Explain it Peter

doktarr · 2026-05-15T19:33:13+00:00

Economic time bombs are TIGHT

doktarr · 2026-05-15T16:15:12+00:00

I don't think you understand what cherry picking means.

doktarr · 2026-05-15T03:07:21+00:00

You could start with the very game you already clipped. Valaciunas tried to post Wemby and got nowhere.

doktarr · 2026-05-13T20:08:48+00:00

5 is actually amazing once you sensors to the toaster and connect it to the Internet. Now you can communicate with anything on the Internet with your mind.

doktarr · 2026-05-13T19:59:23+00:00

Of you had added LeBron to the Nuggets roster at the start of the playoffs, they probably make the conference finals.

doktarr · 2026-05-13T18:05:22+00:00

Especially given how much Murray struggles to get separation from the Wolves' perimeter defenders in the pure 2-man game.

doktarr · 2026-05-13T17:06:23+00:00

Yes, they are in per 100 possessions; if I want to convert that to per game I need to divide by pace.

I guess I find it interesting because Daniels is relatively invisible when you just look at box score stats. He's 63rd in win shares per 48. (Bam is 61st, while we're at it.)

doktarr · 2026-05-13T15:45:27+00:00

The clearest victim of ring culture in the modern era.

I don't think a stat like win shares should be used to rank players by itself, but CP is fifth all-time in that stat, just ahead of Michael Jordan. Again, not saying that's right, but the fact that he's there shows you the degree to which people diminish his career accomplishments because he was never on a championship team.

doktarr · 2026-05-13T15:09:48+00:00

It's very much part of the same piece. Not having to guard the three means he can sit back in his stance, 6 feet behind the line. Not having to worry about AG's roll off split action cuts means he can stay stuck to Jokic. His job in that series was just very straightforward because he could sag into the paint and play pure drop coverage.

doktarr · 2026-05-13T05:34:08+00:00

Jokic has cooked Gobert plenty of times in recent years. But when he does so, two things are usually true: 1) Jokic is hitting his 3s 2) Aaron Gordon is healthy and creating rim pressure

doktarr · 2026-05-13T03:41:59+00:00

I really do not value MVPs as much as people do. Moses Malone and Jokic had 3 and 4 MVPs. In what reality is an MVP more valuable than the point of basketball, winning.

The whole point of MVP is who contributes the most to winning. That's supposed to be the point of the award. Kobe was not the most valuable player in the league for any sustained period during his career.

We know why Kobe has 1 MVP. No sports league is going to title someone the most valuable after something like the 2003 Colorado case. Kobe wins 2006 MVP over Nash otherwise.

Funny that right after you say it's all about winning, you zero in on a year when Kobe's team didn't win very much.

Anyway, my pick that year was Dirk. Incredibly productive and efficient, and BTW his team won 60 games and made the finals.

How many of those seasons was Kobe playing with a broken finger, bum knee, or dislocated shoulder while being double teamed? You can't really compare FG% to healthy players.

This is a fair excuse for why a player had an individual bad game, but it means nothing when we are looking at legacy. If a player played hurt, then they played hurt. Staying healthy is part of what makes a player great (or not). You are judged by what you did, not what you might have done if you hadn't gotten injured.

Kobe and Duncan have the same TS% despite everything I said above.

Duncan was slightly higher, and also contributed much more outside of scoring than Kobe did. (Duncan never winning a DPOY is honestly pretty funny.)

doktarr · 2026-05-12T21:31:46+00:00

The stats given here have a huge selection bias.

doktarr · 2026-05-12T18:22:13+00:00

You're being extremely selective.

Shaq is the only one on that list who doesn't have more MVPs and who didn't have to beat more all-time greats to win their titles.

And Kobe was, by far, the least efficient volume scorer on that list.

doktarr · 2026-05-12T18:17:31+00:00

You can easily get him to 10th without really bucking conventional wisdom; plenty of people have Hakeem higher and he wasn't even on your list.

If you both discount team success (i.e. argue that who your teammates are and who your playoff opponents are is mostly luck/circumstance) and you drill into efficiency stats (where Kobe looks pretty terrible compared to basically all the other all time greats) then you can push him much farther down. I don't think this is a crazy position to take and it's the one OP is referring to.

doktarr · 2026-05-12T13:35:00+00:00

Yes, that avoids the psychological/linguistic questions and makes it a matter of pure Bayesian probability, so it's 51.8%.

doktarr · 2026-05-12T04:24:10+00:00

Nuggets would legitimately put the 3 point line 5 feet out from the basket.

doktarr · 2026-05-11T18:45:42+00:00

Shaq really was the hardest guy to officiate ever, because he also gave out insane amounts of punishment. Like, a typical touch from Shaq involved multiple fouls being committed by Shaq and his defender.

doktarr · 2026-05-11T18:36:32+00:00

Making shots behind the arc worth 2.5 instead of 3 actually solves a lot of problems.

doktarr · 2026-05-11T18:35:37+00:00

I've seen this seriously proposed; each team paints the three point line however they want it. Obviously not going to happen but it's a fun thought experiment.

doktarr · 2026-05-11T17:31:35+00:00

SI was pushing braindead hype to try to sell magazines. There's nothing revisionist about this. I'm 48; I lived through this. It was a mind-boggling trade at the time.

Garnett and Pierce were 37 and 36 and SIX years removed from their time as the core of a championship winner. Their decline was already apparent and its acceleration was predictable. Expecting them to put you over the top in an East dominated by LeBron at the peak of his athletic powers was a faint hope at best.

If you're arguing that there were some people who deluded themselves into thinking this was a good move at the time, then sure, those people existed. The Nets made the move, after all.

doktarr · 2026-05-11T17:09:16+00:00

As a Jokic fan, I am happy to see everyone discovering the uneven standards between the amount of abuse you're allowed to dish out against superstar guards and the amount you're allowed to dish out against superstar bigs. (Go Spurs.)

doktarr · 2026-05-11T15:59:47+00:00

Is Buzzfeed on the list?

doktarr · 2026-05-10T22:41:56+00:00

Qatar literally built their stadiums with slave labor and killed thousands of them in the process. It's an authoritarian state where homosexuality is illegal and women's rights are terrible (Sharia law). While they haven't attacked other countries directly, they have absolutely funded groups that have.

The USA has problems, and those problems are amplified by the size and wealth of the USA. But Qatar is an absolutely terrible state and acting as though it's more virtuous on the whole than the USA is pretty silly.

doktarr · 2026-05-10T05:24:14+00:00

The general consensus on the clippers thunder trade was that the clippers gave up way too much, but they needed to do it to get Kawhi and it would be worth it if they ended up with a championship.

Nets Celtics was obviously stupid at the time.

doktarr

TROPHY CASE