LOL @ Hollinger

[timvp]

Hollinger Hits a New Low (http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/playoffodds)

Wouldn't you throw away an equation that indicates that the Boston Celtics have more than double the chances of winning the championship than the Spurs, Mavs and Suns combined?

I mean, we know he knows what a calculator is. The key is coming up with things that actually pass the laugh test.

Amazing.

[travis2]

*sigh*

would you believe ESPN is blocked???

[Dave McNulla]

i wonder if he worked on the forbes GM ranking formula?

[Ed Helicopter Jones]

The article appears to be set up to hotlink to "Hollinger's explanation" but no such link actually exists. :lol

Gay.

[timvp]

The Orlando Magic have the same chance to win the championship as the Spurs, Suns and Mavs combined?

Put down the calculator, J Ho.

[dougp]

The Orlando Magic have the same chance to win the championship as the Spurs, Suns and Mavs combined?

Put down the calculator, J Ho.
He's just loopy, and his ranking crap needs to be dismissed. It's crap - to be doing a prediction thing like this with as few numbers as we have currently.

[101A]

The East sucks. That is gonna skew ALL results.

Getting out of the West is SO hard - there are so many teams that it is possible for; that the ODDS of winning a championship after playing through it are relatively small.

Right now, I would put the Celtics odds of winning a championship as greater than any SINGLE WC team; simply because they have a 60% - 70% chance of being in the finals. That said, the East's chances against whoever fights through the West I still wouldn't put above 35%.

[RonMexico]

Everything with Hollinger is going downhill... his power rankings are poor indicators of success in this season and he projected Manu to have a "down year."

Except he's having the greatest season of his life.

[CubanMustGo]

Not drawing conclusions from insufficient data points is a fundamental tenet of statistical theory. Too bad Hollinger's an idiot.

[balli]

I think this thread title exists on just about every teams' board. Why the hell ESPN keeps this kook around is beyond me?

[travis2]

could someone cut and paste?

[RonMexico]

And his chats where he tries to justify his numbers are even worse.

The guy should stick to number-crunching and not NBA analysis.

[Spider TX]

Also, in the power ranking, they have the Magic at #2, who already have been swept by the Suns, lost to the Spurs pretty convincingly, who even as a Suns fan, have to be ahead of the Spurs. I finally am believing how much of a joke ESPN can be.

[ThomasGranger]

Not surprising from the guy who maintained Butler could become a 20 and 10 player.

[Supergirl]

WHat's fascinating is this:
ROOKIES PER RATING (Efficiency ratings of rookies, currently)
1. Glen Davis, BOS 19.84
2. Sean Williams, NJN 17.43
3. Daequan Cook, MIA 16.24
4. Joakim Noah, CHI 16.05
5. Jared Dudley, CHA 15.04
6. Juan Carlos Navarro, MEM 14.83
7. Luis Scola, HOU 14.76
8. Nick Young, WAS 14.37
9. Al Horford, ATL 13.91
10. Kevin Durant, SEA 13.85

ANyone else surprised to see Durant barely eking it into the top 10 at #10? And who are some of these scrubs who are ranking so highly - Young? Dudley? Williams? Never heard of them.

But what I was most suprised about was "Big Baby" Davis coming it at #1. I mean I knew he had potential, but...#1? In efficiency? Really?

Also interesting to note that the Spurs' Big 3 are the top 3 international players in efficiency, and all 3 make it into the top 10 in PER out of ALL NBA PLAYERS. Not bad, considering the Spurs aren't even playing all that well yet.

[MoSpur]

That wholes # thing is a joke. I don't even read that stuff anymore.

[balli]

What's funny is the Rockets have hired and filled their front office with pretty much a bunch of hollingeresque stat geeks. Interesting to see how that's gonna turn out for them.

[AFBlue]

WHat's fascinating is this:
ROOKIES PER RATING (Efficiency ratings of rookies, currently)
1. Glen Davis, BOS 19.84
2. Sean Williams, NJN 17.43
3. Daequan Cook, MIA 16.24
4. Joakim Noah, CHI 16.05
5. Jared Dudley, CHA 15.04
6. Juan Carlos Navarro, MEM 14.83
7. Luis Scola, HOU 14.76
8. Nick Young, WAS 14.37
9. Al Horford, ATL 13.91
10. Kevin Durant, SEA 13.85

ANyone else surprised to see Durant barely eking it into the top 10 at #10? And who are some of these scrubs who are ranking so highly - Young? Dudley? Williams? Never heard of them.

But what I was most suprised about was "Big Baby" Davis coming it at #1. I mean I knew he had potential, but...#1? In efficiency? Really?

Also interesting to note that the Spurs' Big 3 are the top 3 international players in efficiency, and all 3 make it into the top 10 in PER out of ALL NBA PLAYERS. Not bad, considering the Spurs aren't even playing all that well yet.

The rookie PER isn't all that suprising...

Each of those individuals most likely play less minutes than KD and are not as important to their team's success.

Though they have performed well in their limited time, some of them might not be as effective if they were to assume a larger role and take on more minutes.

[roycrikside]

I don't think you should dump on it that badly TimVP. First you have to factor in that the East is essentially a two team race. In the West there are probably five or six legitimate contenders, and it's all going to come down to health, who's playing the best in May, and match-ups.

Obviously our road will be easier without facing Houston and Dallas and Phoenix's road will be easier not facing us, and Dallas' road will be easier not facing the Warriors, etc.

Secondly, I think while people may want to bash Hollinger for anything and everything, it's important to remember that the man isn't inherently biased. He just punches the numbers in to whatever formulas he creates and whatever the results are, the results are. It's not like he's specifically designing formulas to tell you the Celtics are great or that Yao Ming is a dominant player.

The guy I think gets more stuff right than wrong. For example, he warned us all that Marco Bellinelli would be a completely awful player and a bust, and it appears he got that one right. The guy can't get his shot off in the NBA, he can't shoot, and he doesn't do anything else on the floor (like rebound or pass) and he gets burned badly on defense.

Why he's so bullish on the Celtics is not just their record but their crazy margin of victory. They're putting up some historic '96 Bulls type of numbers so far. Personally I don't believe they'll be good enough when it counts, but we should remember that last year Hollinger was the only guy saying the Spurs were the best team even when the Mavs and Suns had better records. We weren't saying he was crazy then, were we?

[TampaDude]

Those numbers are going to change as we move into 2008 and towards the playoffs...the Spurs will be ready, don't worry...

[Extra Stout]

The kind of regressions a guy like Hollinger is going to assemble will necessary be too simplistic to give results that are terribly meaningful.

The kind of regressions that are useful would be assembled using reams of data and complicated statistical formulas by MIT grads who are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide the results confidentially to NBA teams.

[timvp]

I don't think you should dump on it that badly TimVP. First you have to factor in that the East is essentially a two team race. In the West there are probably five or six legitimate contenders, and it's all going to come down to health, who's playing the best in May, and match-ups.

Obviously our road will be easier without facing Houston and Dallas and Phoenix's road will be easier not facing us, and Dallas' road will be easier not facing the Warriors, etc. I can live with the Celtics or whoever is best in the East having good odds of making it to the Finals. However, this forumla has the East as a whole winning the championship 71.1% of the time. Does that pass the laugh test?


Secondly, I think while people may want to bash Hollinger for anything and everything, it's important to remember that the man isn't inherently biased. He just punches the numbers in to whatever formulas he creates and whatever the results are, the results are. It's not like he's specifically designing formulas to tell you the Celtics are great or that Yao Ming is a dominant player. I don't see anyone claiming Hollinger is biased. And really, being unbiased isn't much of a positive trait. Statisticians are supposed to be inherently unbiased. That's like praising an NBA players by saying he isn't a midget.


The guy I think gets more stuff right than wrong. For example, he warned us all that Marco Bellinelli would be a completely awful player and a bust, and it appears he got that one right. The guy can't get his shot off in the NBA, he can't shoot, and he doesn't do anything else on the floor (like rebound or pass) and he gets burned badly on defense. His numbers also showed that Nick Fazekas and Josh McRoberts were top ten players in the draft. And really, anyone who had seen Belinelli play wasn't too impressed. A lot of draft fans in here were against the idea of the Spurs drafting Belinelli.

Overall, I'd say Hollinger is about 50/50 as far as being right on his calls.


Why he's so bullish on the Celtics is not just their record but their crazy margin of victory. They're putting up some historic '96 Bulls type of numbers so far. Personally I don't believe they'll be good enough when it counts, but we should remember that last year Hollinger was the only guy saying the Spurs were the best team even when the Mavs and Suns had better records. We weren't saying he was crazy then, were we?Like I said, I wouldn't have any problem with the Celtics being the odds on favorite to win it all. They may very well be. The problem I have is the heavy tilt toward the East and a team like the Magic having the same chances to win as the Spurs, Mavs and Suns combined.

And last year, Hollinger going with a three-time championship team to win a fourth championship wasn't exactly going out on a limb.

[AFBlue]

Not surprising from the guy who maintained Butler could become a 20 and 10 player.

Butler always had an impressive offensive game and had played extremely well in limited time with the Knicks, which skewed the future projection. Of course, the statistical formula didn't really account for defense outside of steals or blocks.

I honestly think if Butler played for a coach that cared little for defense and conditioning(i.e. Knicks), he'd be a productive player.

Speaking of Butler...where is that guy?

[nfg3]

"Three things that I hate most in life. Lies, damn lies and statistics" Disraeli - English PM

It can be statistically proven true that the Mississippi River at one time in its life was over a million miles long. -Mark Twain

Anything can be proven "true" with numbers. All you have to do is get them in the right order and they will "prove" anything.

What a joke. :dizzy

[Cry Havoc]

Speaking of Butler...where is that guy?

Caron?

[Indazone]

Kevin Garnett injures knee. Out for season. How you like your numbers now Hollinger? LOL

[polandprzem]

Hooligan

[Tippecanoe]

i see no problems with his odds :D

[Extra Stout]

I've tried to put these kinds of regressions together before. You really have to have a well-validated model, and a mountainload of data, or it's GIGO.

[bdubya]

I always knew Hollinger was a tool. But unless I'm misreading his odds, he's a broken one, too. Somebody please tell me I'm not reading this right, because if he's making a living doing this, I'm changing careers tomorrow.

He's got the Pistons and Orlando both 100% GUARANTEED to win their divisions, the presence of the Cavs and Heat notwithstanding. One-hundred-percent total confidence. Boston gives up a one-in-a-thousand shot to the Raptors, but it's a mathematical impossibility for Cleveland to win more regular-season games than Detroit.

And even though they would have to get through the Boston juggernaut to even make the finals, the Pistons have better odds of winning a title than anyone from the West. AND SO DOES ORLANDO. A Spurs repeat is less likely than the Magic getting past Boston and Detroit on their way to a title. LOL is right...

[Das Texan]

Man, Hollinger thanks.


I needed a good laugh today.

[Bruno]

Hollinger should stick to fantasy basketball.

[Budkin]

I would be embarrassed to post this if I were Hollinger. Sad.

[batboy]

Wouldn't you throw away an equation that indicates that the Boston Celtics have more than double the chances of winning the championship than the Spurs, Mavs and Suns combined?

/signed

[mathbzh]

Here:

The Playoff Predictor: Explaining how it (doesn't) works (http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=PlayoffPredictor-071206)

He tries to save his face explaining how useless his new toy is.

Pathetic

[bdubya]

We have a new word:

Hollinge (v.): to put together exceedingly complex mathematical models whose predictions consistently fail to be confirmed by simple empirical observation.

[wildbill2u]

"Three things that I hate most in life. Lies, damn lies and statistics" Disraeli - English PM

It can be statistically proven true that the Mississippi River at one time in its life was over a million miles long. -Mark Twain

Anything can be proven "true" with numbers. All you have to do is get them in the right order and they will "prove" anything.

What a joke. :dizzy
I think Hollinger designed the BCS ratings system. :p:

[SpursIndonesia]

Hollinger is the best, he gave me the chance of getting nice contract from the well known financially conservative team in south Texas.

Sincerely,
Jackie Butler
:toast
.
.
.
:donkey

[ShoogarBear]

I'm going to do something I've never in my life done before, and probably never will do again.

I'm going to sorta defend Hollinger on this one. A little bit, anyway.

Mainly because timvp attacked him first. :smokin



No, but seriously. Without knowing anything about the model, you have to cut it slack because it's still very early in the season. The model is only as good as the data you give it. If you gave the most perfect model possible data from only the first couple of days of the season, it's going to spit out numbers based on that data, and tell you that the New Orleans Hornets rank highest, or whatever.

Okay, now the attacking part.

What he should have done was applied the model to past seasons, and determined the minimum number of games that typically need to be played before the data isn't garbage. And maybe he did that, but he doesn't seem that savvy. But that's not the really bad part.

The really bad part is that I am reasonably sure that you are not supposed to use regression methods (like he did) to predict who should win a championship. The reason, as I explained in a previous thread (which I can't link because search is down) is that regression is for drawing correlation to independent outcomes.

Like, suppose I looked at all the people in the world who could dunk, and all who couldn't, and measured all the factors that distinguished dunkers from nondunkers. Like height, weight, age, gender, shoe size, country of birth, etc. I could think develop a regression equation and use it to predict whether bdubya could dunk or whether wildbill2u could dunk or whether timvp could dunk (:lmao). But these are all independent, that is, whether or not bdubya can dunk plays no factor in whether wildbill2u can dunk (unles wildbill2u is laughing so hard after watching bdubya fail that he has no energy to jump).

That's not true when you have outcomes that are dependent on one another. If instead I was trying to find an equation that will predict who can jump the highest, that's a completely different modeling question, because only one person can win. And that's what you're trying to model when you try to predict a champion (meanwhile, predicting who's going to make the playoffs is something that falls between the two extremes). This is a problem I've been off-and-on trying to generate a solution for over the last couple of years, and I think I have a method, but I need a real statistician to help.

[timvp]

I logged onto SpursTalk too late.

:smokin

[ShoogarBear]

I can't dunk. :depressed

[FromWayDowntown]

Hollinger swears that he's introducing this concept, but I could swear that he did the same thing towards the tail-end of last season. I tried to find something to support that, but ESPN's archives on Hollinger (as best I can tell) only go back to mid-May.

I'd be curious if anyone could find that model -- if I'm remembering correctly -- so we could how good it was last season. Of course, it's much, much, much easier to assess which teams are likely to win titles in mid April than in early December, faltering 67-win teams aside.

Edit: I did at least find this (http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2007/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=TitleOdds), which was Hollinger's odds to win the title in 2007 (though it appears that he may have used a different methodology). That methodology made the Spurs the odds-on favorites to win last year.

Here (http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2006/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&id=2416551) are Hollinger's odds from 2006, too.

[bdubya]

Without knowing anything about the model, you have to cut it slack because it's still very early in the season. The model is only as good as the data you give it.

If you run your model in December and it gives you a 100% certainty that a given team will win its division, I can tell you right now there's a bigger problem than the dataset.

And I can dunk. Just need a leg up and a low rim. And a few tries. And no defender.

[Stargazer]

I guess I'm in the minority, but I like Hollinger's analysis. The key is to not think of it as a prediction, but rather as a statement of what has happened so far. For example, it's not unreasonable to give Boston such odds of winning, if you think of it only as a reflection of what has happened so far.

Once you think that way, then it can reveal some interesting insights.

[itzsoweezee]

it's a neat tool. not very useful this early in the season, but entertaining nonetheless. i don't see anything to get upset over.

he explains, "this is a tool that becomes more valuable the later in the season we get, because that's when schedule discrepancies between playoff contenders really become important."

once the celtics are exposed as being overrated thanks to their charmin-like schedule, i'm sure their %'s will fall back to earth.

[ShoogarBear]

If you run your model in December and it gives you a 100% certainty that a given team will win its division, I can tell you right now there's a bigger problem than the dataset.

And I can dunk. Just need a leg up and a low rim. And a few tries. And no defender.Yeah, the "100%" (again, no idea how he calculates that) is probably just another indication that at core, Hollinger doesn't really understand what he's doing.

[jman3000]

In the last 4 years the chances of a team from the east winning a championship was 100% after the spurs won a title.

:drunk

[jman3000]

even his explanation is fubar. he states that if orlando comes out of the east, with the way theyve been playing, they will be favored over whoever in the west is... even the spurs and suns who have both beaten them.

[bdubya]

Yeah, the "100%" (again, no idea how he calculates that) is probably just another indication that at core, Hollinger doesn't really understand what he's doing.

Not to beat a dead..ok, I'm beating a dead horse. But WRT your point about the outcomes being interdependent , when I heard about this, I figured Boston's great odds were based on the relative weakness of the East making them much more likely to be in the Finals than any one team out of the West. But he's also got Orlando and Detroit as better bets to win a title than any West team. I just can't figure that whole package.

[ShoogarBear]

While it's still laying there, dead . . .

Another mistake that probably explains these results is that Hollinger used an equation with coefficients fitted to stats over a complete 82-game season. If you really want to predict who's going to do what based on 20 games, then he should have gone back into each year, looked at just the first 20 games, and fitted his coefficients to that data.

In other words, the coefficients should change based on how far you are into the season. The coefficients this early in the year should have much greater uncertainty built in to the than the end-of-year coefficients.

[polandprzem]

I'm sure timvp can dunk on that basket



http://lh3.google.com/_lCHwrK7B9xY/Rt8W2kypq_I/AAAAAAAABBI/f8ZIpyEn9iw/s800/DSCN0791.JPG

[bdubya]

Another mistake that probably explains these results is that Hollinger used an equation with coefficients fitted to stats over a complete 82-game season.

Ah. That rings true.

I can't help wondering - if he inputs the stats from each of the past several 82-game years, does it reproduce the corresponding playoff results? Or does it give you a fourth Lakers title followed by a Suns three-peat, or what? I want to see this done.

[Purple & Gold]

Hollinger and his PER is :sleep

[RonMexico]

I wish he would provide these stats and just say "here they are" instead of trying to justify them and provide in-depth analysis.

Pretty much like his rookie PER - Big Baby has probably played like 12 mins in garbage time and gotten a good chunk of reboundsa and layups, so of course he'll have a higher PER than Horford or Durant... but would you say he's rookie of the year? The only PER's that are indicative of success right now are LeBron's and Manu's...

[mathbzh]

The only PER's that are indicative of success right now are LeBron's and Manu's...

Not true his PER ranking is as good as any number can be to judge players... at least for starters playing enough minutes.

[ShoogarBear]

Not true his PER ranking is as good as any number can be to judge players... at least for starters playing enough minutes.Here we go again. "As good as any number can be". :rolleyes

Do you have a shred of data (not opinion) to back that statement up?

When I fit a model to data, I can produce goodness-of-fit statistics to ascertain whether it is better or worse than another model. What's the goodness-of-fit for PER?