Saturday, December 25, 2010

What does it say about our country

Tom Haberstoh wrote an article about who is "clutcher" LeBron James or Kobe Bryant. Of course there is great debate to whether a player can raise their game in clutch situations or not and the general consensus is that if this ability does exist, it only is able to raise performance by the tiniest of margins. So, to educated readers, it should come to no surprise that LeBron is more clutch than Kobe, by virtue of being a better - a much better player. Tom Haberstoh agrees

What I find interesting is the comments section of the ESPN page. Despite the evidence that Haberstoh presents, the public doesn't buy it. Here are some of the comments:

"Anyone who claims Lebron is better clearly has not watched these two players play in a meaningful game in the last 5 minuets with the game on the line. There's a reason almost everyone in the NBA will claim Kobe as the best closer of all time."

"statistics for people who don't know what they talking about. Any idiot who use stats as the cruch of his argument is a fool in any walk of life"

"Why do they even do these Kobe/LeBron comparisons. LeBron isn't on Kobe's level. Kobe's always been clutch and has been the ultimate closer. He's still the best"

"Kobe brings to the table much more than numbers. the intangibles and his refuse to lose that makes Kobe the best player in the NBA for the past 6 years."

"The article glaringly forgets to mention that Kobe has been Mr. Clutch in games that actually MEAN something...like the NBA finals. How many clutch shots does Lebron have in the Finals? ZERO because he's never been there."

So I ask the question, what does it say about the American people that despite looking in black and white at who has performed better - they just dismiss it? I don't particularly understand why supporters of Kobe are so obsessed with claiming him as better than LeBron. You never hear LeBron fans casually throw Kobe into the discussion as not being as good as LeBron, but the oppostie side does. Reading the comments on ESPN just serves as a reminder as why people like Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and Rand Paul can be forces in American politics, because of the inability of people to look at facts and analyze and synthesize information.

Merry Christmas!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Why scouts are unreliable

Subject A. Timofey Mozgov.

How many times does he get a pass thrown to him in a position to score and he just bumbles it out of bounds? Literally incredible how many. Throughout training camp and the prelude to the season, all I heard was how great the Russian was going to be. So far in 223 minutes he has produced -.9 wins for the Knicks. The reason for this terrible number is just simply - Mozgov does nothing well on the basketball court...nothing.

Amar'e Stoudemire remembered he was Amar'e Stoudemire and is now an above average player! WP48 of .106 (average of .100) Yay Amar'e! He is bringing the pow as of late.

The Knicks currently sit at 10-9, and the summation of wins produced puts them at 9.7, right in line with the 10 wins. That number should go up if D'Antoni would play Landry Fields more often and send Mozgov to Siberia.