We can't beat Dallas 4 straight games? No kidding.

[DubMcDub]

Flawed reasoning. "Four straight" after you've already won the first three is just one straight. When someone says "it's difficult to win four in a row," that's only true before the first game has been played. Once you've already won three in a row, winning four in a row is only as difficult as winning one game.

[Sisk]

Flawed reasoning. "Four straight" after you've already won the first three is just one straight. When someone says "it's difficult to win four in a row," that's only true before the first game has been played. Once you've already won three in a row, winning four in a row is only as difficult as winning one game.

Wow. And he has flawed reasoning?

[DubMcDub]

Wow. And he has flawed reasoning?

Yes.

Any other questions? I can break it down for you in more detail if you like, but I'm not too confident you'd get it.

[Sisk]

"Four straight" after you've already won the first three is just one straight.

By this point, four straight doesn't exist. So by this logic it's inherently impossible to win four straight games, as it's three straight and the one stand alone game?

Am I missing something here, Plato?

[Sisk]

Oh, forgot to mention, before you come at me with this bull "every game is a stand alone game", well no . But in basketball, you can make these things called ADJUSTMENTS which just so happened to take rick three games to figure it out. Thus, making winning four in a row increasingly more difficult with each win. Get it yet?

[DubMcDub]

By this point, four straight doesn't exist. So by this logic it's inherently impossible to win four straight games, as it's three straight and the one stand alone game?

Am I missing something here, Plato?

Nice straw man. Of course "four straight" exists. But that's not the point.

The reason winning four in a row is hard is because, if you assume that each team has around a 50% chance to win each game--we'll say it averages to that even though home court obviously swings each individual game either direction--then by pure probability there is only a 6.25% chance that one team wins all four games. But once one team has won the first three games, the odds of winning that fourth game, and thus four in a row, are back to about 50-50.

Now of course it's not really 50-50, as there's some adjusting to be since the Mavs were at home and were more desperate. But clearly the implication of the OP was that the odds of winning the 4th game were somehow drastically lower than the previous three individually. That's certainly not the case.

Frankly, all these cliches people throw out about "The closeout game is the toughest" and "Winning X in a row is so hard" are a bunch of nonsense. People are reminded of those cliches when those situations occur, but then they conveniently forget them in the litany of instances where a team easily wins a closeout game, easily wins their 3rd/4th game in a row, etc. Think about how many easy closeout game victories you've seen watching the playoffs over the last 5 or so years, even against evenly matched teams.

[Sisk]

Now of course it's not really 50-50, as there's some adjusting to be since the Mavs were at home and were more desperate. But clearly the implication of the OP was that the odds of winning the 4th game were somehow drastically lower than the previous three individually. That's certainly not the case.

Frankly, all these cliches people throw out about "The closeout game is the toughest" and "Winning X in a row is so hard" are a bunch of nonsense. People are reminded of those cliches when those situations occur, but then they conveniently forget them in the litany of instances where a team easily wins a closeout game, easily wins their 3rd/4th game in a row, etc. Think about how many easy closeout game victories you've seen watching the playoffs over the last 5 or so years, even against evenly matched teams.

Touche

and Touche

[Spursmania]

Flawed reasoning. "Four straight" after you've already won the first three is just one straight. When someone says "it's difficult to win four in a row," that's only true before the first game has been played. Once you've already won three in a row, winning four in a row is only as difficult as winning one game.