re: no love from DA

[Kestutis.Kveraga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kestutis Kveraga)]

--- You wrote:
 I think there is a tendancy to overestimate the advances teams make in based
on their offseason moves (I know I do it).  I did an analyis last offseason
about how the teams that took a big jump in wins did it and just about every
team did it by getting an injured player back or a unit finally coming together
whose core had been together for a while (like the ECF version of the C's 2
years back).
--- end of quote ---

Another thing I would add to this discussion is that people tend to overuse the
heuristic of checking where the "name" players (usually, scorers) ended up and
then judging teams "on paper" based on how many "name" players they've added or
lost. A good recent example of this is predicting great things for the Atlanta
Hawks because they had put a nice "name" lineup on paper. We all know what
happened to that prediction. People tend to be impressed by the likes of Glen
Robinson, but not no-names like Greg Buckner, George Lynch, or Kenny Thomas.
But I bet the latter are more important to a team's success than the former.
We're seeing the same thing again with the Sixers ("now that they've added the
Big Dog to help AI score, they're gonna be tough"), Orlando, Minnesota, and of
course, the Lakers. But it's fantasy league stuff. No one knows how well they
will play as a team, no matter how loaded with superstars that lineup is (viz.
the USA World Championships '02 team). 
Kestas