GAME THREAD: BLAZERS @ KNICKS - FEB. 5TH, 2014, WEDNESDAY, 5:00 PM, ESPN & CSNNW

Lots of things I say baffle you. Fortunately, you're not the intended audience.

 

For someone who uses things like "PER/USG" and "WS/48" in a 200-minute sample when talking about 9th men on the team, your obliviousness towards things like "efficiency" and "TS%" smacks of utter hypocrisy when it comes to one of the team's starters.

 

I didn't think you were an idiot for saying CJ was playing like shit...he is not playing well, and I agreed on just about every count.

I thought it was incongruous that you were railing against CJ playing like shit while simultaneously saying that Mo shouldn't lose his minutes, when Mo's actually playing even worse than CJ is. And that incongruity is what I was pointing out to you, when you thought I was "arguing your thoughts on CJ".

FWIW, Stotts' benching of CJ neither validates nor invalidates any opinion I have of him. Unless you think that Leonard has twice justified taking all of Robinson's minutes as well, or that Mo's the best backup PG in the league solely because Stotts so opines to the media.

 

You've already done the math on that, and I gave you credit for doing so. I don't pretend to rely on multiple-derivative stats in miniscule samples to buttress arguments. Everything I use can be found on basketball reference, 82 games or nba.com. I like when you bring them up, because it's an aspect that I generally don't look at (I don't feel the need to invent more stats, other than Tongue-in-Cheek ones like "Coin Ratio" for Mo), and you'll notice that I don't give you crap for doing so. What I was bringing up was the dichotomy between ignoring the "mainline" stats like FG%, eFG%, and TS% when comparing Mo vs CJ (CJ's winning in all of them) and using things like WS/48 to show he's horrible while Mo should keep his minutes; while when I bring up basic ones to discuss LMA, you stop discussing basketball and start making attacks. As you did after I answered about 43 of your questions with statistical proof, and you started your "JUMPSHOTJUMPSHOTJUMPSHOT! I didn't know LMA shot jumpshots! He shoots jumpshots?!" crusade.

The only reason this ridiculous premise is promulgated is because of your insistence on upping the rhetoric when proven wrong. You can't count how many times this year I've said something to the effect of "LMA's the best PF in the NBA not named LeBron" or "I hope he signs a max contract here".

That's refreshing.

Or perhaps it could have nothing to do with being a mod, but being someone who attempts to use reason and statistics to back up opinion and hypothesis, whether complimentary to a player or no? I'm not the one who stated that he "posts to ridicule" in order to "bring an energy to the board". That's not "confrontation", because you're not making an honest argument.

I can see how it would seem that way, to someone who doesn't want to hear anything about it, but I'd point out that it didn't seem in the game thread that many others responded positively to the quality of play from the MVP candidate

at my kids' bedtime I left for a while. My apologies for not giving LMA on-time credit for making 2 of the 4 shots he took in the 4th. Belatedly: Good job, LMA! As for your "didn't give LMA credit for passing out of double teams", you should probably revisit the game thread. Once again, your opinion is not backed up by fact. In fact, I deliberately left off the number of times LMA shot against a double-team and missed versus passing around for an open shot by someone else--something that I've been advocating for for a long time. I didn't notice you posting about WS/48 PER/USG or FG% when he was 1-10. IIRC it was something to the effect of "he has 5 assists! Sheesh, people". Even now you retort to BBert's opinion that LMA "stunk up the game" by pointing out his counting stats of 15/12/5. You don't seem to mention that 15pts on 17 shots isn't very good...in fact, it's 10% worse than CJ's "horrible" season shooting %. I can't think of too many greater incidences of "cherry-picking stats".

Yes, I call statistics "facts".

The original opinion was founded on "eye test" and supported by years of statistical proof. Each time someone attempts to use rhetoric to say "I told you so", I use 'facts" to support my opinion.

It's not cherry-picking if every single one supports the premise that I've posted. Including ones that seemed to upset you, like "LMA shooting outside the paint gets as many points per shot as Andrea Bargnani" and "this isn't the best stretch of LMA's career" and "just about every offensive stat across the board for LMA is his career-worst, except for # of shots (21.1 vs. 17.8), ppg (24.4 to 21.8) and assists (2.9 to 2.6)". His FG%, eFG%, TS%, ORB%, TORB, are all the worst of his career.

You don't have to attack other posters to get your point across. "Sheeple" and "dumb people" who may appreciate stats rather than invented rhetoric are posters with honorable intent and opinions.

 

To be fair, you are adding to it by continually bringing it up...

 

It hasn't worked that way for 3 years.

And I agree with you. See? Consensus!

You're welcome to take whatever you like. I'm going to, until shown to be incorrect, maintain that shooting more shots than anyone in the league, and doing as well as Andrea Bargnani while doing it, is not helping the team. Perhaps we could be 38-11, which would be better than 35-14, no? I mean, if we'd have scored 2 more points against MIA, PHI, DAL and NOP, we might be 39-10 right now and in the #1 seed with Stotts coaching the ASG.

Don't get me wrong, I've posted many other stats that some might take umbrage with. Mo playing like garbage and not deserving anything close to 25 mpg, CJ playing about as bad as Mo, Wright shooting 35% from the field and 34% from 3 (but, due to the miracle of cherry-picking, still has an eFG% and TS% higher than the MVP candidate!), Nic making too many turnovers with bounce passes in traffic that don't get to their intended targets, Dame shooting 3s out of rhythm, etc. Somehow, (very reminiscent of your Outlaw campaign) you stop talking basketball and start lashing out whenever one of your favorites is shown to not be an MVP-level player or not to be in the "best stretch of his career". LMA doesn't care what I think. Stotts doesn't, either. I don't get paid for educating. I just think it's interesting to have something more than emotion to back up what I stand behind. To each their own.

You're welcome to ignore the posts, PapaG. I notice you didn't refute any of them. At least you're now admitting that the stats "somewhat" support the opinion. Baby steps.