Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Monday, February 9, 2015
The Hall of Fame
When Malcolm Butler stepped in front of Russell Wilson's pass a week ago, more was at stake than just whether or not the New England Patriots or the Seattle Seahawks would win the Super Bowl. As we had breathlessly been informed in the run-up to the game, this was really about Tom Brady's quest to win his fourth Super Bowl title and establish a legacy as the greatest QB of all-time. Beating the Seahawks was the only way he could surpass Joe Montana.
When Alexander the Great saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds left to conquer.
Now, with Brady near the end of his journey, the only question is who will be next? What young QB of the next generation will one day join him atop Mount Olympus? Who will lead his team to the most championships? Who will bestow the most glory on all lucky enough to share a stage with him? In the history of the Patriots franchise, these years shall be called the Brady/Belichick era and they will be long remembered for the bountiful harvests of playoff victories they showered upon their devoted followers.
As someone who covers the NBA draft, I watch players at the other end of the process, raw lumps of clay not yet molded into the icons they will become. At last season's McDonald's All-American Game, I spent most of my time watching Karl Towns, Jahlil Okafor and Myles Turner going at each other. At this point, I think it's a pretty safe assumption to say that all three are going to make ungodly sums of money playing professional basketball over the next 10-15 years. The only thing they need to worry about is developing their games, staying healthy and not getting into too much trouble off the court. In the grand scheme of things, life is pretty good for guys who have been blessed with that type of size, coordination and athleticism.
In the world of the NBA draft, though, they are kept in a constant state of insecurity, as their value as basketball players - and ultimately their self-worth - is in a state of limbo depending on their most recent performance. Are they worthy of being taken at No. 1? No. 5? In the lottery? Where is their draft stock at this exact moment? What can they do to make it go up or down?
We treat the whole thing as if they are political candidates running for office. In order for Jahlil to go No. 1 overall, he will need to put up big numbers on a Duke team that makes the Final Four. If Towns is going to have a chance, Kentucky will likely need to go 40-0 while outplaying Jahlil in an NCAA Tournament game. Turner never had much of a chance given the team around him and the flaws of his campaign manager (Rick Barnes). What does it matter how good a candidate is if he doesn't have the team around him that can put him in a position to succeed?
Even once they have achieved stardom in the NBA, are they allowed to be content or be satisfied for even a moment? No. Being content, we are told, is the enemy. You have to constantly manufacture slights against yourself in order to reach ever greater heights of self-actualization. The greatest players must live in constant fear of whether or not they are respected by their peers, the fans and the basketball industry in general. What exactly does Damian Lillard have to do to get everyone's respect!? Nevermind that he was just in the All-Star Game last season. For him to be recognized as one of the greatest players in the NBA, he requires ever constant validation lest doubts and whispers start to emerge.
The result is a world where the greatest athletes can never humbly accept all they have been given and can never really be happy for the accomplishments of their peers. The world of awards is a zero-sum game - there can only be one No. 1 overall pick, one MVP and one GOAT.
No matter how many All-Star appearances you make, it is never enough. Kobe Bryant has been to 15 All-Star Games yet the biggest story surrounding him coming into the season is where he was voted on in the Big Board of Life aka NBA Rank. Instead of wondering how he would be able to stay healthy all season after seeing his last two seasons ended by injury, people were obsessing about whether Kobe would be able to prove his doubters wrong. Don't they understand that Kobe isn't human?
As it turns out, he was. Basketball players are just human beings like everyone else and they have the same types of issues that everyone else has except they have more money and people are constantly sticking cameras and microphones in their face in order to ask impossibly mundane questions about the most basic aspects of their job. The disconnect comes when we are confronted by the difference between the image of them we have built up in our minds and the reality of who they actually are. This is what most of Jay-Z's (aka Jay Hova aka The God MC) songs are about. This is what happens with every man who becomes President. First they love you then they hate you then they love you again. It's the gift and the curse.
How will you remembered when your career is over? For the guys at the highest levels of the game, everything is building towards one final judgment, when their fans weigh it all, good and bad, in order to determine whether or not they are worthy of the ultimate honor. Who will be on Mount Rushmore?
In a lot of ways, Hall of Fame voting resembles the process of sanctification in the Catholic Church. Which of these historic figures should be elevated to Godhood? It's the ultimate merit badge, the shiniest gold sticker. The mark on the resume of their life that elevates them above mere mortals in order so that we may have an inspiration to strive towards. The difference is the Church is elevating people who renounced their worldly possessions, changed the lives of thousands of people and died for their faith instead of guys who use a lot of performance enhancing drugs to hit a lot of baseballs really far for a long time.
History has judged Pete Rose as it will soon judge Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. All the money they made, all the records they broke and all the games they won - what would any of it mean if they didn't have a plaque in an office building in a small town in upstate New York? We can be sad for the legacies they have thrown away but we can never forget their own hubris is what prevented them from ascending to Olympus. The Gods of Baseball have cast them aside, forcing them to spend the rest of their wretched lives wandering the Earth while performing acts of penance and atonement in the hope that one day mercy will be shown on their souls.
When someone makes the Hall of Fame, we always want to ask them - what does it feel like? A former athlete is a former athlete, no matter what they did in their playing career. I went to school with a few brothers whose dad played for the Dallas Cowboys for three seasons, The Dallas Cowboys! All of the kids were in awe of him. Just by making it that far, he had already won the game of life. How does it feel to have your ego validated on the ultimate level? I imagine it feels pretty good for awhile and then you kind of get used to it.
For guys like Kobe and LeBron, the biggest carrot of them all is dangled in front of them. Forget the Hall of Fame. They could be better than Jordan. They could transcend mortality and achieve Godhood in the flesh as the Greatest Of All Time, the best there ever was and the best there ever will be. We must consult the ancient myths and legends - everything they do, everything they say, everything they are - it must all be compared to the Jordan standard. Is it something Jordan would do? Jordan would never team up with his greatest rivals. Jordan would never pass the ball in the final moments. Jordan would never subtweet his teammates. Well, he probably would have done that.
In this telling of the story, the city of Cleveland has been wandering through the desert for more than 40 years in search of the Promised Land. In their hearts, they were starting to wander if they would ever get there or if they were forever destined to fall short, the victims of some tragic curse. They couldn't go back and they couldn't go forward. Had they been lied too all this time? Did they live in a world where God kept his promises? Did they live in a world where God even existed?
LeBron leaving Cleveland was Moses abandoning Israel, deciding the only way he could overcome the enemies who were guarding the way to the land of milk and honey was by leading a different people, a people with more money and more cosmopolitan tastes. Or maybe LeBron was just a 26-year old who wanted to live in Miami with his friends for a few years. Then, when he got older and started thinking about where he wanted to raise his kids, he decided to move back home. It's all how you want to look at it.
The ultimate standard for any player is he a guy I will tell my grandkids about? Is he a guy with a timeless game, a game good enough to transcend his era and be passed down as folk tales to people who had never seen him play? MJ, Kobe, LeBron - maybe our grandkids will care about those guys and maybe they won't. We care about Babe Ruth. We don't really care about Jack Johnson. Will their grandkids care? And their grandkids? Soon enough, the basketball players of the NBA become the gladiators of Rome. Who was the best chariot racer in the Byzantine Empire?
What would I ask to the greatest athlete during the reign of Justinian The Great? I don't think I would ask him about his greatest chariot race. I'd probably ask him about how life back then was. Kanye West asked Paul McCartney if pussy tasted different in the 1960's. What is there to ask really? At a certain level, it's all the same. Nothing ever really changes.
The actions of 2015 matter a ton from the perspective of 2050, a good amount from the perspective of 2150 and a small amount from the perspective of 2650. We are a society constantly worried about the judgment of History - we sit in judgment of History and we do not wish to be judged so ourselves. The key fact to remember isn't the fact that History is written from the perspective of the winners. It's that it isn't really written at all. From the perspective of 4150, the actions of the year 2015 might as well not exist. From the perspective of 8000, they won't. Ancient Egypt has a history that stretches back thousands of years. The Jews were slaves in Egypt longer than the United States has been a country.
Maybe global warming or nuclear winter or The Singularity will change everything. People have always looked for signs of the apocalypse. For a society of narcissists, the only thing worse than thinking the world is going to end is knowing that it will keep right on spinning without us. All the world is a stage, everyone is a player and they all have their entrances and their exits. The music cuts, the light comes off, you get gently ushered off the stage and someone else takes your spot. Your entire career becomes a one-minute TV ad.
I think we all recognize the fundamental unreality at some level. Brady and Montana are individual players in a team sport yet we insist on judging them by the same standards as Federer and Sampras. If there are 53 different players on an NFL roster, how valuable could any one player be, at least in comparison to a sport like tennis? A billion different factors go into the outcome of a game that a QB has absolutely no control of. What if the Seahawks coaching staff had decided to hand the ball off to Marshawn Lynch one more time? What if they hadn't been blessed by a miraculous catch to give them the ball at the 1-yard line a few second before?
No matter how you spin it, though, Brady has been the QB for the dominant team of his era, winning 4 Super Bowl titles, playing in the game 6 times and appearing in the playoffs in every season but one of his 13-year career as a starter.
*Tom Brady wakes up next to Giselle, looks over at the Lombardi trophy*
"Is this all there is?"
— RUSS BENGT$ON (@russbengtson) February 2, 2015
When Alexander the Great saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds left to conquer.
Now, with Brady near the end of his journey, the only question is who will be next? What young QB of the next generation will one day join him atop Mount Olympus? Who will lead his team to the most championships? Who will bestow the most glory on all lucky enough to share a stage with him? In the history of the Patriots franchise, these years shall be called the Brady/Belichick era and they will be long remembered for the bountiful harvests of playoff victories they showered upon their devoted followers.
As someone who covers the NBA draft, I watch players at the other end of the process, raw lumps of clay not yet molded into the icons they will become. At last season's McDonald's All-American Game, I spent most of my time watching Karl Towns, Jahlil Okafor and Myles Turner going at each other. At this point, I think it's a pretty safe assumption to say that all three are going to make ungodly sums of money playing professional basketball over the next 10-15 years. The only thing they need to worry about is developing their games, staying healthy and not getting into too much trouble off the court. In the grand scheme of things, life is pretty good for guys who have been blessed with that type of size, coordination and athleticism.
In the world of the NBA draft, though, they are kept in a constant state of insecurity, as their value as basketball players - and ultimately their self-worth - is in a state of limbo depending on their most recent performance. Are they worthy of being taken at No. 1? No. 5? In the lottery? Where is their draft stock at this exact moment? What can they do to make it go up or down?
We treat the whole thing as if they are political candidates running for office. In order for Jahlil to go No. 1 overall, he will need to put up big numbers on a Duke team that makes the Final Four. If Towns is going to have a chance, Kentucky will likely need to go 40-0 while outplaying Jahlil in an NCAA Tournament game. Turner never had much of a chance given the team around him and the flaws of his campaign manager (Rick Barnes). What does it matter how good a candidate is if he doesn't have the team around him that can put him in a position to succeed?
Even once they have achieved stardom in the NBA, are they allowed to be content or be satisfied for even a moment? No. Being content, we are told, is the enemy. You have to constantly manufacture slights against yourself in order to reach ever greater heights of self-actualization. The greatest players must live in constant fear of whether or not they are respected by their peers, the fans and the basketball industry in general. What exactly does Damian Lillard have to do to get everyone's respect!? Nevermind that he was just in the All-Star Game last season. For him to be recognized as one of the greatest players in the NBA, he requires ever constant validation lest doubts and whispers start to emerge.
The result is a world where the greatest athletes can never humbly accept all they have been given and can never really be happy for the accomplishments of their peers. The world of awards is a zero-sum game - there can only be one No. 1 overall pick, one MVP and one GOAT.
No matter how many All-Star appearances you make, it is never enough. Kobe Bryant has been to 15 All-Star Games yet the biggest story surrounding him coming into the season is where he was voted on in the Big Board of Life aka NBA Rank. Instead of wondering how he would be able to stay healthy all season after seeing his last two seasons ended by injury, people were obsessing about whether Kobe would be able to prove his doubters wrong. Don't they understand that Kobe isn't human?
As it turns out, he was. Basketball players are just human beings like everyone else and they have the same types of issues that everyone else has except they have more money and people are constantly sticking cameras and microphones in their face in order to ask impossibly mundane questions about the most basic aspects of their job. The disconnect comes when we are confronted by the difference between the image of them we have built up in our minds and the reality of who they actually are. This is what most of Jay-Z's (aka Jay Hova aka The God MC) songs are about. This is what happens with every man who becomes President. First they love you then they hate you then they love you again. It's the gift and the curse.
How will you remembered when your career is over? For the guys at the highest levels of the game, everything is building towards one final judgment, when their fans weigh it all, good and bad, in order to determine whether or not they are worthy of the ultimate honor. Who will be on Mount Rushmore?
History has judged Pete Rose as it will soon judge Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. All the money they made, all the records they broke and all the games they won - what would any of it mean if they didn't have a plaque in an office building in a small town in upstate New York? We can be sad for the legacies they have thrown away but we can never forget their own hubris is what prevented them from ascending to Olympus. The Gods of Baseball have cast them aside, forcing them to spend the rest of their wretched lives wandering the Earth while performing acts of penance and atonement in the hope that one day mercy will be shown on their souls.
When someone makes the Hall of Fame, we always want to ask them - what does it feel like? A former athlete is a former athlete, no matter what they did in their playing career. I went to school with a few brothers whose dad played for the Dallas Cowboys for three seasons, The Dallas Cowboys! All of the kids were in awe of him. Just by making it that far, he had already won the game of life. How does it feel to have your ego validated on the ultimate level? I imagine it feels pretty good for awhile and then you kind of get used to it.
For guys like Kobe and LeBron, the biggest carrot of them all is dangled in front of them. Forget the Hall of Fame. They could be better than Jordan. They could transcend mortality and achieve Godhood in the flesh as the Greatest Of All Time, the best there ever was and the best there ever will be. We must consult the ancient myths and legends - everything they do, everything they say, everything they are - it must all be compared to the Jordan standard. Is it something Jordan would do? Jordan would never team up with his greatest rivals. Jordan would never pass the ball in the final moments. Jordan would never subtweet his teammates. Well, he probably would have done that.
In this telling of the story, the city of Cleveland has been wandering through the desert for more than 40 years in search of the Promised Land. In their hearts, they were starting to wander if they would ever get there or if they were forever destined to fall short, the victims of some tragic curse. They couldn't go back and they couldn't go forward. Had they been lied too all this time? Did they live in a world where God kept his promises? Did they live in a world where God even existed?
LeBron leaving Cleveland was Moses abandoning Israel, deciding the only way he could overcome the enemies who were guarding the way to the land of milk and honey was by leading a different people, a people with more money and more cosmopolitan tastes. Or maybe LeBron was just a 26-year old who wanted to live in Miami with his friends for a few years. Then, when he got older and started thinking about where he wanted to raise his kids, he decided to move back home. It's all how you want to look at it.
The ultimate standard for any player is he a guy I will tell my grandkids about? Is he a guy with a timeless game, a game good enough to transcend his era and be passed down as folk tales to people who had never seen him play? MJ, Kobe, LeBron - maybe our grandkids will care about those guys and maybe they won't. We care about Babe Ruth. We don't really care about Jack Johnson. Will their grandkids care? And their grandkids? Soon enough, the basketball players of the NBA become the gladiators of Rome. Who was the best chariot racer in the Byzantine Empire?
What would I ask to the greatest athlete during the reign of Justinian The Great? I don't think I would ask him about his greatest chariot race. I'd probably ask him about how life back then was. Kanye West asked Paul McCartney if pussy tasted different in the 1960's. What is there to ask really? At a certain level, it's all the same. Nothing ever really changes.
The actions of 2015 matter a ton from the perspective of 2050, a good amount from the perspective of 2150 and a small amount from the perspective of 2650. We are a society constantly worried about the judgment of History - we sit in judgment of History and we do not wish to be judged so ourselves. The key fact to remember isn't the fact that History is written from the perspective of the winners. It's that it isn't really written at all. From the perspective of 4150, the actions of the year 2015 might as well not exist. From the perspective of 8000, they won't. Ancient Egypt has a history that stretches back thousands of years. The Jews were slaves in Egypt longer than the United States has been a country.
Maybe global warming or nuclear winter or The Singularity will change everything. People have always looked for signs of the apocalypse. For a society of narcissists, the only thing worse than thinking the world is going to end is knowing that it will keep right on spinning without us. All the world is a stage, everyone is a player and they all have their entrances and their exits. The music cuts, the light comes off, you get gently ushered off the stage and someone else takes your spot. Your entire career becomes a one-minute TV ad.
"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!"
What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go but the Earth remains forever. No one remembers the former generations and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
I denied myself nothing my eyes desired, I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun.
The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise? This too is meaningless. For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered. The days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!
That was written over 2,000 years ago yet it remains as true now as it will be 2,000 years from now. We are only this Earth a short amount of time and nothing we do here really matters. It's all going away one day. Make whatever peace you can with that fact but don't pretend there's some tragic nobility in striving towards an impossible goal. There is no such thing as immortality. Not for athletes. Not for kings. Not for any of us. From dust we came and from dust we shall return.
My name is Oyzmandias, King of Kings: Look upon my works, ye mighty, and Despair!
Friday, February 6, 2015
Kansas State Preview
At Barking Carnival, a look at the struggles Bruce Weber's program is going through.
The Next Danny Green
One of the most intriguing free agents in this year's summer class is Danny Green. He's a huge part of what the Spurs do, but since they will almost certainly have to max out Kawhi Leonard, a huge money offer to Green could put San Antonio in a tough situation financially. He would be a perfect fit on a team like the Mavs, who desperately need three-point shooting and perimeter defense, two things Green provides in spades. He is the quintessential 3-and-D role player, an archetype increasingly in vogue league wide. An elite team almost has to have a few players like Green because of the force multiplier effect they add.
The funny part is that it wasn't too long ago that Green was fighting his way into the league. This is not a lottery pick destined for stardom. Green was the No. 46 pick in the 2009 draft - he spent one season in Cleveland and he bounced around the minor leagues before landing in San Antonio, where he was cut multiple times before slowly earning his way into the organization. This is a guy whom anyone in the NBA could have had. The question becomes is that if he is really that valuable now, are there more guys out like a young Danny Green, waiting for another chance? Why pay full freight for Danny Green when I can get a Danny Green starter kit for 95% off?
When you look at the conventional tools - Green's size (6'6 210 with a 6'10 wingspan), athleticism (he's not Gerald Green) and offensive game (he's never going to be an elite shot-creator, ball-handler or passer) - there's nothing all that extraordinary about him. He's not Kawhi Leonard. You don't find guys like Kawhi floating around the D-League too often. So if there are more Danny Green's out there, where are they? The key is to find guys in a similar situation as Green - guys who didn't get much of a chance to crack a rotation in their first stop in the NBA.
A lot of people will look at Danny Green's story and think that he must have changed his game or re-dedicated his life to Jesus or something to make it back to the NBA. The reality is that he just needed an opportunity. He played 115 minutes in 20 games as a rookie in Cleveland - this was enough for them to tell he wasn't an NBA-caliber player? Of course not. They were just trying to win a title and they had a full roster and they didn't really have time to bring along a younger player, especially one who wasn't projected for stardom. That's something I've been trying to stress a lot in my writing about the draft lately - it is very, very hard to get a "fair shot" in the NBA.
If a team doesn't need you they aren't going to play you and if they don't play you, how will anyone else know how good you are? You think these analysts are trying to go back and through your college days and find out how good a player you are? No. They are going to look at whatever meager statistical outputs you were able to generate in your limited amount of time in the NBA and sit on you in judgment like Commodus in The Gladiator. They have consulted with the formulas. The projections have spoken. The rest is just math.
Unless you are a franchise player type, you are not going to necessarily put in a position to succeed. No team is going to build around you. They are going to throw you in the fire and hope for the best. Even worse, they may just never throw you in at all. If you don't work out, there are 10 more behind you who might.
This is an interesting quote from Paul Flannery's profile on Ryan McDonough, a former Celtics executive who is now GM of the Suns:
Bullock played a little more than Green - 668 minutes in 69 games with LA, most of them in garbage time. There just weren't many opportunities for him to get on the floor, as Doc Rivers continually brought in wave after wave of 30-something veterans to soak up any additional minutes around his stars. Doc, like a lot of player turned coaches, is a firm believer in the power of veteran experience. Ask yourself this - how many teams does Doc Rivers the coach think Doc Rivers the player could have helped? So why wouldn't Doc Rivers the GM look for guys that remind him of Doc Rivers the player? Which player fits most closely to his perception of himself? The wily old veteran with friends throughout the league who Doc knows he can trust? Or the young guy who makes a ton of mental mistakes and hasn't paid his dues? Doc paid his dues. These young guys can too.
Most people focus on minutes per game, points per game and wins and losses, but here are the numbers with Bullock that interest me:
1) He is 37 for 113 from 3 (32.7%) in the NBA.
2) He shot 38% from 3 in his sophomore season at UNC and 43% from 3 as a junior.
3) He is 6'7 200 with a 6'9 wingspan and he has a max vertical of 36.5 inches.
This is a guy who needs a chance, but it's not going to be any easier for him to get one in Phoenix. The Suns are just racking up talent, in large part because McDonough is finding free money on the ground all around him. He keeps picking it up because why not. The only thing he had to give up to get Bullock is Shavlik Randolph. All he had to do to get Eric Bledsoe was move along Caron Butler and Jared Dudley.
If Bullock is going to get minutes, he will have to find his way through this logjam on the perimeter:
PG - Eric Bledsoe, Isaiah Thomas, Tyler Ennis
SG - Goran Dragic, Gerald Green, Archie Goodwin
SF - PJ Tucker, Marcus Morris, TJ Warren
Where I would differ from most people is that if Bullock doesn't get much of a chance in Phoenix, I still wouldn't be ready to write him off. Why? Because I'm looking at his tools and wondering whether they will translate to his stats. Most people are looking at his stats and coming to conclusions about his tools.
It's really a matter of Bayesian probability. What that means is that by the time guys come into the NBA, I already have a long list of things I believe to be true about them. I have watched them in college and I have covered them in the draft process, where I'm really focusing on what their tools are. How big is this guy? How fast is this guy? Is he a good shooter? Is he a good passer? Can he create his own shot? Can he defend an NBA position? Etc. etc. That's where the disconnect exists between those who "watch the game" and those who rely on stats. If you aren't watching for the right things, it doesn't really matter. If you are watching for the wrong things, it would be better (from an analytical POV) if you didn't watch the game at all and just relied on the stats.
As a result, I'm going to take the first few years of their data in the NBA with a huge grain of salt, whereas most people who only watch the NBA are going to look at that data as the only data worth having about a player. That's why I can look at the same data about a young player and come to a radically different conclusion than a lot of the conventional wisdom.
Which brings us to another young player who I have been tracking for well over 5 years, who I think just needs to go play for a coach who believes in him - Jeremy Lamb. My man has been pretty unfairly villified since the second he came into the NBA because of his involvement in the James Harden trade, which many observers found to be personally offensive on some level. How dare the Thunder trade away one of the best players in the NBA for a bunch of unproven young players!? These young guys better be good because if they are not we are going to roast Sam Presti & Co. Lamb, since he has not been able to carve out a consistent spot in the rotation is OKC, is ipso facto a bust and a failure. The guy just can't get it done. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Let's play a game. Here are the per-36 minute statistics of a few players this season. You tell me who is playing better.
Player A: 16.4 points, 5.9 rebounds, 2.7 assists on 1.5 turnovers and 1.3 steals on 41.6% shooting, 36% from 3
Player B: 14.8 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.9 assists on 1.9 turnovers and 1.9 steals on 38.7% shooting, 27.7% from 3
Player C: 6.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists on 1.3 turnovers, 1.4 steals and 0.9 blocks on 45% shooting, 21.6% from 3
Player A is Jeremy Lamb. Player B is Dion Waiters. Player C is Andre Roberson.
Now you can spin those numbers any way you want, but those are the only numbers the players have any actual control over. They don't control minutes per game or points per game - that's entirely on the whims of the coach. When a team is winning games, it's hard to criticize the coach for his rotation decisions. When the team isn't winning games, you would think the coach would try to look at what's happening on the floor and see if there are any adjustments on the bench. I don't see Scott Brooks doing that.
Whenever I watch OKC, I see a team that looks stuck in the mud in offense and has to work really hard to score points when KD and Russ aren't isolating and scoring at will. Maybe Waiters (doubtful) and Roberson (probable) are that much better on D that Brooks has no choice but to play them, but when your team is rated No. 18 on O and No. 9 on D, maybe he's looking for answers on the wrong side of the ball? What he doesn't seem to understand is that a bad offense can have consequences on your defense. If the other team doesn't have to guard Andre Roberson and they have an easier time getting stops, that allows them to get out in transition, where they will always have an easier time scoring than against a set defense in the half-court. It's hard to push the ball when you are inbounding it from under your own basket.
Most people will look at Lamb's lack of playing time and OKC's struggle to score and ask what the hell is wrong with him. I look at Lamb's lack of playing time, OKC's struggle to score and his consistent per-minute production and wonder what the hell is wrong with his coach.
Here's the important thing to remember about Lamb - he can't make Scott Brooks play him. When he's on the floor, the only thing he can control is how he plays. The big knock on him with a lot of OKC fans is that he's not consistent ... but he has been consistently better than Dion Waiters whenever he has played so what exactly is he supposed to do?
Scott Brooks reminds me a lot of Avery Johnson in that he seems to be constantly searching for ways to justify his own playing career in the way he handles his rotation. Scott Brooks the basketball player didn't have a ton of natural talent and didn't put up huge statistics, but he played REALLY hard and he REALLY wanted to win and etc. etc. etc. So when he sees a player like Lamb with a ton of natural talent who seems to "float" through the game it naturally makes him more upset than when he sees a guy like Roberson with a broken jumper who still plays really hard. How many times did a young Scott Brooks have to swallow his pride and watch a "more talented" younger player who was taken higher in the draft play ahead of him even though he didn't work nearly as hard? When he in charge, things will be different.
When I look at Jeremy Lamb, I see a 22-year old with good athleticism and plus length for his position (6'11 wingspan), whose always been a consistent three-point shooter and whose shown the ability to handle and pass the ball. Whenever he's on the court, he seems to find his way into points, rebounds, assists and steals. I'm fairly confident he's a good basketball player and I don't really hold his inability to convince Scott Brooks of his worth against him. In short, he reminds me a lot of Danny Green in Cleveland.
After all, who was Danny Green before the Spurs gave him a shot? A lot of NBA teams want Danny Green at 27 but they don't want to go through the trouble of developing Danny Green at 23. They want someone else to do it for them and to give them the statistical certainty they so desperately crave. Jeremy Lamb and Reggie Bullock are both younger than Green when he came to San Antonio. If you are looking for a market inefficiency, there it is.
When you look at the conventional tools - Green's size (6'6 210 with a 6'10 wingspan), athleticism (he's not Gerald Green) and offensive game (he's never going to be an elite shot-creator, ball-handler or passer) - there's nothing all that extraordinary about him. He's not Kawhi Leonard. You don't find guys like Kawhi floating around the D-League too often. So if there are more Danny Green's out there, where are they? The key is to find guys in a similar situation as Green - guys who didn't get much of a chance to crack a rotation in their first stop in the NBA.
A lot of people will look at Danny Green's story and think that he must have changed his game or re-dedicated his life to Jesus or something to make it back to the NBA. The reality is that he just needed an opportunity. He played 115 minutes in 20 games as a rookie in Cleveland - this was enough for them to tell he wasn't an NBA-caliber player? Of course not. They were just trying to win a title and they had a full roster and they didn't really have time to bring along a younger player, especially one who wasn't projected for stardom. That's something I've been trying to stress a lot in my writing about the draft lately - it is very, very hard to get a "fair shot" in the NBA.
If a team doesn't need you they aren't going to play you and if they don't play you, how will anyone else know how good you are? You think these analysts are trying to go back and through your college days and find out how good a player you are? No. They are going to look at whatever meager statistical outputs you were able to generate in your limited amount of time in the NBA and sit on you in judgment like Commodus in The Gladiator. They have consulted with the formulas. The projections have spoken. The rest is just math.
The Gods of this world have found you wanting.
Unless you are a franchise player type, you are not going to necessarily put in a position to succeed. No team is going to build around you. They are going to throw you in the fire and hope for the best. Even worse, they may just never throw you in at all. If you don't work out, there are 10 more behind you who might.
This is an interesting quote from Paul Flannery's profile on Ryan McDonough, a former Celtics executive who is now GM of the Suns:
"If a guy is talented enough to be in the NBA, you have to constantly monitor him until he retires," says McDonough. "I’ve heard people say, ‘I don’t want that guy, or he’s not my kind of guy.’ Well, it’s difficult to dismiss somebody with NBA-caliber ability."That quote jumps out even more in the context of the Suns latest move, swooping in on a three-team deal between the Clippers and the Pelicans in order to grab Reggie Bullock, a former UNC SG who had struggled to find minutes on a title contender in his first two seasons in the NBA. Does that sound familiar to anyone?
Bullock played a little more than Green - 668 minutes in 69 games with LA, most of them in garbage time. There just weren't many opportunities for him to get on the floor, as Doc Rivers continually brought in wave after wave of 30-something veterans to soak up any additional minutes around his stars. Doc, like a lot of player turned coaches, is a firm believer in the power of veteran experience. Ask yourself this - how many teams does Doc Rivers the coach think Doc Rivers the player could have helped? So why wouldn't Doc Rivers the GM look for guys that remind him of Doc Rivers the player? Which player fits most closely to his perception of himself? The wily old veteran with friends throughout the league who Doc knows he can trust? Or the young guy who makes a ton of mental mistakes and hasn't paid his dues? Doc paid his dues. These young guys can too.
Most people focus on minutes per game, points per game and wins and losses, but here are the numbers with Bullock that interest me:
1) He is 37 for 113 from 3 (32.7%) in the NBA.
2) He shot 38% from 3 in his sophomore season at UNC and 43% from 3 as a junior.
3) He is 6'7 200 with a 6'9 wingspan and he has a max vertical of 36.5 inches.
This is a guy who needs a chance, but it's not going to be any easier for him to get one in Phoenix. The Suns are just racking up talent, in large part because McDonough is finding free money on the ground all around him. He keeps picking it up because why not. The only thing he had to give up to get Bullock is Shavlik Randolph. All he had to do to get Eric Bledsoe was move along Caron Butler and Jared Dudley.
If Bullock is going to get minutes, he will have to find his way through this logjam on the perimeter:
PG - Eric Bledsoe, Isaiah Thomas, Tyler Ennis
SG - Goran Dragic, Gerald Green, Archie Goodwin
SF - PJ Tucker, Marcus Morris, TJ Warren
Where I would differ from most people is that if Bullock doesn't get much of a chance in Phoenix, I still wouldn't be ready to write him off. Why? Because I'm looking at his tools and wondering whether they will translate to his stats. Most people are looking at his stats and coming to conclusions about his tools.
It's really a matter of Bayesian probability. What that means is that by the time guys come into the NBA, I already have a long list of things I believe to be true about them. I have watched them in college and I have covered them in the draft process, where I'm really focusing on what their tools are. How big is this guy? How fast is this guy? Is he a good shooter? Is he a good passer? Can he create his own shot? Can he defend an NBA position? Etc. etc. That's where the disconnect exists between those who "watch the game" and those who rely on stats. If you aren't watching for the right things, it doesn't really matter. If you are watching for the wrong things, it would be better (from an analytical POV) if you didn't watch the game at all and just relied on the stats.
As a result, I'm going to take the first few years of their data in the NBA with a huge grain of salt, whereas most people who only watch the NBA are going to look at that data as the only data worth having about a player. That's why I can look at the same data about a young player and come to a radically different conclusion than a lot of the conventional wisdom.
Which brings us to another young player who I have been tracking for well over 5 years, who I think just needs to go play for a coach who believes in him - Jeremy Lamb. My man has been pretty unfairly villified since the second he came into the NBA because of his involvement in the James Harden trade, which many observers found to be personally offensive on some level. How dare the Thunder trade away one of the best players in the NBA for a bunch of unproven young players!? These young guys better be good because if they are not we are going to roast Sam Presti & Co. Lamb, since he has not been able to carve out a consistent spot in the rotation is OKC, is ipso facto a bust and a failure. The guy just can't get it done. Nothing to see here. Move along.
add to that the timing of it all, and presti was never gonna get “equal value.” missed on lamb, though. that had to sting his ego a bit.
— Bomani Jones (@bomani_jones) February 5, 2015
Let's play a game. Here are the per-36 minute statistics of a few players this season. You tell me who is playing better.
Player A: 16.4 points, 5.9 rebounds, 2.7 assists on 1.5 turnovers and 1.3 steals on 41.6% shooting, 36% from 3
Player B: 14.8 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.9 assists on 1.9 turnovers and 1.9 steals on 38.7% shooting, 27.7% from 3
Player C: 6.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists on 1.3 turnovers, 1.4 steals and 0.9 blocks on 45% shooting, 21.6% from 3
Player A is Jeremy Lamb. Player B is Dion Waiters. Player C is Andre Roberson.
Now you can spin those numbers any way you want, but those are the only numbers the players have any actual control over. They don't control minutes per game or points per game - that's entirely on the whims of the coach. When a team is winning games, it's hard to criticize the coach for his rotation decisions. When the team isn't winning games, you would think the coach would try to look at what's happening on the floor and see if there are any adjustments on the bench. I don't see Scott Brooks doing that.
Whenever I watch OKC, I see a team that looks stuck in the mud in offense and has to work really hard to score points when KD and Russ aren't isolating and scoring at will. Maybe Waiters (doubtful) and Roberson (probable) are that much better on D that Brooks has no choice but to play them, but when your team is rated No. 18 on O and No. 9 on D, maybe he's looking for answers on the wrong side of the ball? What he doesn't seem to understand is that a bad offense can have consequences on your defense. If the other team doesn't have to guard Andre Roberson and they have an easier time getting stops, that allows them to get out in transition, where they will always have an easier time scoring than against a set defense in the half-court. It's hard to push the ball when you are inbounding it from under your own basket.
Most people will look at Lamb's lack of playing time and OKC's struggle to score and ask what the hell is wrong with him. I look at Lamb's lack of playing time, OKC's struggle to score and his consistent per-minute production and wonder what the hell is wrong with his coach.
How Scott Brooks makes his rotation decisions: pic.twitter.com/BujqLimaK3
— Jonathan Tjarks (@JonathanTjarks) February 5, 2015
Here's the important thing to remember about Lamb - he can't make Scott Brooks play him. When he's on the floor, the only thing he can control is how he plays. The big knock on him with a lot of OKC fans is that he's not consistent ... but he has been consistently better than Dion Waiters whenever he has played so what exactly is he supposed to do?
Scott Brooks reminds me a lot of Avery Johnson in that he seems to be constantly searching for ways to justify his own playing career in the way he handles his rotation. Scott Brooks the basketball player didn't have a ton of natural talent and didn't put up huge statistics, but he played REALLY hard and he REALLY wanted to win and etc. etc. etc. So when he sees a player like Lamb with a ton of natural talent who seems to "float" through the game it naturally makes him more upset than when he sees a guy like Roberson with a broken jumper who still plays really hard. How many times did a young Scott Brooks have to swallow his pride and watch a "more talented" younger player who was taken higher in the draft play ahead of him even though he didn't work nearly as hard? When he in charge, things will be different.
When I look at Jeremy Lamb, I see a 22-year old with good athleticism and plus length for his position (6'11 wingspan), whose always been a consistent three-point shooter and whose shown the ability to handle and pass the ball. Whenever he's on the court, he seems to find his way into points, rebounds, assists and steals. I'm fairly confident he's a good basketball player and I don't really hold his inability to convince Scott Brooks of his worth against him. In short, he reminds me a lot of Danny Green in Cleveland.
After all, who was Danny Green before the Spurs gave him a shot? A lot of NBA teams want Danny Green at 27 but they don't want to go through the trouble of developing Danny Green at 23. They want someone else to do it for them and to give them the statistical certainty they so desperately crave. Jeremy Lamb and Reggie Bullock are both younger than Green when he came to San Antonio. If you are looking for a market inefficiency, there it is.
Justise Winslow vs. Justin Anderson
At The Cauldron, a look at a match-up of two of the best wing players in the ACC.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Bill Self
At RealGM, a look at the underlying reason why he is in line to win his 11th straight Big 12 championship.
Monday, February 2, 2015
The Big Board Problem
Not too long ago, a few Redditors doing the Lord's work noticed Chad Ford's big boards on ESPN Insider changing retroactively. There was a ghost in the machine, moving players who had done well in the NBA up his draft boards and knocking down guys who had done poorly. Just like that, Ford has been on Giannis the whole time, putting him at No. 9 despite his lack of a track record either at the club level or in major international tournaments. It was history in Soviet Russia all over again, with enemies of the state wiped from the record books as if they had never even existed.
The difference is no one actually cared whether Ford nailed all of his picks on the Big Board. It just doesn't make a lot of sense - is the reward of a negligible improvement to your reputation worth the risk of being discovered as someone who doesn't have the integrity to stand by your predictions? Nor has ESPN been very forthcoming. All they have told us is that A) Ford denies doing it and B) they have no way to know who changed the rankings. Ford has made no public comments about the controversy and he has continued writing articles as if nothing had happened.
The message is clear. Nothing to see here, move along. I would love to hear Ford's side of the story, but my guess is we never will. Here's why - no matter what he says, it would look really, really bad for ESPN. Since we know for a fact the rankings were altered by someone within the organization, there are only three things he could say.
A moment of weakness becomes an addiction, a compulsive habit that he can't break despite the insane risks he was taking? Or perhaps he thought he couldn't be caught? He has been around long enough he might not realize how much the internet has changed. Did the Way Way Back Machine exist when he first started covering the draft?
The problem with admitting this is that it destroys his credibility as a reporter. If he is willing to lie on something so small purely out of a sense of vanity, how can we trust him not to lie on other things he is writing? Most of his job is quoting people anonymously. Who knows what people are really saying to him? How could we ever check? If we aren't taking Chad Ford at his word, there's really no reason to ever listen to anything he says. That's what I keep coming back too - the risk/reward for pulling anything like this is totally out of whack. Stephen Glass was pushing an agenda and Jayson Blair was too lazy to actually do any reporting. Ford has been doing the work. Why put his job and his reputation on the line?
Then I saw this report in Deadspin:
3) Did someone above Chad Ford edit his rankings?
Here's the other way to ask that question - just how far does the rabbit hole go? This is the point in the story where the trail goes cold. If there's a conspiracy, there's no incentive for anyone within the conspiracy to talk. Unless we are going to go all Woodward and Bernstein on ESPN, there's really no way for any of us to find out. When you try to make sense of it, all you are left with is the final scene in Burn After Reading.
It's a Schrodinger's Cat problem. Either A) Ford did it or B) one of his bosses did it, but you have no way to collapse the equation and find out. You don't want to operate as if either one is true because you want to believe the best out of A and B.
Like most under-30 basketball writers, I grew up reading Chad Ford. I want to believe him. I have never met him, but he seems like a nice enough guy.
Conversely, if higher-ups at ESPN are doing this and then letting their employees take the fall in the public eye .... what is there to say? Everyone at the media wants to work for ESPN. They are the Evil Empire. They have all the money. They are one of the only organizations still hiring. In the world of sports media, they are holding every key and guarding every door. In essence, you either play ball with ESPN or you become an un-person.
There's only one way to collapse the equation. Ask yourself this question - does it even matter who changed the rankings? Whenever there is a breakdown in a large bureaucracy, when some of the dirt that happens behind closed doors slips into the public eye, there's always a rush to find a scapegoat. Who is responsible? Who is abusing their authority? Where are the bad apples and how do we get rid of them? Maybe the problem isn't any of the players in the bureaucracy. Maybe the problem is the bureaucracy itself.
That was the theme of The Wire. In David Simon's telling, our institutions - whether it's the police force, the education system, the newspaper or your friendly local neighborhood crack gang - are the Greek Gods of our era, hurdling down thunderbolts and immune to any of our efforts to reform them. In his version of Baltimore, it wouldn't matter if you changed every detective and every teacher and every politician and every newspaper reporter. The system itself would keep on going on. McNulty becomes Sidnour, Avon becomes Marlo, Omar becomes Mike, Bubbs becomes Dukie, Royce becomes Carcetti.
ESPN wants you to focus on whether or not Ford has enough integrity to do his job for the same reason they want you to focus on whether or not Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith have finally crossed the line on First Take. It's the same reason the NFL wants you to worry about whether or not Roger Goodell lied about Ray Rice. If only we had a good commissioner, the media tells us, if only we had a strong commissioner who could investigate these things further, then we would have some justice in the NFL. Down with Goodell! Can't the owners see what a terrible job he is doing?
Of course, the converse of that question is whether the owners would even want someone who is more "effective" than Goodell in office. Would Robert Kraft really be fine with Adam Silver grilling every member of the Patriots organization up and down about Deflategate? Or would he rather have someone who isn't going to ask the tough questions, someone who knows when to back off without even having to be asked? Why do you think Goodell is being paid $45 million dollars? To do his job or not to do his job?
The question isn't whether or not Skip Bayless is an asshole. If Skip Bayless didn't exist, ESPN would have had to invent him. Which is funny because that's basically what they did. Without ESPN, Skip is a local sports columnist trying to fill the airtime on his 3-hour call-in radio show. Without ESPN, Chad Ford is a college professor in Hawaii who likes to watch a lot of college basketball. If someone else took their jobs, would it really look all that different? If ESPN Insider needs their NBA Draft expert to generate a lot of subscriptions, he had better be accurate.
Here's a thought experiment to illustrate Ford's dilemma. Let's make a Big Board of the 2011 draft and compare it to where guys were actually drafted:
1. Kawhi Leonard (No. 15)
2. Klay Thompson (No. 11)
3. Kyrie Irving (No. 1)
4. Jimmy Butler (No. 30)
5. Jonas Valanciunas (No. 5)
6. Nik Vucevic (No. 16)
7. Tobias Harris (No. 19)
8. Markieff Morris (No. 13)
9. Kenneth Faried (No. 22)
10. Chandler Parsons (No. 38)
11. Brandon Knight (No. 9)
12. Kemba Walker (No. 8)
13. Donatas Motiejunas (No. 20)
14. Nikola Mirotic (No. 23)
15. Reggie Jackson (No. 26)
16. Alec Burks (No. 13)
17. Enes Kanter (No. 3)
18. Tristan Thompson (No. 4)
19. Marcus Morris (No. 14)
20. Iman Shumpert (No. 17)
For starters, NBA teams clearly haven't figured out all there is to know about the draft. This is not an easy thing to do.
I'm not saying this is in anyway the definitive list. If you put a gun to my head, this isn't the list I would make, but that isn't the point. Make your own list and you will start to see how difficult an exercise this is. What are we judging on? What they have done in the last 4 years or what they will do in the next 4 years? Is there even a difference? Tobias Harris is still only 22 years old. Nikola Mirotic is in his first season in the NBA. Are we really ready to put a ceiling on their game? How will this list look a year from now?
A year ago, not many people would have Klay at No. 2 or Jimmy B at No. 4. A year from now, maybe Kyrie is the 2nd wheel on the defending champs. Maybe Reggie Jackson goes to New York and becomes an All-Star. Maybe Terrence Jones never stays healthy and Donatas Motiejunas develops into a 15-8 player on a championship contender or maybe Jones gets his starting job back and D-Mo starts bouncing around the NBA as a shooting PF who comes off the bench. Always in motion is the future.
For that matter, what are we even ranking anyway? Is Markieff Morris a better player than Jonas Valanciunas or Brandon Knight? Would I want the two-way shooting PF, the solid young C who isn't elite at any one thing or the first option PG who needs to be hid on defense? Well, it would probably depend on the rest of my roster. That's like trying to compare a FS with a LT or a QB with an OLB. These guys play completely different positions and they have completely different responsibilities so there's really no way to say definitively which one you would want on your team. Then people will say - what about in a vacuum? So we are speaking hypothetically? How exactly are we supposed to come to a resolution on hypothetical arguments?
What is #NBARank if not an attempt to create a Big Board for the entire NBA? Does anyone feel super proud of what we've done with that? Besides the people whose job it is to boost the number of clicks that ESPN's NBA section gets?
I could talk about the problems with NBA Rank all day, but in the interests of time, let's go with the Kevin Love example. What's Kevin Love's NBA Rank when he is the primary option in Minnesota? What's his NBA Rank when he is the third option in Cleveland? Do you ever wonder if there are players in the NCAA who are stuck in a Kevin Love in Cleveland situation? Look at how Chris Bosh's numbers have gone up now that he is not on a super-team in Miami. John Calipari builds a super-team at Kentucky every year.
Furthermore, if we can't come to a consensus on grown men who we have more than a decade's worth of data on at the highest levels of the sport, how exactly are we supposed to do the same exercise for 18-19 years olds with 1-2 years worth of statistics in vastly different situations, all of whom are still growing on and off the court into the players and the people they will become?
If you did a Big Board of each draft class at the end of every season in the NBA, how long would it take until things finally started to shake out? Year 4? Year 5? Year 6? A lot of guys are coming into the league at 18-19-20 and not peaking until they are 26-27 years old. I'm not sure you would have a 100% solid consensus until Year 8-9-10.
So what are we to do? Is there any way to sift out the pieces of gold from all the dirt that is caught in the wash?
What you want to do is look for the things that hold constant over time, that don't change every season as young players get new teammates and new coaches and get put into new roles on new teams at different levels of the game. How big is he? How tall is he? How long are are his arms? How well can he shoot the ball? How well can he dribble? How does his handle hold up against ball pressure? Can he run off screens and consistently knock down catch-and-shoot jumpers? What type of defense can he play? Does he have the speed to hang with NBA players on the perimeter? The size to play with them at the front of the rim? In short, what are his tools?
Tools change over time, but they change at a much slower rate. Guys don't just become great jump-shooters - that takes a ton of dedication and a ton of work and possibly some luck. There are some guys who work their asses off at trying to be a better shooter and it never happens for them. It's the same when it comes to handling the ball, reading the floor, defending a position at an NBA level and having a nose for the basketball on the glass.
In the stock market, this would be called investing on the fundamentals. That's what Warren Buffet does. When you have as much money as Warren Buffet, you aren't really thinking short when it comes to the market. You are thinking real long. You are trying to make the long term play based on the underlying assets of a given corporation, the type of market they are in and the demand for the product they are selling over the next decade.
Say what you want about how Chad Ford covers the NBA draft, but I think we can all agree that he doesn't cover it like Warren Buffet. Whose stock is up? Whose stock is down? Will the big game change how we view a prospect? Did the big game change how we view a prospect? What are the latest rumors? Who likes a guy? Who doesn't like a guy? If you follow every twist and turn of the NBA draft board, guys are going from underrated to overrated to back to underrated in the span of a few months.
Does Warren Buffet need 7 mock drafts between when the season ends in March and the draft happens in June? The information isn't changing. The data is there and you can make of it what you will. All that's changing is the amount of noise around it.
Here's a fun game - try to be the Chad Ford of your fantasy league next season. See how well that goes over. No one really wants to give away their draft strategy. If everyone knew what they were going to do, they would have to change it. More importantly, the draft is a chaotic system - a butterfly flaps its wings and halfway across the world starts a hurricane etc. All it takes is for one team at the top of the draft to make an unexpected pick and the entire dynamic changes. If Chad Ford was given the chance to predict who a team would take right before they made the pick, he would do pretty well. Cleveland stuns everyone and takes Anthony Bennett at No. 1 and the entire thing is fucked. Think of all the man hours it took to assemble all those mock drafts and you could throw them out 5 minutes after the draft started.
All that chatter, all those web chats, all those Sportscenter hits, all those feature tabs on the home page on ESPN with every rumor, it was all a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There's only so much you can learn from covering the draft that way. There's only so much you can learn from covering anything that way.
This is a lot funnier if you pretend it's Louis CK doing a bit.
It's just like Bernie Madoff. Why does anyone cook the books? Because they don't have confidence in the product they are selling. That's the thing you have to understand about making a Big Board. The only way to get the questions right is to fill them in after you see the answers.
The difference is no one actually cared whether Ford nailed all of his picks on the Big Board. It just doesn't make a lot of sense - is the reward of a negligible improvement to your reputation worth the risk of being discovered as someone who doesn't have the integrity to stand by your predictions? Nor has ESPN been very forthcoming. All they have told us is that A) Ford denies doing it and B) they have no way to know who changed the rankings. Ford has made no public comments about the controversy and he has continued writing articles as if nothing had happened.
The message is clear. Nothing to see here, move along. I would love to hear Ford's side of the story, but my guess is we never will. Here's why - no matter what he says, it would look really, really bad for ESPN. Since we know for a fact the rankings were altered by someone within the organization, there are only three things he could say.
1) Someone below him did it without his knowledge.
So chad ford is arguing for the existence of friendly secret helper gnomes who sneak around and make you look better without you knowing?
— jay caspian kang (@jaycaspiankang) January 26, 2015
2) He did it.A moment of weakness becomes an addiction, a compulsive habit that he can't break despite the insane risks he was taking? Or perhaps he thought he couldn't be caught? He has been around long enough he might not realize how much the internet has changed. Did the Way Way Back Machine exist when he first started covering the draft?
The problem with admitting this is that it destroys his credibility as a reporter. If he is willing to lie on something so small purely out of a sense of vanity, how can we trust him not to lie on other things he is writing? Most of his job is quoting people anonymously. Who knows what people are really saying to him? How could we ever check? If we aren't taking Chad Ford at his word, there's really no reason to ever listen to anything he says. That's what I keep coming back too - the risk/reward for pulling anything like this is totally out of whack. Stephen Glass was pushing an agenda and Jayson Blair was too lazy to actually do any reporting. Ford has been doing the work. Why put his job and his reputation on the line?
Then I saw this report in Deadspin:
That means just about anyone, including Chad Ford, could have modified his rankings without leaving a trail. The motivation? As an ESPN Insider writer, Chad Ford has significant incentive to have his track record be—or merely appear to be—as accurate as possible. While to casual fans this sort of prognostication may seem silly and a waste of time, to industry experts and hardcore NBA wonks the best predictions are worth the money, and we're told Chad Ford drives a lot of ESPN's Insider revenue. [emphasis added] That would make it worth the while of anyone with a vested interest in Insider's success to tamper with Ford's records.If Chad Ford is going to say he didn't do it, that leaves only one explanation for how the rankings were changed. And you can see why he won't be allowed to give that explanation.
3) Did someone above Chad Ford edit his rankings?
Here's the other way to ask that question - just how far does the rabbit hole go? This is the point in the story where the trail goes cold. If there's a conspiracy, there's no incentive for anyone within the conspiracy to talk. Unless we are going to go all Woodward and Bernstein on ESPN, there's really no way for any of us to find out. When you try to make sense of it, all you are left with is the final scene in Burn After Reading.
It's a Schrodinger's Cat problem. Either A) Ford did it or B) one of his bosses did it, but you have no way to collapse the equation and find out. You don't want to operate as if either one is true because you want to believe the best out of A and B.
Like most under-30 basketball writers, I grew up reading Chad Ford. I want to believe him. I have never met him, but he seems like a nice enough guy.
Conversely, if higher-ups at ESPN are doing this and then letting their employees take the fall in the public eye .... what is there to say? Everyone at the media wants to work for ESPN. They are the Evil Empire. They have all the money. They are one of the only organizations still hiring. In the world of sports media, they are holding every key and guarding every door. In essence, you either play ball with ESPN or you become an un-person.
There's only one way to collapse the equation. Ask yourself this question - does it even matter who changed the rankings? Whenever there is a breakdown in a large bureaucracy, when some of the dirt that happens behind closed doors slips into the public eye, there's always a rush to find a scapegoat. Who is responsible? Who is abusing their authority? Where are the bad apples and how do we get rid of them? Maybe the problem isn't any of the players in the bureaucracy. Maybe the problem is the bureaucracy itself.
That was the theme of The Wire. In David Simon's telling, our institutions - whether it's the police force, the education system, the newspaper or your friendly local neighborhood crack gang - are the Greek Gods of our era, hurdling down thunderbolts and immune to any of our efforts to reform them. In his version of Baltimore, it wouldn't matter if you changed every detective and every teacher and every politician and every newspaper reporter. The system itself would keep on going on. McNulty becomes Sidnour, Avon becomes Marlo, Omar becomes Mike, Bubbs becomes Dukie, Royce becomes Carcetti.
ESPN wants you to focus on whether or not Ford has enough integrity to do his job for the same reason they want you to focus on whether or not Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith have finally crossed the line on First Take. It's the same reason the NFL wants you to worry about whether or not Roger Goodell lied about Ray Rice. If only we had a good commissioner, the media tells us, if only we had a strong commissioner who could investigate these things further, then we would have some justice in the NFL. Down with Goodell! Can't the owners see what a terrible job he is doing?
Of course, the converse of that question is whether the owners would even want someone who is more "effective" than Goodell in office. Would Robert Kraft really be fine with Adam Silver grilling every member of the Patriots organization up and down about Deflategate? Or would he rather have someone who isn't going to ask the tough questions, someone who knows when to back off without even having to be asked? Why do you think Goodell is being paid $45 million dollars? To do his job or not to do his job?
Does Goodell think he should take a pay cut? "That's up to the owners. They evaluate my compensation every year. I don't argue."
— Manish Mehta (@MMehtaNYDN) January 30, 2015
Translation: I'll take anyone's money if they just GIVING it away.
The question isn't whether or not Skip Bayless is an asshole. If Skip Bayless didn't exist, ESPN would have had to invent him. Which is funny because that's basically what they did. Without ESPN, Skip is a local sports columnist trying to fill the airtime on his 3-hour call-in radio show. Without ESPN, Chad Ford is a college professor in Hawaii who likes to watch a lot of college basketball. If someone else took their jobs, would it really look all that different? If ESPN Insider needs their NBA Draft expert to generate a lot of subscriptions, he had better be accurate.
An actor reading a script.
Here's a thought experiment to illustrate Ford's dilemma. Let's make a Big Board of the 2011 draft and compare it to where guys were actually drafted:
1. Kawhi Leonard (No. 15)
2. Klay Thompson (No. 11)
3. Kyrie Irving (No. 1)
4. Jimmy Butler (No. 30)
5. Jonas Valanciunas (No. 5)
6. Nik Vucevic (No. 16)
7. Tobias Harris (No. 19)
8. Markieff Morris (No. 13)
9. Kenneth Faried (No. 22)
10. Chandler Parsons (No. 38)
11. Brandon Knight (No. 9)
12. Kemba Walker (No. 8)
13. Donatas Motiejunas (No. 20)
14. Nikola Mirotic (No. 23)
15. Reggie Jackson (No. 26)
16. Alec Burks (No. 13)
17. Enes Kanter (No. 3)
18. Tristan Thompson (No. 4)
19. Marcus Morris (No. 14)
20. Iman Shumpert (No. 17)
For starters, NBA teams clearly haven't figured out all there is to know about the draft. This is not an easy thing to do.
I'm not saying this is in anyway the definitive list. If you put a gun to my head, this isn't the list I would make, but that isn't the point. Make your own list and you will start to see how difficult an exercise this is. What are we judging on? What they have done in the last 4 years or what they will do in the next 4 years? Is there even a difference? Tobias Harris is still only 22 years old. Nikola Mirotic is in his first season in the NBA. Are we really ready to put a ceiling on their game? How will this list look a year from now?
A year ago, not many people would have Klay at No. 2 or Jimmy B at No. 4. A year from now, maybe Kyrie is the 2nd wheel on the defending champs. Maybe Reggie Jackson goes to New York and becomes an All-Star. Maybe Terrence Jones never stays healthy and Donatas Motiejunas develops into a 15-8 player on a championship contender or maybe Jones gets his starting job back and D-Mo starts bouncing around the NBA as a shooting PF who comes off the bench. Always in motion is the future.
For that matter, what are we even ranking anyway? Is Markieff Morris a better player than Jonas Valanciunas or Brandon Knight? Would I want the two-way shooting PF, the solid young C who isn't elite at any one thing or the first option PG who needs to be hid on defense? Well, it would probably depend on the rest of my roster. That's like trying to compare a FS with a LT or a QB with an OLB. These guys play completely different positions and they have completely different responsibilities so there's really no way to say definitively which one you would want on your team. Then people will say - what about in a vacuum? So we are speaking hypothetically? How exactly are we supposed to come to a resolution on hypothetical arguments?
What is #NBARank if not an attempt to create a Big Board for the entire NBA? Does anyone feel super proud of what we've done with that? Besides the people whose job it is to boost the number of clicks that ESPN's NBA section gets?
I could talk about the problems with NBA Rank all day, but in the interests of time, let's go with the Kevin Love example. What's Kevin Love's NBA Rank when he is the primary option in Minnesota? What's his NBA Rank when he is the third option in Cleveland? Do you ever wonder if there are players in the NCAA who are stuck in a Kevin Love in Cleveland situation? Look at how Chris Bosh's numbers have gone up now that he is not on a super-team in Miami. John Calipari builds a super-team at Kentucky every year.
Furthermore, if we can't come to a consensus on grown men who we have more than a decade's worth of data on at the highest levels of the sport, how exactly are we supposed to do the same exercise for 18-19 years olds with 1-2 years worth of statistics in vastly different situations, all of whom are still growing on and off the court into the players and the people they will become?
If you did a Big Board of each draft class at the end of every season in the NBA, how long would it take until things finally started to shake out? Year 4? Year 5? Year 6? A lot of guys are coming into the league at 18-19-20 and not peaking until they are 26-27 years old. I'm not sure you would have a 100% solid consensus until Year 8-9-10.
So what are we to do? Is there any way to sift out the pieces of gold from all the dirt that is caught in the wash?
What you want to do is look for the things that hold constant over time, that don't change every season as young players get new teammates and new coaches and get put into new roles on new teams at different levels of the game. How big is he? How tall is he? How long are are his arms? How well can he shoot the ball? How well can he dribble? How does his handle hold up against ball pressure? Can he run off screens and consistently knock down catch-and-shoot jumpers? What type of defense can he play? Does he have the speed to hang with NBA players on the perimeter? The size to play with them at the front of the rim? In short, what are his tools?
Tools change over time, but they change at a much slower rate. Guys don't just become great jump-shooters - that takes a ton of dedication and a ton of work and possibly some luck. There are some guys who work their asses off at trying to be a better shooter and it never happens for them. It's the same when it comes to handling the ball, reading the floor, defending a position at an NBA level and having a nose for the basketball on the glass.
In the stock market, this would be called investing on the fundamentals. That's what Warren Buffet does. When you have as much money as Warren Buffet, you aren't really thinking short when it comes to the market. You are thinking real long. You are trying to make the long term play based on the underlying assets of a given corporation, the type of market they are in and the demand for the product they are selling over the next decade.
Mr. Large Sample Size
Say what you want about how Chad Ford covers the NBA draft, but I think we can all agree that he doesn't cover it like Warren Buffet. Whose stock is up? Whose stock is down? Will the big game change how we view a prospect? Did the big game change how we view a prospect? What are the latest rumors? Who likes a guy? Who doesn't like a guy? If you follow every twist and turn of the NBA draft board, guys are going from underrated to overrated to back to underrated in the span of a few months.
Does Warren Buffet need 7 mock drafts between when the season ends in March and the draft happens in June? The information isn't changing. The data is there and you can make of it what you will. All that's changing is the amount of noise around it.
Here's a fun game - try to be the Chad Ford of your fantasy league next season. See how well that goes over. No one really wants to give away their draft strategy. If everyone knew what they were going to do, they would have to change it. More importantly, the draft is a chaotic system - a butterfly flaps its wings and halfway across the world starts a hurricane etc. All it takes is for one team at the top of the draft to make an unexpected pick and the entire dynamic changes. If Chad Ford was given the chance to predict who a team would take right before they made the pick, he would do pretty well. Cleveland stuns everyone and takes Anthony Bennett at No. 1 and the entire thing is fucked. Think of all the man hours it took to assemble all those mock drafts and you could throw them out 5 minutes after the draft started.
All that chatter, all those web chats, all those Sportscenter hits, all those feature tabs on the home page on ESPN with every rumor, it was all a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There's only so much you can learn from covering the draft that way. There's only so much you can learn from covering anything that way.
This is a lot funnier if you pretend it's Louis CK doing a bit.
It's just like Bernie Madoff. Why does anyone cook the books? Because they don't have confidence in the product they are selling. That's the thing you have to understand about making a Big Board. The only way to get the questions right is to fill them in after you see the answers.
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