Pace is Irrelevant, So What DOES Make Us Win?

And who, besides you, uses it, as it pertains to basketball?
Anybody - anybody - who asks if one variable is correlated with another variable in the context of basketball will use Pearson's R. Anybody who does analytics will use Pearson's R. Every single team in the league employs at least one person whose job is to use Pearson's R among other tools. As an example, here is a Grantland article where Zach Lowe uses it (http://grantland.com/features/the-reliance-3-pointer-whether-not-hurting-nba/). This article happens to also relate to the three pointer, but I did not select it for that feature, but rather because it was the first article to come up in Google at a major website by a major journalist that mentioned a correlation coefficient in it.
I hope you understand why I'm asking you these questions?

Honestly, I'm flummoxed. You seem to want to challenge the validity of Pearson's R. Pearson's R is a standard technique. I can tell you ahead of time that challenging the validity of Pearson's R is not a winning strategy. No, I have no idea why you're asking.
 
You are the one throwing personal insults. I'm sorry if you disagree with my opinion and that "gets a rise out of you". People have explained why in a convoluted way, but ive never understood the logic. So that's my reasoning for that post if you're done writing essays about to stupid people who disagree with you on a basketball board are.
You just don't get it, do you? I've seen you posting on here for the past few days with short, little comments like these that have absolutely no substance to them. It's as if you are trying to spark a reaction out of posters here.

You say you don't understand the anger over firing coach Malone, yet there have been numerous replies to your comments about why so many people are upset. Which leads me to believe you are attempting to troll, choosing not to read any posts on this board (which seems unlikely since you are replying to many members on this board), or you have the reading comprehension of a 2nd grader.

Are you allowed to disagree with the opinion that firing Malone was a poor decision by our FO? Yes, but at least be respectful and take the time to understand where the other side is coming from. It's comments like "I don't understand such anger for firing such an average coach" that make you look childish and ignorant. It's been explained to you multiple times on this board why there is anger over firing Malone. Don't sit there and play dumb in an attempt to get a rise out of people.

Most normal people backup their statements with evidence of why they believe a certain way. I'm still waiting on your piece of evidence that hasn't already been nullified by other posters here. If you ever expect to be taken seriously as someone who knows a thing or two about the NBA, I suggest you change your username and try a different approach because I'm not sure there is anyway you can climb out of this crater you dug for yourself.
 
1) yes, we can only have these threads after 2 or 3 seasons go by?

2) if the front office numbnuts wanted to make a call based on 24 games I'm perfectly fine responding after 37.

3) I know perfectly well what makes this team win, and knew before I made this thread. The numbers merely illustrate the obvious. And yes even with 3pt shooting. We have lost multiple games this year where teams packed the middle and made us shoot threes, and we could not hit. Shooting threes is the analytics movement's great holy grail, well alongside being a good FT shooter of course, but even if you believe that stuff it is in no way universal. In fact one of the big problems with many analytics types is how essentially basketball stupid they are.

Analytics Pt 1: shooting threes = good!
Real basketball situation: your team is composed of 5 Shaquille O'Neals

The thoughtless (and lazy) number cruncher will say, well then the Shaqs should shoot threes. The person who has actually watched the game outside of a spreadsheet will say er...maybe we better just slam it inside. The Kings just don't have good volume 3pt shooters. You can say it would be great if Shaq could hit a bunch of threes. But since Shaq can't hit a bunch of threes, that doesn't apply. Ditto for us. Shooting lots of threes does not play to our strengths or our personnel. And in fact I'm not even sure leaugewide data matters, because they don't have a Demarcus Cousins. Certainly not paired with a Rudy Gay. There's certainly a model for surrounding a guy like Cuz with great spot shooters, and in future years hopefully we might. But if you cloned Boogie and Rudy and dumped a copy on every team in the league, I'm betting the supposed benefit of a bunch of chuckers bombing threes willy nilly would drop precipitously because suddenly you'd have a much better option than most teams have. If Plumlee is your best option inside, then yeah, that three point bomb looks like a pretty good option. If Boogie or Shaq is your best option inside, it changes the whole relationship. Now the three point shooter is a servant to the superior inside player, rather than the reverse. And the relationship is even more unbalanced when its Boogie and Rudy inside and nobody better from the perimeter than an erratic Ben and a couple of low volume guys like DC and Gay.

3pt shooting is indeed the analytic holy grail because it works and has been proven to work around dominant big men throughout NBA history. And there hasn't been a successful championship team that didn't excel at spacing the floor. It's the formula you look to surround your star players with (in our case, Rudy and Cuz.) And the exact reason WHY we need to do so and WHY it would lead to tremendous offensive success is because Cuz and Rudy are capable of dominating the paint while getting to the FT line and they're capable of making the pass to find the open shooter.

And there's also the fact that we don't shoot 3s in the first place. 27th in the NBA in 3pA rate. And Collison, Ben and Gay are all above 37% 3pt%. Williams is somehow close to average at 32%. With 3 above average floor spacers and a semi-average one in the rotation, it's not fair at all to say we don't have guys capable of doing it and that it's something we need to go away from to win. It's the exact opposite in fact.
 
Yeah lump me in with a troll (Pace) because I don't always agree with the lawyer and his stable who all just say the exact same things every thread and never ever disagree with each other. It's just one parrot repeating another parrot. Hell well more than 50% of the time I agree with it but it would be nice if this forum was something other than........Lawyer guy makes a post or thread and next several pages are the same people every time agreeing and parroting every point. It's literally the same thing every thread. All I have to do is read a post from Bricklayer and I automatically already know the opinion of at least 5 other people before they even post.

I'll give credit to Brick though, he runs a cohesive unit that is in lock-step so to speak. If the Kings were as in tune as a unit they'd be a much better team.

Did you ever stop to think its maybe because we agree with each other (and basically every other media member, nba pro, etc)? And maybe you (and the few guys you are getting lumped with) are just wrong?
 
Honestly, I'm flummoxed. You seem to want to challenge the validity of Pearson's R. Pearson's R is a standard technique. I can tell you ahead of time that challenging the validity of Pearson's R is not a winning strategy. No, I have no idea why you're asking.
As a matter of fact, I wasn't. I am not interested in challenging Pearson's R. As I am not a statistician, I had never heard of Pearson's R. Statistics was not a required course for my CNS degree.

I asked because 1) I'm a cynic, 2) I'm an *******, and 3) I distrust the motives of everybody, and when you made that backhanded (albeit most probably unintentional) dig at b-r.com, and the availability of their metrics, I became suspicious of a formula that I'd never seen used by anybody. I would never question the accuracy of the numbers, coming from you but, knowing that you are a champion of the three-pointers, and being an ******* and a cynic (as previously stated), I absolutely would question whether you would create your own formula to support your narrative.


In other words, while I'm sure that the numbers themselves are accurate, according to the formula, they were, as near as I could tell, obtained using a totally arbitrary criteria, and I don't have enough trust in anybody's integrity that I would give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't only present the numbers that support what they believe.
 
... One thing I have found is that the Clique here does not like to be disagreed with. It goes beyond matter of opinion and more about wanting to surround yourselves with like minded people.

I think they'd much prefer that nobody ever disagrees with them and all of these threads just turn into 100+ posts of high-fiving and agreeing with each other's vast basketball knowledge.

Again, we disagreed about pretty much everything until this bone-headed move. There were plenty of heated discussions, including ones between people now on the "same side" about things. This has united a lot of very smart, very knowledgeable but very different thinking fans together.
 
Did you ever stop to think its maybe because we agree with each other (and basically every other media member, nba pro, etc)? And maybe you (and the few guys you are getting lumped with) are just wrong?

I don't know how many more times I have to tell you, I thought firing Michael Malone was a mistake. The front office choosing style/pace over winning is also a mistake. The front office trying to force a style onto a roster and #1 player that doesn't fit is also a mistake. All very stupid and foolish mistakes from a very meddling owner and a GM that seems not interested in adapting to the players he has.

Yet because I make a post supporting some of the roster moves PDA has made or disagree with one of the Parrot Crew on another issue you lump me with those that you feel support the front office.

That makes your reading comprehension poor, not mine.
 
I don't know how many more times I have to tell you, I thought firing Michael Malone was a mistake. The front office choosing style/pace over winning is also a mistake. The front office trying to force a style onto a roster and #1 player that doesn't fit is also a mistake. All very stupid and foolish mistakes from a very meddling owner and a GM that seems not interested in adapting to the players he has.

Yet because I make a post supporting some of the roster moves PDA has made or disagree with one of the Parrot Crew on another issue you lump me with those that you feel support the front office.

That makes your reading comprehension poor, not mine.

This isn't a reading comprehension issue. This may come as a shock to you but most of us don't pour through your post history marking off what areas you agree with us vs others. I honestly don't care about your particular stance on things and yes its possible I've unfairly generalized your position on some issues. Maybe it's just your overall style I find distasteful. Doesn't matter really. But I find it odd that you act so offended by being unfairly labeled just one post after claiming people that agree on issues are just parroting our lawyer leader.
 
This isn't a reading comprehension issue. This may come as a shock to you but most of us don't pour through your post history marking off what areas you agree with us vs others. I honestly don't care about your particular stance on things and yes its possible I've unfairly generalized your position on some issues. Maybe it's just your overall style I find distasteful. Doesn't matter really. But I find it odd that you act so offended by being unfairly labeled just one post after claiming people that agree on issues are just parroting our lawyer leader.

I'm not offended, words on an internet forum from a bunch of dudes (and a chick that likes to use the word dude) are not going to hurt my feelings.

You've lumped me in with the Front Office supporters on more than one post and I guess because you don't like my style (that's fine by the way). That's why I mentioned the Parrot thing earlier, it's gotten to the point here that if you disagree with Brick or one his crew on a myriad of individual issues, people assume you disagree on all of them. Are we not allowed to have opinions on individual issues or do we have to hit YES or NO to ALL?

I don't like PDA/Vivek firing Malone and especially hate the incredibly poor way they handled it. Yet if I post in a game thread that Rudy or DeMarcus is not giving good effort on the defensive end and look like they are mailing it in.......people just assume I'm on the side of the front office. If I say I like the Ben McLemore pick people assume that automatically means I support the firing of Malone too. That to me is stupid, I supported a move not all their moves. The inability of people here to separate agendas from individual issues is staggering.[/quote]
 
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The quote didn't work but I think your point is a fair one and I'll try to be more thoughtful in how I respond to your posts.

Even when they're stupid. :)
 
The quote didn't work but I think your point is a fair one and I'll try to be more thoughtful in how I respond to your posts.

Even when they're stupid. :)

That's fine I don't mind you calling a spade a spade......unless of course it's a diamond! :)
 
3) I distrust the motives of everybody, and when you made that backhanded (albeit most probably unintentional) dig at b-r.com, and the availability of their metrics, I became suspicious of a formula that I'd never seen used by anybody.

It was certainly not intended to be a backhanded dig at b-r.com. They are my go-to website for stats and I esteem them highly.

I just want to go over what I said about b-r.com in that post to explain why it was not intended to be a dig in any way.

...MOV is a simple cut-and-paste from basketball-reference.com while winning percentage is not.

When I was doing this, I wanted to compile this data relatively quickly. The easiest way I know to do this is to go to their "season summary" pages. In fact, six of the seven stats that I checked for a correlation with MOV (and MOV itself) are all found on the Miscellaneous Stats table. Fortunately these six stats all lined up very closely to the stats that Brick was interested in. While they are not necessarily the exact numbers he was using (for instance, free throw rate as opposed to total free throws) I think they are in general better than raw stats for the kind of question I was asking anyway. But the fact that they are in table format is the key, because I could simply copy and paste five times (the entire table, once for each year) and get 150 data points quite quickly. The same page does have winning percentage on it, but it is not in a tabular format nor is it arranged by team in a logical order (for instance, I sorted the table alphabetically by team before copying so that it would line up with the other table which I also copy-pasted to get AST and FGM numbers, which I will mention below). This means that in order to get winning percentage, which incidentally I would prefer to MOV, I did not see any option other than making 150 individual hand entries. (Perhaps there is another page that I have missed that would allow me to get these values in a tabular format.) I did not want to make 150 hand entries, and I know from previous experience that MOV is very strongly correlated with winning percentage, and since that was in the table, I used that as a proxy.

So I simply wanted to point out why it was that I was using a proxy instead of the number that would seem to be the preferred number (winning percentage). But I didn't mean to imply that b-r.com is bad or that winning %age is not available, just that it's not one of the columns in the easy cut-and-paste table.

b-r.com doesn't have a simple assist rate column for its team stats

Again, this was part of an explanation as to why I didn't use assist rate (that is, assists per possession, as I used similar rate stats for all of the other comparisons) and instead used a different value of AST/FGM. I didn't mean to dig b-r.com by saying that, just to explain that as a team stat an assist rate stat to complement my other comparisons was unavailable. In fact, it looks like b-r.com does not calculate what I would consider to be a true assist rate (assists per team possession) at all, presumably because they prefer the Pomeroy Assist Rate (which they call AST%) for individual stats and AST% is not particularly amenable to team stats.

But anyway, no dig intended at b-r.com. They are indispensable.
 
Swaze, one thing I can tell you from my experience is that most of the time people respond to the content within the post more than they respond to individual posters. If people take issue with one thing that you have to say that doesn't mean they are branding you as "the enemy" and no longer listen to anything else you say. Maybe one or two people act like that, but the vast majority just continue the discussion. As sballer pointed out, many of the people who agree that firing Coach Malone was a mistake have disagreed in the past over all sorts of issues, sometimes heatedly so. The whole reason this message board even exists is to give a place for these types of discussions. It's not personal, it's basketball.
 
Swaze, one thing I can tell you from my experience is that most of the time people respond to the content within the post more than they respond to individual posters. If people take issue with one thing that you have to say that doesn't mean they are branding you as "the enemy" and no longer listen to anything else you say. Maybe one or two people act like that, but the vast majority just continue the discussion. As sballer pointed out, many of the people who agree that firing Coach Malone was a mistake have disagreed in the past over all sorts of issues, sometimes heatedly so. The whole reason this message board even exists is to give a place for these types of discussions. It's not personal, it's basketball.

Agreed with all of the latter part of your post. I do however think that often times people look for one thing in a post that they dislike and then they frame an entire argument around that single thing. Something a lawyer would do quite well.

PDA and Vivek have definitely managed to once again re-unite the fan base much like the Maloofs did when they kept trying to move the team.

Of the last few years there is no question in my mind though that there are a couple posters here who have essentially a crew that waits for them to come up with an opinion and then the crew comes running with all of the support posts. Case in point last Spring/Summer with I.T. Most of the fan base was very positive with Thomas but once the powers-at-be determined he was on their dislike list this forum became the Anti Isaiah Thomas. The vast majority of the Kings fan base liked Isaiah but you would not know it by coming here. It practically became a hate forum for him last spring into Summer. By the way I was for the Kings letting Thomas go and getting Collison instead I just found the amount of hate and insults towards on him on this forum to be odd. Forum used to have a policy against trashing players and yet mysteriously that went by the wayside for Thomas.

Year before it was the same thing in the opposite direction with Tyreke. Sample people every time all saying the same thing and trying to bully people who disagree. If you said anything bad about Tyreke you were called a troll and threatened to be banned. I know because it happened to me when I said Tyreke was a dime-a-dozen type player.......as if that's crossing the line and yet calling people gerbil, midget, or pizza-boy is somehow classier.
 
You are the one throwing personal insults. I'm sorry if you disagree with my opinion and that "gets a rise out of you". People have explained why in a convoluted way, but ive never understood the logic. So that's my reasoning for that post if you're done writing essays about to stupid people who disagree with you on a basketball board are.

Again, the lack of reading comprehension is astounding...

You can disagree with the large majority of Kings Fans opinions on the Malone firing. It doesn't matter that you are in one of the smallest minorities I've come to see on this board. You have a right to disagree, and it's one of the things that makes this forum so great. It's the way you go about it that is the issue. Many people have had different views than me on this forum, but they tend to back it up with logic and reasoning. If you're going to be in this small minority of people, you better be ready to support what you say; otherwise, you're going to see a lot of hammers come down on you.

Now do you have to change your ways? No. You can continue down this path and flirt with the troll line knowing that your opinion will never be taken seriously here. It's your right to have that legacy if you so choose!
 
SO we come to the conclusion, that defense matters but an efficient offense matters too.
Question...does pace has anything to do with the ability to play good defense?
We are all talking offense here all the time, argueing about purported run&gun, junkball, cherrypicking, NBA 3.0...
But we all know, that we can win despite the changes on the offensive end as long as we play defense.
This is the true and only misconception of the Malone firing - the assumption that the team would play the same kind of defense despite the coaching change.
And this is all on PDA and the rest of the FO.
But we showed signs in the games against the Thunder and Cavs, that we can still play some solid D even with the new approach. So there may be hope.
 
Scary, Huh?

it is what it is. i called em newbs last year and got some hate for it. we'll see how it goes throughout cousins contract. we know we can get at least 3 1st round picks for cousins if they decide to trade him. that will give them 3 new jazz band players to fulfill their revolutionary 3.0 position-less fantasy.
 
If we really get to it though, what's been different about the last two wins, relative to when Malone was coaching?

Rotations have been tighter for sure, but let's not act like Corbin reinvented the wheel. A re-commitment to both individual and team defense has them playing winning ball.

Other than that, I'm not seeing the wins reflective of a new style.
 
Was I the only one watching the game the other night urging the Kings to slow it down as the third quarter came to a close? Yes they were up by 19, but the Cavs hit a couple of 3's and the Kings were still playing too fast IMO. I do like the game slowed down when a team has a commanding lead and there is only one quarter left.
 
it is what it is. i called em newbs last year and got some hate for it. we'll see how it goes throughout cousins contract. we know we can get at least 3 1st round picks for cousins if they decide to trade him. that will give them 3 new jazz band players to fulfill their revolutionary 3.0 position-less fantasy.

I hope we have not just given them an idea. Those picks could equal very little, just as it did back in the day for the GSW. Cousins is a very special talent.
 
If we really get to it though, what's been different about the last two wins, relative to when Malone was coaching?

Rotations have been tighter for sure, but let's not act like Corbin reinvented the wheel. A re-commitment to both individual and team defense has them playing winning ball.

Other than that, I'm not seeing the wins reflective of a new style.

Well I agree. Corbin hasn't changed that much and PDA wanted Corbin to slow down even more. This is why I don't understand all this uproar about NBA 3.0, run&gun, junkball, pace.
 
Well I agree. Corbin hasn't changed that much and PDA wanted Corbin to slow down even more. This is why I don't understand all this uproar about NBA 3.0, run&gun, junkball, pace.

It's precisely because those are the buzzwords being used at the FO at every given opportunity, even at Malone's firing and subsequent interviews. I mean, If your boss was canned for employing a certain style, and his boss said things like "pace, style, etc." as a reason, you'd try to do the opposite as well.

Sometimes I think they're doing it just to sound smart, but it's actually given the opposite effect. I wonder how much feedback they really got from PDA's community forum, and if any of that resulted in the change we're seeing, or if it's merely coincidence.
 
I hope we have not just given them an idea. Those picks could equal very little, just as it did back in the day for the GSW. Cousins is a very special talent.
we haven't given them any ideas. they particularly love 2nd round picks and trade exceptions. thats a step up in evolution for them if they start going for 1st round picks.

they wanna play like GSW but GSW does not have a dominant big man like cousins. don't blame their strategy bc they are playing the cards they are dealt which is shooting (splash bros).
 
Sometimes I think they're doing it just to sound smart, but it's actually given the opposite effect. I wonder how much feedback they really got from PDA's community forum, and if any of that resulted in the change we're seeing, or if it's merely coincidence.

Sounds belittling towards our Fo to me. I know it's pretty popular to think that these guys just don't know what they are doing and don't know much about basketball and that some of the more vocal users around here would do a better job as a Gm, but that's something that takes criticism a bit too far for me.
I don't expect an NBA franchise to model their playstyle after the opinions heard during a fan forum.
 
Sounds belittling towards our Fo to me. I know it's pretty popular to think that these guys just don't know what they are doing and don't know much about basketball and that some of the more vocal users around here would do a better job as a Gm, but that's something that takes criticism a bit too far for me.
I don't expect an NBA franchise to model their playstyle after the opinions heard during a fan forum.

Based on the way things have been going maybe they should. Forget NBA 3.0 let's skip straight ahead to NBA 4.0 where the GM Position is open sourced from the fan forums. Vivek is just crazy enough to try it one day...
 
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