Mystic - In general, I give you the benefit of the doubt because English isn't your native language. But I'm just floored right now given how many things you have misread, misinterpreted, made up, or attributed to me out of left field.
First, you jump into the conversation I was having with Doc to say
mysticbb wrote:ElGee wrote:Dirk's role in the Mavs offensive was to run as a primary scoring hub/threat, not turn it over much and shoot the hell out of the ball.
That is WRONG. How many plays did they really run for Nowitzki? In most plays Nowitzki was used as a decoy, in order to draw the attention of the defense out of the zone to give the perimeter players opportunities to attack the basket.
No where did you actually refute my categorization of Dirk's role, because I don't think a knowledgable human being could object to what I wrote. Perhaps you don't know what the word "threat" means, but that's something you should look up before shouting "WRONG."
Then you decided to go on another diatribe about my comment "his worst offensive series since 2007," which you said you misread. OK, so then I asked you abut your off-ball calculation and two points specifically in the method. I then said, in the context of asking you about quantifying something
that I've specifically written about beforeI actually think this is an interesting way to try to measure off-ball impact, but it's obviously missing a little ITO of on-ball activities, the variance/accuracy of RAPM, and the interactive combinations of lineups.
For you to then say
mysticbb wrote:ElGee wrote:You said I wasn't accounting for Nowitzki's Spacing Effect in the Finals.
And you don't do that.
mysticbb wrote:ElGee wrote:I'm well aware Dirks' spacing helps
No idea that you are "well aware" of that. Maybe you are aware of that, but in that case you are rather dishonest in your approach here.
is just whacky. I don't know how else to say that nicely, other than to genuinely ask if you believe that I don't think spacing is an issue in basketball, and how you come to that conclusion? When I post information as a reference point (which is what I did for Doc), do you want me to write footnotes in each instance explaining all the possible holes and vagaries in every metric??
Now, any Spacing Effect obviously isn't a true mathematical constant. I would hope that you would give ME the benefit of the doubt and wouldn't just automatically assume I'd say something so moronic, especially when I rant about variance every 3 posts. It seems really obvious to me that "SCREEN SETTING" or "SHOOTING THREAT ON PERIMETER"
are relatively constant values within a 7-game series against one opponent, UNLESS one of the teams makes a drastic adjustment (eg, we aren't going to have this play set picks, or defensively we are now going to leave this player open.)
Feel free to explain how you think, in the context of impacting a game by 1-3 points per 100 (?) that this is a highly variable talent. But otherwise, identifying the degree of that Effect is the crux of the issue since you've objected so vehemently to the "on-ball" analysis that reveals such a close level of play. (And as an aside, I'd like to add that James was subpar in the Finals relative to himself defensively, which is part of the reason I think fatigue was such an issue, and also the type of thing where EV could equally be as off as any Spacing Effect, but I don't see you haranguing away on that front.)
mysticbb wrote:Really, the quality of your argumentation is going really down here, it really looks like the typical responses by people here on the board who are only concerned about them winning a debate rather than actually analyzing the game.
The "circumstantial" value is here due to Nowitzki's skillset, which is the driving factor to allow the players to play way better. There is a reason that over 12 years Nowitzki's teammates played better with him on the court than without him, and in the majority of the possessions Nowitzki was on the court the plays weren't run for him, but for one of his teammates. The way the defense has to react to Nowitzki is giving his teammates more time to make a pass or the shot. Nowitzki's movement without the ball is helping to open up the middle or is just helping to create a better passing angle. Nowitzki's teammates are changing their shot selection with him on the court. A good example would Barea, who took 58% of his shots in 2011 in the paint with Nowitzki on the court while it went down to 48% without Nowitzki. Or Shawn Marion having more open shots from midrange with Nowitzki than without him leading to a difference of converting those shots with 37% over the last 2 seasons with Nowitzki on the court and with 27% without him. Those differences can't be explained by "winning bias", that is a result of different spacing. Completely dismissing that thing by arguing a strawman (constant value) or trying to detect a "winning bias" will always make you miss an important part of the game. And that part of the game differed between James and Nowitzki during the finals as well.
And that kind of value would give Nowitzki to ALL teams. Obviously, there are teammates needed to convert the opportunities given, but other players instead of Nowitzki wouldn't give the teammates those opportunities. Trying to dismiss that value by saying "circumstantial value because he is on Dallas" is ignorant here and just related to the fact that you don't have a point of comparison. Well, maybe you should have watched some of the games he played for Germany and then compare that with the games without him, maybe you wouldn't dismiss that as quickly as you do it right now.
Well, again, *I'm not ignoring Spacing.* The "circumstantial" value I mentioned isn't something you even address here -- I'm talking about the degree to which that effects Dirk's Spacing Effect. It will be present every where he goes, but it will be of different value in Dallas than if he were traded tomorrow, dependent on shooters, penetrators and scheme. How you can flip out about Spacing being relatively constant in a series and then simultaneously object to me saying, like every other "value," it's conditional?
KG has huge value on Boston right now -- they have no bigs. If he played with 3 clones of himself, he would have less VALUE, but it wouldn't change how well he played in a series when he was on the court. Thats the point -- it's not merely specific to Spacing, but obviously the impact of one's Spacing will be dictated by role and teammates (as I said, with Terry and Peja on the court, what do you think the effect looks like)?
The issue is that you are not talking to people obsessed with "clutch" or "winning" here, neither Doc MJ nor myself are "obsessed" with that kind of things.
And where did I say you were?
But you are arguing as if we would be some sort of fanboys blinded by our wrong focus on things like clutch or winning.
NO. What I'm saying is so powerful is that someone as smart, thoughtful and knowledgable as Doc would drop the blanket statement that it was "obvious" Nowitzki played better in the Finals, not really because of anything to do with LeBron James (although that might magnify it), but because the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Finals. More importantly, he represents the beliefs of the majority here. That's entire point of this discussion with Doc, and it's germane because every year this stuff dictates people's impressions heavily, and it probably gets worse in time. The brain LEANS towards dichotomy because it's simpler storage, and because it can't function in ambivalence.
When we go back to last year, you were also so obsessed with showing that the difference between the Heat winning and losing would have been some sort of luck/bad luck from the free throw line. You were so confident about that part that you didn't even check the numbers and obviously missed the mistake Hollinger made. You showed a clear bias here, a confirmation bias, those numbers by Hollinger were enough for you to conclude that the Mavericks just won, because of variance at the free throw line. And right now I have a hard time seeing that you learnt from your mistake.
I was "obsessed" with a simple conclusion? You mean, everyone drew extreme conclusions about 2 players based on a team result in a high-variance sport after the closest Finals basically ever? And I pointed out it was the closest FInals and that made me "obsessed with showing that the difference between the Heat winning and losing would have been some sort of luck/bad luck from the free throw line," even though I CITED someone else's post on that matter as an illustration of how close the series was?
It's the last sentence that really makes me cry. Team's don't win games because of one thing, play, quarter, etc. It's the collective result of the entire game. If you've pretty much read anything I've written, this is a constant theme. What would make you conclude that "those numbers by Hollinger were enough for [me] to conclude that the Mavericks just won, because of variance at the free throw line?????"
I didn't appreciate your attributions last year, when it wasn't enough for you to say, "Hey, ElGee, Hollinger's numbers are wrong but your basic point still stands," you had to come up with some crazy conspiracy theory about how, while I was working in the morning and reading TrueHoop, I was browing around looking for
false data to prove a point about how close the Finals were. Now you say "I didn't learn from my mistake." What mistake would that be, exactly?
Like most of this exchange, it's just unnecessarily combative and misses the point. For goodness sakes, you mentioned the word "bias" 12 times on the last page to me, when we were talking about measuring a Spacing Effect.
Blah blah blah bias. Blah blah blah Individuals, not teams. Blah blah blah variance. ROUGHLY every third post. In all seriousness, it does feel like at times my realgm posts are telescopic, but of course, my goal is to discuss basketball, as has happened in great depth and detail in some of the projects. 
