Doctor MJ wrote:Frankly, every caveat that's been thrown my way in this thread has left me saying to myself, "Wait, that wasn't obvious to everyone? Okay I guess...". And that sounds arrogant as hell but keep in mind that my frustration here isn't coming from the fact that I think what's obvious to me isn't obvious to everyone else - I'm a teacher who teaches subjects that came very easily to me when I first exposed to them, let alone now that I have decades of experience, if I couldn't be patient with others who need more help, I wouldn't have pursued this line of work - and nor would have I been a really good moderator on these boards for a long time as a once was (not claiming to be one any more).
Rather, the frustration comes from having to deal with the "you should have" crowd who didn't do anything like this themselves, along with the "stop it with your agenda!" crowd who are looking to have reasons not to learn from what I'm posting because of my personal imperfections rather than based on what was actually said. Simply put, I don't consider these to be constructive ways to learn through conversation in basically any domain, and unfortunately, at this point in my life, I tend to see red when I'm hit with too much of it.
As I say all of this, I need to acknowledge how inevitable all this probably was. When a domain has knowledge build rapidly for years in a setting where standard pedagogy cannot be implemented, you're going to keep having people come in, not know stuff that others already figured out, and not necessarily come in with an approach that's the most respectful to others who have been around longer.
Of course, you want new people to come in and be able to question the things older people think they know. If they can't innovation tends to stagnate. But let's just say that bridging the generation gap is a delicate thing.
I think it is an odd move to complain about “obvious” caveats when you make pretty definitive statements about what you think the metric and the use of the metric indicates about the strength of Curry’s support — and yes, it does very much feel arrogant and patronising when the response to criticisms of that approach is basically to say that the critics clearly do not understand the value and merits and principles in play that you of course very much do, and heavily implying that any rejection is therefore an unwillingness to “learn” (itself again an implication of some objective truth here). And I actually do not mind that in itself — would be hypocritical if I did (although on that note, Doc, complaining about how people have a tendency to reject data they see as inconvenient to their gut preferences did strike me as a funny note considering how often you seem to do the same with players like Lebron or Chris Paul
) — but what I
do mind is how that is essentially being used to dodge meaningful engagement with the criticisms.
So I am not misunderstood, what I mean by that is I do not really care about high-effort “agenda” posting in itself, because whining about high-effort agendas far too often tends to be a distraction from an inability to counter said high-effort “agenda” (contrast with low-effort “agenda” posting where there is no meaningful substance with which to rationally engage at all — say, as a totally offhand example, complaining about a sweep versus a five-game loss). I think what I implied was that you were a lot more interested in a metric that advanced what I suppose we can now say is this “agenda”;
however, that implication would accomplish nothing had it not been an incidental observation in a longer post explaining why the metric itself was not fairly representative of the point I challenged, much as I do not really feel this attempt at meta analysis over “willingness to learn” or whatever has actually accomplished anything or defended that original point: big gap indicates overrated support.
Which I suppose takes us to the “you should have”. Again, to be clear, I specifically took issue with the portrayal of your individual versus team plus/minus as something qualifiedly representing team support such that it uniquely discredited those supposedly “galling” overstatements of Curry’s team quality (as opposed to the other potential measures and observations I mentioned). The work itself is fine, as it is just data that people can analyse how they see fit; had someone else tried to spin that as some sort of strong indication of an overemphasised supporting cast for Curry, they would have likely received a (far more curt) version of that reply instead. I do not have a Stathead subscription, and I am not aware of any quick way to do team plus/minus without it, so I appreciate those who do make use of those services just as I appreciate those who share paywalled data in general.
Nevertheless, I endeavoured to check Curry’s postseason plus/minus relative to his team’s plus/minus by hand anyway, and I gestured to as much in my response. And there indeed we see that regular season +3 or whatever individual plus/minus lift over team plus/minus vanish. Obligatory caveats here (most notably that Curry missed some of the easiest series — there too, perhaps also obviously, not a luxury necessarily afforded to other title-winning superstars), and for all I know, maybe that is true of every other superstar to a similar extent… but at the very least it is something I and many who more heavily weigh the postseason do see as clear support for the “galling” idea that Curry being the best player on a dynastic team and league-leading lineups is ultimately heavily buoyed by an all-time supporting cast, as was true for Jordan and Magic and Bird, etc. Nor do I think anyone is outright wrong to prefer those players less than Curry on their respective merits anyway, especially under any more modern lens; I just do not see much need to justify that preference by challenging an excellent supporting cast via some selectively framed “impact” analysis.
