Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats

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AEnigma
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#41 » by AEnigma » Sun Nov 20, 2022 3:14 pm

Dutchball97 wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Another well-argued contribution from the guy openly here because he felt too insecure about Jordan.

I've explained why the game 2 4th quarter wasn't just garbage time and in response OhayoKD accuses me of dismissing context when I've literally just added context to a claim about Jordan that everyone was ignoring up till that point and mostly still are. I came in here with a good faith argument and only dismissed you guys when my arguments were thrown out the window as biased when they didn't fit your narrative.

Uh huh.
The Pistons had 36 points in the 4th quarter, MJ doesn't go off and they quite possibly lose that game. I know people have been clawing lately to try to talk Jordan down but having a strong 4th quarter in the ECF against a notoriously tough defensive team should be an argument for his greatness, not against.

Good faith!

Ohayo then mostly breezes past that and spends some time contextualising the dynamic by which Jordan “went off” (i.e. the Pistons desperately fouling him to stay in the game) and challenging the quality of that defence relative to what it had been, and then closes by basically saying your analysis was lazy — which it was, whether because you did not feel like putting forth any more effort or because you could not.

In response, you basically ignore everything he wrote and do a slight expansion on your initial comment.

Ohayo again expands on his point, and reminds you that you came in and accused everyone of “clawing to talk Jordan down”, and then your response ignores everything he wrote but for basically claiming that he started all the “bias” talk, at which point I came in because I was fed up with your dishonest attempt to reframe everything as if Jordan was some victim.

And then of course you accused me of bias too, because that is apparently the only real move you have. :roll:

Ohayo continues to show a lot more patience than I would and highlights how making that your only real move does nothing to advance discussion and if anything only serves to derail legitimate conversation and analysis… and then your response to that is to say he and I are in the midst of an “emotional meltdown”, “spewing venom” in an “echo chamber” of uninteresting and meaningless discussions “without bringing up comparative arguments”, even as you aggressively avoid comparisons and analysis and instead sit here hurling insults and accusations because an offhand observation was made that Jordan’s box score averages may be mildly overstated in much the way the same is often said of Lebron’s 2014. :blank:

I'm not even a Jordan fan but judging by your comment it's apparently uncommon for you to stick up for the level of play of a player you don't like or am I wrong?

So what exactly should we call someone who has Jordan as his #1 peak to such an extent that he actively derails any thread that threatens to cast the slightest tangential aspersions on it. You can “stick up” for him, sure (so brave!), but the more that requires you reflexively rage against even mild criticisms, the less it looks like anything other than insecure fanboying (whether you see yourself as that or not). Falco asked a question, brought up two similar instances from Lebron and Jordan to get it started (sadly too often a dangerous move), and now half the thread is devoted to you crying about daring to bring up Jordan.

If you want to paint yourself as some measured neutral party, this may be the absolute worst way you could have possibly done it.
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#42 » by dooki667 » Sun Nov 20, 2022 3:20 pm

Dutchball97 wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Another well-argued contribution from the guy openly here because he felt too insecure about Jordan.


I've explained why the game 2 4th quarter wasn't just garbage time and in response OhayoKD accuses me of dismissing context when I've literally just added context to a claim about Jordan that everyone was ignoring up till that point and mostly still are. I came in here with a good faith argument and only dismissed you guys when my arguments were thrown out the window as biased when they didn't fit your narrative.

I'm not even a Jordan fan but judging by your comment it's apparently uncommon for you to stick up for the level of play of a player you don't like or am I wrong?

In your first post u went to people are trying to claw down Jordan, ur giving motivation for his thoughts without providing good reason for how you know he is biased. he could just disagree with you. He even said I don't know how much we should weight this had a LeBron and mj example but still ur response added the trying to claw down Jordan jab. It's unnecessary my man brought up wilt being sick dude agreed it was friendly right. but now imagine he added something like gotta build Bill Russel up or something it would change the tone of the Convo. That's all I got we all friends it's all good hope ur day is going well
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#43 » by penbeast0 » Sun Nov 20, 2022 3:48 pm

Quit attacking each other and focus on the posts or we will close this thread and suspend the offending poster.
“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination,” Andrew Lang.
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#44 » by AEnigma » Sun Nov 20, 2022 3:58 pm

2006 Wizards: 35.7/7.5/5.7 with 5.7 turnovers on 59.9% efficiency; without Game 2, 38.6/7.2/6.4 with 4.9 turnovers on 63.9% efficiency

2008 Celtics: 26.7/6.4/7.6 with 5.3 turnovers on 48% efficiency; without Game 1, 29.2/6/7.3 with 4.5 turnovers on 50.8% efficiency

2014 Pacers: 22.8/6.3/5.5 with 3.3 turnovers on 63.7% efficiency; without Game 5, 26/7.2/5.9 with 3.4 turnovers on 67.6% efficiency

2017 Celtics: 29.6/6.4/6.8 with 3.2 turnovers on 64.6% efficiency; without Game 3, 34.3/6.5/7 with 2.5 turnovers on 69.3% efficiency

2018 Celtics: 33.6/9/8.4 with 5.7 turnovers on 61% efficiency; without Game 1, 36.7/9.3/8.3 with 5.5 turnovers on 63.2% efficiency

Not overly interesting, but kind-of fun.
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#45 » by Dutchball97 » Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:39 pm

For Jordan the best examples going both ways (so both a boost and a downgrade) both happen in 89 in consecutive rounds. In the 2nd round against the Knicks MJ averaged 35.7/9.5/8.3/2.5/1.3. Without his not so great game 2 he'd average 39.8/9.8/9.4/2.8/1.6 on improved shooting. (FG% and FT% go up by 2-3% and 3P% goes from 31% to 40% but I wouldn't call that too relevant due to low sample size with 12 3PA with game 2 and 10 3PA without it).

A round later against Detroit, instead of an insane statline being somewhat brought back to earth by a lackluster one here he is helped by having 1 amazing game to off-set some oh his less impressive outings that series. He averaged 29.7/5.5/6.5/2/0.5 but without his dominant game 3 it drops to 26.4/5.2/6.8/1.4/0.6 with significantly worse shooting (MJ shot had shot 46% from the field and made 75.9% of his free throws, which drops to 41.8% and 71.8% respectively without game 3, 3P% improves but again with a near negligble sample size).

86 against the Celtics is another obvious one where his average either drops a lot without game 2 or increases to astronomical levels without game 3 but going from an already small 3 game sample size to just 2 games doesn't seem all that useful.
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#46 » by trex_8063 » Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:51 am

Owly wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:
70sFan wrote:I wouldn't call 16 points lead at the beginning of the 4th a blowout. We may disagree, but you still have to do your job in the 4th to win such game.

Well, if we were to get into the weeds of this, it would probably be a good idea to establish a baseline for what would constitute garbage time. Did any team in the 91 playoffs manage to win a game where they entered the 4th quarter traling by 16 points?

Okay so without presenting the data, the (I read as) implicit argument here is flawed.

1) Does X occur in a small sample (1 playoffs).
2) Does it occur in a smaller sample (teams trailing by 16 points).
3) Requires exact meeting of threshold on both ends end (must be 16[+] down, must win) rather than similar circumstances with sufficient net movement (e.g. down 14, 17 point turnaround, 3 point net win from comeback would show sufficient net turnaround from a very similar position.


OK, I did a quick n' dirty of the '90 and '91 playoffs (added in '90 just to make a larger sample size [and assuming league environment very very similar]).

I looked for how often a team was trailing by 16+ pts going into the 4th quarter, and what the outcome was (did the trailing team lose, or were they able to eliminate that 16+ pt deficit [I intended to count it as eliminated even if they only managed to push it to overtime and lost in OT]).

I also tabulated how many times there was a 16+ change in the pt differential in the 4th quarter (NOTE: this would include, for examples, a team that was down 28 going into the 4th and pulled it back to just a 12-pt loss; or a team that was up 9 going into the 4th and won by 25: both would constitute a 16-pt change, even if the leading team still won in both instances).

SO.....

Between the two playoffs there were 135 games played.

*There were 25 instances in which a team trailed by 16+ points going into the 4th quarter [18.5% of the time]. In ALL 25 instances, that team lost [and NOT in overtime].
**There were just THREE instances where a 16+ point shift in the pt-differential occurred [just 2.2% of the time]; iirc, only ONE of those occurred as part of a comeback win (something like down 9, and came back to win by 7; can't remember who it was).

To be fair, a number of these were substantially larger than just a 16-pt deficit going into the 4th (so of course the losing team couldn't come back).
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#47 » by Owly » Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:59 pm

trex_8063 wrote:
Owly wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:Well, if we were to get into the weeds of this, it would probably be a good idea to establish a baseline for what would constitute garbage time. Did any team in the 91 playoffs manage to win a game where they entered the 4th quarter traling by 16 points?

Okay so without presenting the data, the (I read as) implicit argument here is flawed.

1) Does X occur in a small sample (1 playoffs).
2) Does it occur in a smaller sample (teams trailing by 16 points).
3) Requires exact meeting of threshold on both ends end (must be 16[+] down, must win) rather than similar circumstances with sufficient net movement (e.g. down 14, 17 point turnaround, 3 point net win from comeback would show sufficient net turnaround from a very similar position.
4) Selection bias. Actual teams down 16+ will tend to be the worse team (particularly in playoffs this level deficit is more likely in 1v8 seeds than closer on paper match-ups). That wouldn't make a 16 point margin garbage time in general insurmountable or "garbage time" in general.

Given responses it doesn't seem like you were tightly wedded to this as initially expressed ... I'd just say I think the argument as above is flawed.

fwiw there's a famous example of an adjacent years Bull's team winning the title via a game in this vicinity perhaps assumed to be "garbage time." G6 final 1992 Bulls enter the 4th 15 points down (supposedly [via Lazenby] down 17 late in the third when Pippen plus bench unit [Hansen, Armstrong, King, Williams]come in though by my reckoning they come in starting the 4th) and bring the gap down to 5 within 3 minutes, down to 3 maybe 30 seconds later. It's probabilities, sometimes very slim ones, but as long as they're counting the points and there's time on the clock you've got some chance.


OK, I did a quick n' dirty of the '90 and '91 playoffs (added in '90 just to make a larger sample size [and assuming league environment very very similar]).

I looked for how often a team was trailing by 16+ pts going into the 4th quarter, and what the outcome was (did the trailing team lose, or were they able to eliminate that 16+ pt deficit [I intended to count it as eliminated even if they only managed to push it to overtime and lost in OT]).

I also tabulated how many times there was a 16+ change in the pt differential in the 4th quarter (NOTE: this would include, for examples, a team that was down 28 going into the 4th and pulled it back to just a 12-pt loss; or a team that was up 9 going into the 4th and won by 25: both would constitute a 16-pt change, even if the leading team still won in both instances).

SO.....

Between the two playoffs there were 135 games played.

*There were 25 instances in which a team trailed by 16+ points going into the 4th quarter [18.5% of the time]. In ALL 25 instances, that team lost [and NOT in overtime].
**There were just THREE instances where a 16+ point shift in the pt-differential occurred [just 2.2% of the time]; iirc, only ONE of those occurred as part of a comeback win (something like down 9, and came back to win by 7; can't remember who it was).

To be fair, a number of these were substantially larger than just a 16-pt deficit going into the 4th (so of course the losing team couldn't come back).

It's nice that you put the work in and there may be interesting stuff in there and it would have been a better argument had the poster done that research.

I will say/reiterate
1) in terms of the actual original argument that 25 game sample is still tiny (and we're still talking, as you acknowledge, "down at least ...")
2) Per my point 4 ... the worse team is likely to be down, I'd reiterate that we can't necessarily leap from the proportion irl to the probability in a vacuum, it's contextual.
3) To reiterate this in 1993 (RS only, I think)the Bulls were down by 15+ 6 times entering the 4th. They were 3-3 (.500). The rest of the league were 1-259 (0.003846154). The next year the whole league was 3-266.
4) Moving more general here I think we have to consider what is garbage time. If it's a notion that the game is decided, the final score and win status doesn't necessarily reflect that. If the team got within ... say ... 5 at some point (not off a 3 on their last possession) ... I think the leading coach is concerned and focused and putting a serious lineup out and the game is in contention and the previous feeling that the game was dead is gone (and indeed thus arguably was wrongly thought of as garbage time) and that this is the case even if the team eventually wins.

Big comebacks are rare. I do think the "worse team likely to be the team down" is relevant to and justifies hesitancy in converting irl comebacks to a conceptual "general terms" safety and the raw "actually happened" numbers isn't independent of team quality (e.g. '94 sample Dallas has 23 opportunities to come back from 15+ down, Seattle had 2).

Anyhow thanks for looking at this.
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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#48 » by OhayoKD » Mon Nov 21, 2022 9:34 pm

trex_8063 wrote:
Owly wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:Well, if we were to get into the weeds of this, it would probably be a good idea to establish a baseline for what would constitute garbage time. Did any team in the 91 playoffs manage to win a game where they entered the 4th quarter traling by 16 points?

Okay so without presenting the data, the (I read as) implicit argument here is flawed.

1) Does X occur in a small sample (1 playoffs).
2) Does it occur in a smaller sample (teams trailing by 16 points).
3) Requires exact meeting of threshold on both ends end (must be 16[+] down, must win) rather than similar circumstances with sufficient net movement (e.g. down 14, 17 point turnaround, 3 point net win from comeback would show sufficient net turnaround from a very similar position.


OK, I did a quick n' dirty of the '90 and '91 playoffs (added in '90 just to make a larger sample size [and assuming league environment very very similar]).

I looked for how often a team was trailing by 16+ pts going into the 4th quarter, and what the outcome was (did the trailing team lose, or were they able to eliminate that 16+ pt deficit [I intended to count it as eliminated even if they only managed to push it to overtime and lost in OT]).

I also tabulated how many times there was a 16+ change in the pt differential in the 4th quarter (NOTE: this would include, for examples, a team that was down 28 going into the 4th and pulled it back to just a 12-pt loss; or a team that was up 9 going into the 4th and won by 25: both would constitute a 16-pt change, even if the leading team still won in both instances).

SO.....

Between the two playoffs there were 135 games played.

*There were 25 instances in which a team trailed by 16+ points going into the 4th quarter [18.5% of the time]. In ALL 25 instances, that team lost [and NOT in overtime].
**There were just THREE instances where a 16+ point shift in the pt-differential occurred [just 2.2% of the time]; iirc, only ONE of those occurred as part of a comeback win (something like down 9, and came back to win by 7; can't remember who it was).

To be fair, a number of these were substantially larger than just a 16-pt deficit going into the 4th (so of course the losing team couldn't come back).

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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#49 » by ShaqAttac » Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:03 pm

OhayoKD wrote:
Dutchball97 wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:
I know people have been clawing lately to try to talk Jordan down

My comment literally opens by pointing out a potential criticism for an entire playoff run of Lebron's. Are you sure I'm the biased party here? :wink:

but having a strong 4th quarter in the ECF against a notoriously tough defensive team should be an argument for his greatness, not against.

To be clear, "having a strong 4th quarter"more or less translates to getting fouled a bunch by a team trying to make up a 16 point gap in 10 minuites. For the 90's(where 3-pointers were basically non-existent), this is very much "garbage time" territory. Accordingly, facing a defense his teamamtes battered largely without him, Jordan's effiency and volume skyrocketed. It would be one thing if this was a result of Jordan suddenly going crazy on jumpers, but this was more or less just the pistons fouling him a bunch.

And no, the 90 pistons were a notriously tough defensive team, paticulalry when they faced non-helios(bird and jordan led offenses collapsed against the pistons while the Magic-led lakers excelled). The 91 pistons were a shell of their former selves who the Bulls were battering for half the series despite Jordan offering little through game 1 and the first three quarters of game 2.

I think any objective analyst would acknowledge that the conditions in that 4th quarter were unusally favorable for MJ, just as they would acknowledge that what Lebron "produced" in blowouts in 2014 may not be as indicative of what he was offered relative to what he produced when the games were close.

Good analysis invites the consideration of context. Bad analysis dismisses it. Reducing this to "storng 4th quarter performance vs tough defense" is very much the latter imo.

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Re: Times when single games or quarters disproportionately change a series stats 

Post#50 » by capfan33 » Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:03 pm

The MJ Detroit series are a good call-out but I'm surprised no one's mentioned 93 vs the Knicks.

Overall: 32.2/6.2/7 on 40% shooting
Excluding game 4: 27.8/6.2/8 on 35.2% shooting (too lazy to do ts)

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