lessthanjake wrote:OhayoKD wrote:Jaqua92 wrote:
You nailed it. He pops up in every single MJ and Jokic thread spewing this nonsense. He just oozes confirmation bias with biases against MJ and Jokic.
Confirmation bias...like vaguely alluding to what I do "every thread" to cover for a youtuber bringing up nonsense isolation numbers because they look good for a player you like defending?
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=111949673#p111949673
Anyone who reads "not bad" as a meaningful defense of an alleged goat is clearly practicing confirmation bias. If that person than proceeds to undead a week old thread to say it's the other party doing the bias confirming, then that aforementioned someone is also practicing "projection".
Why does ball-handling matter? Let's ask Iverson, Magic, and Stockton:Spoiler:
TLDR:
-> Better ball-handlers draw more defensive attention.
-> Better ball-handlers take out more opposing defenders before a shot attempt
If you have to caveat jokic's handling with "for a center" or praise him for being "not bad", then ball-handling is a weakness, just as defending low paint-protection load with "for a guard" would single protecting the paint as a weakness.
Refusing to acknowledge Jokic's weaknesses as weaknesses is a key step in "not allowing any mold to be better than the mold of player you've decided is the best".
Of course if you think defense and ball-handling are not meaningful because PER and it's cousins said so, there's a more effective means of proving this than misusing English("confirmation bias"): show the results.
More specifically, show the results that indicate Jokic is an outlier on offense and comparable to the very best ever at impacting winning.
When you or ltj or peregrine answer that bell, "confirmation bias" becomes a viable talking point, as opposed to you just yapping because your conception of winning basketball has little to no basis in reality.
I already addressed the vast majority of this just a few posts above in this thread, so I won’t repeat any of that and would just direct others to read my prior post in tandem with yours and see what they think.
But one thing I want to add is that I actually disagree with the notion that adding a “for a center” caveat means it is bad. Because, you see, every team has a center, and centers usually cannot handle the ball much. So if you have a player who is a fantastic ball-handler “for a center,” your team will very likely have more ball-handling skill on the court at once than if you had a player that was an equally good ball-handler but at a different position. This has really important benefits, because it means you can leverage things that a team with an equally good ball-handler at a different position could not. For example, having your center be a great ball-handler that can run the fast break is often a major benefit to transition offense, because it means the guy who rebounds the ball the most can immediately run the break. If you have an equally good ball-handler at a different position, that is less common. It also means that your center that spreads the floor is also a threat to drive to the basket off a pump fake. Adding another player that is a real threat to put the ball on the court after receiving a pass puts significant additional pressure on the defense. I could go on.
Basically, the fact that Jokic has the ball-handling of a guard while being a center is actually a genuinely bigger boost to his team than having a guard (or forward) with that ball-handling, because the counterfactual isn’t the same. The typical center can’t handle the ball, while the typical guard can, so a great ball-handling center is a bigger delta. Jokic’s freakish ball-handling “for a center” is a huge positive, even if his ball-handling might not be as good in absolute terms as some of the best ball handling guards and wings of all time. Of course, the flip side of this is that we could say the same thing about some other aspects of Jokic’s game in ways that would cut against him: For instance, his incredible rebounding is less of a boost to his team than it would be if he rebounded like that as a guard. His lack of rim protection is worse for his team since he is a center than if he was a guard. Etc. But I think we all generally recognize those things and discussion about him does contextualize his strengths and weaknesses based on his position. And you certainly do when it suits you. Ball handling should be the same. But, of course, if you reject that way of thinking about things, then you should really see the parts of my earlier post talking about the advantages in terms of size and strength that Jokic has over other GOAT-offensive-player candidates. If Jokic’s ball-handling is a negative even though he’s a great ball-handler for his position, then Jokic’s size and strength (which, by the way, draws huge amounts of “defensive attention”) is an absolutely enormous positive compared to great offensive guards and forwards and you can’t turn around and say that that positive is mitigated by the fact that they aren’t centers.
Off-topic, but your signature post is hilarious
It's amazing that he actually compared LeBron and Messi.
