Reply With Quote
*sigh*
would you believe ESPN is blocked???
Hollinger Hits a New Low
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.
*sigh*
would you believe ESPN is blocked???
i wonder if he worked on the forbes GM ranking formula?
The article appears to be set up to hotlink to "Hollinger's explanation" but no such link actually exists.
Gay.
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.
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%.
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.
Not drawing conclusions from insufficient data points is a fundamental tenet of statistical theory. Too bad Hollinger's an idiot.
I think this thread le exists on just about every teams' board. Why the ESPN keeps this kook around is beyond me?
could someone cut and paste?
And his chats where he tries to justify his numbers are even worse.
The guy should stick to number-crunching and not NBA analysis.
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.
Not surprising from the guy who maintained Butler could become a 20 and 10 player.
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.
That wholes # thing is a joke. I don't even read that stuff anymore.
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.
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.
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?
Those numbers are going to change as we move into 2008 and towards the playoffs...the Spurs will be ready, don't worry...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
