The Undefeated debuts

What did he ignore about basketball? Howard was a 28-year-old a year/back injury removed from a half-decade run as a first-team all-NBA player. That seems very much about basketball. You can argue he was immature and an injury risk, but grabbing a recent top-10 player who is still young because of potential upside, that's not because of some magical formula.

It was a move that didn't work out, but to imagine the failure is because of numbers over solid basketball acumen is revisionist history at best.

 

He had to be shamed by a teammate into playing in L.A. I think that was a bit of a sign.

There were a lot of people at the time saying committing to Howard was a mistake. That isn't revisionist.

Anyway, up through this season you'd get a numbers-based argument that Howard was valuable -- ELITE!!!!! -- but the results haven't matched in a long time.

 

You are correct that he was a shit. You are correct many people said committing to him was a mistake (there were also many saying he was a max contract guy, as there are many people who say things nowadays). But it it revisionist history to say he was signed for reasons that have nothing to do with basketball. He was signed because at the time, he'd been very good at basketball quite recently.

It was a risk, but lots of stars have been petulant and clashed with coaches, and sometimes acquiring talent is worth the risk. Other teams (Golden State for one) were willing to take it. It didn't work out, and that happens. I'm also not sure anyone looking at numbers would say he was elite the past four seasons. Maybe if you are generous about 2013-14. But of course, when he signed, he was a year removed from being pretty damn good.

(Had Houston not signed him, what would be the upside? Keep Parsons around? It's not as if there was a high-level star that hit the open market, and the 45-win team before Howard came was likely a ceiling. They got better for two years, one with Howard hurt, had a meltdown and now they're at the same spot as when they started)

 

That Wilbon analytics piece was tremendously disappointing. Draymond Green is far from the only athlete who wants nothing to do with advanced analytics, and it's silly to frame that in context of race. And you can recognize the importance of barbershops in black culture without identifying them as the nexus of black legitimacy.

 

Athletes don't need to understand analytics but your management group sure as hell better.

 

Right. In the same vein regarding baseball, it was always frustrating that Joe Morgan was so hostile toward "Moneyball" and sabermetrics.

Morgan didn't realize how big a superstar he was to the sabermetric community. There might not have ever been an elite player whose value was tied more into many of the core tenets of baseball analytics: drawing a ridiculous number of walks, stealing bases at a high percentage and hitting for far more power than anyone else at his position.

 

The intersection of race, math and culture.

 

Only later, after the shift, did we learn how much better Curry was from the corners. One stat, according to ESPN Stats & Information, assigned Curry some number in excess of 100 for his 3-point sniping from the corners. This tells you just how bogus the exercise is if the “percentage” reports to be greater than 100.

It’s like calculating points per 100 possessions, a very popular go-to stat in NBA circles. Why is that more important than points per 48 minutes, which is the actual time in which an NBA game is played?

Maybe because all players don't play 48 minutes, but they are in fact involved in the 100 possessions because they're on the court?

I really don't like the tone of that article. It's like he's saying black people are too cool to talk about nerdy stuff. That kind of attitude fosters and embraces ignorance. If Wilbon has never discussed Moneyball or other "advanced stats" books or articles with any of his brethren, that's their loss.

 

I think Wilbon was trying to underline this point. Not sure he pulled it off, but the gist was: Players who don't value analytics turn into coaches who don't get hired because they never valued analytics.

Analytics are, IMO, misunderstood by both sides of the debate. Of course data is going to reveal trends and whatnot. Of course it is. That's not a profound conclusion.

What's profound is translating those analytics into a style of play, and convincing elite athletes to embrace those roles without being didactic and preachy about it, because players don't tend to appreciate "theories" explaining their success.

The Royals, in baseball, have done so. KC is not just pulling two World Series appearances out of its ass despite analytic trends that projected far worse; it has figured something out that other teams probably have not. And KC doesn't beat its chest over it. Which is probably why it works so well - because it's not about who gets credit, but that it works, and wins games.

 

Wilbon missed the article that said the Browns are the blackest organization in the NFL.

 

What are some examples of the stats that are contrived measures?