A Little Victory Over a Little Man

Stalwart commenter Rreducla1 pointed me to another website with another dunderhead named Zachariah Blott using advanced statistics poorly. Well, let’s put it this way… Zach Blott is to Advanced Statistics as a braindead monkey is to Advanced Statistics.

No need to link. On his site, Blott was making a series of supposedly objective statements using such ridiculous measures as raw win-loss records, and when the results would not line up with his theories, he would supply subjective context to make it all right. The factual errors are too numerous to mention here, but Blott never responded to them.

It’s not worth getting into the heres and theres about it, the important point is that after destroying every point Zachariah Blott had to make on his site, beleaguered Zach went in last night and deleted every one of my comments, and every one of his comments responding to me.

That, my friends, is the act of capitulation. I wish I could show you how every post of mine had stats in it, and every post of his kept saying “nyah nyah” in the form of “You obviously don’t understand math, but I won’t bother to actually show you why your argument is wrong, keep trying”.

But I can’t, because Zach Blott would rather erase all evidence of a conversation if he can’t manipulate it to make the point that he wants to make. And I love him for that.

UPDATE: Zachariah Blott has blocked my IP from viewing Behind the Basket. Which is fine and totally his prerogative. I’m leaving him one last comment to point him to this article and then I’ll leave him alone. Some folks can’t stand the heat.

Add Matt Moore to the Silly List

Thanks to rreducla1 who is acting as a wonderful field scout for NBA blogfoolery.

Matt Moore from Hardwood Paroxysm threw out this silly answer in an ESPN 5-on-5:

How should Lakers fans feel about Kobe playing overseas?

Matt Moore, Hardwood Paroxysm: Like he’s given them five championships and has never really paid much mind to what anyone thought was best but himself. Hey, maybe he’ll meet someone over there to convince him he doesn’t need to go one-on-five.

Of course, as always, any joker is entitled to his opinion about anything. Personally I feel like the Rolling Stones are overrated. But I wouldn’t posture at any kind of objective, new-world stats-y look at the issue. It’s just a personal bias that has no real basis in anything. And I love that song “Hey You Get Off My Cloud” which I think is when the Stones covered Method Man or something.

I guess what I don’t understand is: what’s the point of these 10th-generation NBA writers if they claim to be newthink but they’re actually Skip Baylesses in disguise? If you just want to cherrypick 82games.com to jump off into a 1500-word rant that sums up as “KOBES A BALLHOG LOL” then admit to it.

Or at least have the wherewithal to realize when you are contradicting yourself in a two-sentence blurb on an ESPN fluff-cuz-nothing-else-is-happening lockout piece. If Kobe was convinced he needed to go one-on-five (not true, but whatever), and it gave Los Angeles five championships, how or why or who or what would convince him that he didn’t need to do the thing that he doesn’t actually do as often as silly NBA bloggers write that he does?

And another bit of intellectually dishonest writing is Moore’s post on PBT about Kobe winning a game of Knockout against his basketball campers. This is the worst form of NBA newthink shadiness. The gist is Moore wants to criticize Kobe for taking the game too seriously and trying to win even when he doesn’t have to. And yet Moore is unwilling to own up to this criticism, and hedges through the following equivocations:

• Labeling the post as a “standard blahblahblah post”. This creates a bit of intellectual distance, the writer is simply filing what is required of him given the context, he’s not really committed to the opinion. It’s like saying, “Look, don’t take this personally, but…”
• Describing what Kobe did in the game with the kids as “tearing them apart”. It’s really more that Kobe continued to make jumpers casually until he didn’t, and then he hustled for a rebound and made a layup. If you watch the video it’s clear he wasn’t in full lower-jaw stuck out mode.
• Using the phrase “instead of glorifying this obsession with winning at all costs or making it seem like a bad thing” and then doing exactly that.
• Taking the end of his post to a middling position, giving the appearance that Moore holds a sophisticated, nuanced position about the video, aware of the context and how Kobe represents to the kids at his camp, despite the fact that the headline for the post is “Kobe Bryant has the will to win… against children,” unless Moore is taking an extremely fine-grained position that the “standard blahblahblah post” about Kobe is one that has a sensational, snarky headline and body copy that gets progressively neutral.

It makes wonder what the point of the TrueHoop network is. What’s the central occupational need that a TH writer fills?

The person on the right is 22 years old.

WAH #3: Putting draft prospects to the psych test

I was kind of really excited about Henry Abbott’s latest post, because it seemed like a step towards rehabilitation. In it, Henry describes taking a test from Sports Aptitude that is used to evaluate the personalities of NBA draft prospects.

The test generates scores in ten dynamics. The one Henry scores the lowest in is “awareness”. He also could do better in “self-disciplined” and “takes responsibility.”

Could this be the way back to credibility for young Hank? Would he step up his intellectual discipline, and own up to his biases and blind spots?

Alas, no. Abbott spends the last third of his column backing away from the test because it cites him as lacking internal motivation. There’s no way to really evaluate this claim. I could jack-knife my position on Henry’s writing to fit it if I wanted to (does he really have the self-motivation to question his own viewpoints) but it’s probably not right. At the same time just because someone jogs every day doesn’t mean they have their motivation in the parts of their life that truly matter. It also doesn’t mean they don’t.

But I do find it kind of strange that Henry essentially dismisses the test based on his anecdotal experience that his own behavior is different than what he tested. It’s especially strange if you consider that his lowest trait is “awareness”. So he seems like the worst possible person to make this determination.

I was hoping it might be a bit of a wakeup but mostly it’s an opportunity to pile on the word count again (tellingly, one of Henry’s counterpoints to the motivation question is that he  was “virtually unsupervised as I set an ESPN.com record for most words published in a year.” I mean, doesn’t that say so much about what is wrong with TrueHoop?).

By the way, if you root around enough in the TrueHoop archive, you’ll see posts where Henry admits to an anti-Laker bias and being pro-Blazer. The post I’m talking about in particular is one where now he claims to be a Lakers fan because of… something. I accidentally came upon the post the other day and I don’t feel like wading around to find it and it doesn’t matter anyway. Because the reasoning was specious and the column unpersuasive, and years old. And it doesn’t seem consistent to some of the potholes that litter Abbott’s writing today.

And unlike Henry, I don’t cite years-old text as evidence of a current context.

NBA Classic: Dennis Johnson Double Dribbles

This came up in Bill Simmons’ podcast this week. Guest Mike Fratello described a play in game 6 of the 1998 Hawks-Celtics series, with Atlanta on their home court attempting to close out Boston.

In the video below, if you skip to 2:55, you’ll see Dennis Johnson barely making it over the half-court line in 10 seconds (that was the rule back then). He then picks up his dribble, pivots around looking for someone to pass to, then starts dribbling again. None of the players, refs, or commentators seem to notice. DJ drives to the hoop and makes a lay-up while getting fouled by Tree Rollins for a three-point play.

Today, a play like this would be deconstructed relentlessly on the blogs. Did it kill Atlanta’s momentum (and, you know, does momentum exist, and according to Synergy how many Boston plays end with a right-side layup over defenders named after plants)? It would certainly light up SB Nation for 48 hours.

I have no idea if that’s a good or a bad thing. I’m just pointing it out.

illdoc1more: How LeBron James Broke the Golden Rule of Sports

Brilliant.

An Idea for the Dallas Mavericks Championship Jewelry

Mark Cuban says he doesn’t want to give the team rings, that it’s “old-school”. No one knows what he has in mind instead, but I had a notion that would be interesting (and would be something I think Cuban would be interested in).

Make it a simple, sleek, futuristic, and classy ring. Maybe a bit of gemological flash, but mostly a pristine looking, elegant object of desire.

Inside the ring, you embed an NFC chip — near field communication, like the work badge you swipe to go to your job that is so much worse than LeBron James’ — and create merchandise and experiences that only an official 2011 Dallas Mavericks Championship Ring can trigger.

Things like:

• An exclusive lounge in Dallas with a security door that opens with a wave of the ring
• A linked payment chip account that lets someone with the ring swipe it to pay for things on Cuban’s dime
• A special-edition Blu-Ray championship video, with an exclusive electronic autograph board. It has blank spaces for every player. When you meet Dirk in person and he swipes his ring, his blank space turns into an electronic version of his signature. Collect all 15… only possible by actually meeting your favorite Mavericks in the flesh
• Replica rings for Dallas fans, with NFC chips that swipe into a USB reader to enable access to an elite Mavericks Online fan lounge
• And since it’s timely, a Dallas-branded blue power lantern that plays audio clips from every player and coach whenever you “recharge” your fan ring

10 Ways My Life is Better Than LeBron James’ Life

1. I don’t live in Miami near people that love me without knowing me.
2. I don’t live in Akron near people that hate me without knowing me.
3. When I make a mistake, I can take personal responsibility for it. If you ask for specifics, I can give them to you, and I can give you an idea of how I might improve for the future.
4. When I get a chance to speak to a larger group of people through mass media, I have the ability to enjoy myself and have fun. And I’m able to do it without a friend sitting next to me for support.
5. I don’t answer questions by starting with, “Uhhh” in the most dim-witted, perfunctory tone imaginable.
6. I don’t say one thing and contradict it with my public actions. For example, I don’t say that I pay no attention to what people say about me and then post a tweet saying that I am making a list of everyone and what they say about me.
7. I have a full head of hair, and signs look good that I’m going to keep it.
8. I don’t waste time deciding whether I want a Ferrari or a Maybach, which is like deciding which Affliction shirt makes you look more like an assjack.
9. When I give people bad news I don’t feel the need to surround myself with small children as a buffer to shield me from criticism.
10. While it might be nice to live in LeBron James’ body, or his house, or his wealth, or his position to influence the world, my current life has the distinct advantage of not having to live inside LeBron James’ brain, which seems like a sad, bare, and socially-challenged wooden shack wallpapered with pictures of himself and Monopoly money.