[Game] Hawks at Kings 1/4/11 Game Thread

Asaf does bring up a good point. You should always be aiming to play smart basketball, if that means going to Tyreke or Cousins then go for it. If we need some 3 point shots, then best run some plays for your 3 point shooters, or at the least try to get them a shot.

asaf has a history of grinding axe's with Tyreke. Which is why his credibility in this current discussion is up for debate.
 
That can't possibly be true. Over the course of a season, averages will normalize, and because he's currently a .280 3 point shooter, that doesn't mean he will be when the season is over. Omri shot .362 in November, .422 in December, and is currently .462 in January (3 point shots). Where will his overall average be? Who knows. He might slump in February having recently hit his peak, or he may stay at .462, which would be awesome. He also shoots .550 on Mondays, and .150 on Fridays - should we bench him on Fridays?

Shooting averages are not like flipping a coin. It's not the theoretical probability of heads/tails, or else more players would be closer to .500 when they shoot. Shooting a basketball is a much more experimental process, and you can "get hot" as your confidence increases. I've had games where my players have done everything but make the shot, and other games where they couldn't miss. There is a human element that can't be denied.

Shooting averages in basketball are good to tell you what has happened, but they aren't as reliable a predictor of future success - that's why you play the game.

Talk to JR Smith about 'hot hand'. He is proof positive that players are streaky.
 
Play some basketball yourself and you will soon find out what a "hot hand" is.

I play basketball, thank you very much. Or rather, I played before I was injured, but that's beside the point. Nights were you supposedly have a "hot hand" are a statistical necessity to make up for nights where you shoot below your average. But those are the extremes and not the norms.

Like I said, we tend to think of a "hot hand" as something real because we remember those nights when we made all of our shots or missed all of them, and usually forget about nights that we were somewhere in between. But the truth is that there is no correlation between the chance of making a specific shot and whether you made or missed your previous shots. Someone mentioned JR Smith as streaky. Here is his game log sheet from this season, along with Ray Allen's, who is considered a more reliable shooter. While Ray obviously shoots a better percentage, you can see there is no streak pattern. He has some great nights, some bad nights, and some average nights. If "streaky" players existed, their game log sheet would consist of a lot of 5-5 nights and 1-7 nights and almost no 2-4 or 3-7 nights, but that is not the case, and having random shooting percentage nights is much more common than having a night where you miss or make all your shots.

http://www.nba.com/playerfile/jr_smith/game_by_game_stats.html

http://www.nba.com/playerfile/ray_allen/game_by_game_stats.html

Feel free to look at any other player's game logs. you will find the exact same thing.
 
asaf has a history of grinding axe's with Tyreke. Which is why his credibility in this current discussion is up for debate.

and you have a history of grinding a personal axe with anyone who doesn't see things from your point of view, which is why you have the honors of being the first one to go on my ignore list in this forum.
 
How can you not possibly believe in shooters being hot? I mean you see it with your own eyes. We have averages and percentages because there are times players are hot and times they are cold and those two instances gives us averages and percentages.

Read my post above.

As an aside, even if you do believe in a hot hand, the only person who actually had anything resembling a "hot hand" that night was Cisco, who was 2-2 from beyond the arc as opposed to Tyreke's 0-3, which just strengthens my argument that going to Tyreke for those 3-pointers was not the smart thing to do.
 
You're giving me all these stupid a** numbers and statistics. I just don't see how you don't believe in the hot hand. I've been watching basketball my whole life(you probably have to) and I've seen players get so hot they play out of their minds. Remember Rex Chapman's 3's? How bout Tmac's 13 points in 35 seconds outburst? Ray Allen in game two of the finals last year(where he went on to be cold the rest of the series).
 
You're giving me all these stupid a** numbers and statistics. I just don't see how you don't believe in the hot hand. I've been watching basketball my whole life(you probably have to) and I've seen players get so hot they play out of their minds. Remember Rex Chapman's 3's? How bout Tmac's 13 points in 35 seconds outburst? Ray Allen in game two of the finals last year(where he went on to be cold the rest of the series).

I don't know if you've ever played a game involving dice, like backgammon or such. But if you have played these games enough times, you probably came across sequences where you rolled 5 doubles in a row, for example. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, you remember it and it feels like you're "on fire". Does that mean that rolling the first four doubles increased the chances of rolling the fifth? I think you would agree with me on that the answer to this is no. The chances of rolling that fifth double are equal to the chances of rolling the double in any other sequence.

This is how many gamblers lose all their money. They seem to think that if they won two or three times in a row, it somehow enhances their chances to win the next time, so they raise their stakes because they are "on a roll" (when in reality their chances of winning or losing are exactly the same as they were at any other time), and end up with a couple of goons demanding all their money and the keys to their car, or else...
 
Asaf is right here. It's basic statistics. Anyone who's watched The Celtics in the playoffs over the last few years knows that even on nights when Ray Allen isn't hitting his threes, they still get him open looks at threes because they know there's about a 40% chance of the next one going in even if he's missed his last 10 in a row. If Rondo took a three when Allen was open, even if Allen was "cold" that night, you can be sure he'd hear about it from Doc. Shooters do have slumps but that doesn't mean you just stop letting them shoot or have lower percentage guys shoot instead. Almost any coach I've heard always says they want their best shooters to shoot when they're open even if they're struggling at the time.
 
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I don't know if you've ever played a game involving dice, like backgammon or such. But if you have played these games enough times, you probably came across sequences where you rolled 5 doubles in a row, for example. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, you remember it and it feels like you're "on fire". Does that mean that rolling the first four doubles increased the chances of rolling the fifth? I think you would agree with me on that the answer to this is no. The chances of rolling that fifth double are equal to the chances of rolling the double in any other sequence.

This is how many gamblers lose all their money. They seem to think that if they won two or three times in a row, it somehow enhances their chances to win the next time, so they raise their stakes because they are "on a roll" (when in reality their chances of winning or losing are exactly the same as they were at any other time), and end up with a couple of goons demanding all their money and the keys to their car, or else...

Holy crap. This example is so retarded it's not even funny. A sports bet is a suckers bet because you're betting on something you have no control over. Same thing applies to a game of Craps. You really don't know how the dice are going to roll. This example you just gave completely ignores the fact that basketball has a human element to it. Unless you think these players are robots.
 
Holy crap. This example is so retarded it's not even funny. A sports bet is a suckers bet because you're betting on something you have no control over. Same thing applies to a game of Craps. You really don't know how the dice are going to roll. This example you just gave completely ignores the fact that basketball has a human element to it. Unless you think these players are robots.

First of all, just because you keep using words like stupid and retarded doesn't make your argument any stronger.

Second, of course there's a human element, and I'll give you that confidence can play a role in these things more than it does in rolling dice, but the role it plays is magnified 10 times by the illusion created by our own perception. A player's 4th shot doesn't have a higher chance of going in if he made the previous three that had he missed the previous three. Don't believe me? Look at the numbers. You can call them stupid, but they are a mere representation of the facts.

One could say "look around you. It's obvious that the world is flat and that the sun rises from the sea each morning and hangs above us for the day. Saying that the world is round and revolves around the sun is just silly. I mean you cas SEE that it's not true, right?". Or maybe, sometimes it's better to put aside our intuition and realize that some beliefs are created due to illusions, and not reality.
 
Lol you're bringing up things that have nothing to do with whether a basketball player is hot or not. Peace, love, and happiness my dude.

Btw, go Kings!
 
A player's 4th shot doesn't have a higher chance of going in if he made the previous three that had he missed the previous three. Don't believe me? Look at the numbers.

It's not that I don't believe you - in fact I suspect you're right. But I don't exactly know which numbers to look at here. Has somebody taken play-by-play data and actually done an analysis? If not, does that fall on me? ;)
 
Asaf says he's played basketball but apparently has never experienced being "in the zone."

Especially when it comes to shooting, which requires physical precision, there are times when a player is feeling it and times when he's feeling off. When you KNOW the ball is going in and when you HOPE it's going in. To suggest that simply because over the course of a season one player ends up at 40% while another ends up at 35%, there is never a time within that season that the 35% player is not a better shooter than the 40% is ludicrous. More so when you factor in fatigue, the defender, injuries, and clutch situations, which some players handle better than others. Or has the phenomenon of clutchness also been scientifically disproved in the lab?
 
A player's 4th shot doesn't have a higher chance of going in if he made the previous three that had he missed the previous three.
That would be true in a vacuum. But it can be argued that the chance of a player's shot going in can be temporarily reduced to below their career average during stretches where tangible things like injury or emotional stress are effecting the physical mechanics of their shot..
 
It's not that I don't believe you - in fact I suspect you're right. But I don't exactly know which numbers to look at here. Has somebody taken play-by-play data and actually done an analysis? If not, does that fall on me? ;)

Yes, that was the research I was talking about. But if you want to do your own analysis, feel free to do so. I'm sure it will be enlightning to some folks around these areas.
 
That would be true in a vacuum. But it can be argued that the chance of a player's shot going in can be temporarily reduced to below their career average during stretches where tangible things like injury or emotional stress are effecting the physical mechanics of their shot..

Of course, but that wasn't the situation discussed. Players also improve (or deteriorate) their averages over time, but that's something that takes months or years. The situation discussed was that of a single game, where injuries or significant emotional issues were not a factor.
 
That would be true in a vacuum. But it can be argued that the chance of a player's shot going in can be temporarily reduced to below their career average during stretches where tangible things like injury or emotional stress are effecting the physical mechanics of their shot..

I agree with this. A player's average can also go above their career average as well. Hence the term. Things like fatigue, as noted before, also play a role.

There are too many things that can affect a shot, which clearly can affect a player's shooting percentage over time. Day to day, though, you're going to look at who's feeling it that night, and sometimes your best shooter (who btw on the Kings is NOT Ray Allen) isn't the guy to get that last shot. In a season of growth, however, I want my star, or potential superstar, to hoist up that shot and feel confident enough to lead his team to victory. It's too early in the season (and career) to assume that Tyreke is going to be a career .280 3 point shooter. Here's an example:

.222
.267
.394

Care to take a guess?
84084530.jpg
 
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Of course, but that wasn't the situation discussed. Players also improve (or deteriorate) their averages over time, but that's something that takes months or years. The situation discussed was that of a single game, where injuries or significant emotional issues were not a factor.

That's a lie. This discussion was about whether or not a player is hot. We never said that all factors were thrown out the window.
 
I think some people here just don't watch good teams enough, and simply accept that pickup ball mentality that Westphal has instilled here of going on gut feelings and random reaction to circumstances. I hope that someday, when this team becomes good, you will look back and realize how some of the things we are doing right now are so wrong on so many levels, and that includes the way we utilize (or mis-utilize for that matter) Tyreke's talents. I also suggest you pick up a book or two written by the guy who won 11 championships in the last 20 years and read a little bit about how a team is supposed to function. Yes, he is a Laker, but he probably knows what he's talking about.
 
That's a lie. This discussion was about whether or not a player is hot. We never said that all factors were thrown out the window.

How can injuries or emotional problems contribute to "being hot"? They can only contribute to "being cold" for that matter, and in any case, they are irrelevant to the situation that sparked this debate because they were not a factor in said situation.
 
Yes, that was the research I was talking about. But if you want to do your own analysis, feel free to do so. I'm sure it will be enlightning to some folks around these areas.

Could you point me to the research you're talking about? I'd sure like to see if I'm satisfied with what somebody else did before putting out a lot of effort.
 
How can injuries or emotional problems contribute to "being hot"? They can only contribute to "being cold" for that matter, and in any case, they are irrelevant to the situation that sparked this debate because they were not a factor in said situation.

I'm sure you can extrapolate that logic to outside factors that would create a feeling of "being hot."
 
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