rpa wrote:To be honest. Anyone who thinks that evaluating Basketball players is almost as objective to math isn't worth the time. There's a reason there are thousands of basketball analysts out there, hundreds of evaluating systems to determine better players, and thousands of people who visit the player comparison board every day (as an example of only ONE of these types of boards). Basketball is anything but a cut and dry type science when it comes to evaluating the value or ability of players. There are cases where it's obvious (just like in politics where sometimes it's obvious what's right and what's wrong).
First of all, let me get this off of my chest, because we've been ignoring it's profound ineptness for a while now: your original statement.
rpa wrote:But then again, I just realized that you're a Raptors fan which means that your opinion really doesn't hold any credibility here.
What you are attempting to say here is completely different that what you are saying now, which is that basketball is completely subjective, and that the value of players can't be completely known because there are multiple supportable positions. If this whole thing is so subjective, then why are all Raptors fans not able to hold their own opinions?
Your original statement implies that Raptor fans are not to be trusted with their opinions on trades. But how could you know that to be the case if everything is so darned subjective? Could it be that there is a level of OBJECTIVITY within basketball that allows people to ascertain the relative value of how much players are worth, and in doing so, be able to evaluate trades in a satisfactory manner? If things are as subjective as you say, you are actually arguing AGAINST your original point.
Furthermore, your original statement is SO FLAWED that it cannot possibly hold water, no matter how much you want to plug the holes. Not only does it have multiple fallacies built into it, like the
falacy of division but it's also just an incredibly misguided thing to say.
You've strayed so far from your original point that now you're trying to say that Basketball is this thick, swampy soup where there are no wrong answers, only opinions on the matter, and objective analysis can't be relied upon. Please, not only is this totally untrue, it hardly supports the point you originally tried to make.
The thing about basketball is that it isn't totally subjective. There is a science and an intelligence to the aquisition of players that makes it intriuging.
Here is the point that will sink your argument once and for all. If there is no intelligence associated with the ability to correctly evaluate players, like you are suggesting, then why are certain General Managers better than others? Why do some General Managers manage to create winning teams after winning teams, making the correct trade more often than not? Is it because they have a level of basketball intelligence that sets them apart from the others? The same lack of intelligence that you are accusing Raptors fans of not having?As stated above (or inferred) how exactly can rating basketball players (as an absolutely) be so objective when there are hundreds of different systems to rate them by? At some point there IS a case of bias. Say I used Hollinger's PER and you used simple PER. Does choosing one make a person dumber than the other? No. It only means they have a bias to one of them. Neither form of PER can be proven to be correct.
My point was never that basketball was completely objective, or a completely known commodity. My point was that your assumption that there doesn't exist a system of evaluation that can be relied upon is incorrect. There are many metrics that evaluate the stock market as well, are you actually arguing that even they aren't useful tools? Knowing the different tools that are available to you regarding the stock market will help you make the correct decisions, and as your understanding of those tools increases your knowledge about the stock market grows. That's a type of intelligence.
In the same way, knowing what PER is, how eFG works, how assists per minute or rebounding rate works will help you evaluate a player in the NBA. That is a type of intelligence that you originally stated that Raptors fans do not have enough of to make qualified decisions on basketball. SO YOU WERE INSULTING MY INTELLIGENCE. End of story. You're wrong.
You're trying to argue objectivity (intelligence) in a subjective realm (player value). Those 2 things just don't go together at all.
This could not be further from the truth. Not only does your new interest in subjectivity not sync up with your original point, basketball IS NOT totally subjective. Things that are totally subjective are things like art or fashion, which are governed entirely by taste and opinion.
In the case of basketball, there are stats, contracts to evaluate, and even more stats at your fingertips to evaluate how good a players is. Does it tell you the full story? No, but it tells you enough about a player so that you can make a decision that isn't entirely based on opinion. What YOU are trying to say is that it's all relative, which is clearly wrong.
Basically, what this all boils down to is the fact that when I challenged your
obviously wrongheaded opinion that you can't classify how intelligent people are based on the place on earth they come from, you branched off onto a fruitless foray into subjectivity which, from reading what you have written, you don't really understand very well. When you take the arguments that you are using now, and compare them to what you wrote originally, they don't support what you were saying, and it's clear that you were only attempting to obfuscate things so that it wouldn't be clear that you lost this argument. Well guess what? You lost this argument. Sorry!
And just for poops and giggles, I'll repeat my request, where are you from? I want to make some baseless accusations about your intelligence based on where you are on the globe.
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Baron Davis
to you! Why would we take on Kenny Thomas' ulgy contract and give up the best player in the deal Calderon for Artest and Thomas? Where is Thomas going to play and fit? I don't see Toronto having any intrest in him unless we are getting Martin in return and we both know that will never happen.
