#18 Highest Peak of All Time (Dirk '11 wins)

[colts18]

Just to expand on my HCA advantage in regards to jerry west point. This is from the Western conference from 2004 on (doesn't include last year due to lockout):

68 Lakers: 52 wins

Avg seed in 04-11 West based on 52 wins: 5.4
Avg wins of 8th place 04-11 west team: 46 wins (2 50 win seasons)
Avg # of 50 win 04-11 west teams: 5.9

Out of the 8 years, 52 wins is only good enough for 4th place or better (HCA) just once in that span (4th place finish in 07). The other 7 years are 5 seed or worse including 2 6 seeds and 1 7 seed. Just to put that into perspective, lets be generous and say West would be the 5th seed from 04-11, in that span the 5th seed of the west only won 2 playoff series totals (09 Rockets, 10 Jazz) and both proceeded to lose to the championship Lakers teams in the 2nd round. So 5th seed is a real tough road. West played in the easy 68 Western conference that had the 2nd best West team at 2.37 SRS.

[Dr Positivity]

Another thing is that while we've talked about how a contending team should have the talent to make the playoffs without 30 Gs of West, a benefit of a full season of West is the team can withstand OTHER injuries. For example it's almost a certainity that if the 66 or 70 Lakers (two teams that almost won the title) had the 68 version of West, they would've missed the playoffs because West's health was key to carrying those teams through other problems. Baylor was a hot mess the 66 RS with a 16.6ppg 40% season for 65 Gs before being back to normal through the playoffs, while the 1970 team got 54 Gs out of Baylor and 12 out of Wilt in the regular season. Those are two years where West playing the full season instead of 50, potentially was the difference between winning a title and missing the playoffs despite the fact that they had a title caliber roster. Likewise you can think of other combinations like 68 West playing with one of Shaq during one of his 50 G years and season going to royal hell if the team lost both of them for a 15-30 G stretch

The more I think of it the more I become sold on 66 and 70 West > 68 West. Think about it, at best 68 West is a slightly better version of a year like 66. Whatever that gap is, I'd trade that for HCA in key playoff series, seeding giving a team a chance at avoiding the hard matchups, and peace of mind regarding having the right roster to make the playoffs

[drza]

Have any votes at all changed since last night? Or is it still 5 - 5 for Dirk 11 and West 68? And if it stays a tie at midnight, what happens then?

[colts18]

Another mark against 68 West is that his MPG was the lowest it was since his rookie year. So in 66 he played 68% more regular season minutes than 68 and 62% more in 70 compared to 68. I doubt West's impact in those minutes is enough to overcome 68% more minutes of a slightly worse West.

Of course his playoffs in 68 was very overrated. The Lakers didn't beat a team with a positive SRS in that postseason. In fact the average SRS of their opponents in the Western conference playoffs was -2.39 SRS and 36 wins or the equivalent of last season's Golden State Warriors/TWolves. The Lakers beat a 29 win team in that playoff. Thats the equivalent of sending the Toronto Raptors to the playoffs.

[Doctor MJ]

'68 West vs '11 Nowitzki

Since we have a run-off now between these two, I think it's high time we had a comprehensive comparison between the two. Off the bat, I'll say that (as someone that doesn't really have a personal stake in who wins this matchup) it seems pretty clear to me the biases that are being displayed on both sides of the argument. I've seen the same people that verbally acknowledge that '68 West saw his impact shoot up in large part because a new coach came in and implemented a system that fit him perfectly/the personnel started fitting him better as Baylor declined, but are still willing to give full value to West for the mega increase in his impact that season...at the same time question whether 2011 should be used as Dirk's peak because Dirk's skill set isn't demonstrably better in 2011 than in previous years so his mega +/- values from that season are likely skewed by the Dallas front office putting the perfect personnel and coaching system around him to maximize his value. I don't, for the life of me, see how this is a reasonable stance. Either we should compare West '66 to Dirk '06 and be done with it, or we should give both West '68 and Dirk '11 the benefit of the doubt for their huge measured impacts while acknowledging that both likely hit these peaks based on more circumstances than just their own individual play level. Across 50 years and huge changes to the game itself, I don't see any more reasonable way to isolate one's circumstances from the other's.

On the other hand, I see issues with how West is being looked at from the other side as well. We all know that pace is an issue and likely inflates volume stats to some degree...but it's also extremely unlikely that the pace effect is linear. Thus, categorizing West as a 20/4/4 player after pace adjustment seems like a grossly unfair way to characterize him. Whatever the unknown impact pace had, West in '68 was still among the league leaders in scoring and assists, led the league in true shooting percentage, and was among the tops in PER, offensive win shares and win shares/48. In other words, the connotation we get present-day from a 20/4/4 player obviously doesn't fit with what West was providing at his time. Plus, with West's very well documented deep-shooting range it is very easy to extrapolate that he would have been an excellent 3-point shooter that would get a boost from moving to a time with a 3-point line. Again, we don't know exactly what the boost would be...teams now spend more effort defending the 3-point line than they perhaps used to when West pulled up from 25 feet, so perhaps his distance shots would have been better defended and thus kept his scoring improvements with a 3-point line from being linear. Since pace and the 3-point line are two huge factors (among many, obviously) that we can't really correct for across 50 years, I'm going to make the completely unscientific decision not to get too caught up in the details of West's scoring numbers vs Dirk's and instead treat them as though they're roughly on the same scoring level. This would be true without correction ('11 Dirk at 24.2 pp36 on 61.2% TS vs '68 West's 25.2 pp36 on 59.0% TS), so I'll assume with fudge factors it would probably be similarly true as well.

Another area of dispute is what value (if any) to attribute to West's defense. We have almost nothing to go by here outside of West's physical dimensions and defensive style on limited tape, word-of-mouth, and general historical trends for perimeter players with a few in-game box scores we can look at as well. I'm okay with starting using the time-period thought process that West was the best perimeter defender as the default...as long as you acknowledge that the time-period-thought process from THIS era is that Kobe has been the best perimeter defender of this generation. And we have plenty of quantitative evidence that Kobe's defensive impact is essentially negligible compared to his offense as far as comparing him on a historical level. I actually don't think that Kobe is the best defensive comp for West, though, because West is known for being more of a thief/shot-blocker than holding down his man (which several of the box scores that I've seen from huge matchups suggest that West wasn't outstanding at). No, to me West sounds a lot more similar defensively to Dwyane Wade. And again, Wade has traditionally not been a huge impact defender quantitatively. His career-best defensive RAPM was +1.5 in 2006, which Dirk matched in 2003. The third present-day defender that I could see as a reasonable comp for West is Manu Ginobili, who also is long and athletic as a perimeter defender, and Manu measures out the best of the three recent guys in defensive RAPM (values up to +3.0 in 2008). But again, Dirk matches those defensive RAPM numbers in 2011. And while I acknowledge that defensive RAPM isn't perfect and perhaps Dirk's most recent numbers may be influenced by the defenders that his style allows him to play with, I also have to again re-iterate that Dirk was putting up defensive RAPM numbers as good or better than anything Wade or Kobe ever put up from 2003 - 2006 before Carlisle or Tyson Chandler ever came along, and he's maintained his career-best numbers in 2012 after Chandler was gone. With the level of uncertainty that we're working with as far as West and the available knowledge of his defense goes, I see NO WAY to say that he has any kind of defensive advantage over Dirk that is definitive enough to include it on his side of the ledger in this comparison.

So, where does all that leave me? If it seems to me that, to the limit of our capabilities to compare, Dirk '11's impact in his time is similar to West '68's impact in his time, with similar team situation caveats...that Dirk 11's scoring is similar in his time to West 68's scoring in his time...and that defensively I see no supportable argument for West getting any kind of impact boost, then where that leaves me is with no way to make a definitive quantitative argument in either direction. Which means I have to start looking to my own "basketball judgment", or whatever you'd call it, and other potential tie-breakers. So, here goes:

drza's tie-breakers for Dirk and West:

*Impact trends. We see the huge beyond-the-box-score impact players tending to have strengths in one of several areas: unmeasured defense, offensive floor general, or spacing. I think both West and Dirk fit into the last category. West was a good floor general, but he wasn't running things offensively the way we see for other historical point guards that we know got the quantitative boost. So to me, West's primary super-impact factor is his dramatic spacing impact, especially in an era with no 3-point line in which defenses weren't equipped to have to defend out 25 feet like West made them do. But as great as West's range was, I think Dirk's spacing impact is even greater because you get similar range from someone 7-feet tall. So instead of pulling an opposing wing out of the lane (and of course stretching everyone else out to compensate) like you get with West, with Dirk you're pulling an opposing big man out of the lane which a) is hugely out of his comfort zone and b) usually is taking a primary defensive cog/rebounder out of the area where he can have his main influence, thus weakening the team defense by a larger degree. So while for their times West 68's and Dirk 11's impacts may have been similar, I think for the generic championship team that we're trying to build all-time Dirk's overall impact would turn out to be higher.

*Health. I've been willing to buy the argument that regular season health may not be as important as one might think when it comes to championships for the reasons that ElGee points out. BUT. As we pointed out with Wade '09 vs '10 (and ElGee, you ultimately ended up agreeing with this stance), we can't just assume that every injury that happened in the actual season would happen in exactly the same way on our generic team. But what WOULD be fair to look at is the probability that a given player would get injured at some point in our expected peak season. For Wade '09 and Wade '10 those probabilities are fairly even so it didn't matter so much. But for Dirk '11 vs West '68, this IS potentially a big difference. A huge difference, even. Because when you transplant West '68 to our generic championship-team-wannabe, there is a GREAT chance that he gets injured. West missed 20 - 30 games almost every year in his prime due to some injury or another, INCLUDING in '68. So peak West would very likely be injured on our championship-team-wannabe. The problem for West, is, there's ALSO a very reasonable probability that said injury might occur at the end of the season as opposed to early enough for him to get over it. We know that this is actually what happened in real life in 1967, the very year before the '68 peak, in which West missed the playoffs due to injury. So if we're going to be consistent about how we treat the probability of injury as opposed to the actual fact of it, for the sake of this project, this HAS to be an area where iron-man Dirk gets a significant advantage at peak over West.

Conclusion: So, given all that I just wrote, I end up concluding right where I was with my first post in this thread: Dirk gives me all of the impact that West does, but he's also 7-feet tall and an iron-man vs West's 6-5 and fragile. So in the end, I just see Dirk as pretty clearly the better peak option almost solely due to the difference in their physical gifts.

This is really a great post, and I think some strong arguments have been made for Dirk. A few things though:

Re: +/- hypocrisy. It's not that. As others pointed out, I'm not basing my rankings here exclusively on value in that given year. I'm trying to get a picture of what that player's more general goodness was. In West's case, the added morsels about '68 answer questions I had about West. In Dirk's case with '11, I don't know what to make of it really in terms of what it says about his general goodness.

Now, obviously there are times where I lean toward benefit of the doubt when I fully acknowledge I don't know everything, but with Dirk I already had been watching him for years and then we get '11. Is it really so unreasonable for me to say to tread carefully in changing my assessments here? Keeping in mind also: While clearly some others aren't thinking much about value vs goodness, this has been something I've been talking about since the moment I implemented the project. When I say I credit Dirk for his value, but I'm careful of re-writing the book on his goodness, this seems like a pretty reasonable approach.

Re: Assuming good about West's defense. I think it's pretty understandable if someone says, "Look, I've seen what some big rep guys in this era on the perimeter are actually doing impact-wise, so I'm not going to assume West was a better defender than Dirk simply because of rep.", but that's not what DS was saying. He quite literally asked "Wait how can you vote for West when Dirk's better on offense and defense?" deep into this thread, and then when I asked him more about the situation he didn't dive into details or even give clear reasoning. He pointed out reasons for doubt, asserted are inability to truly know anything, and then after some missing step of logic that led him to not only conclude Dirk MUST be the better defender, but apparently felt it so obvious that he didn't think to even argue it before asking a question for which the person's answer had to be, "I don't agree with you obviously."

A couple other points:

1. When people say, "How would you feel if Kobe got the benefit of the doubt 40 years from now West is getting from you now?", I just don't understand what's so complicated about my thinking here:

It's called benefit of the DOUBT. I could be wrong, and that's fine, but the fact that one player has an overrated reputation does not mean it makes sense to assume that everyone with a great reputation must be drastically overrated.

2. West's missed games. People KEEP bringing this up. I don't know if they do it just because they think people haven't thought about it or what, but it's been at the forefront of the discussion for a long time because it's so dang obvious.

I don't begrudge people siding against West because he missed games, but I've been very clear why that doesn't sway me.

[ElGee]

Colts, WHAT are you doing here man?? You're trying to re-invent something that's already been studied with hand-picked data when people have presented more comprehensive results.

Whatever that gap is, I'd trade that for HCA in key playoff series, seeding giving a team a chance at avoiding the hard matchups, and peace of mind regarding having the right roster to make the playoffs

And as a matter of reference

If Player A improves a team from 0 SRS to 6 SRS and plays 82 games, their title odds will be ~28% (28.4% based on my numbers).

If Player B improves a team from 0 SRS to 6.5 SRS and plays 51 games, their title odds will be ~29% (28.6%).

You guys can fudge things in whatever direction you want, but you should really understand the general picture here, which is that how you play in the PS matters FAR more than your seed or HCA. The reason we don't see a lot of champs in this mold (eg play half season 0 SRS, half season 8 SRS) is because there aren't many players historically who fir the bill of (a) being that good and (b) being injured on appropriate strength teams. (Although, ironically, the 70 Lakers could be used as an example along with, of course, the very season in discussion, the 68 Lakers. I would also think of the 04 Pistons as such a team via trade.)

We do see OBVIOUS giant counter-examples that might help make this concept less intuitive, namely the 09 Celtics (No 1 seed, HCA, basically a title long shot) and the 12 Bulls (No 1 seed, HCA, NO shot at a title).

Then to bring up MPG as a bad thing is just weird. I mean, the impact he had is the impact he had, regardless of mpg (35 or 40), and we've seen stuff with guys like nash and garnett having monstruous impact playing ~35 mpg today...and your point of reference for this is West playing just under 38 mpg! DIrk's career high in mpg is 39! West did play 42 mpg in the PS of course...just not sure what you are doing here at all.

[colts18]

Then to bring up MPG as a bad thing is just weird. I mean, the impact he had is the impact he had, regardless of mpg (35 or 40), and we've seen stuff with guys like nash and garnett having monstruous impact playing ~35 mpg today...and your point of reference for this is West playing just under 38 mpg! DIrk's career high in mpg is 39! West did play 42 mpg in the PS of course...just not sure what you are doing here at all.

Its not about MPG, its the fact that he played 68% more minutes in 1 season. Thats a huge difference. While Nash was having big +/- impact, it didn't translate as much to wins recently because he didn't play as much on court. Those 1200 extra minutes are big and translate to regular season wins. Please point me to an NBA champion who was lower than a 4 seed? The only 1 you can is the 95 Rockets. Other than that, 4 seeds and 5 seeds don't even make the finals.

You haven't addressed the point that 68 West played weak competition in the playoffs so his playoff numbers are completely meaningless.

[thizznation]

Alright, without trying to extend into hyperbole here. But how many players can play point guard at the highest level, shoot the 3, and defend at a high level with a 6'4'' long frame. If you visualize what a player like West would do if added to any of the teams that made the playoffs last year, the impact would be huge. He gives you a lot of flexibility since he can play both positions in the backcourt at the highest level. Having West to handle the ball late game would be fantastic with his handles, shooting (from the floor and the line), and playmaking ability.

[Dr Positivity]

Have any votes at all changed since last night? Or is it still 5 - 5 for Dirk 11 and West 68? And if it stays a tie at midnight, what happens then?

I had changed my vote to West a few pages ago (was originally for Tmac). However I have been swayed by the last few pages so I'm flipping flopping again and going for 2011 Dirk. My vote is for 2011 Dirk

I don't love it because I probably would've voted 66 West over 11 Dirk. But if it's a run-off between 68 West and 11 Dirk I lean slightly towards 11 Dirk

[ardee]

Alright, without trying to extend into hyperbole here. But how many players can play point guard at the highest level, shoot the 3, and defend at a high level with a 6'4'' long frame. If you visualize what a player like West would do if added to any of the teams that made the playoffs last year, the impact would be huge. He gives you a lot of flexibility since he can play both positions in the backcourt at the highest level. Having West to handle the ball late game would be fantastic with his handles, shooting (from the floor and the line), and playmaking ability.

+1

West had the perfect skillset as a guard.

[colts18]

What's 68 West argument over 11 Dirk in the playoffs? West beat 2 teams with an average of 36 wins in the western conference finals before losing a 3.87 SRS team in the finals. It's not like West stats improved a lot in the playoffs. If West had a true 8 SRS+ team like Elgee is claiming, why did they lose in the finals with a SRS half of that? Wouldn't that be a huge blackmark against West that his team lost to a team half as good?

[ardee]

Have any votes at all changed since last night? Or is it still 5 - 5 for Dirk 11 and West 68? And if it stays a tie at midnight, what happens then?

I had changed my vote to West a few pages ago (was originally for Tmac). However I have been swayed by the last few pages so I'm flipping flopping again and going for 2011 Dirk. My vote is for 2011 Dirk

I don't love it because I probably would've voted 66 West over 11 Dirk. But if it's a run-off between 68 West and 11 Dirk I lean slightly towards 11 Dirk

I voted '66 West as well earlier on, but consider that '68 West was more efficient, and it led to a pretty crazy offensive season for the Lakers when he was healthy.

Considering you were the one who chose '10 Wade over '09 Wade on the premise that that 27 game "OMFG HE'S ON FIRE' streak didn't affect Miami's final placement all that much, why are you penalizing West for missing a similar amount of games, that, accoridng to ElGee, did not affect the finish of the Lakers? Because those games being missed would seem to be the only reason to rank '66 over '68 in terms of impact. Frankly I believe neither is his peak season, right now I think it's '70, but I'm going to go with the flow.

[lorak]

the one thing that really confuses me is why you - one of the biggest proponents of the plus minus stats - didn't mention high error earlier ? in particular when you were using 4.5 game sample to determine Malone's value without Stockton ? it didn't seem to bother you then so why change your approach ? is it possible that supremely unbiased ElGee lost his way ?

furthermore West's in/out is a RS stat. Lakers weren't playing like 8 SRS team in the playoffs. yet West's RS stat is being used as an argument here as if RS had relevance... but then you say missing 40% of RS games is irrelevant. so I ask - which is it ? you can't have it both ways. either RS is important and you have to punish West greatly for missing its major part, or you go with PS results only, using in/out as your context info, not as a main argument. this in/out is the main reason why West 68 is getting voted in before his other seasons.

I think that's the Elgee's double standards about which mysticcbb is talking recently and I agree with him and you.

[lorak]

Doc MJ, imagine we wouldn't have any kind of pbp data now and someone in 40 years would tell you that Bryant was an awesome clutch player and great defender. What would be your reaction? Well, you are doing the same with West right now, proclaiming him as being incredible clutch and a great defender based on hearsay. The story of the witnesses and the media might not be the accurate one. Like Bryant, West might have been just more often in such close game situations, making it more likely to have some clutch success without saying anything about his efficiency during those minutes. You should keep that in mind as well.

That's great point. Even now, when we basically are able to watch every game, this kind of bias is strong, even among media members. So imagine what happened during 60s when journalist usually watched players only when they were playing in media members city. Maybe finals were more available in national TV during 60s? That would explain West's clutch reputation, who obviously often played in the finals and that created his image as mega clutch player, because nobody (except Celtics players - but that was Russell's team, and BTW, Sam Jones also have great clutch reputation) during 60s played as often in these clutch situations which were seen in national media.

[thizznation]

Doc MJ, imagine we wouldn't have any kind of pbp data now and someone in 40 years would tell you that Bryant was an awesome clutch player and great defender. What would be your reaction?

I would tell them to post it on RealGM.com

[Dr Positivity]

Have any votes at all changed since last night? Or is it still 5 - 5 for Dirk 11 and West 68? And if it stays a tie at midnight, what happens then?

I had changed my vote to West a few pages ago (was originally for Tmac). However I have been swayed by the last few pages so I'm flipping flopping again and going for 2011 Dirk. My vote is for 2011 Dirk

I don't love it because I probably would've voted 66 West over 11 Dirk. But if it's a run-off between 68 West and 11 Dirk I lean slightly towards 11 Dirk

Well, you say this as if I have 68 West over 66 West but am choosing the latter because of health. I don't. I consider 66/68 West as pretty close to a draw as players, I slightly favor 66 West. So when additional factors like HCA/seeding help in the RS, and losing those West games means a team is extremely vulnerable to any other injuries (ie imagine 66 or 70 Lakers without West for 30 Gs, or 93 Suns having to play with neither Barkley or KJ for 1/3 the season's games), it just became a tiebreaker I didn't entirely need

I don't believe 2010 Wade's regular season leads to much less Ws than 2009's. That team's caliber of play is going to depend on the rest of the roster make-up much more than which Wade shows up (as shown by 2010's team outperforming 2009's). However losing West for 31 Gs is a different animal and could lead to a significant (7+) loss in Ws

[Dr Positivity]

The deadline passed, Dirk wins with my vote

[Doctor MJ]

Okay, Dirk Nowitzki '11 takes it.

[Dr Positivity]

Doc MJ, imagine we wouldn't have any kind of pbp data now and someone in 40 years would tell you that Bryant was an awesome clutch player and great defender. What would be your reaction? Well, you are doing the same with West right now, proclaiming him as being incredible clutch and a great defender based on hearsay. The story of the witnesses and the media might not be the accurate one. Like Bryant, West might have been just more often in such close game situations, making it more likely to have some clutch success without saying anything about his efficiency during those minutes. You should keep that in mind as well.

That's great point. Even now, when we basically are able to watch every game, this kind of bias is strong, even among media members. So imagine what happened during 60s when journalist usually watched players only when they were playing in media members city. Maybe finals were more available in national TV during 60s? That would explain West's clutch reputation, who obviously often played in the finals and that created his image as mega clutch player, because nobody (except Celtics players - but that was Russell's team, and BTW, Sam Jones also have great clutch reputation) during 60s played as often in these clutch situations which were seen in national media.

Being a photogenic white guy probably didn't hurt his reputation either

[ElGee]

Bingo. Smart post, but especially the last point. The one thing that has really confused me is how no one has mentioned the error rates involved in PM stats. I find this family of stats, over a single year sample, very useful as a ballpark mechanism. If there is data that looks funny, it's also a clue to look into (perhaps it's valid, perhaps is driven by something else). But why hasn't anyone mentioned error?

West's in/out (with a lovely, controlled sample, mind you) doesn't mean he was *exactly* +8 as a player (hello GOAT conversation) and a +8 RAPM doesn't mean the same thing either. Why would some people point to this stuff here and then not push for KG over Duncan, for example?

the one thing that really confuses me is why you - one of the biggest proponents of the plus minus stats - didn't mention high error earlier ? in particular when you were using 4.5 game sample to determine Malone's value without Stockton ? it didn't seem to bother you then so why change your approach ? is it possible that supremely unbiased ElGee lost his way ?

I'm not sure what you want me to say to a comment like this when I take the time to try and qualify just about every number I post. Otherwise, I don't think I've brought up APM or RAPM in this project once (and if I have it was off the cuff as a quick reference). Are you SERIOUSLY asking me why I haven't mentioned error in a stat I'm not bringing up, or are you just trying to be inflammatory?

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't understand what I was doing in response to Malone earlier...I didn't use a 4.5 game sample (nor did that have anything to do w +/-). I used EVERYTHING I could find. I also never once said, nor implied, that it proves anything...partly because the sample is so small. But I also very clearly said it was illustrative of what I saw with my eyes and tried to present further video evidence (I've broken down Malone games in the past). Positivity flat-out asked "can you be that confident with your memory" to which I responded "of course not."

furthermore West's in/out is a RS stat. Lakers weren't playing like 8 SRS team in the playoffs. yet West's RS stat is being used as an argument here as if RS had relevance... but then you say missing 40% of RS games is irrelevant. so I ask - which is it ? you can't have it both ways. either RS is important and you have to punish West greatly for missing its major part, or you go with PS results only, using in/out as your context info, not as a main argument. this in/out is the main reason why West 68 is getting voted in before his other seasons.

Your conflating ideas here.

We're trying to figure out how good Jerry West is at basketball. Pointing to what happened in the RS is indicative of that (31g/51g sample). Looking at a 15g sample in the PS isn't a strong indicator of the team strength...because of sample size. Make sense?

The issue of missing time in the RS matters only in that it weakens a teams position (HCA, matchup) in the PS. But if the team is clicking on all cylinders, it's not nearly as important as the point-differential advantage they have over an opponent. Make sense?

When you point to the PS here, you have to think about

(1) Were the Celtics better than THEIR RS SRS indicated?
(2) The Lakers were 8-1 with +8.8 MOV in their first two rounds...is this a BAD thing?
(3) How easy is it lose a series if you are actually better than the opponent, just based on variance?

I keep seeing a lot of misunderstanding surrounding results and probability and variance, etc. as if these are just buzz-words I'm making up. Are the people that are not grasping these concepts simply unfamiliar with these concepts prior to realgm? If so, probably better to google/ask questions than be combative with people who use these concepts on a daily basis. I'm willing to explain, but you know what would be way better? Every time you think you spot an inconsistency, do what Dr. Positivity did: ask nicely.