sure if that's exactly how the equation works, but this reconciliation is a great way to bring up Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009-10.

While I'm aware of the futility, or at least the limitations, of box score stats, they're still an important part of player mythos for me. In short, you might be inclined to think of FreeDarko's interpretive ravings as a return to an even more primitive time, when sports were much more literature than science. That would put us on the Continental side of things: ecstatic, expansive, and possibly total bullshit. Then there's the world of advanced statistics, a positivism that dissolves phenomenon and their traditional measures of them into lies and inaccuracies, leaving in its wake a new, more precise form of inquiry.

Given all that, you'd expect PBP 2009-10 to only interest me so much. Any well-organized, impeccably-researched guide to every team, every player, and every important theme for the coming season, is fine by me; in this respect, this book is absolutely indispensable, and has very nearly hamstrung me when it comes to writing to writing my own previews. But I don't just respect PBP 2009-10, or find it a handy reference tool. It's insistently readable, consistently eye-opening, and, from where I'm sitting, an invaluable ally in the project FD has sought to undertake from day one.

To go back to that fateful split, the central cause for disagreement was over Truth itself. In a practical sense, it boiled down to whether Truth was ecstatic and sprawling or harsh and precise; follow through on that, and you end up with a disagreement over whether or not Truth actually exists or not. Any truce would proceed from the assumption that neither side had a monopoly on Truth—that each, in its own way, valued and sought to illuminate a different facet of the same phenomena. The two approaches would complement each other, provided they accepted this common purpose rather than focus on antagonization.



After reading over a few chapters of PBP 2009-10 early last week, I told Kevin that what struck me most was how funny it was. He was confused, and I couldn't explain what I meant—as readers of KP know, that's rarely the first impression you get from his writing. But then I settled on this passage about Lawrence Frank as my case in point:

Lawrence Frank is the dean of Eastern Conference coaches, entering his fifth full season at the helm of the Nets, yet he is also the second-youngest NBA head coach and will not turn 40 until next summer. Frank has generally been an average coach during his time in New Jersey, winning or losing depending upon the talent he has been given, and doesn’t have any clear statistical profile. If the Nets cut him loose at season’s end, Frank will get another chance quickly, and deservedly so.

It is virtually impossible to read that without laughing out loud. Why? Because it lays bare the sheer absurdity of Lawrence Frank's career, the mess that much of the East remains, and the bizarre culture of coaching hires in the NBA. Only a very, very small percentage of the Association makes perfect sense, lacks wondrous imperfections, or really does fit together like clockwork. PBP deconstructs traditional statistics to reveal something that's, well, more true than the usual drivel. Watching the TNT crew of experts last night, I couldn't believe how oblivious or wrong-headed they were. FD takes root in all the material that Reggie Miller fails to pick up on, but that's right in front of you every time you turn on the television. PBP is the other side of this coin, tearing down empty myths and conventional wisdom so we can see what a complex, and convoluted, game pro basketball really is—and what a bizarre state so many teams find themselves in. That can mean "totally fucked," but also "unique and beautiful like a snowflake." Or both.



Not to get all Oklahoma! on you, but I think there's a reason Kevin Pelton and I get along in real life. While our approaches couldn't be more different, stylistically-speaking, at the end of the day we both want to illuminate the NBA, to make sure fans get a chance to appreciate it as both well-considered quantitative analysis and as FD's poetic meltdown—the qualitative. At the end of the day, though, I know we're talking about, and value, the same league. Not just that, it's the same version of the league. Presumably, anyone reading FD feels like we make something about the NBA more clear than it would otherwise be. This clarity, this belief that there's a "real NBA" to be conveyed, is also the point of PBP 2009-10.

Note: I'm guessing that this Gelf piece by myself and Tom Ziller gets at some of the same stuff. Oh, and that Ziller fellow, he's like the embodiment of everything I'm talking about here. The grand synthesis, if you will. Track him down and haunt his house.

No Chase in Leaving

Every once in a while, my world stops turning here, but continues elsewhere, meaning that I have one foot in motion and the other at rest. That may make some of you angry, and it's a little awkward for me, but I think it warrants a post in case you don't just love FD for the template.

The big Gatorade gundown: Simple, hella corporate, and yet awakening the competitive spirit I didn't think I had in me. Click on that link and vote for my favorite Jordan moment of all time, so it can end up on a bottle across the nation. For space reasons, they had to cut the part where I suggest MJ finished in this manner to send a message to Bias, who had just had his potential game-winner blocked by Sam Perkins. Not quite the 1992 "eff Drexler" half that Skeet selected, but in the same vein. In case you've never seen it:



At one point, I was thinking of using this web classic:



I've posted it on here multiple times, but what fascinates me is that YouTube has allowed for a rediscovery of early Jordan. This grainy footage of his ninth game, the first time he really exploded as a pro, is quite possibly the most raw example of Michael Jordan, threat to the known universe. And relatively speaking, it might as well have never existed before this video was posted, except as a box score. Certainly, it's only recently that we've been able to drill it into our own heads, to memorize each move and, for me, reassert a past that's quite special in its own right. It's allowed us all to experience a relatively obscure moment as real, even consider it for the canon.

Moving on, the ol' day gig has produced some possible posts of note. I was in a bad mood when I read Dave Berri's "underpaid/overpaid" post, and ended up writing a column about it. Slight slip in terminology notiwthstanding, I think it's a point that had to be made, even if Ziller really hit hardest. I also found out that Berri himself does't think so highly of me, though I suspect he only reads my stuff about him, and might think that everything on FD is by me. Regardless, this blurb is a keeper: "As always happens when I read Bethlehem Shoals, I am left wanting the last few moments of my life back. He generally offers a few personal attacks and then reveals he didn’t quite read what was written."

A commenter suggested that, to paraphrase, I should be sympathetic to Berri because we both look at basketball in an unorthodox way. What do you think?

FURTHER LINKS:

-Can't miss cult classics for 2009-10

-I am confused about J.R. Smith's gang leanings

-Over at Rethinking Basketball, Q. McCall recaps every single conversation we had at the Storm/Mercury game, most of which involved comparing the men's and women's pro games (as style, and product, etc.)

Turn Your Z Around: The Ways of Wade

First there was the Z, then 2.0. A scientist cooked up the team version.

Now we bring you a re-imagining:

Soon, we will release the statistical baselines for skill qualification. Until then, an example:

We're All So Close Together

Heading home tonight. I am tired, and I am weary, or maybe I'm just like Hannibal Lechter when he makes collect calls to the FBI from some unholy tourist trap. But I did feel the need to weigh in on the latest stats dust-up, such as it is. I'm not sure entirely what's going on; I know that the Recluse was flush with angst, and that the crux of the matter can be found here. It instantly brought me back to the great PER Wars of a few years back, when myself and Silverbird5000 tried to take on Ziller and Kevin Pelton. We lost, but it was funny. Let the record show that this was all motivated by an attempt to dismiss Lamar Odom's dismal PER; as many of you have probably already seen, Odom's a fuckin' love supreme when it comes to adjusted +/- . . .for the past two years, when the Lakers grew strong again. So on that most superficial level, I'm not out to get stats anymore.

I will say this, though: The serious stats people I commune with also have one foot firmly planted in the very same currents of the game that I call home. Maybe they don't look for cartoons and metaphors, but joyous subjectivity always seems an important part of their statistical inquiries. These judgments are either bolstered or critiqued by numbers that, unless you're a dummy, have an undeniable power. Ever watch a game, think someone's playing well, and then see they actually shot like shit? So it is with advanced stats and more subjective claims about how, in ways both spectral and booming, Battier-esque and Bron-tastic, certain players or teams impact us as viewers. Anyone looking only at old numbers is as bad as the mythic ballhog who looks only at his points total; focusing solely on the new numbers is to imagine the game as an series of iterations that have no cohesion, will, or identity to guide them.



Which is to say, it all comes down to watching the game with some measure of both passion and sensitivity. Stats force you to think with greater sophistication, in terms of both aesthetics and matters most technical, lest stats overthrow your judgments. Maybe this is one man's attempt to come to terms with the way that numbers have begun to overrun this least quantifiable of sports. For that reason alone, though, I look to them as supplementary tools, ways of clarifying what the trained eye can already see. And yes, there is something vindicating about the ways in which some FD darlings have performed surprisingly well in this new realm.

It points toward some unified life force we can all share together, and makes me realize I've either been transformed or ruined by this ambitious book.

(NOTE: Said life force would be just one of the many episodes/stepping stones that crop up in Revolution in Mind. It's the interplay of outlooks that I'm feeling sorely affected by.)

FD Guest Lecture: Rising from the Whirl

Guest post today from Scout PT, whose ideas over email could not be denied.

Recently, I've been thinking about the job of a point guard—what he does and, more specifically, how he's measured. Basketball, as those who read FD know, is often opaque to numerical analysis. Baseball and football have discrete plays which provide clarity in the evaluation of individual actions. Strikeouts. Yards per attempt. OPS+. Basketball is a flow game and thus harder to measure. The player at the center of the flow—the point guard (and I include here for intellectual completeness point forwards, point centers, and point gauze-wrapping trainers...)—is perhaps the hardest to measure.

In the general discourse, PGs are measured first on assists - themselves, the most subjective of all major sports statistics, relying on the charity of a scorer to judge whether a player is credited for facilitating a direct move to the basket. Did or didn't, 8.3 per game or 5.1, no shades of gray, no description of quality, no description of whether the PG hit his forward in stride for a power lay-in or whether he chucked it up for the center to wrestle through four guys for an ugly bucket. Beyond assists, other measures of a PG's effectiveness include points and concepts like assist/turnover ratios—useful numbers, when considered in the proper context. Scoring 30 points a game is great, unless four dudes are watching the other player—sadly, often the best player on the team—go one-on-five every time down the court. The game is about the team and the rhythm. The extra pass. Moving off the ball. Getting everyone on the squad to move off the ball, and then to make the extra pass. That's what a PG should do. That, to me, is the magic, and point guards are the magicians.

How, then, does one measure magic? I've had a few discussions in which certain players are dismissed as "gunners", "ballhogs" or "just plain bad shooters". The determination is usually made by examining shooting percentages. Kidd and Cousy, two of the greatest court magicians, have horrible career shooting percentages, even adjusting for style-of-play in Cousy's era, and often receive criticism for such performance. Does that bad number mean they're bad shooters? Conscience-less gunners? I don't think so. Both guys had pretty good career foul-shooting percentages and, in the case of Kidd, decent 3-point shooting percentage. When they wanted to, each of them could turn it on and dominate. Outside, inside, whatever. Neither of these guys is Rajon Rondo.



One might consider styles when attempting to measure magic. On the other end of the shooting percentage spectrum are guys like Stockton and Nash (at least, in the glory years). Stockton, in particular, posted crazy numbers. Super crazy for a 6 foot 1 player. My gut tells me that the reason was that Stockton and the glory-years Nash were very disciplined shooters. They took shots they thought they could make and didn't take ones that they didn't, and didn't put themselves in positions where they'd end up with bad shots. That's how you shooting 57 percent from the field. But does that mean that Kidd and Cousy were undisciplined? Kidd, maybe, but Cousy? Aw, hell naw.

Here's what else my gut tells me. Cousy and Kidd have very similar styles. They're the kind of PGs that give the best shots to their teammates. Let's call them Superior PGs, in the I Ching sense of Superior. To illustrate, just think about the flow for a minute. If the ball ends up in the Superior PG's hand with 3 seconds left on the clock and he's stuck in a place he hates shooting from. Too bad but somebody still has to shoot the rock. Kidd and Cousy probably take that shot. Another guy might look to dish because he's in bad-spot hell, but I think guys like Cousy and Kidd take ownership for not executing in the first place and letting things get that bad and take the shot.

See, if the Superior PG dishes to his big for an easy lay-in after he drives and draws the big's man, that's doing his job right. But the shooting percentage win goes to his big. If the big's guy doesn't switch and the Superior PG is stuck under the basket looking at a wall of the wrong colored uniforms and thinking about which of a bunch of bad options is the least bad, all that happened because he's not doing his job right. The Superior PG might still take the shot from a bad spot because a) he didn't do something right in the first place and b) someone still needs to shoot the damned ball. And if he drives and things actually go well, and the choice is for the Superior PG to take a good shot or to dish to a guy 5 feet farther in who has a better shot, well, you know what he'll do.

I note as an aside here that there is an unresolved issue in my mind as to whether there is more ego - and less Superior-ness - in taking the shot from underneath that wall of wrong-colored uniforms or in pre-empting the whole issue and making a 15 footer rather than driving in an attempt to get a switch and a lay-in for your big. I also note that much of the PG's choice is dictated by the quality of said big.



But all things require balance, even being Superior. The greatest of all our magicians, Magic himself, had a .520 career FG%. Superior? Not Superior? First, you have to back out the Showtime fast breaks. Half-court Magic has a shooting number much closer to that of mortal men. Still, Magic was a pretty good shooter and, if you'll remember, Magic used to catch a lot of shit in the press about overpassing. He'd have an easy lay-in on the way and WHOA LOOKIT THAT the ball would end up in Rambis's hands.

*FACEPALM*

To his credit, Magic always acted like he had the team's best interest at heart. I'm the assist man, he'd say, that's what I do. He was unselfish to the point of selfishness. It was only after he got it through his head that the game wasn't just about making gorgeous passes - whether for the benefit of teammates' scoring or his own prestidigitational glory - that he ended up scoring 24 a game and taking home MVP trophy #1. That, my friends, isn't ego. It's Superior.

So, we return to the central question. How do we measure magic? The answer is, you don't. You describe magic. Maybe someday soon, 82Games will figure out how to break every PG's game down into quanta. Then we can measure magic. Until then, we watch, we feel for the flow, we think, we debate about whether a Kidd or a Nash, a Stockton or a Cousy, a young Magic or an older Magic is truly Superior.

Check Into Tomorrow

For serious, I swore I was going to take it easy over All-Star Weekend. Instead, some links:

-Joey and I frantically work through the implications of a shorn AI.
-Ty and Carter pay snide attention to the non-dunk parts of All-Star Saturday.
-Over at TSB, my Then and Now column overviews the weekend. No, "overview" is not a verb, except for here. Read and comment on this one so it stays alive.

Oh, and after much deliberation, we've decided to gently call out TNT for their Sunday intro. No, not because of its forgettably racist overtones, but because it's invocation of "spirit animals" and "style" was just a little too close to home. Probably not as glaring as the the ESPN mag deal, but still, we're left feeling something between flattered and slighted. Plus, they really should've dug a little deeper into the desert ecosystem.

Now, onto brighter places, or at least those that thrive and scamper in the fields of discourse, not envy. Michael Lewis's Battier/NBA Moneyball/how Morey works piece has seriously shaken up the basketball world. At least the kind that reads the Times. Some have been blindsided (ha!) by this sudden and gaping window into Morey's methods. But what's really made an impact is the fact that Battier, formerly thought of as that annoying Duke whose fantasy numbers means you have to draft him, but will automatically forfeit your team's claim to likeability, is portrayed here as a truly advanced stylist and a compelling figure. It was, in many ways, an FD-ization of Battier, albeit as a means toward an end.

Central to this version of Battier is the idea that he's not simply a scrappy guy who likes to defend and do "the little things," a hungry opportunist who imposes himself on the game by taking over the real estate no one else wants. Instead, Battier remains constant as "a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths." What's more, compared to the hustle guy who hits the floor on every play, Battier pursues a far less brute version of the glue guy—who even in Morey's parlance, can be seen as seeking some form of attention as an assertion of style. It's not just that his contributions only really come through in advanced stats; compared to Battier, a lot of other intangibles experts come across as single-minded and, in their lack of ego, almost showy. Battier is on another level, versatile and evasive. He's nothing less than the Right Way version of apositional icons like Lamar Odom and Shawn Marion—a player who, while dependent on context (whether instantaneous or long-term, as in a system) for direction, is valuable precisely because of his ectoplasmic net effect. And in Battier's case, this requires more flexible math than the box score offers, as if Shane himself provided the impetus for a change.



It's no accident that Lewis sees fit to include a healthy dose of Battier's biography, devoted in large part to his identity in the game as a mixed-race youth. Presumably without irony, Lewis explains that Battier followed the ultra-black Chris Webber at Detroit Country Day, but realized he could never be that player. Of course, Webber himself had plenty of identity issues, but on the court, there was no question he was a super-charged, highly-skilled power forward who had "superstar" scrawled all over his corpus. Anyway, the Life of Battier:

And yet here he was shuttling between a black world that treated him as white and a white world that treated him as black. ''Everything I've done since then is because of what I went through with this," he said. "What I did is alienate myself from everybody. I'd eat lunch by myself. I'd study by myself. And I sort of lost myself in the game."Losing himself in the game meant fitting into the game, and fitting into the game meant meshing so well that he became hard to see. In high school he was almost always the best player on the court, but even then he didn't embrace the starring role.

To me, this perfectly sums up why Battier is both so frustratingly hard to pin down, and in some ways, so fittingly the role player of the future. The pure specialist is as much of a dinosaur as the 20ppg scorer who offers little else. Not to conflate race and style too much, but think about Battier: Sure, he appeals to conservative fans and lacks swagger, but he's also long, versatile, and has been known to make pinpoint, aggressive plays. You follow from there. "Meshing so well that he became hard to see" is a statement about style, but it's also a reflection on identity. Battier's neither a black guy playing white, or someone whose white game is arrived at through means often associated with a certain stran of black player (the difference between Battier and Outlaw is. . . ). Granted, most of this is pat, but if Battier is next level when it comes to this "flow of the game" stuff, it might not be by coincidence that he also confounds easy race-based stereotypes on the court. He doesn't transcend oppositions; instead, he hangs out in everyone's margins, impossible to explain and thus posing a riddle to both sides. That shared terrain, that intersection of margins, is vast and unexplored, and it's only natural it would give rise to new kinds of players and a new way of seeing the game.

And yeah, there is an Obama reference earlier on in the story.

SELF IS THE NEW STATS

Tune in elsewhere for Dr. LIC's Black/Jew essay and a truly epic Shoals Unlimited (BOTH UP NOW!).

I really don't like to go back and do an entire post on something from another post that I failed to clearly explain the first time around. It smacks of self-obsessed perfectionism, which is to say, it can obscure whether or not the material really matters that much. But like most of you, I am mortal, impatient, and occasionally busy, which means that my favorite part of yesterday's post got condensed—maybe compressed—into this impenetrable passage:

The challenge, then is to somehow quantify stupidity on both side. Wide-open lay-ups, drives into four defenders, cherry picks, full-court drives, gambling for the steal on every play. . . these are the markers of deviance, and big surprise, the ball I love. Remove them, and pace could truly be universalized. I wonder, though if there's not a slippery slope, or two of them, on either side of an equilibrium forever in question. Where you set it, what represents the mean, is strictly a matter of preference.

To review, the purpose of yesterday's post was to address "D'Antoni inflation," and determine if such a thing were truly statistically possible. Such an investigation would help us all better understand just how to view Kobe's 61-point game; like, if the numbers were completely inflated, then how much of a statement game could it have been? Ziller proved that adjusting for pace alone yielded no conclusive difference, so we delved into the possibility of a qualitative difference. The anecdotal evidence for this is rich, if a little perverse: Namely, players suck after leaving D'Antoni. This feeds into Simmons's claim that D'Antoni screws with the game's collective brain, the LSD of its sporting era, and some never quite recover. To actually "deflate" stats requires some standard by which we filter out "good" plays from "crazy" ones. Simmons suggests no such things, but unlike home runs in baseball, here we are talking about a difference in style—something that clearly manifests itself on the basketball court. One could conceivably draw distinctions, as opposed to estimating, via advance trigonometry, which balls wouldn't have gone the distance if struck by a non-roided up batter.

I was not, however, endorsing this sorting of play-by-play data, because applying the kind of criteria Simmons hints at is both totalitarian and self-defeating. For one, as you can guess, the line between stupid and inspired is preciously thin in the NBA, or at least the NBA as I prefer it to be. When you start to judge plays based on how rational they are, or whether they represent the most efficient form of execution, then you end up fast in Dave Berri territory. That's not to say that D'Antoni teams, or Nelson's Warriors, aren't at the far end of that spectrum. A normative basketball, though, would force you to pass judgemnent on individual basketball acts, regardless of context, overall flow of the game, or symbolic pay-off. Not exactly friendly soil for revelation or transcendence. This also raises the question of whether all basketball contains such imperfections, and thus the goal would be to adjust teams for their relative "stupidity", or punitively hold them all to a single standard.



The latter seems downright evil. You could end up with very, very strong teams punished for not being sufficiently perfect, or not pursuing a single-minded approach to the game. In an even yuckier version of things, the standard is not any particular team that season, but a nameless, faceless archetype, such that the players and teams that have come to define "smart" ball would still have to measure up to an ideal. It goes without saying that truth lies in creation-through-example, not a coach's imagination. The former brings up the question of where exactly you put that mean. Would it be based strictly on that year's numbers? Or is it inserted arbitrarily, a reflection of one's own stylistic preference? In both cases, deflation becomes an essentially political act.

To bring it back to reality, we are on some level talking about the primacy of identity-through-style. Is the game not defined by particular players and teams, the limits of the reasonable charted anew each night? If a man finds himself through "foolishness," well the, who plays the fool? There is only a "wrong way" or "bad plays" if they result from clear misapplication and lead to indisputable wreckage. So what if the Suns screw with people's heads, or there are clear-cut "D'Antoni players?" It's like acid casualties from the sixties. Are we really suggesting that era should've stayed clean, so it would be easier to compare with those that preceded it?

Oh, and only because it can never be said enough: The Suns didn't win any titles, but they have changed the definition of "stupid." Point guards now matter more than centers. Every team plays some small ball now, no one milks the clock. Phoenix itself ran away from the very low rumble of change that they set into motion. Perhaps the right thinking here is that D'Antoni's stats are ahead of their time, and those who emerge from his teams suffering from a permanent time-travel hangover. I've had those, and they suck. Maybe we should be looking at inflating former Suns' numbers so they accomodate a greater amount of "stupidity."

Note: Al Harrington is the Rosetta Stone of this shit.

STATS ARE THE NEW SOCIAL NETWORK

Behold, the new Black/Jew dialogue starts today at We Are Respectable Negroes. Look for myself and Dr. LIC later in the week.

I don't know if the intertwub'ns (catch the slang!) is supposed to make me feel perpetually included, or forever alone. Certainly, blogger and Twitter can go either way, mostly depending on my mood. How you make a straight social network anti-social—not in the "Joey never goes out anymore," but actually encouraging narcissism and absence of any form of interaction—is beyond me. I feel the same way about sports sometimes. So Kobe goes for 61 while I'm busy taking notes on the Blazers. I've watched the highlights. I knew it was happening. I'm writing about it. And yet this morning, I can't help but feel like I'm out in the desert with all the wrong memories. You'd think that the power of modern communication and computing could provide a reasonable facsimilie of first-hand experience. Instead, all of this build-up seem like that much more mockery. I missed it. All the catch up, prying, or immersion in the world can't get me any closer to that basic, visceral event, which provides the spark for all the web-borne reinforcement going on this morning.

But fuck it, dude score 61, it was a modern miracle, and I have something to say about that bare fact. For firsts, I know this will repercuss back onto the way this Bynum-less team is perceived. I trust a lot of these reactions will be stupid, so please refrain from airing them out here. I swear to Hoth, I will delete them. This has also allowed me to deconstruct the myth of the Garden, to which I welcome angry, or empirically sound, objections. Yes, I do equivocate the visitor's record with the all-purpose record, with the latter raising all sorts of questions about how the Knicks feel about the Garden, or maybe real evidence of a franchise style that abides throughout the ages (oft-referenced, rarely proven, truism). Or maybe I just don't understand how uncommon 50-point games are.

In Kobe's case, though, even as it was happening you heard mutterings about D'Antoni inflation. This theory holds that playing for or against Mike D'Antoni leads to a stat explosion. Therefore, any and all numbers achieved in that context deserve disdainful raised eyebrow. It's also been brought up in reference to David Lee's numbers, which because they're distorted cannot gain him entry into the All-Star Game. I'm by no means well-versed in the advanced statistical community, but it seems like we could adjust these numbers to determine just how many "real" points Kobe scored, or how many double-doubles Lee would have elsewhere.



ENTER TOM ZILLER

The so-called Mike D'Antoni Inflation Effect is wildly overstated. I can't really delve into the philosophical question of whether the mere existence of D'Antoni magically makes every player's heart swell to the point of scoring explosion (read on for Shoals' opinion), but I can strip pace from the equation, something a hundred amateur statisticians have done since the birth of SSOL.

D'Antoni's Knicks play at an above average pace, giving the players more opportunities to score and rebound and so on. The Knicks average 97 possessions/game, league average is less than 93. So adjust David Lee's 16/12 down 6% to account for the extra team possessions, and he's really a 15/11 guy. Quel horreur. (This is a quick and dirty [emphasis on the dirty] calculation; this assumes no other affects on Lee or the team if the team were to be forced into league average pace suddenly. That assumption at a team/player level makes me anxious, but so does Francisco Garcia. But you don't see me discounting Francisco Garcia's existence.)

As this chart -- the Knicks' per-game scoring figures at real pace and league-average pace -- shows, the Mike D'Antoni Inflation Effect as it pertains specifically to pace is wildly exaggerated.



In a equipace world, Brandon Roy would be the league's #7 scorer instead of his current #11. LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gay, David West and Rodney Stuckey also get love in a land without D'Antonis and Nellies.

ZILLER LEAVES

This assumes, though, that the difference is a purely quantitative one. Bill Simmons's asterisk argument, I take it, is that there's also a qualitative shift, a suspension of all common sense that gives way to numbers that are not merely inflated, but also empty. I wonder, then, if there's some way not just to fix numbers according to pace (or paceless-ness), but to also quantify the amount of irrationality or impetuousness that a team like the Knicks or Warriors brings to the game. It's possible to play fast and smart.

On the other hand, when a D'Antoni or Nelson team is intent on sowing the seeds of mayhem and disrupting all basketball order, the opposing team is either tricked or forced into following suite. They are the proverbial serpent 'round the hoop, and dude, we kind of needed to listen to the serpent to so we could one day build our own zoos. I don't believe that there's no such thing as a bad shot or poor decision against these teams, just that you can get away with things—maybe even have to get into them—if you can't outright shut down these offenses. The challenge, then is to somehow quantify stupidity on both side. Wide-open lay-ups, drives into four defenders, cherry picks, full-court drives, gambling for the steal on every play. . . these are the markers of deviance, and big surprise, the ball I love. Remove them, and pace could truly be universalized. I wonder, though if there's not a slippery slope, or two of them, on either side of an equilibrium forever in question. Where you set it, what represents the mean, is strictly a matter of preference.

ZILLER RETURNS

(We considered also adjusting for the team's own defense, with the idea that D'Antoni teams don't care about defense and can thus reserve all energy for offense, thus inflating their production -- as in, on any other team, the players would produce less because they'd get tired on defense. But this is stupid and a few steps too far. Your top scorers list would just be Celtics and LeBron. BOO.)

ZILLER LEAVES; SHOALS CHOOSES IMAGE

Take Your Sunday

Now I am really fucking snowed in, and Lady Shoals has gone mute from illness. So here are some notes/thoughts of a basketball nature that came to me this morning. Consider them the survivalist version of yesterday's post.

-Have I ever said, somewhere, that the Suns did win in the end, at least in spirit? Every team in the world plays small and fast sometimes now. Does that mean that, had the 2004-05 team remained intact, they would've gotten a title, or were they the extremists who sparked mainstream change? Logic says no. Besides, the 2006-07 team was more moderate, better on paper, and could easily have ended up in the Finals had it not been for some serious bullshit. Yet for some reason, I feel like it's the 2004-05 squad that would've been the most dangerous in the climate they've now brought about.

-I'm really taking seriously the possibility that LeBron does sign this summer. Cavs look great, Williams and West are low-key Positional Revolution, a poor man's Arenas/Hughes (oh, the irony), and with Wally and Wallace expiriing, the team will have cap space to sign Bosh or Amare, both of whom will be looking to change teams for sure in 2010. Doesn't that spell multiple rings to you? Where exactly would Bron have a better shot at championships?

-Haven't quite figured this one out yet, but Josh Smith needs to stay in motion constantly. Which is sort of the same thing as saying he needs to just study Amare's game intensely. He's not a PF, can't post up conventionally, and especially with Horford so important, is just getting in the way/wasting his talents when he meanders around the paint trying to get position. Smith needs to always be on his way toward the hoop to be effective. That can involve taking a few dribbles himself, or being hit with a less-than-perfect pass. But what doesn't work is his starting from a stand-still up top or trying to get his bearings down low, with the ball.

-For better or worse, he's not the new Sheed.



-Still thinking about the scoring leaders. I guess I'm just surprised to see Harris, Granger, and Roy near the top, because I never considered them dominant scorers. Don't Paul or Howard seem a tier higher than them? I mean based on presence alone. It's not only a change, it's one we didn't see coming, and I think that FD favors prophecies that come true, not change trumping the narrative.

-Though maybe I need to look further down, spot Ben Gordon on there, and once and for all view this list worth a grain of salt.

-I can't decide if this Pistons thing—combined with the end in Denver—is badly fucking with Iverson's legacy, or has just made him irrelevant. And then, the walking dead or an OG everyone opens the door for? Yes, I'm writing this as they cut to him on the bench in the fourth.

Friday Super Challenge

First, for everyone who lost his job on account of that tits yacht, here's a harmless video of Nicolas Batum attempting a trip to Burger King (about 2:00 in):



I love this guy. On so many levels, he's like the missing other half of Barbosa. Moves weird, mild and yet aggressive in the most slippery way imaginable, by all accounts a lovable ingenue on these shores. But as of now, you see it mostly off the ball and on defense.

-Here's something to ponder: Read this TSB column of mine on a proposed overhauling of the NBA salary system, and explain to me where it lands me on the political spectrum. I truly have no idea.

-New Quotemonger, where the comments section gets especially silly.

-Share your favorite Harrington/Bender memories in the comments section.

-Also, at the Launch Thing on Wednesday, I was badgering Kevin Pelton about what I deemed "the single game indicator." As in—off of the Anthony Morrow phenomenon, of course—are there any one-night performances that can definitively mark a player as of lasting worth? The caveats here are Anthony Johnson and Tony Delk; they'd seem to throw scoring out the window, unless maybe you set the bar over 60 or something. That's pretty rarefied air.

My suggestions were a little more sneaky: The Hakeem triple-double and Kirilenko's 5x5. I don't have the data to back this up, but I just don't think a player reaches one of these statistical benchmarks—however fleeting—unless there's real substance there. And you? Any new submissions?

UPDATE from DR. LIC: Our old friend and FD affiliate, Emynd, has blazing remix of Paper Route Gangstaz' "Woodgrain"



It appears on the new Fear and Loathing in Hunts Vegas project. COP here.

The Word Is Out

Artist Formerly Known as Miss Gossip, you're a national treasure. This is pure gold. I especially like the look on Sheed's face when he hears the phrase "Free Darko" for the second time.

Also, the whole damn gang comes together for a very special New York Times Q&A. Tragically, they edited out the part where we revealed that high-top Wallabees are the FD uni.

Thanks to everyone out who came out to the Redwood. The games were atrocious, but the company was good, conversation was at a high level, and I can only hope all our events go this well. Only basketball thought from tonight: Like I said, Oden's a work in progress. But things are happening. Fast. That's what I'm picking up on: A rumble too deep to ignore or nit-pick with human hands. Quoth Ben: "Crystallizing talent beats raw promise every time."

Original Crooks, Original Heads

We already knew that J.A. Adande was pretty much the coolest sportswriter out, but were still moved by the mid-90's hip-hop knowledge he flashed in his latest ESPN chat, especially this nugget: "Enta da Stage is an underrated album." Really, though, the singles off that album are where it's at. He also makes a really good point about the double standard in how NBA fights are perceived compared to those in other major sports.

We're just about done gassing ourselves up about the book, but you know we had to link to Gil's blog, since it's not every day that happens. Also, Silverbird5000 wanted to follow up on Gil's comments about the "No Conscience" chart, featured on page 53 of the Almanac, which illustrates the peculiar relationship between the distance and accuracy of his 3pt shooting. Arenas writes:

There's a stat in there that the further I get from the basket, the higher my shooting percentage goes up. It's true, but it's one of those stats where I don't take a lot of shots from that far (I think they say I'm 20-for-46 from wayyyy downtown for my career or something) so it's not like I've taken 100 shots from there.

The data in question is actually from the 2006-2007 season - the last before his injury - but the point about the small sample size (just 46 shot attempts) is well taken. HOWEVER, when we expand our sample to include all four seasons before his injury (2003-2007), it remains the case that Arenas shoots a ridiculously high percentage from Way Down Town. In those four seasons, Arenas took 116 shot attempts from the 28ft-40 foot range and shot 35.34%. That's basically equal to his normal-distance 3pt%, and far more accurate than the other two players who took 100+ shots from that range - Kobe and T-Mac - who clocked in at just 30% and 25%, respectively. Indeed, among players with at least 40 shot attempts, Arenas ranked a impressive 3rd in FG% from 28ft+, with only Mike Miller and Baron Davis ahead of him.



The fact that Arenas has never even cracked the top 50 in overall 3pt% makes his performance from the outer galaxies all the more compelling. 2006-2007 may have been his long-ball high point, but Gil's swag has always been phenomenal.

People Get Ready

Exhibit A: What the fuck is going on in that picture? I'll tell you what's going on—the only possible thing that explains this, Exhibit B:




(Both of these images were originally 666px long!!!!!)

The per-48s for that, if you're wondering, would be 39 points, 7 for 35 from the floor, 21 for 35 from the line, 25 boards, and 3.5 blocks. But he'd probably foul out first. I also didn't think you could be labeled a "point forward" if you had the spirit of an evil point guard.

This makes me feel vaguely bad about watching no ball all weekend, as does that Warriors/Grizz game that turned into a game between ten shooting guards. Though I like to think I was there in spirit, and maybe even contributed to it a little.

FD Guest Lecture: Something About Robots

Ziller weighs on yet another urgent current event. But don't sleep on the Recluse's take on the Josh Howard situation. Really, don't. Or the ongoing, unspeakably awesome, Presidental 21 Tournament.

Gelf published a keen, damning piece on faux media-driven controversy in the ever-tiring baseball stats-vs-scouts war. ("Ever-tiring" because anyone who knows anything in that sport saw the light years ago. Those withholding belief have become a farce and their denials self-parody. Sort-of like everything about a particular presidential campaign.) In the Gelf post, Jake Rake notes the baseball war has basically moved to a cold phase, with mutual understanding overriding deep hatred despite the lasting media narrative. (I mean, damn, FJM's been dormant almost all fall.) That isn't the case in the NBA, of course, and it never will be. TIMELY NEWS HOOK: Gil.

Last year, no shortage of "scout" types basted Arenas because the Wizards had the audacity to play well without him. It's the fucking Ewing Theory gone mad: if a team is X units of good when player A is healthy, and X, X-1 or X+1 units of good when A is injured, A must be useless, overrated, not worth the currency he graces. Basketball, the most interdependent game in the whole universe ... and we'll leave out players B through E. NEVER MIND that one of the cornerstone pleas of the anti-stat basketball crowd is the nonlinearity and INTERDEPENDENCE of basketball. They argue that you can't measure a player's worth because there are too many variables. But when a player beloved by science doesn't get enough W's, it's all on that player's talent/production/performance. It's a completely two-faced argument.



Is it a secret that the formulas generally adore Gil? Dean Oliver rates Arenas highly. Same for Hollinger and the adjusted plus-minus set. (Berri hates scoring and thus is recused from the matter.) Almost all basketball seamheads consider Arenas an elite efficient scoring genius. So the opposing view from much of the anti-stats crowd -- elucidated so plainly in David Friedman's senseless assault on Gil last year -- is that all those points come at a cost to the team, as if Arenas scoring 30 a night on solid shooting dismisses the grit and effort and team play Washington trots out there when dude's off playing grab-ass with Beau Biden.

The argument aganst Gil from "basketball purists" (that term's loaded like a Kennedy) is that Gil gets his, but does not contribute to the team in any meaningful way. PROOF: the Wizards did well without him. The argument by the maths: Gil gets his, which helps the team. PROOF: the Wizards got good when Arenas came 'round, and basic arithmetic indicates Gil does many important basketball tasks (score, pass, draw fouls, shoot) extraordinarily well, which helps the team. There's no way to prove who's right, insomuch as there's no way to make irrational, anti-reality folk concede to fact when their heart's fixed on a narrative that feels good.

If someone isn't willing to believe Arenas is an amazing talent based on the proof which exists, you'll never change their mind. So really, the best this season of Gil could have provided to we of the pasty numberkind who have is an appendix of truth, a fuck-you synopsis of mathematical philosophy. All we lost was the chance to point at the scoreboard during a game without a mercy rule. So Gil's valiant ascent with Caron and 'Tawn to maybe first-round home-court has been dashed, and the thieved opportunity for a minor victory stings. But the war rages on. IN DIOGU WE TRUST.