Kobe

[Eric Albert]

>asterix ninetynine <asterix_9_9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>The team with the most points wins?  Really??
>   
>I think what he was trying to understand was if the team was improving.  And yes, sometimes an inferior team wins.  That's called an upset, but you probably knew that form the 2000 or so games you've watched.

Hm.  I didn't think my message was that difficult to understand,
but let me simplify it for you:  Point spread means nothing in
NBA games.

Strong teams routinely let weak teams "hang around" but they
still end up beating them.  Yes, they sometimes get too casual
and the weaker team wins, but it's unusual, hence the term
"stealing" a game.

Most games in the NBA are close games.  Look at the average
losing margins for the worst teams: they're not huge.  Unlike in
other sports, bad pro basketball teams *don't* routinely get
blown out.

So, it doesn't mean much (or maybe anything) to routinely
lose "close" NBA games.  If you're losing most (or all!) of your
games, they aren't *really* close.

Then how can you tell if your team is getting better?  By seeing
if they start winning more games.  Look at, say, runs of 20 games.
Is your team's overall record in the most recent 20 games better
than it was in the 20 games before that?  Than the first 20 games
in the season?  Than the average 20-game stretch in the previous
year?

I posted early in this year that, while the Celtics were having
longer and more frequent win streaks, they still had the identical
record to last year.  I said this meant that the Celtics were now
streakier, but not any better.

Winning teams couldn't care less about their point differentials.
They just look at their record.  "Close" games and "moral victories"
and "growth in the young players" are concepts losing teams use
to make themselves feel better.  They mean nothing.

-- Eric