'15-16 RealGM Player of the Year Discussion Thread

[Texas Chuck]

.

Random thought that popped into my head: it seems like in recent years we've had kind of an epidemic of stars having a really tough time making sense of the defenses they're shown. We saw it with LeBron, Durant, Curry, etc... I wonder if this is A. A real thing or just recency bias and B. Owing to advancing techniques and influence of coaches or C. Some other factor.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Not Bob obviously.... but I'd say the continued advances in analytics and scouting and coaching are factors here. Much like in baseball teams know exactly where to pitch to each hitter and where to position the infield and the outfield and the much increased use of the shift. NBA teams now can see shooting charts and video of what kind of defense tends to bother a guy. And of course some of the best defenders are doing their own studying of tendencies, but how have so much additional data to back up the video work.

And to go back to some of my earlier comments itt--I feel like this is where the star player's coach plays an important role. Dirk had his worst two series in his prime while being coached by Avery Johnson and I don't believe this was a coincidence. Avery had some strengths defensively and in holding players accountable for effort. But offensive strategy was not his strong suit nor was listening to those around him. He ran off a very good assistant in Del Harris who left the team because Avery ignored his input.

I'm not quite as high on Kerr as many here--he's down the list a bit on my COY ballot--but this is one thing I feel he does well. He helps his best offensive players out when it appears they are struggling--tho I'd say Curry's struggles are more physical than anything else. I don't know how hurt he is or isn't, but he doesn't look to be moving quite as well and he's dealing with waves of long athletic defenders even on switches and OKC has been switching everything nullifying some of the advantages the Warriors typically get from the Curry/Green PNR. But Kerr makes subtle changes allowing his team to still get good lucks.

[Dr Spaceman]

.

Random thought that popped into my head: it seems like in recent years we've had kind of an epidemic of stars having a really tough time making sense of the defenses they're shown. We saw it with LeBron, Durant, Curry, etc... I wonder if this is A. A real thing or just recency bias and B. Owing to advancing techniques and influence of coaches or C. Some other factor.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Not Bob obviously.... but I'd say the continued advances in analytics and scouting and coaching are factors here. Much like in baseball teams know exactly where to pitch to each hitter and where to position the infield and the outfield and the much increased use of the shift. NBA teams now can see shooting charts and video of what kind of defense tends to bother a guy. And of course some of the best defenders are doing their own studying of tendencies, but how have so much additional data to back up the video work.

And to go back to some of my earlier comments itt--I feel like this is where the star player's coach plays an important role. Dirk had his worst two series in his prime while being coached by Avery Johnson and I don't believe this was a coincidence. Avery had some strengths defensively and in holding players accountable for effort. But offensive strategy was not his strong suit nor was listening to those around him. He ran off a very good assistant in Del Harris who left the team because Avery ignored his input.

I'm not quite as high on Kerr as many here--he's down the list a bit on my COY ballot--but this is one thing I feel he does well. He helps his best offensive players out when it appears they are struggling--tho I'd say Curry's struggles are more physical than anything else. I don't know how hurt he is or isn't, but he doesn't look to be moving quite as well and he's dealing with waves of long athletic defenders even on switches and OKC has been switching everything nullifying some of the advantages the Warriors typically get from the Curry/Green PNR. But Kerr makes subtle changes allowing his team to still get good lucks.

I wonder then whether we (I) should entertain the idea of grading modern players on a bit of a curve.

[Doctor MJ]

.

Random thought that popped into my head: it seems like in recent years we've had kind of an epidemic of stars having a really tough time making sense of the defenses they're shown. We saw it with LeBron, Durant, Curry, etc... I wonder if this is A. A real thing or just recency bias and B. Owing to advancing techniques and influence of coaches or C. Some other factor.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

I think this is an important observation.

When Lebron started having the occasional issue along these lines I tended to say he wasn't a choker, but because his game wasn't as simple as Jordan's, it meant that he had more to figure out, and this added difficulty would at times show up with an underwhelming performance. I tried not to put too much of a value judgment on the mere existence of this, but I also had no issue with those who did so long as they viewed it in these terms rather than saying "LeBron's a choker!!!".

But you're right, this is a recurring them now, and given the sophistication of the defenses involved, it's awfully hard to say the cerebral part of these guys' offensive game isn't necessary.

I'll also note that the most Jordan-like guy we've seen since Jordan isn't Kobe but Westbrook in terms of attitude, and despite the fact that calling Westbrook a choker seems pretty laughable to most of us I think, he's long been known for being problematic in the clutch precisely because imho his lack of intellectual game gets him into trouble against quality modern defense.

[Doctor MJ]

I wonder then whether we (I) should entertain the idea of grading modern players on a bit of a curve.

Heh, well when you put it like that, I think many will be resistant to it. I probably do do that, but I don't see it as a curve. This might explain to some degree why I saw Curry and the Warriors' playoff performance last year so differently from many.

I tend to look at the Warriors' ability to respond and "take back" the series, along with Curry's (and now Klay's) ability to simplify their game and "go off" at the right time, as an incredibly impressive strength. I won't say that I think their playoff performance rivals the 2001 Lakers, but other than that, I don't see any reason to DQ them from comparisons with pretty much any other team & star.

Then again, I've maintained all year that while Curry had the GOAT regular season in my mind, I don't like evaluate how a current player truly stacks up until the end of the playoffs, so I look forward to the discussion at that time.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm going to make one comment here for today and then i'll probably say something on the Thunder board after the game tonight if they lose:

While I don't think it's appropriate to put asterisks by winners in general, and I have no intention to do so here with the Warriors should they win, it really bothers me the way people have gone negative on the Thunder following a game last night that so easily could have gone the other way.

First off, let's be honest, Draymond should have been suspended, and if that were the case, Warriors lose. As a basketball fan looking to see the best series possible, I'm glad he wasn't suspended, as to me him staying in gives us the best sense of who the better team truly is at playing basketball - and I also don't really think Green's behavior scared or scarred the Thunder into playing worse. But rule-wise, I don't know how you justify not suspending him.

Second, realistically the Warriors only one with Klay having the game of his life and Durant & Westbrook shooting terribly from range. (Curry was also huge, arguably even more valuable than Klay because of his overall impact, but a performance like that from Curry is also to be expected. While Klay has had times like this before, it is not anything the Warriors can remotely count on.) Narrative moralists will look at this discrepancy and talk about big time players showing up while other guys choke, but we folks here know there's luck involved, and if the Thunder shoot more typically, they may well win the game.

Between these two things, and the fact that the Thunder already thoroughly outclassed the Spurs and have driven the Warriors to the very brink, this Thunder team has more than shown that they are championship-capable, and that's a big deal. I realize they were cursed with injuries the past few year and so you could argue they didn't have to prove this, but I certainly wasn't sold on these Thunder being able to regularly match and/or surpass the Warriors & Thunder and they only got there by means of role players who really work well with their stars. But the play of these role players can't seriously diminish what Westbrook & Durant do out there because EVERY champion has role players doing their thing well, so all this has proven is that this dynamic duo doesn't really need anything that crazy to reach the top of the mountain.

Last note: On the idea of Donovan needing to do a better job of coaching given the simplistic schemes the team still uses, and the continued tendency to simplify further to the detriment of effectiveness as things get tight:

I would urge people to remember that when Donovan's Florida Gators broke through to win their first national championship, their beautiful passing had everything to do with what made them unstoppable. As a UCLA Bruin fan, I got to watch my team get utterly decimated by them. We had a pressing defense that had crushed all of our opponents, and I was hoping to see it do the same against Florida. Instead what Florida showed was that if you've got smart, aware passers all throughout your team, pressing defenses get crushed as they only give the passers more space to work with.

All this to say that if this continues to be how OKC plays in the time to come with Donovan, it's not a Donovan issue. This is a way of me saying that I'm leaving the door open for Donovan to figure out how to build a smarter offense with these players, but I'm skeptical it's possible, and in a nutshell, this is what I mean by accepting what you have in your superstars and building the best thing you can with them.

Really the big issue is Westbrook imho, which should come as no surprise given my skepticism of him. The way he plays, full tilt, he's just not a guy who keeps the whole court in his head. He zeroes in on a goal, and he goes for it. This doesn't mean he can't make some nice passes along the way, but his tendency to get tunnel vision I think has everything to do with why he's able to seemingly "want it more". The good and the bad come together, and you just have to decide whether the good is worth it.

I've long been on record saying that if I had had to choose between Westbrook or Harden, I'd have kept Harden, for all these reasons. This year though is making more really back off on this front, and while part of that is Harden's issues in Houston, really it's more come from a realization that Westbrook's flaws, while they are significant, just don't seem to be enough to keep him from leading OKC to a championship even if the competition is pretty fierce give what all he brings to the table.

And if OKC loses tonight, that doesn't erase what I feel like I've learned this year.

Last thought: While I say Westbrook is "the big issue" keeping OKC from playing smarter basketball, at this point were Durant asking me advice about what he should do in free agency, I'd tell him he's crazy to leave unless he secretly dislikes where he is for reasons that aren't about basketball. This is a team that's very, very close to being unstoppable and should be able to go into the off-season hyped to take a leap forward simply by fine-tuning the roles that have worked so well this year.

If you're a Thunder fan (like bondom), a Game 7 loss here undoubtedly feels devastating, but speaking as an outsider, your team has sold me. I'll be cheering for the Warriors over the Thunder because I aesthetically prefer how Golden State plays, but I'm no longer under the illusion that that means the team has a higher ceiling than the Thunder do, and whatever happens in the years to come y'all should remind me of the crow that I've eaten on this front if I seem to forget it.

Best of luck to Thunder fans tonight. If they pull it out, I'll be happy for you.

[Dr Positivity]

Probably going to keep Westbrook behind Lebron, Kawhi and Durant. The least portable when considering he doesn't bring a lot as a defense+spacing player, and arguably having him puts a ceiling on a team's decision making somewhere below elite. For his amazing strengths he takes the most things off the table of those four players

[SideshowBob]

.

Random thought that popped into my head: it seems like in recent years we've had kind of an epidemic of stars having a really tough time making sense of the defenses they're shown. We saw it with LeBron, Durant, Curry, etc... I wonder if this is A. A real thing or just recency bias and B. Owing to advancing techniques and influence of coaches or C. Some other factor.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Hmm. Hasn't this been the case for a long time though? Off the top of my head, I'd point to Jordan because he's the one whose history I'm most familiar with. He'd steamroll through earlier rounds then look clearly underwhelming for games at a time vs. Detroit and NYK (his last 3 games vs. Detroit in every series from 88-90 come to mind, 1st 3 games vs. NYK are even worse, but he picked up a bit in the 2nd half of the series, similar to Lebron's adjustment in the 13 SAS series). I could get into further detail, but I think the phenomenon your describing is the same. I think we can pull examples like this era by era if we look carefully (Wilt vs. Boston/Russ comes to mind).

So my point being, I agree with your line of thought but I don't think this is something new in recent years. I think its reasonable to purport that its a combination of A (a real thing) and B, and always has been. Don't know what to make about grading on a curve though. Can you expound?

[mikejames23]

GSW's defense worked on Durant, more so than what the Spurs threw at him. Durant does not shrink in big situations - I would actually say he's one of the most reliable clutch players in the entire league. I am crediting Igouadala for this, along with help from Green. Co-anchors of a very good defensive scheme. Iggy won Finals MVP last year and on the defensive end may have been GS's MVP for this series, esp. with Curry's inconsistencies.

It's worth noting that:

Kanter, Ibaka, Adams, Waiters, and Roberson combined for 18/31 FG's for 44 point total. When your roleplayers show up like this, the end result had to be disappointing for OKC.

Anyway, I don't think it's a guarantee that GSW wins tonight. Winning 3 straight against OKC is a feat on its own.

[Clyde Frazier]

I wonder then whether we (I) should entertain the idea of grading modern players on a bit of a curve.

Heh, well when you put it like that, I think many will be resistant to it. I probably do do that, but I don't see it as a curve. This might explain to some degree why I saw Curry and the Warriors' playoff performance last year so differently from many.

I tend to look at the Warriors' ability to respond and "take back" the series, along with Curry's (and now Klay's) ability to simplify their game and "go off" at the right time, as an incredibly impressive strength. I won't say that I think their playoff performance rivals the 2001 Lakers, but other than that, I don't see any reason to DQ them from comparisons with pretty much any other team & star.

Then again, I've maintained all year that while Curry had the GOAT regular season in my mind, I don't like evaluate how a current player truly stacks up until the end of the playoffs, so I look forward to the discussion at that time.

For anyone who watched the warriors enough this season (hooray league pass), you learned they were just never out of any game. This goes back to pretty early in the season when they were down 20+ in the first half to the clippers. They're just too potent offensively and good enough defensively to go on these mini runs in a matter of minutes that get them right back in the game.

So yeah, while the thunder really pushed them to the edge this series and made them look mortal, i'm not surprised they were able to turn it around and force a game 7. You don't win the most games in league history without having that ability. Can't wait for the game tonight... getting anxious in anticipation.

[RSCD3_]

I wonder then whether we (I) should entertain the idea of grading modern players on a bit of a curve.

Heh, well when you put it like that, I think many will be resistant to it. I probably do do that, but I don't see it as a curve. This might explain to some degree why I saw Curry and the Warriors' playoff performance last year so differently from many.

I tend to look at the Warriors' ability to respond and "take back" the series, along with Curry's (and now Klay's) ability to simplify their game and "go off" at the right time, as an incredibly impressive strength. I won't say that I think their playoff performance rivals the 2001 Lakers, but other than that, I don't see any reason to DQ them from comparisons with pretty much any other team & star.

Then again, I've maintained all year that while Curry had the GOAT regular season in my mind, I don't like evaluate how a current player truly stacks up until the end of the playoffs, so I look forward to the discussion at that time.

For anyone who watched the warriors enough this season (hooray league pass), you learned they were just never out of any game. This goes back to pretty early in the season when they were down 20+ in the first half to the clippers. They're just too potent offensively and good enough defensively to go on these mini runs in a matter of minutes that get them right back in the game.

So yeah, while the thunder really pushed them to the edge this series and made them look mortal, i'm not surprised they were able to turn it around and force a game 7. You don't win the most games in league history without having that ability. Can't wait for the game tonight... getting anxious in anticipation.

Who do you want to win?

Im torn because I think Golden State's season has been too good that anything but a championship would be a disappointment and as a curry fan I want him to make it to the finals. However as a lebron fan, he has a much better chance vs the thunder and could have a story books finals and win.


Im in shambles but thats what happens when you like players from the west and east, i wonder if there were any fans of bird and magic, I should be happy because I would be cool with any outcome but that almosts guarantees someone I like or two people will be disappointed. It's tough. Im just gonna play my cool music soundtrack playlist in the background and enjoy what happens most likely.

[ronnymac2]

I've been thinking about something for a while now. There's this game called GO. I know nothing about it except it's 1,000 times more complicated than Chess. I was reading an article about how A.I. had defeated a legit human master of the game, using unorthodox moves and strategies.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/googles-ai-wins-fifth-final-game-go-genius-lee-sedol/

The machine plays moves designed to maximize its chances of winning, not to maximize the margin of victory. This sometimes results in seemingly weak or “slack” moves that top human players look down on.

I thought about how this relates to basketball; not necessarily on-court strategy (defensive game-planning, offensive sets), but more along the lines of how we value SRS/MOV vs. team record.

Say a team went 82-0 with a MOV of 3 points (winning all 82 games by a margin of 1-7 points). They went 16-0 in the playoffs (Same MOV). Then another team (another year obviously) went 67-15 with a MOV of 10. They go 16-5 in the playoffs (similarly strong MOV as in REG SEA) and were down 2-1 vs. the second best team in the league at one point. Both teams played at a normal pace.

Which team dominated it's competition more? Which type of domination is more practical?

I'll bring this back to a current topic RE: Golden State having trouble with OKC means you can question their status as a GOAT team. Considering the sample size is bigger and the format is less focused, is SRS/MOV the superior indication of dominance in the REG SEA? Is wins/losses superior when determining playoff dominance because the format is laser-focused (everybody knows they have one opponent to deal with), despite things get murky with small sample sizes (Can "The Variance of Life" determine a series, or is 7 games enough?).

Right now, I think OKC blowing out Golden State for two games doesn't mean Golden State's greatness can be questioned, particularly if they go on to win the series (and then the Finals). The Warriors are at the point in the season now (the playoffs) where all that matters for them as a team is winning the games.

[Texas Chuck]

^^ I've always valued w/l over SRS. I don't care about the predictive advantage that SRS proponents push since its supposed to be a record of what has already happened. And there aren't bonus points for differential so I don't care. I feel like we should always judge people based on the goal of the endeavor. The goal is to outscore each opponent not outscore your opponents in aggregate by the most total points.

[Dr Spaceman]

^^ I've always valued w/l over SRS. I don't care about the predictive advantage that SRS proponents push since its supposed to be a record of what has already happened. And there aren't bonus points for differential so I don't care. I feel like we should always judge people based on the goal of the endeavor. The goal is to outscore each opponent not outscore your opponents in aggregate by the most total points.

Comparing only by record assumes that all opponents are neutral quality and there's no difference between playing at home/road.

[Doctor MJ]

I've been thinking about something for a while now. There's this game called GO. I know nothing about it except it's 1,000 times more complicated than Chess. I was reading an article about how A.I. had defeated a legit human master of the game, using unorthodox moves and strategies.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/googles-ai-wins-fifth-final-game-go-genius-lee-sedol/

The machine plays moves designed to maximize its chances of winning, not to maximize the margin of victory. This sometimes results in seemingly weak or “slack” moves that top human players look down on.

I thought about how this relates to basketball; not necessarily on-court strategy (defensive game-planning, offensive sets), but more along the lines of how we value SRS/MOV vs. team record.

Say a team went 82-0 with a MOV of 3 points (winning all 82 games by a margin of 1-7 points). They went 16-0 in the playoffs (Same MOV). Then another team (another year obviously) went 67-15 with a MOV of 10. They go 16-5 in the playoffs (similarly strong MOV as in REG SEA) and were down 2-1 vs. the second best team in the league at one point. Both teams played at a normal pace.

Which team dominated it's competition more? Which type of domination is more practical?

I'll bring this back to a current topic RE: Golden State having trouble with OKC means you can question their status as a GOAT team. Considering the sample size is bigger and the format is less focused, is SRS/MOV the superior indication of dominance in the REG SEA? Is wins/losses superior when determining playoff dominance because the format is laser-focused (everybody knows they have one opponent to deal with), despite things get murky with small sample sizes (Can "The Variance of Life" determine a series, or is 7 games enough?).

Right now, I think OKC blowing out Golden State for two games doesn't mean Golden State's greatness can be questioned, particularly if they go on to win the series (and then the Finals). The Warriors are at the point in the season now (the playoffs) where all that matters for them as a team is winning the games.

I was actually just playing Go last night. Total coincidence as I've hardly ever played but I'll say a couple things about it:

1. The rules are way simpler than chess. A child can completely grasp how to play the game, and yet in terms of the complexity involved in mastering the game it far surpasses chess.

2. I tend to think that Go pushes players to think in terms of building structures, and then leveraging those structures to pin down the opponent. There's some of this in chess but less so, and meanwhile there's considerably "gotcha!" play in chess. Because all the pieces can move differently what that means is you can't really visualize the board as one thing, which makes it comparably harder for humans relative to a computer who has no issues along these lines. Humans fare better in Go than they do in Chess compared to computers because we can concretize what we see better and once we do we're better able to operate in the realm of intuition.

Hence it's not really a surprise that we couldn't build quality Go computer opponents until we made breakthroughs in the realm now referred to as deep learning, whereas we could build a superhuman Chess program literally just by putting in enough rules to follow.

But that's not really relating to your point, which I think is an interesting one on a number of levels:

1 - My bias against Westbrook I think is similar to why coaches kept playing Derek Fisher long after he should have been put out to pasture. When X is supposed to happen, and you see a guy make a mistake that many college players wouldn't make, it's easy for that to "count" more in your brain than something else that's just as damaging but not due to actual errors.

To me this is a little like a Go player not considering a move because it strikes them as going against a general principle which when followed gives a good result most of the time. The computer lacks that same philosophical hang up and will play it if "running out the clock" makes sense on the opponent.

2 - On the other side of things when consider Golden State from a GOAT perspective, something I've maintained from last year is that it's wrong to judge who the best team is based on who is more likely to sweep their opponents. These are 7 game series, so if a team exists that can figure out their way to the best strategy against their opponent over the course of several games better than any other opponent, then they may well be the team with better than 50% odds at beating all others in history, and thus would seem to me to have a good case for the GOAT.

That isn't to say I thought the Warriors last year were the GOAT, merely far less suspect than people think.

It also isn't to say the Warriors are GOAT this year though, at least in terms of how they've recently been playing, because they'll be very fortunate to get out of this series alive, assuming they even do. I do think though that a lot of the issue for the Warriors has to do with Curry just getting back in the right mental place.

[lorak]

Maybe some people would tell that Thunder choked, because they had 3:1 led and still lose. But the truth is that when Warriors were under pressure they elevated their game on insane level, especially on defense. Thunder did better than anyone could and there is no shame in losing to one of the best teams ever. And thus I definitely wouldn't rank Russ or KD lower based on what they did in this series - if anything their play vs GSW impressed me (Durant is elite defender!) and I'm seriously considering putting them both above Kawhi.

[RSCD3_]

Maybe some people would tell that Thunder choked, because they had 3:1 led and still lose. But the truth is that when Warriors were under pressure they elevated their game on insane level, especially on defense. Thunder did better than anyone could and there is no shame in losing to one of the best teams ever. And thus I definitely wouldn't rank Russ or KD lower based on what they did in this series - if anything their play vs GSW impressed me (Durant is elite defender!) and I'm seriously considering putting them both above Kawhi.

How did your opinion of draymond's position on your ballot change if at all?

[ronnymac2]

I've been thinking about something for a while now. There's this game called GO. I know nothing about it except it's 1,000 times more complicated than Chess. I was reading an article about how A.I. had defeated a legit human master of the game, using unorthodox moves and strategies.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/googles-ai-wins-fifth-final-game-go-genius-lee-sedol/

The machine plays moves designed to maximize its chances of winning, not to maximize the margin of victory. This sometimes results in seemingly weak or “slack” moves that top human players look down on.

I thought about how this relates to basketball; not necessarily on-court strategy (defensive game-planning, offensive sets), but more along the lines of how we value SRS/MOV vs. team record.

Say a team went 82-0 with a MOV of 3 points (winning all 82 games by a margin of 1-7 points). They went 16-0 in the playoffs (Same MOV). Then another team (another year obviously) went 67-15 with a MOV of 10. They go 16-5 in the playoffs (similarly strong MOV as in REG SEA) and were down 2-1 vs. the second best team in the league at one point. Both teams played at a normal pace.

Which team dominated it's competition more? Which type of domination is more practical?

I'll bring this back to a current topic RE: Golden State having trouble with OKC means you can question their status as a GOAT team. Considering the sample size is bigger and the format is less focused, is SRS/MOV the superior indication of dominance in the REG SEA? Is wins/losses superior when determining playoff dominance because the format is laser-focused (everybody knows they have one opponent to deal with), despite things get murky with small sample sizes (Can "The Variance of Life" determine a series, or is 7 games enough?).

Right now, I think OKC blowing out Golden State for two games doesn't mean Golden State's greatness can be questioned, particularly if they go on to win the series (and then the Finals). The Warriors are at the point in the season now (the playoffs) where all that matters for them as a team is winning the games.

I was actually just playing Go last night. Total coincidence as I've hardly ever played but I'll say a couple things about it:

1. The rules are way simpler than chess. A child can completely grasp how to play the game, and yet in terms of the complexity involved in mastering the game it far surpasses chess.

2. I tend to think that Go pushes players to think in terms of building structures, and then leveraging those structures to pin down the opponent. There's some of this in chess but less so, and meanwhile there's considerably "gotcha!" play in chess. Because all the pieces can move differently what that means is you can't really visualize the board as one thing, which makes it comparably harder for humans relative to a computer who has no issues along these lines. Humans fare better in Go than they do in Chess compared to computers because we can concretize what we see better and once we do we're better able to operate in the realm of intuition.

Hence it's not really a surprise that we couldn't build quality Go computer opponents until we made breakthroughs in the realm now referred to as deep learning, whereas we could build a superhuman Chess program literally just by putting in enough rules to follow.

But that's not really relating to your point, which I think is an interesting one on a number of levels:

1 - My bias against Westbrook I think is similar to why coaches kept playing Derek Fisher long after he should have been put out to pasture. When X is supposed to happen, and you see a guy make a mistake that many college players wouldn't make, it's easy for that to "count" more in your brain than something else that's just as damaging but not due to actual errors.

To me this is a little like a Go player not considering a move because it strikes them as going against a general principle which when followed gives a good result most of the time. The computer lacks that same philosophical hang up and will play it if "running out the clock" makes sense on the opponent.

2 - On the other side of things when consider Golden State from a GOAT perspective, something I've maintained from last year is that it's wrong to judge who the best team is based on who is more likely to sweep their opponents. These are 7 game series, so if a team exists that can figure out their way to the best strategy against their opponent over the course of several games better than any other opponent, then they may well be the team with better than 50% odds at beating all others in history, and thus would seem to me to have a good case for the GOAT.

That isn't to say I thought the Warriors last year were the GOAT, merely far less suspect than people think.

It also isn't to say the Warriors are GOAT this year though, at least in terms of how they've recently been playing, because they'll be very fortunate to get out of this series alive, assuming they even do. I do think though that a lot of the issue for the Warriors has to do with Curry just getting back in the right mental place.

Well it looks like the GSW figured out the best strategy against a more-than-worthy opponent, from utilizing their bench more, to playing a bit bigger, to even changing their starting lineup in GM 7.

Also, you couldn't ask for a superior squad in today's NBA to task with keying in using length to slow down GSW's shooters. Roberson, Durant, Ibaka, and Adams did as well a job as you can hope for. Yet Klay and Curry set records for 3's in a series, each averaging over 4 per game. Speaks to Golden State's offensive resiliency.

I think what Golden State just did is more impressive than what the 2001 Lakers did in any given series that year. OKC is better than any team LA faced in my opinion, and OKC found a strategy that worked well enough to gain a 3-1 lead and blow out a team that hadn't lost twice in a row all year. This wasn't a fluke, because OKC found a different strategy a round earlier that allowed them to defeat another legit great team in San Antonio. So OKC was proving they were not only super talented, but also super flexible, both personnel-wise and coaching-wise.

Yet Golden State pivoted, and when there weren't any more adjustments for either team to make — as far as professional human coaches could think of — Golden State ended up on top.

[ronnymac2]

I've been thinking about something for a while now. There's this game called GO. I know nothing about it except it's 1,000 times more complicated than Chess. I was reading an article about how A.I. had defeated a legit human master of the game, using unorthodox moves and strategies.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/googles-ai-wins-fifth-final-game-go-genius-lee-sedol/

The machine plays moves designed to maximize its chances of winning, not to maximize the margin of victory. This sometimes results in seemingly weak or “slack” moves that top human players look down on.

I thought about how this relates to basketball; not necessarily on-court strategy (defensive game-planning, offensive sets), but more along the lines of how we value SRS/MOV vs. team record.

Say a team went 82-0 with a MOV of 3 points (winning all 82 games by a margin of 1-7 points). They went 16-0 in the playoffs (Same MOV). Then another team (another year obviously) went 67-15 with a MOV of 10. They go 16-5 in the playoffs (similarly strong MOV as in REG SEA) and were down 2-1 vs. the second best team in the league at one point. Both teams played at a normal pace.

Which team dominated it's competition more? Which type of domination is more practical?

I'll bring this back to a current topic RE: Golden State having trouble with OKC means you can question their status as a GOAT team. Considering the sample size is bigger and the format is less focused, is SRS/MOV the superior indication of dominance in the REG SEA? Is wins/losses superior when determining playoff dominance because the format is laser-focused (everybody knows they have one opponent to deal with), despite things get murky with small sample sizes (Can "The Variance of Life" determine a series, or is 7 games enough?).

Right now, I think OKC blowing out Golden State for two games doesn't mean Golden State's greatness can be questioned, particularly if they go on to win the series (and then the Finals). The Warriors are at the point in the season now (the playoffs) where all that matters for them as a team is winning the games.

I was actually just playing Go last night. Total coincidence as I've hardly ever played but I'll say a couple things about it:

1. The rules are way simpler than chess. A child can completely grasp how to play the game, and yet in terms of the complexity involved in mastering the game it far surpasses chess.

2. I tend to think that Go pushes players to think in terms of building structures, and then leveraging those structures to pin down the opponent. There's some of this in chess but less so, and meanwhile there's considerably "gotcha!" play in chess. Because all the pieces can move differently what that means is you can't really visualize the board as one thing, which makes it comparably harder for humans relative to a computer who has no issues along these lines. Humans fare better in Go than they do in Chess compared to computers because we can concretize what we see better and once we do we're better able to operate in the realm of intuition.

Hence it's not really a surprise that we couldn't build quality Go computer opponents until we made breakthroughs in the realm now referred to as deep learning, whereas we could build a superhuman Chess program literally just by putting in enough rules to follow.

But that's not really relating to your point, which I think is an interesting one on a number of levels:

1 - My bias against Westbrook I think is similar to why coaches kept playing Derek Fisher long after he should have been put out to pasture. When X is supposed to happen, and you see a guy make a mistake that many college players wouldn't make, it's easy for that to "count" more in your brain than something else that's just as damaging but not due to actual errors.

To me this is a little like a Go player not considering a move because it strikes them as going against a general principle which when followed gives a good result most of the time. The computer lacks that same philosophical hang up and will play it if "running out the clock" makes sense on the opponent.

2 - On the other side of things when consider Golden State from a GOAT perspective, something I've maintained from last year is that it's wrong to judge who the best team is based on who is more likely to sweep their opponents. These are 7 game series, so if a team exists that can figure out their way to the best strategy against their opponent over the course of several games better than any other opponent, then they may well be the team with better than 50% odds at beating all others in history, and thus would seem to me to have a good case for the GOAT.

That isn't to say I thought the Warriors last year were the GOAT, merely far less suspect than people think.

It also isn't to say the Warriors are GOAT this year though, at least in terms of how they've recently been playing, because they'll be very fortunate to get out of this series alive, assuming they even do. I do think though that a lot of the issue for the Warriors has to do with Curry just getting back in the right mental place.

Well it looks like the GSW figured out the best strategy against a more-than-worthy opponent, from utilizing their bench more, to playing a bit bigger, to even changing their starting lineup in GM 7.

Also, you couldn't ask for a superior squad in today's NBA to task with keying in using length to slow down GSW's shooters. Roberson, Durant, Ibaka, and Adams did as well a job as you can hope for. Yet Klay and Curry set records for 3's in a series, each averaging over 4 per game. Speaks to Golden State's offensive resiliency.

I think what Golden State just did is more impressive than what the 2001 Lakers did in any given series that year. OKC is better than any team LA faced in my opinion, and OKC found a strategy that worked well enough to gain a 3-1 lead and blow out a team that hadn't lost twice in a row all year. This wasn't a fluke, because OKC found a different strategy a round earlier that allowed them to defeat another legit great team in San Antonio. So OKC was proving they were not only super talented, but also super flexible, both personnel-wise and coaching-wise.

Yet Golden State pivoted, and when there weren't any more adjustments for either team to make — as far as professional human coaches could think of — Golden State ended up on top.

Also, interested in this GO game now.

[PaulieWal]

Well it looks like the GSW figured out the best strategy against a more-than-worthy opponent, from utilizing their bench more, to playing a bit bigger, to even changing their starting lineup in GM 7.

I don't really think GSW figured out anything. Not trying to rain on their parade and if people think I am being unfair feel free to call me out. They mostly won games 6 and 7 on two guys making contests 3s at an insane rate. Thunder made mistakes in both these games but never did I feel that GSW finally figured out the Thunder's defense except they have a real life NBA 2k shot making duo. If Klay isn't making those BS contested 3s in game 6 right now we are gearing up for a Cavs-OKC Finals. Today they were leading at the half and then in the 3rd quarter Curry started making those crazy 3s.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/royceyoung/status/737495824742027264[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/737475934324826113[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/SherwoodStrauss/status/737470348023595008[/tweet]

[bondom34]

Amazing what a guy can do at 70 percent.