freethedevil wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:freethedevil wrote:The more time goes by, the more and more worthless Ben's peak evaulations seem to me. He's unrivalled when it comes to marco-level asssessments, but his utter refusal to acknowedge fluctuations in induvdiual play or flat curve everything to fit his pre-conceived assumptions is bafflingly irritating.
He made a video proclaiming lebron's 2016 games 5-7 was the greatest three game stretch ever and backed that up by...
-> ignoring that draymond missed a game,
-> not even trying to compare it to other 3 game stretches
Sounds to me like you're saying you don't place that much value in where he actually pegs a guy numerically. I'd say he'd tell you that that's the least important part.
The real value is in the process that leads to that, and people are bound to disagree at the final marking.
I mean i'm specifically taking issue with his process.
-> The amount of stock he puts on port. aren't based on anything whatsoever. Players can manage far more lift on teams he'll outright say he considers marginally worse than another team they manage far less lift on, and he'll rate the second season way higher because his eyes decide versaility>singular effiency
-> Just handwaves drastic differences in defensive performance season to season away
-> He compeltely disgregards what actually transpires in the playoffs and even mega regular season outcome shifts
-> He will make asssessmnets that massively disagree with the outputs of his formula on a whim
-> A player who he considers otherwise identical can literally add a significant upgrade to their game and he'll dismiss it as noise.
-> Penalizes players for droppign off against "better playoff teams' but doesn' tbother tracking how players play against good playoff defenses or offenses
He just ignores what players actually do for his theoretical predictions on what they would have done if he resimmed the season a million times, and that seems fundemetnally nonsensical to me.
-He doesn't just use eye-test for port. He has a formula he uses that helps him estimate one's portability, based on the way they score, passing, etc.
-I agree that I don't always agree with his defensive performance measures, but he says the valuations are based on what he believes players would do in a playoff setting. He basically says RS does not matter a ton, and therefore, if someone is lax in the regular season which leads to a decline defensively- that same person can still get a great defensive valuation if they turn up the intensity in the PS.
-I don't think he ignores what happens in the PS, however he just is swayed as easily as some us on this forum might be by PS performance. For example, he penalized Giannis and had him move from what would be the #1 player in the league to the #3 player in the league because he is not confident in his offense against good playoff defenses.
-This is my biggest gripe with Ben, but also might be inevitable. He values eye-test and stats, but if the stats do not necessarily back up what he is seeing, he will at times completely disregard the metrics and count it as noise (his peak KG>peak Duncan take very much rubs me the wrong way and I think it is libel but whatever). But then again, I guess we all to some degree might do this, because we believe stats can only capture certain things and are limited.
-Your right he does believe in the simulation model, because the fact of the matter is we are living in just one of many potential realities. If a player does something that is unsustainable (AD hitting like 50-mid 55s in midrange jumpers and being a GOAT mid-range shooter is one), then the odds are that if you were to run things again, Anthony Davis would not be hitting all the jumpers he did in the PS. Furthermore, a player can look better or worse depending on the situation they find themselves in.
-Examples? He does say somethings are noise (for example McGrady's offensive jump shooting in 03 is an example). But if a player makes actual tangible improvements in their game that allows them to raise the ceiling of a team, then I think he usually does give credit.
-False. As with the Giannis example, he absolutely does. He said in a podcast, that if KG could boost his scoring in the PS like Duncan could, he thinks KG would be probably the greatest player ever. Instead KG is quite a bit below that because of his PS scoring. Heck he acknowledges in his writeup that KG beats Duncan in box-score and plus-minus metrics, while being much more portable and a better peak defender through their careers, yet he ranked Duncan higher all-time.