Feeling Nos_sturt_damus-like

[exodus]

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More hypocritical dodge accusations... more re-defining terms like "plan" or "unlucky in the draft" to suit own purposes...

and indeed...

More ripples in the shallow pond, of exodus' making.

BK *did* have a plan--to tear-down and re-build with long, athletic guys at the core.

BK *did* execute that plan.

And, we're watching now to see if the plan works or not... and will know with more certainty in about 3 months.

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Wrong. The Hawks are close to being a fairly complete team but they are still undersized up front. That isn't even debatable.

How can your goal of being long and athletic be accomplished if you are one of the shortest teams in the league at the 4/5 spots.

[TexasPete]

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Add in the fact that BK the genius didn't even work out Roy, nor even consider him, and its just a ludicrous situation.

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Honest question, just looking for an honest answer, TPete... and from you, I know I can expect that...Rewind and imagine that BK drafts Roy.In light of his position on the depth chart, then, how many minutes per game do you think he gets?Then, while it's a given that SWill didn't set the world on fire, who gets his minutes instead?Neither of those are trap questions, but just looking to satisfy my curiosity about your perspective.

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Shelden was both hurt and in the doghouse until garbage time last year so his "minutes" were mainly on the bench until late in the year.Roy would have played at PG most of the year...the same way that Acie plays it now...except 10X better than Acie. Roy plays well with the ball in his hands both setting up others and scoring himself. The fact that we were too arrogant to even bring him in is absurd.The only question that I cannot answer is would Roy have made us better to the point that we lost ping pong balls...and the 3rd pick. Obviously, we will never know.But BK makes the wrong pick more than the weatherman. But, like the weatherman he keeps his job.

[sturt]

(Had an extra hour to fill at work, so I thought I'd drop back in to see how many "last words" my friend ex had actually put to the thread... and he never disappoints.

I should let sleeping dogs lie, but then again, the angel(?) or devil(?) in me begs for some correction to the errors here, and I just feel obliged to answer the call...)

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Neither Deng nor Iggy were the best players available at 6 in the 2004 draft.

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I recognize that you consider yourself to have a profound memory where drafts are concerned, but mine isn't so great, so I had to resort to googling. What I found was that yours isn't so hot, either, my surface-fixated friend...

SI.com thought Iggy should go #3, and Deng #5.

So did NBA.com...

So did Scout.com...

Whadayaknow... so did ESPN.com...

I could have went on, but then I remembered that I told you that I'm not your research department.

(Lesson you shoulda learned long before now: Dig just a little before you make-up stuff... tends to keep you from looking foolish or lazy or both.)

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In hindsight Jefferson and Kevin Martin are the top 2 players that BK could have picked.

However i haven't mentioned either player.

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For good reason... I've yet to see where anyone was projecting them that high.

But, to be appropriately responsive to your comment, I think I get why you bring that up... let me speak to your use of the term "home run" later, though...

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You have said time and again both the Childress and Marvin picks made sense using the BPA theory. That has been officially debunked.

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Reminds me of a few months ago when the one association of scientists attempted to pronounce "officially debunked" the theory that global warming is unrelated to man-made causes.

When you have to pontificate that something is "officially debunked," is it really?

Isn't that more of a reflection of your own frustration that you can't get rid of arguments to the contrary, and of your own desire to, however feebly, manipulate conclusions by presumptuously dismissing those arguments?

Yeah.

Call us cynical, but practically no one is going to take your word for it, so why do it?

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You can use that argument for Marvin but not Childress.

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I think I've located a crux of the dispute here.

I've maintained that Chilz was the BPA... and given the other priorities I've illuminated, he was.

Those other priorities/filters were: (a) failing a Howard development, take a "long and athletic" player (... a term I'll need to elaborate upon below, but normally an agile 6'7"-6'10" guy who optimally could play multiple positions...), and (b) take a conservative-approach, thus if faced with multiple players of similary talent, select the one most likely to not bust.

Without those filters, the BPA was Iggy at that point in the draft; one can only wonder what the gossip may have been that made him the last of the three drafted when, in mock draft after mock draft, he was supposed to be the first. Perhaps there was a Warren Sapp episode that we'll never know about(?).

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And even in the case of Marvin it is still weak given that we had harrington, Smith, childress, Diaw and Donta already on the roster and desperately needed a pg.

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You totally lost me here... if Marvin was the concensus best or next-best player in the draft, then that's what he was, and if that's the predetermined approach to the draft selection, by definition you aren't going to draft a PG because that would be drafting for need.

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Now as to the lottery. let me give you an example to hopefully make things clear, again using 2005 as an example.

The Hawks had the worst record in the league. Does that mean they were unlucky to get the second pick? No

Their proablities for the top 2 picks were

1st 25%

2nd 21.48%

There was a 46.48% chance for them to get a top 2 pick. Therefore there was a 53.52% chance for them NOT to get a top 2 pick.

In your mind you probably believe the Hawks were unlucky to drop a spot. In reality that isn't the case.

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Wow...

Just... wow.

The convolutions one goes to in order to rescue a point. I'm almost afraid to dignify it with a response since it seems to only serve to further your shallow ripples.

Otoh, if I don't, you'll play your "officially debunked" proclamation game again, which is annoying enough that I'll probably need to indulge you sooner or later anyway...

Essentially, you're suggesting that if I had a 25% chance to win $1,000,000 in the lottery (and thus a 75% chance to not win that amount), and a 21% chance to win something less than that, I should consider myself "lucky" to have won second place since, at least, I made the top 2.

And... extending that idea, had I won third place, then I should consider myself "lucky" since, at least, I made the top 3.

And so on and so on and so on... until you eventually end up just feeling lucky for having won SOMETHING... even though, of all of those possibilities, originally #1 was the slot where I had the best odds.

Logic be damned.

Nahnahbanah.

The only way this strawman of yours gains any bones would be if not receiving a pick at all were an option.

Failing that, you have what you have: a grossly convoluted attempt to rescue a brain-dead argument.

(You may save a little face if you just admit it--you didn't think I'd go look all of that up and call your bluff. But it is "just a little" face-saving, because it's not as-if our bad luck where draft slotting is concerned isn't commonly understood... you really should have known better than to test that one.)

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How can your goal of being long and athletic be accomplished if you are one of the shortest teams in the league at the 4/5 spots.

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Your pattern by now is well-established. You seize upon a key term, redefine it to suit your contrarian approach, and then see if you can make a counter-argument that sticks.

First in this thread, there was "plan"...

having explained that one so that you couldn't reconfigure it, you took us to new definitions of "unlucky"...

then, you attempted to bait me into a debate on "best player available," which I guess I deflected by clarifying that my contention was "best player available, but not necessarily right out of the gate"...

then, as I was attempting to illustrate a drafted player who successfully fulfills his high ceiling in using the term "home run," you attempted to redefine home run to mean "best player that no one even considered at that draft slot" (eg, Martin or Jefferson in this case)...

The tradition continues... we now have "long and athletic."

I could be in the minority, but I consider Josh Smith to be "long and athletic," even though he most typically plays at the 4. I definitely consider Marvin Williams to be long and athletic. And I dare anyone to suggest that Joe Johnson isn't long and athletic.

Certainly, at least on this point, I can see where you're coming from--actual position on the floor plays some factor in what "long and athletic" would mean. Joe Johnson is long and athletic at the 1 or 2... but those wouldn't be the first adjectives we'd use to describe him if he had to play the 4 or 5. On the other hand, there aren't a lot of long and athletic centers, period. Seems you'd start with Dwight Howard, and the description drops off fairly prohibitively from there.

So, perhaps "long and athletic" is too limited to describe what I've asserted that BK was looking for in this theoretical master plan... and THAT, after all, is the starting point for the discussion, and the reason why "long and athletic" was ever uttered.

I'm open to other words or phrases that someone would/could suggest, but essentially what I've meant to assert all along (and I know I'm not alone on this) is that BK was looking for guys who would create mismatches at their positions on the floor because of their combination of heighth and their athleticism... thus, tall point guards and tall two-guards and tall small forwards are at a premium... and/but since human DNA just doesn't create infinitely taller and taller individuals, that heighth factor is going to naturally get compromised at the low post positions, and the premium lands on athleticism.

And, the point is not and was never that BK has accomplished the best roster (vis-a-vis, your reference to DET), but that he (a) had a plan (that two years ago was self-evident even to the Hawks detractors who liked to poke fun at the notion of an all 6-8 line-up in ATL), (b) he executed that plan, and © we're seeing the fruit--good or bad--of that plan right now.

Are there arguments to the contrary?

Obviously, you've attempted to put forward some here. I just don't think it's as valid to believe that BK made these decisions over the years without some guiding principles in his mind... it strains credulity to think he thought one way when he drafted Diaw, another way when he drafted Childress and Smoove, another way when he traded for Johnson, another way when he drafted MWilliams.

Virtually none of us who are educated would approach the job in a spontaneous, finger-to-the-wind way... why would someone as known-to-be-meticulous-and-calculating as BK???

No.

I maintain that the preponderance of the evidence appears to support the theory that the man was operating under some guiding principles/priorities, even if he couldn't be totally certain that those principles/priorities would bear fruit in his term of office as GM.

Game, set, match... unless you can find another term to convolute, which appears to be a particular talent of yours.

[exodus]

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even though, of all of those possibilities, originally #1 was the slot where I had the best odds.

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Given my restraints due to my bet with Diesel i cannot respond fully to your post. However i feel safe in responding to a simple error. The team with the worst record has a 25% chance to land the top pick and over a 30% chance to land the 4th pick (which is exactly what happened the last two years).

[exodus]

http://www.nba.com/history/lottery_probabilities.html

[sturt]

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even though, of all of those possibilities, originally #1 was the slot where I had the best odds.

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Given my restraints due to my bet with Diesel i cannot respond fully to your post.

However i feel safe in responding to a simple error.

The team with the worst record has a 25% chance to land the top pick and over a 30% chance to land the 4th pick (which is exactly what happened the last two years).

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I just saw that...

LOL...

Two weeks???

I admire your optimism, at least.

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So, let's give you your 30%, though your history suggests that it's not a good idea to not, first, reserach and affirm something that you put forward...

We should feel "lucky" then to get the #2 slot, even though we presumably (unless you have another percentage you'd like to pull out?) had better odds than any other team to obtain the #1 slot...???

Sorry, ex... you can't spin this.

If I have a ticket that gives me the best shot of any other participant at winning $1 million dollars... even if that ticket is more likely to yield fourth prize, and I end up with the second prize... the game show host is going to come to me and say something like,

"Sorry, sturt, that it just wasn't your lucky day."

And why would he do that?

Because he didn't talk to you first and find a rosy way to spin it so that I'd feel better about my misfortune.

By the way... speaking of prizes, I don't think I saw what the prize for your contest w/ Diesel (???).

[exodus]

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So, let's give you your 30%, though your history suggests that it's not a good idea to not, first, reserach and affirm something that you put forward...

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First of all i posted the link. But since you missed it the first time..http://www.nba.com/history/lottery_probabilities.htmlSecondly it is not 30%, it is 35.8%.I didn't create the lottery. it wasn't my decision to make it this way. The fact is that in 2005 it was more likely for the Hawks NOT to get a top 2 pick than it was for them to get it.That is a fact. And i have never said they were lucky to get the 2nd pick anyway. What i said was that it wasn't unlucky that they moved down 1 spot.

[exodus]

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By the way... speaking of prizes, I don't think I saw what the prize for your contest w/ Diesel (???).

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It isn't a prize issue. It is more an issue of both of us not wanting to lose to the other. And you really aren't helping me (not that you care).BTW it is 3 days not two weeks. I will respond to your misreading my post on saturday.

[AHF]

I agree with exodus on the probability issue that the team with the worst record isn't unlucky if they don't win the lottery because it is a 75% chance that some other team will win.I understand where you are coming from on the "best chance" angle, but the 2nd place team has very similar odds (25% to 19.9%) and the 3rd/4th place teams collectively have a better chance than the 1st, etc. Following your lottery example, thinking the #1 team is unlucky to drop would be like buying 10 tickets in 50 ticket raffle and thinking you were unlucky if you lost.

[Lascar78]

Oh no.Not again.

[exodus]

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Oh no.Not again.

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LOL that lottery thread was one of the funniest threads ever.Might be time for your spreadsheet.

[sturt]

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I agree with exodus on the probability issue that the team with the worst record isn't unlucky if they don't win the lottery because it is a 75% chance that some other team will win.

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Maybe we can agree on this statement(?): As the team that had the best opportunity to gain the top pick, we were "less lucky than we would have liked to have been"... of course, conventionally-speaking, most people would say that was "unlucky," but perhaps "less lucky" is acceptable.

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I understand where you are coming from on the "best chance" angle, but the 2nd place team has very similar odds (25% to 19.9%) and the 3rd/4th place teams collectively have a better chance than the 1st, etc. Following your lottery example, thinking the #1 team is unlucky to drop would be like buying 10 tickets in 50 ticket raffle and thinking you were unlucky if you lost.

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I get you.But let's build on that to be more analogous... over the course of five years, you do the same thing... you buy tickets, and let's say that each year you've figured out proportionally what number mathematically should yield to you a certain return, though there's almost always the possibility of winning more or winning less... in four of those five years, the accounting shows that, not only did you not win more, but you didn't even break even... you lost four times, you gained only once.The law of averages predicts that your luck is going to turn. You were unlucky... or, at least, you were not as lucky as you deserved to be by virtue of the proportion you bought compared to what others bought.AHF, it's not normal for me to disagree w/ you, but on this one, we see it differently. I guess that's because "unlucky" is a nominal term... but "less lucky" on the other hand is an ordinal one, and thus, more precise and not really debateable... perhaps we can meet in that middle.

[sturt]

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The fact is that in 2005 it was more likely for the Hawks NOT to get a top 2 pick than it was for them to get it.

That is a fact.

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I get that, and acknowledge it.

Return volley...

Do you get the fact that in 2005, it was more likely for the Hawks to get the #1 pick than for 13 other teams to get it?

So, here we have two questions, both taking a somewhat different perspective, though both are intended to help make a judgment of "lucky or unlucky."

Begs the question, which perspective is the one that is actually relevant to your original contention that BK has never been unlucky in his draft slotting?

Here's why the answer is the latter, not the former:

Under the definition you're pushing, no team is ever "unlucky" because there's practically always a better opportunity for x-number of other teams to get that draft slot than them... and that being the case, your original question is rendered without any real meaning... according to that perspective, BK wasn't unlucky, and so weren't all of the other general managers who didn't get to pick in a slot proportional to their won-loss record.

In the pursuit of specifying "lucky" or "unlucky," the tipping-point question simply must compare teams individually, not one team versus the collective whole, that is, if it is to have any actual use to that making that determination.

[Lascar78]

I'll bite briefly for old times sake.

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Maybe we can agree on this statement(?): As the team that had the best opportunity to gain the top pick, we were "less lucky than we would have liked to have been"... of course, conventionally-speaking, most people would say that was "unlucky," but perhaps "less lucky" is acceptable.

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It is not unlucky to finish where you are expected to finish. The first team is not expected to win the lottery. No team is. Moving down is to be expected. When a team moves up, many other teams move down. When you have a 75% chance of moving down, you should expect to move down.

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I get you.But let's build on that to be more analogous... over the course of five years, you do the same thing... you buy tickets, and let's say that each year you've figured out proportionally what number mathematically should yield to you a certain return, though there's almost always the possibility of winning more or winning less... in four of those five years, the accounting shows that, not only did you not win more, but you didn't even break even... you lost four times, you gained only once.

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More teams move down than up. It is way against the odds for the top 3 to end up in the top 3. And every time another team moves up (1 team getting lucky), anywhere from 1 to 15 teams are getting unlucky. That is why if you look at any team in the long run, you move down more often than up.

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You were unlucky...

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No you were not.

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or, at least, you were not as lucky as you deserved to be by virtue of the proportion you bought compared to what others bought.

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No you were not, the results were pretty typical for just a couple drawings. Odds are expected to be carried out over thousands or millions of drawings, not a couple.

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AHF, it's not normal for me to disagree w/ you, but on this one, we see it differently. I guess that's because "unlucky" is a nominal term... but "less lucky" on the other hand is an ordinal one, and thus, more precise and not really debateable... perhaps we can meet in that middle.

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You are confusing the issue either because you don't understand it or because you are trying to pretend you are not wrong. Simply put, lucky would be doing better than the expected outcome, unlucky would be doing worse than the expected outcome. In 2005, our expected position was:25.0%*1 + 21.46%*2 + 17.74%*3 + 35.8%*4 = 2.64so your expected average position if you do the lottery millions and millions of times is between 2 and 3, but closer to 3. You got lucky by getting the #2 pick and certainly did not get unlucky. It's not a matter of opinion. It is fact that you did better than the expected outcome.

[sturt]

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By the way... speaking of prizes, I don't think I saw what the prize for your contest w/ Diesel (???).

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It isn't a prize issue. It is more an issue of both of us not wanting to lose to the other.

And you really aren't helping me (not that you care).

BTW it is 3 days not two weeks. I will respond to your misreading my post on saturday.

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First, I would just ask, if I'm the one supplying the terms and using them in a certain way to convey my thoughts... who's "misreading" who?????

Second... seriously, and the discussion of this thread notwithstanding... the poster who said three days proves practically nothing is entirely correct... if it's a contest of wills, setting a time limit of 3 days or 2 weeks or whatever isn't so much a test against each other as it is an individual test against time.

Third... less seriously... it all reminds me of the Seinfeld episode...

yeah... THAT one...

but how bout you guys just PM each other if you choose to compete in THAT way... I'm confident the rest of us really would prefer not to know.

[Lascar78]

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More teams move down than up. ... And every time another team moves up (1 team getting lucky), anywhere from 1 to 15 teams are getting unlucky.

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For example in 05, 2 teams move up, 4 move down. In 03, same thing. And the higher you are, the more likely you are to go down. The #1 team can only go down. The lower teams can pretty much only go up. We were at the top, a lot. It doesn't make us unlucky.

[sturt]

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Simply put, lucky would be doing better than the expected outcome, unlucky would be doing worse than the expected outcome.

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Okay, let's go with that one... I'll agree that there's some logic in that.

Consider this.

That still fails to consider the fact that (1) there is a finite number of other teams, each of whom could claim a given slot, and each of whom has their own "expected outcome" that impacts Team X's "expected outcome" since no team can share the same slot (ie, in the way that two lottery winners can choose the same numbers and share the prize); and (2) some team likely (and definitely where #1 is concerned) is better positioned to gain a given draft slot than any other team is... to ignore that is to ignore the real world of the draft, which is that every slot is filled, ie, we don't skip draft slots.

So, more precisely, let me propose back to you that truly "lucky" would be doing better than the average expected increase/decrease in draft position of all other teams.

In theory, then, if the mean is for a team to slot one below their pre-draft slot, then that becomes the zero point... and all teams that beat the mean are "lucky," and all teams that do not are "unlucky" (... though you still end up with some number of teams that probably come close enough to the mean to prompt debate as to how far away from the mean one must go before it is categorized as "lucky" or "unlucky.")

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In 2005, our expected position was:

25.0%*1 + 21.46%*2 + 17.74%*3 + 35.8%*4 = 2.64

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So, by this calculation (which I agree is correct), we can easily render the first of the 16 numbers we would need to figure this out... 2.64 minus 2 equals 0.64.

We do that for the other 15 teams, add those numbers up, divide by 16, and we have the precise dividing line between "lucky" and "unlucky."

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It's not a matter of opinion.

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Lascar, I appreciate your authoritative tone, but on principle, on this one you overstep... the Truth-in-Lending Act, just for quick example, was created because businesses were choosing to apply different calculations to the same term with some modicum of rationale to back any of those calculations up... it WAS a matter of opinion, at least, until people come to an agreement on how to define a term.

That's not to discount the definition you've brought--it would rightfully get a lot of support were it put to a vote... but I'm not finding it just that way in any dictionary yet, and I bet neither are you (?)... so at the end of the day, it is an "opinion" of how the term should be defined and thus calculated.

[exodus]

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"lucky or unlucky."

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Your definition of "unlucky" must be different from mine. My definition of unlucky is bad luck. Yours must be something else. If i buy 1000 lottery tickets for Powerball (assuming that i bought more than anyone else) and still don't win i don't consider that unlucky because the odds were still heavily against me winning.

[exodus]

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who's "misreading" who?????

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Given my bet i can't go into this in detail now. However you fail to notice your comment that i was responding to where you used the "home run" standard.Do GM's know, on draft day, that they have picked a home run? Except in rare cases (Shaq, Lebron) the answer is no. Home runs can only be seen in hindsight most of the time.

[Diesel]

Sturt is right on this one.Even with the probabilities...If you have a higher probability of winning than someone else and you don't win... You are unlucky.. (if there is such a word).Just like...If you have a lower probability of winning and you win.. you got Lucky... (if there is such a word).You can't really have one without the other...Moreover, you can't say that somebody with a 3% chance of winning that wins is expected. That's stupid talk. That person with the 3% chance of winning was very fortunate (or Lucky)...