parson wrote:Pot; kettle. What we both have are simply arguments to support our positions. Somehow, you get insulted if anyone dares disagree with you.
But what exactly is supporting your arguments? Nothing and no matter how many times you people say that I feel insulted, just remember that it's you that is complaining.
I've dealt and am dealing with the facts. Your problem is, you see ONE set of facts and draw conclusions. I've shown you others.
No, I seem to be drawing from a wide reaching resource of facts while you dance away from each with hypotheticals, suppositions and perfectly placed explanations as to why they aren't relevant to you.
I never said that. You just made that up.
Oh forgive me, this is literal day and people are only allowed to spout "concrete" opinions but not hyperbole.
Here are the actual replies:
parson wrote:^ Thanks.
This is assuming Horford doesn't improve while playing PF fulltime, right?
parson wrote:^ Except for the facts that he's, physically, really a PF, he's never played beside a true (and good) Center and he keeps getting beat up when he logs large minutes at Center.
This sure reads like someone who isn't trying to put down what the metrics told him.
Why can't you see that you are wrong with your assumption that Basketball Reference is really showing games where - in this specific case - Horford was matched up directly against Kevin Garnett? It does not. It simply shows where the 2 appeared in the same games. If you don't believe me, go to the website, type in Horford's name and Stephen Curry's name. It will give you 5 games where they were "head-to-head." Only we know they never were matched up but only appeared in the same 5 games. THEN I PROVED THAT OTHERS (mainly Kendrick Perkins) WERE ACTUALLY HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH HORFORD. I destroyed that claim - one you still insist on making. You're wrong about that claim. Throw all the insults you want at me but it doesn't change that fact.
The point (which you clearly missed) that I'm making to you in that
single paragraph that you broke up is that you seem to have a perfect excuse for everything under the sun. Never mind that we could naturally assume that a frontcourt player would have direct influence against another frontcourt player (unless they are Dirk, they tend to occupy a rather specific area of the court and perform rather specific tasks regardless) but for the sake of argument we will say that it could have been Rajon Rondo actually guarding the frontcourt all this time. Who knows, I don't know, do you know? That measure doesn't specify so I'll just let my imagination run wild to suit my agenda!
I would like to see Horford play with a good Center and I do believe the fact he hasn't had one up to now taints those statistics.
And this is a copout if there ever was one. Why should we rely on other players to evaluate Al as a specific player himself? Does he require a Center strong enough to lift him up to the rim to dunk? Did we need to see Lebron in Miami before we could figure out he is a pretty good player? Just like I took the trouble to look through individual games to compile Al's stats at PF, 82games did that for every game and compiled it in a concise manner. If you want to go down the rabbit hole of "well I need to see player X with Y in order to make any judgements" then perhaps your opinions on his potential are being tainted also by him playing next to other great players but I'm pretty sure that this double edged sword won't swing in that direction.
I showed that he played the majority of minutes at Center. Who cares if, for example, Petro starts if he only plays 19 minutes at Center, then Horford plays the majority there? Especially when West (in your example) played all his minutes at PF?
If we are going to follow this logic then we actually have zero evidence of him being able to play PF seeing as the only instance where he ever played predominantly at PF was the Orlando series which you already excused away. So what have we left outside of his measurements from the draft combine to make claims of him being fit for PF?
You picked 2 games out of 6 in a series where he, on the whole outplayed West. ONLY those 2 games supplied you with an argument.
My original point was about those two games and when questioned about those two games I went even deeper to support my point on those two games. Do you know how much work I put into just researching that? Work that none of you would ever dare muster but you guys are always the quickest to shoot down guys like Azu or me or all of the professional statisticians that are working to revolutionize how the game is getting quantified with your simple arguments of the "tape" telling you otherwise.
If I ever get the free time perhaps I'll pull an 82games and go through every minute that Al played at PF in that series and every other too but alas, I fear my work will be wasted considering that whenever I type more than 3 syllables your attention spans seem to falter and you always seem to have excuses already saved in your hotkeys.
That was a very important argument for you and I showed that Horford had a serious back and hamstring injury at the time. You didn't remember Horford's injuries and you're angry I shot down the argument. You still cannot say, "My bad," in that case. You made a conclusion based on a few statistics and screwed up by not remembering 2 very large extenuating circumstances.
You didn't prove anything and certainly not the severity of any of those injuries. Even the suggestion that injuries that occurred months before a series were cause for Al's poor play sounds insane yet, there you were suggesting it as if it was fact. Did you provide an injury report? Log of games missed? Provide any statistical drop off to prove that he was severely hampered by these injuries as you suggested? Perhaps the reason why I forgot is for the simple fact that they weren't noteworthy enough to anyone outside of Al Horford apologists.
Earlier, when you showed me I was reading the game logs backwards, I admitted it. You are constitutionally incapable of doing the same. I disproved your arguments (really, the B-R point is embarrassingly dumb) and all you can do is throw angry insults.
You haven't disproven anything except for harping on minor points that do nothing to effect the overall point of anything that I've said. What you have is your excuses and nothing to back it up so what is there for me to feel corrected on? Where have I gone wrong? Did I miss anything?
That is still a strawman argument, made all the more foolish by your complaint that I am calling one set "more restrictive" than his pectoral injury, even though you made the same claim in reverse. If you think I'm dumb for doing it, why are you doing it, too? However, I supported my claim by reminding you that this board had members noticing Horford's lowered level of play and criticizing him for it.
No what it is is proving that your excuse is preposterous by combating it with another preposterous statement. I in no way believe that his pectoral injury was in any way restrictive during the Boston series (sure as hell didn't look like it) the same way I certainly don't believe that a supposed back bruise and strained hamstring that he received months before tanked his Orlando series. If injury truly is the root cause for a situation, especially one that occurred months before, then you will see far more evidence of it being represented
previously. What I want for you is to prove the severity which you can't outside of well it's the back and the hamstring, clearly he essentially slipped a disc and tore a muscle.....thus why he missed all of 5 games all year with little statistical drop off until the Orlando swoon. Perhaps a guy always complaining about having to play a man's position really is just soft. That ever occur to you?
Jealous?
As with everything you do, I'm sure you'll provide your credentials /sarcasm.
Qualify much? So he gutted it out. You say that's proof he wasn't hurt? Really? And he did play softer - your lawyer-like qualifying of his performance shows you can't prove your statements - or you would have.
http://espn.go.com/nba/player/splits/_/ ... al-horfordI'm sure you're going to focus in on April and say "SEEEE!".
Nevermind that month is where he played his least amount of minutes what with the team already having it's 1st round matchup with the Magic clinched and all (SEEEEE!
http://www.basketball-reference.com/box ... &year=2011). Yet despite the lower minutes and nothing to play for in those closing games he wasn't able to reproduce the same rebound rates, FG% and barely even points in the Orlando series. CLEARLY had to be the injury from February at work.
Heck even check out his individual game logs
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... elog/2011/Pay special attention to the games that occurred after these "severe" injuries were sustained. Those were some gutsy performances.
Silly.
I know, I thought so too thus why I remarked about it so sarcastically.
You're supposed to debate respectfully, without angry insults at anyone who dares disagree with you. And I'm allowed to have my opinion, especially when your conclusions are so easily disproved.
Big part of respectful debates is actually disproving another person's arguments and not just saying that you did when you didn't and expecting them to eat that bull ****. If my pointing out that it's garbage rustles your jimmies then for the love of God, grow a backbone or just learn to argue better.
Here we have the crux of your problem - the root of your faulty logic: you pick one narrow set of facts and "establish" them as absolute truth. I picked others and disagreed with you.
What facts have you provided and what is this "narrow" set that I'm harping on because it seems as if I've ran the full gamut which taken in entirety......seemed to have proved my point. You think that your nitpicks and Devil's advocacy actually laid waste to the metrics I (and others) have provided?
See I could have just started my side of the debate with the preposition of "from watching every Hawk game that Al Horford has played, having live chatted while doing so, and blogged on them after to fully encompass both what my eyes saw with the views of others from the same broadcast, I've come to the conclusion that he's not a fluid or strong enough athlete to thrive at the PF position". But see in that case the argument is just going to go back and forth between my stance and "well my eyes tell me different". So like any reasonably intelligent person I decided to go beyond that and actually quantify what my eyes saw with stats. They were proven right but alas bringing stats to the debate didn't make it more civil or me more informed, nope it just became a matter of me being told that I'm focusing on one minor subset of a modicum of a footnote, never watched the game, I'm a meanie, I type too much, the end.
