Why I don’t pay for NBA insider.

And, I'm sure I could be as accurate as Pelton having an orca whale spit a mouth full of sea water at various team banners to pick winners and losers. Again, Pelton made the comparison to Silver. And I'm saying he's no Nate Silver in any universe.

Why not make the argument, there are simply too many variables that cannot be accounted for statistically to accurately predict wins from pre-season, to end-of-season? Ah, because then people wouldn't buy the ESPN snake oil.

 

Nah man... Actually the trip is about business. Talking with the lead researcher for a major disease for citrus groves in Florida. Our product has been the only cure for the bacterial infection and they needed me to explain it to their research team. I used way too many brain functions for one day!

 

If he, or anyone, can predict sports 55% of the time they could make a fortune in Vegas. Predict 11 of 20 games right and you'll be rich, predict only 10 of 20 games right and you'll go broke.

 

The logic behind his system is fairly sound. Based on expected statistical outputs both offensively and defensively Pelton's system projected the team would win 44 games. The projections are made based on expected offensive and defensive production excluding luck.

Pelton uses a form of the Pythagorean expectation so for example there is no way one would expect a team like last years Colts to go 11-5 despite being outscored by 30 points those stats more typically represent an 8-8 or 7-9 football team.

It also struggles to account for injuries properly or tanking.

Overall his system needs some work but no one and I mean no one had this team at 18-4 so to be overly critical for him projecting us as a .500 team is weak.

 

Amin Elhassan has a pretty good insider article up today on the long 2 point shot. He uses Lillard as an example in our game versus the Pacers.

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/10113449/boston-celtics-forward-jared-sullinger-tops-list-best-midrange-shooters-nba

Mo is the 10th rated player in the NBA at this metric. Wes is 17th and Lillard is 20th.

 

Good addition but long winded.

 

First, I just wanted to say this is a good response. And, I’m qualified to say so because I know what I think is good. I don’t agree with it, but I’d be hard pressed to say you didn’t put any thought into it. I think it’s important, for the sake of interesting discourse, that people know what constitutes a good take; a reasoned argument. I’m no expert, but you gave me something interesting to consider and respond to, and that has value in my book. So, for what it’s worth, thanks.

And to your point: Pelton's prominence...

All the more reason to be critical when his “expert analysis” isn’t worth the virtual paper it’s written on. His “formula” [SHOENES] has been around for 5 years (according to him), so, take it up with him if I was inaccurate in my OP. I never called him stupid, and clearly he can string a coherent sentence together, but that’s not my issue with Pelton. My issue with him is how horrible his projections are - and more so, his explanations as to why a certain outcome is either an outlier, or simply did not account for particular variables. Mamma always told me, if you're not good at it, do something else.

The thing that makes me laugh most is that Felton and Crawford were TERRIBLE (with a capital T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E) with the Blazers, but they are doing OK with NY and LAC respectively. That’s chemistry, and that’s something Pelton can’t or has not of yet, accounted for. There are simply too many variables that he does not account for, which is why his formula and algorithms don’t amount to jack squat.
Pelton’s projections don’t answer “why” a given player is successful, only that they “are” or “are not” in the confines of his definition. So when Lopez comes to Portland, his cardboard computer tells everyone that Robin isn’t the answer and the Blazers are screwed. Given his take on Portland, I CAN say with confidence that I know MORE about the Blazers than Pelton does. I also played ball in college, and I can tell by Pelton’s physic he’s living the dream behind a computer. He has little to no concept of leadership or team chemistry, and it doesn’t surprise me that he can't account for it. To him, All-Stars win games. And to some degree, he’s correct. The problem is, his imaginary friend (SHOENES) doesn’t and cannot account for why the Lakers FAILED miserably last season, why the Knicks were #2 in the East, why GS and Houston made the play-offs… the examples are never ending. He looks at players and teams in a vacuum, devoid of what makes one player or team successful versus another that goes about winning games with a completely different strategy or personnel.

My entire point was that he spends all his time explaining away why he (and his crap formula) is not wrong. And to say I can’t be critical of someone who presents himself at the next “Nate Silver”, yet is wrong a super majority of the time, is boarder-line retarded. I know that’s probably hurtful and unnecessary for me to say, but I’m just being emphatic. I can respect that tries hard, and at the same time call his analysis absolute crap. It’s pretty cool how that works.

If Pelton's analysis is not accurate, it’s GD useless. You want me to give him extra credit because he spent year talking about basketball? Am I supposed to give him brownie points for typing a lot? Does he get a pass for melting down a bunch of stats into projected wins – even when it doesn’t mean anything? I have no problem doing so were it not for the fact that he has failed to accurately predict anything after 5 years of trying – and every Homer with an audience talks down to fans like they are stupid when they point out why Pelton’s projections are off the reservation (See Homer's Edge).

Take Dave Decker from Homer’s Edge. That guy was so hard up for Pelton’s projection he completely disregarded the Blazers rebounding pre-season as a fluke, and simultaneously asserted that they would struggle because of turnovers. It wasn’t a reasoned argument, it was that Dave was going to make excuses for whatever it took to assure that his logic lined up with Pelton’s projection of 41 wins.

Does it bother me a skoash that a basketball rube has such a large audience of sheep? Maybe. I’ll be sure to bring that up at my next “session”. Homer’s Edge could definitely take a lesson from RC2 in how not to solicit and retain a passionate fan base starved for Blazer news.

I’m all for trying. Keep plugging away KP; trial and error. But if you are suggesting I should take Pelton’s projections seriously, let alone pay to read it, your head is farther up your rear end than Kevin's SHOENES system is up his.

Not having ESPN Insider is not a dis-qualifier to speak intelligently about what a contributor says about a given topic. The internet is a beautiful thing. It’s called homework. Just because you don’t understand why I am informed does not mean I’m uninformed.

Well, agree to disagree. Bob Dole doesn’t agree and that something Bob Dole doesn’t do, or maybe Bob Dole does – but at least Bob Dole doesn’t pretend that Bob Dole isn’t Bob Dole, or that what Bob Dole says isn’t something Bob Dole said.

SHOENES produces crap, therefor it is crap.

A presumption is based on an assumption. Are you suggesting I can’t be critical of wildly inaccurate results, and while faulting me on merit based on assumptions? It [SHOENES] exists because Kevin Pelton threw a bunch of stats together to try and project something it is wholly unqualified to project.

You must have been surrounded by a LOT of positive support growing up. Where I come from, being wrong a majority of the time is a valid criticism, especially when you are an ESPN Insider; as is losing, failing, blowing donkeys, or generally being an ass. Who cares if his model is more accurate than what I wrote on a Burgerville napkin, it’s still ridiculous. Lots of people write horoscopes, and people read those horoscopes, and some people even pay to read those horoscopes. What’s that point? “Hey, TV evangelists and palm readers need to make a living too!!!” Point taken… I digress.

Fair enough. I’m a Blazer fan. I don’t fault anyone with ESPN Insider, I just stated my opinion and singled out Pelton because he’s one of the few that I have a familiarity with his writing, and who contributes to the NBA fodder. If people don’t appreciate my jokes, overt sarcasm, or cutting logic, that’s OK. I do – almost as much as I appreciate the cookie crumb center of a Twix.

 

Who also believes Portland won't make the playoffs.

 

I like BF, but damn her posts are just too long sometimes!

 

Yeah, ain't nobody got time for that!

 

You're making a good, well reasoned argument. Unfortunately, you went to PER to support it. The Felton/Camby thing was just terrible. Veterans tearing the locker room down. Nate McMillan had a near mutiny on his hands. How does PER account for that? I doesn't. Crawford's was expected to play PG, and that's not his game. So while his PER may be the same or better, the team struggled with him because basketball isn't an individual sport.

You also make a good point in being curious about putting a number/stat to an intangible asset. It's that really any stat guy's wet dream? To be the guy who solved the insolvable. To create the next new "box" to label and put players in. There is absolutely a correlation to good players leading to team success, and it is extremely strong, but it's not the only factor. And the factors that are near impossible to account for, if not entirely impossible, are things like intangibles and chemistry and unselfishness. For instance, a team may rebound at the same rate when two players are interchanged (Hickson for Lopez), but their individual rebounds differ. Granted this isn't a good example because Lopez in fact increases team rebounding, but in principle it is a situation that we can relate to because it actually can be accounted for statistically, to a degree. What may not be accounted for is that the Blazer offense is better, perhaps, because they are getting into their offensive sets more quickly because teammates aren't fighting over rebounds that are Blazer rebounds regardless.

Portland's resurgence is not a product of only chemistry. It's not talent OR chemistry, it's talent AND chemistry. Even the Homer projection bumped up the Blazers win total this season, but the pieces are working together extremely well because of a lot of variables that the stat geeks either cannot or did not account for. And rather than saying, "my system sucks because I didn't account for this or, there isn't a stat to represent this variable," they say dumb shit like "Portland will come back down to earth, they will regress, they are an outlier" - deflecting their failure on mythical anomalies. The Blazers differential is only +6 points per game. Three or even 2 baskets. At the least, we could be talking about the variables like chemistry only accounting for 2-3 buckets. But that just so happens to be the difference between a loss and a win. It's significant in that respect.

As to what the "Insiders" based their pre-season predictions on? Who the heck knows. Whatever they based it on was complete horse poop. If someone can't be critical of that kind of piss poor analysis, then why even put any value on any statistic? I'm of the opinion statistics are valuable when use correctly or, on the other hand, garbage in - garbage out.

 

Reading is FUN-damental.

 

BF and Brian could have a post off to see who writes the longest posts.