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Re: Leo Papile's math?

At 11:48 PM 7/26/02 +0200, hironaka@nomade.fr wrote:

Can anyone, Kim Malo perhaps, deconstruct what Leo Papile
said yesterday in the papers, which the Herald's Mark
Cofman bought hook, line + sinker?

The more Leo speaks these days, the more I feel like
maybe we're being sold a used car instead of a
ballplayer. Sometimes, he really does take fans to be
fairly stupid.
Silly Leo, trying to fool us by using calculus to find the differential when anyone who knows math can see it should be algebra to show which A you need to add to B to get a desireable C <g> Sigh. Yeah, I agree. I hate attempted cons like that mainly because of the implication that I'm too dumb to see the fallacy in the slick pseudo reasoning.


http://www.bostonherald.com/sport/celtics/cs07252002.htm
``Yes, we're picking up $56 million, but we're giving
away $30 million in the deal,'' said Papile, referring to
the collective money owed Anderson, Potapenko and Forte
on the remainder of their contracts. ``Over the four-year
period it'll cost us about $7 million per year to have
Vin here over the first three years, then about $4.7
(million in the final year). So we take on an extra $26
million (over four years) for a starting center who can
also play power forward. What you have to take into
account is how much a starting center costs in this
league and then do the math."

***

As spin goes, the 26 million seems "close enough", but
the rest of it sounds invented in thin air (although I'm
no cap expert). Am I wrong in saying this?
Yes and no. The core problem is that he's arguing from the general to the particular (sorry, I took a ton of logic courses when I went to college) by taking cumulative effect (the 26 MM net contract commitment difference) for comparison when the real important effect is year to year, because not all the parts of that 26MM are the same each year and that's when other factors such as cap change, as you illustrate below. Then he compounds that by going back to that cumulative effect - the 26 million- and just averaging it to create a pseudo year to year effect to cover that. Problem is that it's not the real life year to year effect and averages only work well as substitutes for reality with large enough populations of data, which this isn't.


According to my rough math, it goes:

2002-3 One million in savings
2003-4 (6 million more against cap)
2004-5 (8.4 million more)
2005-6 (15.75 million more)
-----------------------------
He's not wrong in the sense that he's making things up entirely, but it's definitely a partial truth about the situation intentionally warped for a positive spin. IMO analogous to the people who would just harp on Walker's ppg and ignore things like the missed shots, turnovers, disruption to offensive flow etc it took to get them. Even Walker's figured out that one doesn't work, by the changes he began to make this past year. Although I also suspect it's the sort of math Leo learned to use to get people to help fund his AAU league despite themselves.


The hard part, of course is that Antoine Walker is free
in the summer of 04-05.

He'll be 28 by then, and we'll probably need a brand new
owner by then to re-sign him or get back the same value
in a sign-and-trade. Otherwise he's likely gone, even
though Baker's 15.75 million finally clears the books
just 12 months later.

Its not impossible to re-sign Walker. It would be a
distortion to say that the Baker signing means we lose
eight of last year's guys plus Antoine later on.
Well you've also got to realize that the rules to re-sign him will almost certainly be very different then too, because a new CBA will probably be in effect. Like maybe no luxury tax magnifying every dollar over the cap.


Remember, Boston couldn't even afford to keep Joe Forte
around (he would have made 1,080,000 in his last
guaranteed year).
Er, yes and no. Not all of us (and reportedly that includes at least some Boston management) were as enthusiastic about his summer league performanceas you Joe. Money was part of it, but I think they'd have found a way if they were more sure that was the best way to use that money.

Kim