Grades: San Antonio Spurs vs. Oklahoma City Thunder – Game #15

[itzsoweezee]

Collins is a ing traffic cone on defense. He’s stiff, has zero athleticism, and doesn’t even try on defense half the time. Give all his minutes to bassey and dump Zach onto a team that doesn’t know any better

[Dejounte]

Smh get off your high horse Chinook making assumptions about people who believe Collins isn’t good for this team saying that they only do so because they “need an enemy”. you, dude.

[scott]

I am not going to say EPM is a bad stat. I don't really know much about it and how it's calculated, so I don't know where it's weak or strong. Advanced stats like this are more educated opinion than objective reflections of reality, and knowing what they're actually saying matters. For example, Collins having a high PER speaks well to his ability to be heavily involved during the short stints he's been getting this year. That's because the stat is biased toward usage in relation to the other members on the floor. His high win-shares per 48 are based in something similar. Explicitly, Collins has been a good offensive rebounder, is an above-average passer for his position and has scored efficiently. That's why he's doing well in offensive win-shares. He's doing well in defensive win-shares because of his defensive rating, which is mainly a consequence of him being a big on a team that is in the upper third of the league in defensive rating.

I looked into EPM a little bit, but I'm not sure it's not heavily based on on/off stats. If that's the case, Collins grading as poor defensively rather than just average might be the result of having Wembanyama has the other guy playing with him. As mentioned before, his defensive rating is positive relative to the team's score, which suggests that he's not giving up points at too high of a rate. But he's backing up a generational defender whose pull on the defense relative to the average Spur is much stronger. Combined, the stats would suggest Collins is way worse than Wemby defensively but still does enough to be positive. By that same measure, Collins' strong offensive performance as a single big is the highest on the team outside of Paul. It's very hard to fault in him.

Bassey's minutes suggest he's having a good defensive impact in the sample he's been given. That's good. His offense has been less good, but maybe that'll stabilize as he settles in with Jones and the other players. It's hard to tell Mamu's defense relative to Collins, because Mamu has played PF most of his minutes this year. He faces less challenges at the rim and thus doesn't have the same difficulty of contests that centers do. But he also has more space he has to defend being more on the perimeter.

Collins is having a good year, objectively. That means that it's not just that his stats look good for his standards. They look good for all players at his position and relative to the other players on the team. That doesn't mean you can't make an argument against it. However, I think this argument may mean more that Zach struggles to defend when compared to Wemby than it does him being so bad on that end that it negates the offensive impact he's had. As I've said before, my issue isn't with the belief that Collins can't be 80/20'd or just straight upgraded. It's been with folks who seem to need an enemy on the team to complain about. Collins isn't holding the team back just as Johnson isn't holding the team back, just as Castle isn't holding the team back, just as Jones isn't holding the team back, just as Sochan isn't holding the team back. Just because a lot of those guys won't be there when the team is good doesn't mean they aren't helping the team move forward today. This is the best Spurs team we've seen in a number of years. That fact that they aren't perfect is great, because it means things can just keep getting better.

In this post:

1) You acknowledge you don't understand EPM (voted as the 2nd best advanced statistic by NBA executives, behind DARKO DPM)
2) instead rely on PER (voted as least preferred advanced statistic by NBA executives because it is heavily box-score dependent. You can read all about it's flaws here.)
3) You use win shares (voted as the second least preferred advanced statistic by NBA executives) to validate what PER told you.

Aside from the fact we can all see Zach Collins getting abused on the defensive every night with our own eyeballs, the advanced metrics send mix messages. Zach's DARKO so far this is is -2.0, almost as bad as last year's -2.4 (to go along with his below-median EPM). On the other hand, Zach's BPM has improved from -2.0 last year to +3.3 this year. Other figures are just as mixed. his Crafted OPM ranks in the 16th percentile in the league, but his Craft DPM places him in the 64th percentile (his overall Craft Plus Minus rates him in the 32nd percentile, the bottom 3rd of players in the league).

What do all of these mixed signals tell us? It's hard to say. But one thing it doesn't tell us is that "Zach Collins is having an objectively good season".

For those who like Crafted Plus Minus (found at craftednba.com), Zach's career Crafted OPM places him in the 6th percentile. Yes... the bottom 6% of all players in the NBA . His Crafted DPM is 35th percentile. Certainly a guy you want to pay $17MM year to.

Your entire last paragraph is just superfluous gobbledygook. The fact that Zach Collins isn't singlehandedly holding the team back is hardly a reason to spare him from criticism.

One conclusion I can draw here, however, is that your analysis here is objectively bad.

[Chinook]

Smh get off your high horse Chinook making assumptions about people who believe Collins isn’t good for this team saying that they only do so because they “need an enemy”. you, dude.

To be honest, I wasn't thinking about you at all when I wrote that. But I guess it makes sense that you'd feel called out, as you're one of the biggest drama posters on this site nowadays.

[The Truth #6]

Last game I just relied on subjective eye testing, but it sure seemed like Bassey helped us go on runs and Zollins would let leads go to deficits. But Bassey was simply creating winning plays, like tip out, offensive rebounds, put backs. It seemed obvious to everyone, including the announcers who likely never heard of him before, that he was having a very impactful game.

Matchups played a big role, I imagine. At the least, he should be considered in the future when the matchups seem appropriate.

Here's the thing. It feels like Bassey is totally okay being a backup player, whereas Zollins still feels like he's supposed to be a starter in the league.

[Atl Spur]

Even a quality win doesn’t make most here happy; spurstalk will always make you pick a side Zach & Charles did their jobs this game and hopefully they can repeat. Dejounte, you are wilding homie… it’s just a message board. Go Spurs Go

[Dejounte]

To be honest, I wasn't thinking about you at all when I wrote that. But I guess it makes sense that you'd feel called out, as you're one of the biggest drama posters on this site nowadays.

Little do I care if the post was targeted towards me or not. It was a trash take, and very belittling of many posters here who share that view of Collins. So spare me that weak attempt at an insult when I don’t GAF what you think.

[Chinook]

In this post:

Your response will proceed to fundamentally misunderstand the entire argument. That you think EPM, PER, win-shares or DARKO DPM are supposed to be equivalent stats is a problem. All advanced stats were created to emphasize certain elements over others. That might be in an attempt to make a catch-all stat. But the performance NBA players can't and shouldn't be boiled down to one number, so it makes more sense to look at those stats through their methodology rather than trying to assign them an overarching "reliability" rating.

For example:

2) instead rely on PER (voted as least preferred advanced statistic by NBA executives because it is heavily box-score dependent. You can read all about it's flaws here.)

This isn't what I did at all. What I did was talk about what Collins' high PER score meant. I didn't say "Collins' PER shows he's better than Bassey" I said, (paraphrasing) "Given what PER measures, Collins having a high PER reflects his efficient scoring and high number of stats collected relative to the other players on the court with him." That's not me putting one stat over the other. That's me going back through the methodology to unpack why he got a good score. It's like if I explained why Collins has a good TS%, and you slid in here complaining about how I'm trying to "rely" on it.

I know you aren't dumb, Scott. You can understand that me saying that I can't interpret EPM without having read its formula and methodology isn't the same thing as saying it's witchcraft and I don't believe in it. I also know that you've been around long enough to not fall into the trap of thinking plus-minus is a bad stat because it "doesn't say who's better". Plus-minus, win-shares, PER, DARKO, EPM -- they're all just numbers. They equal what they equal. They don't have a weight of authority to them to say who's been better or worse. Instead, they all fit into a narrative.

Aside from the fact we can all see Zach Collins getting abused on the defensive every night with our own eyeballs, the advanced metrics send mix messages. Zach's DARKO so far this is is -2.0, almost as bad as last year's -2.4 (to go along with his below-median EPM). On the other hand, Zach's BPM has improved from -2.0 last year to +3.3 this year. Other figures are just as mixed. his Crafted OPM ranks in the 16th percentile in the league, but his Craft DPM places him in the 64th percentile (his overall Craft Plus Minus rates him in the 32nd percentile, the bottom 3rd of players in the league).

What do all of these mixed signals tell us? It's hard to say. But one thing it doesn't tell us is that "Zach Collins is having an objectively good season".

I feel like at this point, you're purposefully misreading the term "objectively". It really wasn't ambiguous the first time I said it, and I clarified in the post you're responding to here. I am not saying "objective" as in "all the stats agree". I said it to mean, "not just relative to his past performances". So no, I'm not saying "You can't come up with a stat to prove me wrong, nah-nah."

Your entire last paragraph is just superfluous gobbledygook. The fact that Zach Collins isn't singlehandedly holding the team back is hardly a reason to spare him from criticism.

This is just an attempt to take the middle. No one is saying you can't criticize any player on the team. They all have deserved it at times, and even at their best, none of them is perfect. I'm talking about the fixation on the player's flaws and the need blow them out of proportion, even when the player is doing well. Yes, it's good we agree that Collins isn't singlehandely holding the team back. But what we don't agree on is that the team isn't being held back at all. Not by Collins, not by a conjunction of players. They're moving forward. And yes, I think people should come out of their caves and appreciate that.

Similar to you, I would like to see the front office recognize a chance to improve their team this year rather than hoping for the draft as the main avenue of improvement. The difference is I don't see a mediocre record this season as a failure for the team. I have a more conservative timeline for them, and they're moving along very well in relation to that. In that regard, I don't find much to complain about. I did earlier in the season and was vociferous in expressing that complaint. But when I see the changes I want start to happen, I complain less. I don't just move on to the next thing on my list.

One conclusion I can draw here, however, is that your analysis here is objectively bad.

You're a good dude, and I hope you're just frustrated about the season not meeting your ambitious targets. I don't mind vigorously debating this stuff, but I also don't want to get so lost in this back-and-forth over the team that we lose track. Ever since Teeds left hinting that he's been struggling with stuff, it just makes me think that a lot of us old-timers are getting up there. Life has thrown a lot of curve balls. I hope you're doing well, man.

[Chinook]

Little do I care if the post was targeted towards me or not. It was a trash take, and very belittling of many posters here who share that view of Collins. So spare me that weak attempt at an insult when I don’t GAF what you think.

I mean, you definitely give a what a lot of posters think. Your history of getting into spats with folks over and over speaks for itself. Though I guess you might be so poorly adjusted that you say, " you" to random people on the bus.

[Dejounte]

I mean, you definitely give a what a lot of posters think. Your history of getting into spats with folks over and over speaks for itself. Though I guess you might be so poorly adjusted that you say, " you" to random people on the bus.

Ha! Continue deflecting from your trash take and go at me, dissecting my post history for what? You’re accomplishing nothing except evidently overthinking (not a surprise here) who I am based on your characterization of me on a message board.

[exstatic]

Smh get off your high horse Chinook making assumptions about people who believe Collins isn’t good for this team saying that they only do so because they “need an enemy”. you, dude.

This is basically what drives this board, Collins or whoever. Manu/Tony, Dejounte/Derrick, people need to objectify and revile someone. Pink Floyd wrote a song about it that was on the classic album Dark Side of the Moon: Us and Them.

[scott]

Your response will proceed to fundamentally misunderstand the entire argument. That you think EPM, PER, win-shares or DARKO DPM are supposed to be equivalent stats is a problem. All advanced stats were created to emphasize certain elements over others. That might be in an attempt to make a catch-all stat. But the performance NBA players can't and shouldn't be boiled down to one number, so it makes more sense to look at those stats through their methodology rather than trying to assign them an overarching "reliability" rating.

For example:



This isn't what I did at all. What I did was talk about what Collins' high PER score meant. I didn't say "Collins' PER shows he's better than Bassey" I said, (paraphrasing) "Given what PER measures, Collins having a high PER reflects his efficient scoring and high number of stats collected relative to the other players on the court with him." That's not me putting one stat over the other. That's me going back through the methodology to unpack why he got a good score. It's like if I explained why Collins has a good TS%, and you slid in here complaining about how I'm trying to "rely" on it.

I know you aren't dumb, Scott. You can understand that me saying that I can't interpret EPM without having read its formula and methodology isn't the same thing as saying it's witchcraft and I don't believe in it. I also know that you've been around long enough to not fall into the trap of thinking plus-minus is a bad stat because it "doesn't say who's better". Plus-minus, win-shares, PER, DARKO, EPM -- they're all just numbers. They equal what they equal. They don't have a weight of authority to them to say who's been better or worse. Instead, they all fit into a narrative.



I feel like at this point, you're purposefully misreading the term "objectively". It really wasn't ambiguous the first time I said it, and I clarified in the post you're responding to here. I am not saying "objective" as in "all the stats agree". I said it to mean, "not just relative to his past performances". So no, I'm not saying "You can't come up with a stat to prove me wrong, nah-nah."



This is just an attempt to take the middle. No one is saying you can't criticize any player on the team. They all have deserved it at times, and even at their best, none of them is perfect. I'm talking about the fixation on the player's flaws and the need blow them out of proportion, even when the player is doing well. Yes, it's good we agree that Collins isn't singlehandely holding the team back. But what we don't agree on is that the team isn't being held back at all. Not by Collins, not by a conjunction of players. They're moving forward. And yes, I think people should come out of their caves and appreciate that.

Similar to you, I would like to see the front office recognize a chance to improve their team this year rather than hoping for the draft as the main avenue of improvement. The difference is I don't see a mediocre record this season as a failure for the team. I have a more conservative timeline for them, and they're moving along very well in relation to that. In that regard, I don't find much to complain about. I did earlier in the season and was vociferous in expressing that complaint. But when I see the changes I want start to happen, I complain less. I don't just move on to the next thing on my list.



You're a good dude, and I hope you're just frustrated about the season not meeting your ambitious targets. I don't mind vigorously debating this stuff, but I also don't want to get so lost in this back-and-forth over the team that we lose track. Ever since Teeds left hinting that he's been struggling with stuff, it just makes me think that a lot of us old-timers are getting up there. Life has thrown a lot of curve balls. I hope you're doing well, man.

My friend, "objectively" does not have a subjective meaning. When one says "Player X is having an objectively good season" that implies that there is no subjectivity to it. The sky is objectively blue. Squares objectively have four 90-degree angles. Jokic is objectively having a great season.

You can't say Zach Collins is having an objectively good season, when 1) clearly lots of rational people disagree (in addition to the irrational ones) and 2) not even all the different ways of cutting the statistics agree.

That you've conjured up some other meaning to "Zach Collins is having an objectively good season" when, in fact, what you appear to mean is that your subjective opinion is that Zach Collins is having a good season, and not just relative to his past performance. That's a fine opinion to fine, and we could debate that. But that's not what you said. Words matter, my friend.

[rankingtear]

Zach Collins grades out in the bottom 16% of the league in Defensive EPM; and bottom 44% in overall EPM, but I'm told he's having an objectively good season.

They changed the formula though to be more like a projection. They have guys in there that haven't played a game yet.

[RC_Drunkford]

to be fair Chinook was never good when it comes to evaluating bigs. In his mind Keldon Johnson is still a PF and Gasol on his last legs was better than Poeltl (basically the same situation we have now with Collins/Bassey). Now he's gon make this longass post how all these takes were still right.

[spurraider21]

[Chinook]

My friend, "objectively" does not have a subjective meaning. When one says "Player X is having an objectively good season" that implies that there is no subjectivity to it. The sky is objectively blue. Squares objectively have four 90-degree angles. Jokic is objectively having a great season.

You can't say Zach Collins is having an objectively good season, when 1) clearly lots of rational people disagree (in addition to the irrational ones) and 2) not even all the different ways of cutting the statistics agree.

The fact that you've conjured up some other meaning to "Zach Collins is having an objectively good season." In fact, what you appear to mean is that your subjective opinion is that Zach Collins is having a good season, and not just relative to his past performance. That's a fine opinion to fine, and we could debate that. But that's not what you said. Words matter, my friend.

I actually think the conversation about objective/subjective and relative/absolute is more complicated than you're suggesting here. In a vacuum, I concede I should have said "absolutely" instead to indicate it not being relative to Collins' past. But "absolutely good" has a more common meaning that would've made the sentence more ambiguous. More importantly, though, things can be objective but still contradicted. There's a whole series rabbit holes to go down about what words actually mean, in terms of denotation, connotation and implicature.

To spare us from that., I'll go ahead and take the L on the point. With that established, hopefully the argument about looking at advanced stats for what they actually say rather than trying to look at the in the context of being catch-all authorities makes sense. EPM doesn't disprove PER or win-shares. Despite what folks (including the creators) say, none of those stats actually measure "goodness". They are shorthand for certain batches of stats, and I think it's much more useful to use stats that I already know how to interpret rather than trying to find what execs think is the single-best. EPM might be good, but until I know what meat is going in that sausage, I won't be able to put it into the narrative.

Where is Collins scoring badly in that leads to that stat? Is it that guys are teeing off on him at the rim? It doesn't look like it, as Collins is 37th out of 90 players who've played at the position this year in terms of lowering the FG% of shots he contests. (For context, there are a lot of players above him with tiny sample sizes. Also, Wemby is fourth, dropping the FG% by more than 10 points by contesting the shots.) It's not that he doesn't contest a lot of shots -- he's 20th in the league in contests per minute, more than anyone else on the team. Maybe it's his fouling -- he does that more than any other rotation player on the team. Or maybe he's allowing a lot of offensive rebound -- that's harder to tell in a non-relative sense, but he's definitely worse than Victor in that regard.

EPM, from the very little I've read has two components: a nebulous "box score stat" and RAPM. Let's start with the latter first. If people don't know, RAPM is a great stat, but it has a lot of inertia due to its a priori element. It can provide evidence on who the best players are over a stretch of years or better yet whole careers, but it isn't designed to reflect changes in performance. A 15-game sample size is laughably small for RAPM. So the RAPM half of EPM is overwhelmingly based on Collins' career performance and very little on what he's doing this year. The other half, called SPM, is also RAPM, but adjusted with current-season data. If that's correct, then EPM is almost exclusively RAPM, especially at this point in the year with so little box score data.

This is the post I've read about EPM: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comment...pm_and_lebron/

With that in mind, I don't think it's a very good stat to use to counter the argument that Collins is having a good year right now. It's overwhelmingly influenced by Collins having a bad defensive career so far. That's valid when talking about Collins in general, but Collins could be playing perfectly and still suffering in that stat for the reasons I said above. EPM is another attempt to make RAPM more responsive to recent events, just as RPM was from ESPN a few years ago. RAPM, for all of its virtues, isn't made for instant reactions. It has so much strength because it's divorced from all that. Because of its strong base, it wouldn't be shocking to me to see it be so well liked, but using it to describe a young season feels like a misuse of the metric.

[Chinook]

to be fair Chinook was never good when it comes to evaluating bigs. In his mind Keldon Johnson is still a PF and Gasol on his last legs was better than Poeltl (basically the same situation we have now with Collins/Bassey). Now he's gon make this longass post how all these takes were still right.

I guess you'd be shocked to see what position Keldon's been playing this year.

[scott]

I actually think the conversation about objective/subjective and relative/absolute is more complicated than you're suggesting here. In a vacuum, I concede I should have said "absolutely" instead to indicate it not being relative to Collins' past. But "absolutely good" has a more common meaning that would've made the sentence more ambiguous. More importantly, though, things can be objective but still contradicted. There's a whole series rabbit holes to go down about what words actually mean, in terms of denotation, connotation and implicature.

To spare us from that., I'll go ahead and take the L on the point. With that established, hopefully the argument about looking at advanced stats for what they actually say rather than trying to look at the in the context of being catch-all authorities makes sense. EPM doesn't disprove PER or win-shares. Despite what folks (including the creators) say, none of those stats actually measure "goodness". They are shorthand for certain batches of stats, and I think it's much more useful to use stats that I already know how to interpret rather than trying to find what execs think is the single-best. EPM might be good, but until I know what meat is going in that sausage, I won't be able to put it into the narrative.

Where is Collins scoring badly in that leads to that stat? Is it that guys are teeing off on him at the rim? It doesn't look like it, as Collins is 37th out of 90 players who've played at the position this year in terms of lowering the FG% of shots he contests. (For context, there are a lot of players above him with tiny sample sizes. Also, Wemby is fourth, dropping the FG% by more than 10 points by contesting the shots.) It's not that he doesn't contest a lot of shots -- he's 20th in the league in contests per minute, more than anyone else on the team. Maybe it's his fouling -- he does that more than any other rotation player on the team. Or maybe he's allowing a lot of offensive rebound -- that's harder to tell in a non-relative sense, but he's definitely worse than Victor in that regard.

EPM, from the very little I've read has two components: a nebulous "box score stat" and RAPM. Let's start with the latter first. If people don't know, RAPM is a great stat, but it has a lot of inertia due to its a priori element. It can provide evidence on who the best players are over a stretch of years or better yet whole careers, but it isn't designed to reflect changes in performance. A 15-game sample size is laughably small for RAPM. So the RAPM half of EPM is overwhelmingly based on Collins' career performance and very little on what he's doing this year. The other half, called SPM, is also RAPM, but adjusted with current-season data. If that's correct, then EPM is almost exclusively RAPM, especially at this point in the year with so little box score data.

This is the post I've read about EPM: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comment...pm_and_lebron/

With that in mind, I don't think it's a very good stat to use to counter the argument that Collins is having a good year right now. It's overwhelmingly influenced by Collins having a bad defensive career so far. That's valid when talking about Collins in general, but Collins could be playing perfectly and still suffering in that stat for the reasons I said above. EPM is another attempt to make RAPM more responsive to recent events, just as RPM was from ESPN a few years ago. RAPM, for all of its virtues, isn't made for instant reactions. It has so much strength because it's divorced from all that. Because of its strong base, it wouldn't be shocking to me to see it be so well liked, but using it to describe a young season feels like a misuse of the metric.

At the end of the day, your opinion on the season Collins is having is just that: your opinion, which by the very nature of opinions is subjective. Likewise, my opinion of his season (in addition to everyone else's) is also just that: my opinion. Trying to categorize things into "absolutes" using terms like "objectively" just set you up for failure, unless you're talking about things that would not be disputed by most reasonable people.

Here are some examples of Spurs-related absolute/objectively statements I think one can safely make:

• Wemby is objectively one of the greatest defensive forces in the league
• Castle is absolutely showing promise as a rookie
• Sochan has objectively shown improvement from last year
• Mitch Johnson has absolutely resulted in a more modern style of game play

The degree to which any of the above are true are subject to debate, but almost no reasonable people would disagree with those statements prima facie. Whereas saying "Zach Collins is objectively having a good season" can be (and has been) disputed by reasonable people. Had you said "Zach Collins is objectively having a better season than last", then there would be less dispute.

The discussion into advanced metrics, I'm not going to get into at this time (though could make a fun thread on its own), because the only reason I got into those metrics is in direct response to the assertion that "Zach Collins is objectively having a good season". Getting into the weeds on advanced stats is besides the point here. They were brought up to show how they vary in what they tell us about Zach Collins. Something cannot be objectively true if there is contradictory data suggesting otherwise. A very elementary example: if you told me that John Doe was objectively a good person but then I showed you video evidence of John Doe killing a bunch of puppies... I think I'd have pretty easily disproven the premise that John Doe is a good person.

I'll look forward to the advanced stats discussion thread

[Chinook]

Bro, don't do this. I just said I took the L on the "objective" conversation. Don't immediately go and misuse the terms after I did that. "Objective" and "subjective" aren't based on consensus or being able to reasonably argue against them. That's just not what the words mean. Objecting truths are true even if nobody believes them, and a belief everyone holds can still be subjective.

I think Wemby is one of the greatest defensive forces in the league. I don't know anyone who doesn't also think that. But "Wemby is one of the greatest defensive forces in the league" is still a subjective statement. An objective statement is "Wemby has the most defensive win-shares on the team." The latter is merely saying one number is bigger than the others. That doesn't require any value judgment or interpretation. "Greatest defensive force" does require interpretation and thus is subjective. You have to determine how that is evaluated, and while it might not seem reasonable to make a rubric that doesn't lead to Victor being near or at the top, it's not illogical or impossible to do so. It is impossible to say Wemby doesn't have more win-shares than anyone else on the team, because that's just how numbers work.

By this logic, I COULD establish that Collins is "objectively" having a good season just by proving all of your counter arguments are unreasonable. I've already poked holes into EPM and gave a (albeit fallacious) argument against the eye-test. I should have a path forward to demonstrate the goodness of Collins' performance as objective reality. However, no. My statement would remain subjective even if everyone on the forum was slobbering all over Zach's knob. I conceded because a value judgment can't be objective, not because you can bring up an argument against it. I do think you've demonstrated why I was right to hesitate on using "absolutely good" instead. Our disagreement in this matter was started over whether Collins was having a good season or just "a good season by his standards". We got sidetracked because I used imprecise language, and I can own that. But I don't think the original sentiment behind the remark has been shown to be any weaker than it was when I initial stated it. This isn't an advanced stats thread, but it's not a linguistic, logic or philosophy thread either. "Objective/absolute" is the sideshow to the argument about EPM and the other stats, not the other way around. The conversation has been about gauging Collins' performance, though I understand if that's become exhausting at this point.

[CorrectCrusader]

I'm not sure I agree with this. We pounced in the third with a flurry of hits outside. That's today's NBA. They're a very well coached team with a lot of overlap down the roster who can step in and contribute. Our bench is a mess and we are behind past a certain point talent-wise.

However, as I said elsewhere, this Thunder team has appreciable gaps that get worse when Holmgren isn't available. Their tenacious, quick defense can be exploited by a tough, bigger team, and that team was the Mavericks last year. Tbh I didn't think that series last year was particularly close, despite the record, which I think was 4-2. It was pretty lopsided in my eyes. Guys like Lively and Gafford were brutal for them.

And then they depend heavily on SGA with few other options, although their players nail shots out of those routines.

They can overwhelm with defense and execution on offense. They're like the Celtics, really. Both are engineered for this era and it's already got the Celtics a championship and may get the Thunder theirs.

The problem with OKC in the playoffs last year is that they stopped hitting shots against the mavs.

[scott]

We got sidetracked because I used imprecise language

You may have gotten sidetracked, but I didn't. My entire point was going after the statement "Zach Collins is having an objectively good season."

"Objective/absolute" is the sideshow to the argument about EPM and the other stats, not the other way around. The conversation has been about gauging Collins' performance, though I understand if that's become exhausting at this point.

I disagree, and I believe it is the other way around. But we can agree to disagree there. There isn't an argument about stats here. It was entirely a discussion about whether "Zach Collins is having an objectively good season." Perhaps you're having a different conversation with someone else?

But to wrap up the conversation on objective - something is not deemed objective because the consensus of reasonable people agrees with them... you are correct. But the consensus of reasonable people agree with them is because they are objectively true. "Wemby is one of the greatest defensive forces in the league" is a vague, but still objectively true, statement that can be backed up with facts.

Anyway, you took your L, and I appreciate that. It's why you remain better than the vast majority of commentators on this website and why I enjoy and appreciate you. When Academy starts selling Bassey t-shirts, I'll get you one.

[RC_Drunkford]

I guess you'd be shocked to see what position Keldon's been playing this year.

obviously SF until Sochan got injured. He's playing PF cause we don't have any besides Barnes (we have Mamu but Mitch ain't really playing him). I knew this was coming

[KobesAchilles]

Then why this forum so averse on Wemby shooting those same 3s?

2 things. There is a sweet spot in attempts and averaging like 12 a game isn’t the best for Vic. And secondly, Victor just jacking up 3s is bailing the defense out. He’s 7 foot 5. I’m not saying he has to post up every possession or something like that but his ass should be shooting closer to the basket

[Kyle_Kuzma]

shut up chinook no one reading all that

[Mugen]