Some Historical Plus-Minus

[tsherkin]

Squared2020 hadn’t been bullied into leaving this forum, since we might otherwise just ask him what the off-samples were (inb4 people butt in to argue he wasn’t treated poorly, when he said he was and had numerous posters agreeing with him, or butt in to argue that he received an apology that should have made up for everything, when he made it clear it was a pretty poor apology).

The "bullying" in question:

Spoiler:

I respect Squared’s work in trying to put that together, but I wish he had held back on sharing any data that was far short of usual sample standards, because this scattering of games has so far pretty much only worsened discourse.

The "numerous posters agreeing with him", yourself included, along with squaredcircle, were the only ones bullying anyone in this exchange.

I don’t want to wade into that past discussion in any substantive way, but I find it really curious that you write a post specifically aimed at saying that no one bullied Squared, while simultaneously mocking his username by calling him “squaredcircle.” Just feels really odd that you can’t stop yourself even in a post that is specifically aimed at suggesting no one behaved badly towards Squared.

Let's keep on topic, shall we?

[OhayoKD]

Squared2020 hadn’t been bullied into leaving this forum, since we might otherwise just ask him what the off-samples were (inb4 people butt in to argue he wasn’t treated poorly, when he said he was and had numerous posters agreeing with him, or butt in to argue that he received an apology that should have made up for everything, when he made it clear it was a pretty poor apology).

The "bullying" in question:

Spoiler:

I respect Squared’s work in trying to put that together, but I wish he had held back on sharing any data that was far short of usual sample standards, because this scattering of games has so far pretty much only worsened discourse.

The "numerous posters agreeing with him", yourself included, along with squaredcircle, were the only ones bullying anyone in this exchange.

I don’t want to wade into that past discussion in any substantive way,

Well of course not. Because doing so would reveal you're were a bully whose now victim-blaming. It's very simple. Which part of this was bullying:

I respect Squared’s work in trying to put that together, but I wish he had held back on sharing any data that was far short of usual sample standards, because this scattering of games has so far pretty much only worsened discourse.

Squared circle is just how I've seen them refered to on discord. I'm happy to refer to them as sqaured2020. Doesn't change they were the bully in chief during the referenced exchange.

[eminence]

The uneven game spread could be contributing a lot to the Jazz sample. They look to have the largest negative difference between sampled win% and actual win% - Orlando the biggest positive one.

They appear to be a pretty bad 35-47 in the sampled games, for a period in which they were 343-231 (so 308-184 in unsampled games, a 51 win pace vs the sampled 35).

Overall, there's something wonky in that data table at the bottom though, there's a different number of sampled wins/losses. Which is... improbable.

[penbeast0]

PLEASE STICK TO THE CONTENT OF THE THREADS. IF YOU WISH TO REPORT BULLYING, USE THE REPORT FUNCTION AND TELL THE MODS. DO NOT REOPEN DISCUSSIONS OF IT IN THESE THREADS.

THANK YOU.

[lessthanjake]

The uneven game spread could be contributing a lot to the Jazz sample. They look to have the largest negative difference between sampled win% and actual win% - Orlando the biggest positive one.

They appear to be a pretty bad 35-47 in the sampled games, for a period in which they were 343-231 (so 308-184 in unsampled games, a 51 win pace vs the sampled 35).

Overall, there's something wonky in that data table at the bottom though, there's a different number of sampled wins/losses. Which is... improbable.

Yeah, I suspect Karl Malone being so low is probably a combination of (1) sharing a large percent of his minutes with Stockton and likely having the few other minutes happen to not go well; and (2) the Jazz doing abnormally badly in the sample.

On the first point, the Jazz seem to have been +110 in Stockton’s minutes in this sample, while being -87 in Malone’s minutes. Given how often they tended to spend on the court together, I think that implies a pretty big gap in how the team did in minutes with Stockton and no Malone vs. with Malone and no Stockton. And I imagine the model sees that and therefore thinks Stockton is the one with the impact. I guess the question is whether this is actually meaningful. The overall sample isn’t actually tiny, but my guess is that the number of possessions they played without each other in this sample is probably not more than 1000 possessions. That’s not nothing, but it’s probably not enough to have much of any certainty about it. That said, I believe the play-by-play era RAPM data we have does tend to corroborate that the Jazz did better with Stockton on and Malone off than vice versa. FWIW, Engelmann’s attempt to derive RAPM-like data for the 1990s, using quarter-by-quarter box scores also has Stockton above Malone. In both cases, the difference isn’t nearly as stark (Malone being at 344th in Squared’s data is surely at least in significant part a product of noise), but the data we have is all at least seeming to go in one direction regarding their respective impact.

[Djoker]

We have a new post on Squared2020’s full-career RAPM data! This new set includes 20% of total games from 1985, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, and 1996. It’s an astounding amount of work (1535 games tracked!!), and we really are getting to the sample size where we can start to make some higher confidence comparisons with these top players. Here are the links:

Fantastic post!

I just want to say that offense/defense splits should always be taken with a whole cup of salt. Many offensive actions impact defense and many defensive actions impact offense. For example, committing a live ball turnover hurts the defense because it often leads to a fast break basket for the opposition and likewise getting a steal helps the offense because it often fuels fast break baskets. There is interplay between offense and defense for most actions on the court.

Thus I would trust the overall RAPM values (limited by their confidence intervals of course) but the ORAPM and DRAPM values I'm much less confident about. Those alone likely have much bigger uncertainties.

[Doctor MJ]

So I know people are trying to get this discussion back to the actual basketball, but I just have to respond here:

- Squared was discussed in a condescending, mocking tone both in the thread and apparently in PM by people here for the incompleteness of his work when what was going on was him battling cancer. People didn't know that of course, but the nature of human beings is that it's always possible someone's going through serious s**t, and if they are, stuff just lands different.

- While I would not say the tone toward him in general represents an extreme outlier compared to the current tone of the board, this wasn't always the tone of the board. It's more combative now that it used to be. That new more combative board tone made him decide not to continue to be a part of the board.

- Here's his Wikipedia entry, where we can see that his analytical basketball credentials are WAY beyond anyone currently part of the community. He was quite possibly the most promising new member of our community to have arrived here in the past decade...and the board's attitude made him conclude this wasn't a place he wanted to be.

- As the person who arguably built this community up more than anyone else, and who worked hard to help bring in great basketball posters from around the internet in the deeper past, I find all this to be really disheartening.

If we ain't nice any more, we're not going to be able to keep having nice things.

[Special_Puppy]

.

[AEnigma]

So I know people are trying to get this discussion back to the actual basketball, but I just have to respond here:

- Squared was discussed in a condescending, mocking tone both in the thread and apparently in PM by people here for the incompleteness of his work when what was going on was him battling cancer.

This is not what happened, particularly with regard to the bolded. I would hope a moderator would strive much more to provide a proper characterization. Your characterization is evidently how he felt about it, which is why he left, but having a good basketball résumé does not mean his every feeling is inherently justified. And while his decision to wipe his post history certainly muddles our ability to revisit the path leading there, he was quoted more than enough for people to come to their own conclusions.

While I would not say the tone toward him in general represents an extreme outlier compared to the current tone of the board, this wasn't always the tone of the board. It's more combative now that it used to be. That new more combative board tone made him decide not to continue to be a part of the board.

He did not and has never responded well to any criticism. That was true here, and that seems to have been true on Reddit, and that continues to be true on Twitter, and it would have been true in the halcyon RealGM of ten years ago (where disputes were indeed regular and, because of the nature of this forum, available for everyone to go back and read themselves). And he is fully within his rights to decide not to bother with any criticism, as is true of everyone, but we do not need to act as if that instinct is typical or even particularly conducive to long-form discussion.

[homecourtloss]

So I know people are trying to get this discussion back to the actual basketball, but I just have to respond here:

- Squared was discussed in a condescending, mocking tone both in the thread and apparently in PM by people here for the incompleteness of his work when what was going on was him battling cancer. People didn't know that of course, but the nature of human beings is that it's always possible someone's going through serious s**t, and if they are, stuff just lands different.

- While I would not say the tone toward him in general represents an extreme outlier compared to the current tone of the board, this wasn't always the tone of the board. It's more combative now that it used to be. That new more combative board tone made him decide not to continue to be a part of the board.

- Here's his Wikipedia entry, where we can see that his analytical basketball credentials are WAY beyond anyone currently part of the community. He was quite possibly the most promising new member of our community to have arrived here in the past decade...and the board's attitude made him conclude this wasn't a place he wanted to be.

- As the person who arguably built this community up more than anyone else, and who worked hard to help bring in great basketball posters from around the internet in the deeper past, I find all this to be really disheartening.

If we ain't nice any more, we're not going to be able to keep having nice things.

With all due respect, this is not what happened at all. There were legitimate criticisms about certain takes that he had includingcertain players and their three-point shooting that were discussed through regular message discourse, and he had an extreme reaction to it, akin to someonr who has never been questioned about anything before.

[Special_Puppy]

I’ve seen some pretty heated and relatively nasty debates on here and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone have the reaction that Squared2020 had. He was obviously going through a pretty tough time in life. And if AEnigma blunt but fairly innocuous statement about how he wished Squared2020 didn’t release the data until he had a more meaningful sample (because discussions over small lineup data can be annoying as anyone who engages in early season basketball discourse knows) made him this upset then I’m not sure he was long for this fourm or honestly any internet community. That being said I love his work and hope he comes back when he’s at a better place in his life.

[OhayoKD]

So I know people are trying to get this discussion back to the actual basketball, but I just have to respond here:

- Squared was discussed in a condescending, mocking tone both in the thread and apparently in PM by people here for the incompleteness of his work when what was going on was him battling cancer. People didn't know that of course, but the nature of human beings is that it's always possible someone's going through serious s**t, and if they are, stuff just lands different.

- While I would not say the tone toward him in general represents an extreme outlier compared to the current tone of the board, this wasn't always the tone of the board. It's more combative now that it used to be. That new more combative board tone made him decide not to continue to be a part of the board.

- Here's his Wikipedia entry, where we can see that his analytical basketball credentials are WAY beyond anyone currently part of the community. He was quite possibly the most promising new member of our community to have arrived here in the past decade...and the board's attitude made him conclude this wasn't a place he wanted to be.

- As the person who arguably built this community up more than anyone else, and who worked hard to help bring in great basketball posters from around the internet in the deeper past, I find all this to be really disheartening.

If we ain't nice any more, we're not going to be able to keep having nice things.

With all due respect, this is not what happened at all. There were legitimate criticisms about certain takes that he had includingcertain players and their three-point shooting that were discussed through regular message discourse, and he had an extreme reaction to it, akin to someonr who has never been questioned about anything before.

To be clear, by extreme reaction we mean "

In a post a year ago, you stated that I should never have released data and that it would be better if I was never around. I asked you what I did to you to deserve to be told that I should not exist. You sent me a long PM apologizing when you realized the magnitude of your words

This is the long PM being referred to

Sorry for not being clear
Sent: Tue Dec 6, 2022 3:40 am
From: AEnigma
Recipient: Squared2020

Hey, just wanted to privately reiterate that I did not intend for those comments to be a slight at you. They were a specifically targeted slight to someone I felt was basically using your work to make bad faith arguments, and because that had been happening quite a bit recently, I really went hard at that misuse. Apologies again for causing offence; I never meant for any of that to ricochet back to you.

And this is what was being perceived as a slight:

I respect Squared’s work in trying to put that together, but I wish he had held back on sharing any data that was far short of usual sample standards, because this scattering of games has so far pretty much only worsened discourse.

I realise Aenigma is not the one producing a sample that is Jordan-dominated and therefore Jordan-skewed, but I don't think that justifies pretending the party pressured into an unnecessary apology was the combative one. Wikipedia entries notwithstanding.

[lessthanjake]

I think what obviously happened is that there was an overreaction that was likely tied to very significant real-life stuff, and then a bunch of people chose to pile on in a pretty overtly nasty way. And I think the defense people give for what happened kind of just ignores the latter part of that equation, in favor of defending the thing that was overreacted to. What I said then and what I’ll say now is that if you think someone has clearly overreacted to something but you are well aware that that overreaction is tied to significant real-life problems in their life, then it is perfectly reasonable to politely explain why you think the person is overreacting/misinterpreting/etc. and leave it at that. But, in those sorts of circumstances, people really should have the maturity and grace not to go further than that and be nasty about it. I could be wrong, but I really don’t think the initial interaction with AEnigma that’s being referenced would’ve actually driven Squared away from this forum by itself. It seemed to me like it was caused by the entire discourse, which involved a lot more than just that initial interaction. I think Squared would still be a contributor here if certain people had had a bit more maturity about the situation, and the result of this (i.e. Squared not posting here anymore) is very unfortunate. And, by the way, to illustrate more generally how nasty people were being in that thread, when I said things that were substantially similar to this at the time, someone responded with an utterly disgusting post that seemed to imply I was a pedophile. Personally, I found that to be one of the most shocking and off-putting things I’ve ever seen on an Internet forum. That’s the type of rabbit hole of immature nastiness that people had gone down in that thread.

[penbeast0]

We have had this discussion before; everyone is just dug in on their positions and the basketball part of this is being ignore so I am going to lock this thread which is a shame.