Good Trade Idea? With part 2

Out of the blue? Not at all. It was in response to your statement that Biedrins had “inflated” numbers and that Bass would produce better numbers if he was here. You also posted that you’d rather have “I’d like someone who GRABS the rebound and GRUNTS LOUDLY over someone with pretty numbers” and your barb about pushing numbers around. It wasn’t directed at me, but I found it both a peculiar position to take (an implication that Bass was more valuable than the “pretty numbers guy”) coupled with a pissy barb at anyone even trying to make a case with the numbers.

It did seem like you were saying that you were presenting a case that Bass was actually better. Yes, that’s my interpretation and I had to read between the lines, but with what you provided, that was not at all a stretch to come to that conclusion. I thought your statement about the nature of the numbers being inflated for Biedrins because of his teammates and suppressed for Bass because of Damp was unsubstantiated because you didn’t substantiate it. You just said it to be so. And you didn’t do any of the ‘leg work’ to see if what you were saying had any merit.

If you took offense at me saying that your position was unsubstantiated when you didn’t substantiate it, sorry, but you didn’t substantiate it.

And instead of thinking about the question and that perhaps your case might not be particularly good, when questioned, you changed tune to that if it wasn’t Damp, it was that “he [Bass] could play with Diop or Nowitzki, both big bodies and presumably fine rebounders.” Fine is a value judgement, but if If they’re the center in such a lineup with Bass at PF, neither are above last year’s C average of 9.7r/36. Both were marginally below the average for a center per minute. This isn’t terrible at all, but it’s not like he was next to rebound-gobbling machines either. It’s also things that you could have checked out before you presented them. Since you did present Damp’s rebound average, I found it curious that you’d lob in those without checking, but hey, that’s what you did and it was the odd bit of pushing some numbers (e.g. Damp’s rebounding) but ignoring others when your limited data were questioned that seemed peculiar and made it clear that you weren’t substantiating anything, weren’t really analyzing anything, but had made up your mind, made a statement because of it, and wanted to stonewall any attempts to challenge the merit of your position.

Here’s another curious bits. 82games lists the 5 most frequent lineups with Bass in them, none of these include Dampier. I have some questions about 82games.com’s data (the minutes don’t always seem to add up), but from what we have to go on, it doesn’t look like Bass is having his numbers suppressed by playing alongside Damp at all, nor does it look like he’s playing alongside guys who are above average rebounders.

I called you on the fact that you presented something without supporting data. Since it conflicted with what I’ve found (namely that rebounding isn’t heavily influenced by teammates) and since you paired it with a statement that strongly implied that you thought that a grunter like Bass was somehow more valuable, I called you on it and asked if you had data, perhaps in a snarky manner, but all you had to do was provide data. You chose instead to do something else, to try to move your target (eg if not Damp, then Diop or Nowitzki) without doing anything to actually check if these cases helped you out either.

Does any of this make me smarter than you? No. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. I was responding to your statement “Anybody can look up stats. Stats are great for analysis and discussion. However, they does not make you a basketball guru or smarter than anyone else.” It seemed particularly denigrating to making a statistical argument (since anybody can do it) and the snarky bit about how it didn’t make me a guru or smarter was something you lobbed first. I’ve never claimed to be a basketball guru and hadn’t claimed I was smarter than you.

I don’t know if I’m smarter than you. Others can decide that.

I am certain that I do more research than you, that what I do is significantly more than “looking up stats” (unless developing and programming a parser to manage and sort ~600mb of data to look at patterns in the game is just ‘looking up stats’). But most importantly, when I make claims, I do my best to back them. When I present opinion, I freely admit when I don’t have strong evidence to support such an opinion.

Statistics are not the only way to substantiate an opinion. Good scouting is more than an unsubstantiated opinion. It’s opinion substantiated by someone’s record of reading what they see and reporting accurately such that their predictions seem better than that of someone uninformed. If a scout is consistently wrong, he a) probably works for the Warriors, or b) won’t have a job for very long as his pronouncements don’t have a track record to substantiate them.

I get also get testy with people who shout out “WATCH GAMES”’ as well, implying that if you resort to numbers, that somehow you’re not watching games (which is false) and don’t see what’s really going on (which is opinion, but one that I do not hold is true). Hey, that’s probably me reading too much in, and if so, I’m sorry.