holfresh wrote:

GodSaveTheKnicks wrote:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-07/nate-silver-led-statistics-men-crush-pundits-in-election

Opinions formed by research and history looked at objectively > Pretty looking "experts" spouting whatever cliches they were raised on

aka

Hollinger > Broussard, Stephen A Smith

then again everyone is better than those 2.

So how does that translate to basketball??

He is saying guys with a statistical background are more precise and accurate than bull****ters.

holfresh wrote:

EwingsGlass wrote:

holfresh wrote:

GodSaveTheKnicks wrote:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-07/nate-silver-led-statistics-men-crush-pundits-in-election

Opinions formed by research and history looked at objectively > Pretty looking "experts" spouting whatever cliches they were raised on

aka

Hollinger > Broussard, Stephen A Smith

then again everyone is better than those 2.

So how does that translate to basketball??

He is saying guys with a statistical background are more precise and accurate than bull****ters.

Well Broussard and Steven A are NBA insiders who get information about player movement and team information...Hollinger would actually be better compared to Magic Johnson, John Barry and Charles Barkley who try to predict what a player might do or a team might do...I think when it comes to basketball knowledge and prediction...I'll run with Magic Johnson..

If Broussard or Stephen A Smith have information from team sources on trades or FA signings that's fine.

Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley are some of the best to ever hoop and their basketball knowledge should be respected.

I think what Hollinger does is a bit different than what those former players do. I like the fact that instead of what doing what a lot of sportswriters and what Broussard/Stephen A Smith do when giving their opinions, Hollinger has actually taken the time to do a ton of research. He also has contacts within the league. I like that fact that when he has an opinion it's based on watching the games, talking to scouts/GMs AND also taking a look at detailed stats to see if he can find something he overlooked.

Here's what I mean.

Hollinger on DeMar DeRozan:

Few players score an emptier 20 than this guy. Offensively, DeRozan drew fouls at a high rate (eighth among shooting guards) and made his freebies (81 percent). But his secondary percentage was still less than the norm for the position because he made only 24 3-pointers all season, and his midrange stroke had some snags, too. DeRozan had made a strong 41.5 percent of his long 2s in 2010-11, but that might have been an outlier; he converted only 35.7 percent last season. Given that he mostly shot long 2s, that was a problem.

He has an opinion but he backs it up with facts. From reading this if you want to be optimistic you can say "Ok, he's great at getting to the line and hitting his FTs but he could get better at developing his 3 pt range and maybe taking those instead of long 2s. Or maybe he can become a freak like Dirk who is way better at shooting long 2s than most of the other elite scorers in the league"

To me that add much more to my day than

"Demar Derozan sucks!" without anything showing how exactly he sucks.

or

"You can NOT win a championship with Demar Derozan as your starting shooting guard!"

which leads to painful exchanges and is a bit lazy because you can just take your 30 seconds to type that, possibly without even really taking a look at dude's game. Which is fine I guess since most of us unlucky shmucks don't get paid to write about the NBA.

But it's kind of why reading/posting on this board gets painful sometimes. I get caught up in it all the time too but more and more as of late I've realized how stupid a lot of these heated back and forths get and how much of what we say is impossible to prove or disprove so it just turns into two camps repeating the same unprovable things to each other over and over. Very very rarely does anyone ever change their minds. Often otherwise reasonable people get so caught up in being RIGHT vs. stepping back and taking a deeper look at the topic of discussion. It would be oh so fun to be able to click on a posters name and be able to like..look at all the posts they've made in the past or search for a subject/name and see what comes up.

Perfect example: my exchange with a guy like AnubisADL on the "Appreciating Tyson Chandler" thread.