Grupy dyskusyjne   »   pl.rec.sport.koszykowka   »   Insider: Hollinger - Truth about the Derrick Rose story

Insider: Hollinger - Truth about the Derrick Rose story

Data: 2011-04-06 01:21:59
Autor: Leszczur
Insider: Hollinger - Truth about the Derrick Rose story
Tak na marginesie wszelkich dyskusji o sposobie przyznawania MVP
wrzucam artykuł Hollingera sprzed tygodnia.


Truth about the Derrick Rose story
League's most irreplaceable player? Dwight Howard (PER Diem: March 31,
2011)
Email Print Comments767
By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Archive


The Bulls' Derrick Rose and the Magic's Dwight Howard have both had
MVP-worthy seasons.
What bothers me so much about this year's MVP coronation of "The
Derrick Rose Story" is not so much that it's a mistake -- we've had
bad award votes before and will have them again -- but that it's the
same mistake, for the fifth time in 11 years.

This is an inherent risk in the MVP selection process. When you ask
people whose life's work is to seek out and tell great stories to vote
on this award, we shouldn't be surprised when they turn out to vote
for the best story rather than the player who is most valuable.

Guards especially make for great stories, because they're natural
underdogs. Height, obviously, is a huge factor in this game, so we're
completely fascinated when smaller players can play at a high level.
Generally, what they do is a lot more captivating than watching a 7-
footer methodically dunk on people's heads, even if the latter is a
much more effective way to win basketball games. We don't like rooting
for Goliath.

Put a guard on a "surprise" team and the impact doubles. Everyone
looks for The Cause, and all roads lead back to the guard. Jab in an
IV and let the confirmation bias flow through your veins, and soon
even the negative plays become proof ("Look at the shot he almost
made!"). This usually happens only with perimeter players, by the way.
A miss on a double-clutching drive after a sweet crossover can be
spectacular, in a way that a missed jump hook simply cannot.

A brief history of Voting the Story
As a result of all our fun with guards and their compelling stories,
the three dominant big men of the past decade -- Shaquille O'Neal,
Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan -- were shafted out of three MVP awards
and nearly a fourth. Ask how this happened and you'll get a lot of
embarrassed shrugging, and yet we're headed down that same path again.

So we'll end up with "The Derrick Rose Story" as this year's MVP --
just as we ended up with Allen Iverson winning in 2001, and Steve Nash
in 2005 and 2006, and Jason Kidd's second-place finish in 2002 (which
I include here because we only narrowly averted the greatest award
travesty in league history, when one of the greatest players of all
time had the best season of his career and nearly lost the award to a
guy who shot 39.1 percent).



And make no mistake, the voters are pulling the lever for the story,
and not the player.



How do we know that? Actually, we can prove it. Even if we presume
that the stats somehow didn't adequately capture the value of Iverson,
Kidd or Nash, we have a smoking gun that the vote was for the story
and not the player.



Believe it or not, the voters told us. Actions speak louder than
words, and their ballots in other seasons are Bose speakers blaring
out that they voted for the story.



Neither Nash, Iverson nor Kidd had their best seasons the year they
won (or nearly won, in Kidd's case). In fact, each had a dramatically
stronger case in other seasons. What they lacked was the storyline.



Check out the evidence:



*  Kidd is the most egregious example. In 2001-02, he almost won the
award, receiving 45 first-place votes. The next season, the Nets
traded two starters for a declining Dikembe Mutombo but made it back
to the 2003 Finals anyway because Kidd had by far the best season of
his career; compared to his first year in New Jersey, he added four
points to his scoring average, shot better and took on a dramatically
larger offensive role. If Kidd was the real MVP in 2001-02 (on a huge
number of ballots), and the stats were somehow missing that, then
surely he was even more valuable in 2002-03 and should have cruised to
the trophy.



You know how many first-place MVP votes Kidd got in 2003? Bupkus.
Zilch. Zippo. Kidd had only 31 total points, for a ninth-place finish
that put him right behind Detroit's Ben Wallace. If people weren't
voting for the story in 2002, as opposed to the player, explain that
one.



*  Nash is an equally strong example. As everyone knows, he won the
MVP in 2005, sporting a player efficiency rating of 22.04 while
joining with a dominant power forward to lead a 62-win team. What few
people realize is that two years earlier, he had teamed up with a
dominant power forward to win 60 games and tie for the best record in
the West; he had a better PER that season (23.51) and played more
minutes. For his efforts he received one fifth-place vote.



The difference between those seasons, obviously, was that in 2004-05
Nash was a great story, because he had just joined a 29-win team that
surprisingly rose to first in the West. The 2002-03 Mavericks were
already good, so his performance there was deemed a minor event.



*  You can do this exercise with several other Nash seasons. For
instance, Nash won the MVP with a PER of 23.29 in 2006, leading a 54-
win team in the conference finals. In 2009-10, Nash had a PER of 21.25
and led a 54-win team to the conference finals. He finished eighth and
didn't get a single first-place vote. Nash also finished a distant
second behind Dirk Nowitzki the year he had his best statistical
season, 2006-07, and won 61 games. Again, it sure seems like the story
was the dividing factor between these seasons, and not the player.



*  Iverson outperformed his MVP season in both 2004-05 and 2005-06; he
had a comparable PER in more minutes in the former and a better PER in
more minutes in the latter. He didn't come close to winning in either
season, finishing fifth in 2005 and getting just a single fifth-place
vote in 2006.

(Side note: If you don't like PER, you can use any other measures and
get the same answers, which shouldn't be a surprise, since PER is
essentially a summary of all the other statistical categories.)



What's the explanation for this other than that the voters went for
the best story instead of the best player? Did all three of these guys
suddenly become crappier leaders or lose their clutch mojo in those
other seasons?


No -- they just weren't hot stories.

The burden of proof
The same thing is going to happen this season with "The Derrick Rose
Story."

Let me emphasize that Rose is indeed a very valuable player, and that
what he and the Bulls have done this season is undeniably a great
story. It does not, however, make him more valuable than every single
other player in the entire league, and the evidence for this is
abundantly clear to anyone who cares to look for it. Sorry, but if you
want me to build the pedestal that high, I'm gonna need some more
concrete for the foundation.

This part gets Rose fans terribly upset, but it's really basic: There
is a glaring lack of evidence that he is as valuable as has been
claimed. It's not just a question of one selected number or another
not supporting his case. It's that none of the numbers do.

I'm not cherry-picking stats to support some covert Rose-hating
agenda. I literally cannot find a single shred of data, anywhere, to
support the idea that he's the most valuable player in the league.


Rose already has an uphill climb in any logical debate -- his status
as the front-runner rests uneasily beside the fact that he'd be the
fourth-best player in the state of Florida. This is where people point
out that "Most Valuable" and "Best" aren't necessarily the same thing,
and that's correct.



But it does shift the burden of proof. If you're going to tell me that
Rose has been more valuable this season in spite of those facts, you
better bring a hell of a lot more to the table than, "But watch him
play!" (For the record, I've seen him in person four times this season
and countless other games on the tube.)



Digging for proof
This always gets people screaming and yelling about those infernal
statheads, as though it's some kind of horrible imposition to ask for
actual hard evidence to back up an MVP vote.

"Nobody has carried a greater burden than Rose," it's been said, and
in an extremely narrow sense that's almost true -- only Kobe Bryant
has used more possessions. Carrying the burden well, on the other
hand, hasn't been his strong suit, as his middling true shooting
percentage attests. More obviously, there are greater burdens than
handling the ball for 20 seconds on every trip. Dwight Howard, for
instance, carries the burden of being his team's entire defense and
absorbing vicious beatings on offense, but it's tough to package that
in a highlight reel.

"Rose won without Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah," it's been said, and
certainly the Bulls did just that. However, even when those players
were out, the Bulls outscored opponents when Rose was off the court,
suggesting they were far more than the one-man band that's been
depicted. None of the Bulls' other players are big stars, and this
throws people, but Chicago's depth and defensive ability have carried
it this year.

And finally, there's the idea of his indispensability -- it's the
"they're nothing without him" approach. If that's the case, the Bulls
should perform much worse when he's off the court than they do.
Certainly, it's the case with most other stars. The Heat are 10.49
points per 100 possessions worse without LeBron James this season; the
Mavs, 16.68 points worse without Dirk Nowitzki; the Magic, 6.95 worse
without Howard, and the Lakers, 6.20 worse without Bryant.

Rose's Bulls? They lose just 1.49 points per 100 possessions. When
he's off the court, they still outscore opponents by 6.78 per 100,
which roughly translates to a 55-win team.

Now, that first measure does understate Rose's impact, because he's
played a lot of minutes with guys like Keith Bogans and Kurt Thomas.
You can get more scientific by adjusting for the players Rose plays
with and against, as basketballvalue.com does, and the difference
becomes a more respectable 8.60. But that isn't the biggest difference
in the league, or even close to it. Howard benefits from the same math
-- Orlando is 12.36 points better per 100 possessions with him on the
court after said adjustment.

Yes, these stats are notoriously noisy. But as I noted above, "The
Derrick Rose Story" doesn't have compelling evidence to start with;
this is another plank of non-support.

Other arguments similarly fall flat. "Look at Rose's impact on the
Bulls' winning," you say. Well, Chicago has certainly won a ton, and
they've done it with a suffocating defense that ranks first in the
league.

Rose? He's arguably been the least important part of that equation.
While I'd argue the stats undervalue his defensive improvement this
season, it's a bit jarring to find out that the Bulls actually give up
dramatically fewer points the second he exits the game.

As for the argument that Rose was the catalyst for the defense anyway,
because of his buy-in to coach Tim Thibodeau's approach ... I agree that
was a necessary condition for Chicago's success. But has it really
come to this? Are we really giving out an MVP trophy with "actually
tried on defense for a change" as a key bullet point in the résumé?


If Rose is indispensable, however, we might also try to remove him
from the Bulls entirely and see what happens. The equation everyone
tries to make in their head is what I call the "bad backup" test,
which holds that since Rose would be replaced by C.J. Watson while
LeBron James would be replaced by Dwyane Wade, then Rose must be more
valuable.



In this test, there's no reason to focus on just the team, however. A
better version of this test will lead you directly to this year's true
MVP:



Whom else in the league could you replace this player with?
That's really what we want to know, isn't it? If you could trade the
player tomorrow and replace him with somebody just as good, it's hard
to make a case that he's the single most valuable player in the
league, right?

In Rose's case, it's pretty apparent that you could replace him with
Russell Westbrook and suffer virtually no drop-off. They both use an
equally large chunk of their team's possessions, and use them almost
exactly the same way in terms of shot-pass decisions and spots on the
floor. Rose shoots more jumpers and Westbrook takes more free throws,
but by and large you'd get the same results.


Not a fan of Westbrook? Fine. You can try the same exercise with Nash,
or Chris Paul, or Deron Williams, or even Wade, who despite being a 2
has a lot of similar attributes to Rose. One can argue for days
whether Rose is a bit better than these players, and if so, by how
much, but we're talking about small change here. And it's not just
that there's one particular player you could replace Rose with and
suffer only marginal decline; there are several such players.



Now, let's try the same exercise with another player.
Who could replace Dwight Howard?

Anyone?
[Taps foot]

Got a candidate in mind yet?
[Looks at watch]

No, I mean from this season, not 1995. Try again.

[Crickets chirping]

Still waiting ...

The conclusion is obvious, isn't it?

Dwight Howard is the most irreplaceable player in the league.

This is the ultimate reason not to vote "The Derrick Rose Story" for
MVP: Every argument put forward for him works better for somebody
else, and in particular works better for Howard.

This last one is the most damning, however. Put Westbrook, Paul or
Williams in for Rose and the Bulls might slip a couple of games.
Might. Put any other player in Howard's position and the Magic
immediately turn to sawdust. It's not just that he's second in the
league in PER and seventh in adjusted plus-minus; it's that no other
center can touch him in either category, and the one who is closest
(Andrew Bynum) has played half as many minutes.

Unlike "The Derrick Rose Story," Howard's case has more than just raw
emotion to support it. The Magic are third in the NBA in defensive
efficiency -- ahead of Miami, Milwaukee, the Lakers and Dallas, among
others -- even though nobody else in their top eight is even an
average defensive player. An Orlando team that often plays Gilbert
Arenas, Hedo Turkoglu and Ryan Anderson at the same time still gets
elite defensive results because Howard so completely controls the
paint behind them.


Offensively, Howard's fingerprints are everywhere, too -- not just
with the dunks, but with the fouls he draws that put opponents in the
bonus and hand his teammates easy freebies, and the clean 3-point
looks that come without his ever touching the ball. It's not always
pretty, but it's hugely valuable.


So why have the Magic not won more games than the Bulls? Because, to
borrow everyone's favorite line about Rose, Howard has played the
entire season without Boozer and Noah, and Luol Deng. Any of these
three would be the second-best player on the Magic. Compare the
benches and you'll get a similar laugh riot; the Bulls have arguably
the league's best backup center, for instance, while the Magic don't
even keep one on the roster.

Unfortunately, the momentum is probably too far gone at this point. We
like great stories and we don't particularly enjoy rooting for
Goliath, so "The Derrick Rose Story" will win the MVP trophy when it
should probably finish sixth or seventh, and Howard will end up in the
same shafted company as Shaq, Garnett and Duncan before him.

But let's not kid ourselves. In the end, this vote says a lot more
about us than it does about either Rose or Howard.

Data: 2011-04-06 13:55:55
Autor: Tomasz Radko
Insider: Hollinger - Truth about the Derrick Rose story
W dniu 2011-04-06 10:21, Leszczur pisze:

(Side note: If you don't like PER, you can use any other measures and
get the same answers, which shouldn't be a surprise, since PER is
essentially a summary of all the other statistical categories.)

No i jak tu traktować Hollingera poważnie?

Data: 2011-04-06 05:45:44
Autor: Leszczur
Insider: Hollinger - Truth about the Derrick Rose story
On 6 Kwi, 13:55, Tomasz Radko <t...@interia.pl> wrote:
W dniu 2011-04-06 10:21, Leszczur pisze:

> (Side note: If you don't like PER, you can use any other measures and
> get the same answers, which shouldn't be a surprise, since PER is
> essentially a summary of all the other statistical categories.)

No i jak tu traktowa Hollingera powa nie?

A co Ty k&%$% wiesz o jego metodzie? ;-)
Może ją zmienił i robi teraz regresję średniej ważonej z FSPI,
Tendexu, WS, WP, Eff, Adj. +/- ?
Szacun się należy!

Pozdro

L'e-szczur

Insider: Hollinger - Truth about the Derrick Rose story

Nowy film z video.banzaj.pl więcej »
Redmi 9A - recenzja budżetowego smartfona