lessthanjake wrote:AEnigma wrote:They were better, and then their best player missed a close loss before rushing a visibly hampered return — something you laughably tried to brush away, because agendas trump sincere assessment.
Mark Price was genuinely probably the Cavs’ best player in one of the games the Cavs won. He missed one game, played in four games, and was good in two of them (which the Cavs split) and pretty bad in one of them (which the Cavs still won) and very bad in another (which the Cavs lost). That very bad game was not his first game back from injury—it was largely just a poor game from him.
… So players get one game of recovery and then are officially at their normal level?
Not sure which is funnier: the idea that you think people will buy that, or that you are even willing to try to sell it.
And the Bulls closed out the series with Price playing well. Obviously, Price’s injury helped the Bulls in the series, but it’s laughable to suggest a 7.95 SRS, +400 title odds team becomes like a 1.28 SRS, +10000 title odds team because one of their top few players misses one game and has an inconsistent series after coming back.
Thank you for emphasising how much you are willing to abandon basic analysis to push a dishonest narrative.
You do not believe the 1988 Cavaliers were a 1.3 SRS team that postseason. You do not believe one offseason of mild improvement across their key players produced a 6.6 SRS elevation. You do not believe that Price played anywhere near as well in the 1989 postseason as he did in the 1988 postseason. Given your commitment to pushing the 1990-93 Cavaliers, you are clearly not a Ron Harper true believer (the only guy who
did elevate his performance from the prior year). Yet here you are, pretending all that may actually be true, because in this thread that happens to be the thing that would reflect best on Jordan.
And in the alternative where this is a matter of sincere belief, then I suppose we all really have been wasting our time trying to communicate with beliefs
that disconnected from the realities of the sport.
And to suggest that while simultaneously accusing others of having “agendas” and being “invested in mythmaking” is the height of irony. Anyways, look, there’s always something available to cling to if you feel a need to come to a certain conclusion. Convincing yourself on this one is Olympic level mental gymnastics, but one can always find something. But it’s also not really worth discussing any further, because it all just goes back to an argument that is just manifestly dumb in its conception
Now
this is the height of irony.
saying that a player was better than another player because that player’s team won a playoff series more easily than the other player’s team won a playoff series against a completely different team.
No one said this. What was said is that one was the more impressive accomplishment, and the only reason that even needed to be said was because of people exalting Jordan for a worse performance against a worse performing version of the team he had already beaten. No one would have anything positive to say about the 2018 Raptors sweep if Lowry had been injured that year instead of in 2017, but I suppose that is the downside of having real standards.
On its face that’s just an absurdly reductionist argument that no reasonable person would find convincing. If you’re convinced by it, then you just desperately want to be convinced of any conclusion that you like, and there’s therefore obviously no point in discussing with you. And if you’re not convinced by it, then there’s no point in discussing nitty-gritty things that merely relate to an argument neither of us think is valid. Either way, it’s not worth discussing.
Yet you have spent pages desperately pushing it, and not for the first time either.
As always, the immediate vindication is appreciated.