Yes, you can if you know enough.
Spurs never had 13% chance. you cannot mix different teams on different years being 2-0 to predict a series and you cannot use limited amount of games either
tossing a coin is always 50-50 , no matter if you got 7 tails on 10 attemps
that is what ing hollinger can't get
Dunno why people post hollinger's garbage here.
Absolutely. It's a BASKETBALL GAME, Hollinger, not a PS3 simulation!
You've read some seduction community theory, I see, or are you just a 'natural'?I bet he's one of the 98% of men who try to apply logic to meeting and attracting women, you know - by buying them dinners and gifts and being NICE guys. Because logically, that would seem the thing to do. What a dumb ass.
Some of us aren't capable of being anything but the "nice guy". That's who we are, and yes, it is our burden to bear. Pity us, don't dump on us.
One of the problems of using numbers in BB, is that the numbers aren't the same for every team.
Now if every team played every other team the same number of times, with the exact same personnel in the RS, it might make more sense to use the stats. But none of this happens. So he ends up with a bunch of skewed stats and tries to use numbers to figure out a winner.
But how do you "stat in" such things as the Champs may not play as hard during RS as the team trying to reach a division championship does. Does another division banner mean much to the Spurs? But what about another WC banner? What about another O'Brian? Now you are dealing with an entire different set of stats.
Right now two teams are "starting over" so to speak. Throw out whatever has happened between them in the past. Right now anything could happen. Kobe or Manu could get a season ending injury in the first quarter of the first game. Then you have another new set of "stats".
Right now it starts out with either team having a 50/50 chance of succeeding. Once the game 1 starts, many things can happen to tip the scales to one team having a greater chance of winning.
Hollinger is very boring.
Classic ES.
Here's a stat for you....
When was the last time an NBA Champion made it to the Conference Finals and DIDN'T go on the the Finals?
1991
Didn't look back further, but a quick reference of my rapidly failing memory says it was a while.
NEVER underestimate the heart of a champion.
I had to stop reading halfway through. What a bunch of self justificatory BS. Normally I really like Hollinger's stuff, but not when he's scrambling like a little to explain away how wrong he's been. Just take it like a man and STFU.
The best part about Hollinger is that he has used the same formula to pick against the Spurs twice and still he is 0-2, that is called a trend.
Here is a hint that spurs fan learned back in 95. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE HEART OF A CHAMPION!!!
The Lakers don't have anyone as athletic or big as Tyson Chandler so Duncan is going to have his way with whoever they put on him. The Lakers have no one that can stay with Tony Parker that is why he is going to abuse him. The Spurs have someone who can keep Kobe in front so they don't have to double him, in fact all the spurs have to do is keep the rest of the Lakers under raps and let Kobe have his and they will win easily, the thing about the Spurs is that we have great perimeter defense and the Lakers feed off of breakdowns in defense which they won't get from the spurs.
Spurs in 5
I'd like to know what the Rockets point differential was the second year of their back-to-back. I know their record wasn't that great in the regular season.
Ditto for the 2002 Lakers...they seemed to sleepwalk through the regular season much like San Antonio did this year and then played well when it actually counted.
Miami was 5th in point differential during the regular season of their le year. Detroit was 2nd for theirs. Boston and Detroit were no.'s 1 and 2 this year, but they also had a lot of Eastern conference fodder to bulk up stats on.
Hollinger is an idiot blindly predicting post season success on something like regular season point differential.
The 1994-95 Rockets were +2.1 in point differential. That was worse than each of the 4 teams they beat on the way to the crown that year (UTH +8.0; PNX +3.8; SA +6.0; ORL +7.1).
The 2001-02 Lakers were a very different story in a Hollinger World. That team was +7.2 in regular season point differential, which appears to have been 2nd best in the league. Using that metric, they were basically as good as or better than each of their postseason opponents (PRT +2.9; SA +6.2; SAC +7.6; NJ +4.2).
As I said, point differential is not an unreasonable thing to look at. Hollinger's problem is, like with PER, he puts way too much focus on the number without considering the entire context.
I agree with you about that; I was mostly just curious in the same way that Chopper was about the historical precedents of championship teams that malaised their way through regular seasons and might have had deceivingly low point differentials.
I'll go one step further with my criticism of Hollinger. I wouldn't mind his narrow focus and lack of context if he wasn't so infuriatingly bound by these metrics he devises and so bent on defending their reliability, even to the point of looking foolish in that effort.
We all remember the 2000-01 Western Conference Finals between the Lakers and Spurs. The Lakers were an ordinary team, with a 56-26 record, and a +2.8 point differential during the season. The Spurs were vastly superior, what with their 58-24 record and +7.8 differential. And so it played out in the series, with the Spurs crushing the Lakers in a four-game sweep that ranks as the most one-sided series in history. Hollinger really is all but infallible with these metrics.
The only thing interesting in this thread, literary or otherwise, is tmtcsc's thumbnail.
I don't mind Hollinger or any journalist picking against the Spurs.
I don't mind Hollinger's stats.
I mind that Hollinger clearly either does not watch games or doesn't understand what he's viewing. You can't watch/understand and continue to return time and again to rigid statistics; there are simply too many variables.
hahahaha HOllinger what a ing tool
why would you even respond to fans emails if you really beleive what you do. he is second guessing himself. ing loser.
I don't think anybody is arguing the math, if you can sit there and read all that crap, the fact of the matter is, Hollinger's articles as of recent, and if memory serves me correctly tons of stats, math, and numbers why the spurs are going to loose. Case in point, when the series was tied 2-2, he wrote this huge article on why the spurs didn't have a chance in against the Hornets. Don't live and die by the math, because there are no formulas, or equations that explain the heart of a champion. This will be a series of wants it more. Lakers are very hungry, and Spurs are playing like there is no tommorow.
I'm guessing most of the Hollinger sukz! guys didn't do too well on word problems in school.
Statistics have one point--to show that seeing _isn't_ believing. Due to the way our brains work, we tend to make certain types of errors. Keeping records, adding, averaging them--in other words, science--helps us combat the misjudgements that routinely occur. They are simply tools, not voodoo.
The Spurs' poor regular season performance, in terms of differential, is worrying. When we won the championships, we had much better statistics. Given this fact, what sane person would think we have just as good a chance as then? Maybe the type that thinks, you either win or lose, so you have a 50% chance.
One caveat is that our starters play less minutes in the regular season, so we do get less minutes. You give the Ginobilis and Duncans more minutes, you get more production. Another is that we had injuries to our best players this year. Both throw any prediction out of whack.
Most statistical systems showed that the Spurs, Hornets, and Suns were basically equal. All that does is point to a close series--which both of them were.
No statistician or economist wants to make a prediction, because sports is highly random. The "hollinger sux" posts say a lot more about the posters than him.
The thing that happens when you go with a chalk prediction is you miss the point. The regular season is a completely different league. You've got back-to-backs, injured/resting/unmotivated players, meaningless win streaks, variations in effort put forth by lottery teams, etc.
It would be interesting to see how many times a prediction of the best regular season team winning the championship comes to fruition over the years. It's probably a low number. Teams also have systems that are 'built' for the regular season or playoffs, and not both, since they are such different atmospheres. Coaching also has a lot to do with why teams win; ask Avery Johnson.
i am never put off by jh's predictions. i don't know why anybody would be. they are as emotionless as could be.
the only emotion is that he gets attached to his formulas like they are his kids. even when they let him down big time, he doesn't want to let it go.
no big deal. just another guy that guessed wrongly.
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