Comments on: How Many Titles Should the Cleveland Cavaliers Have Won During the LeBron Era?

By: cheap Sennheiser

cheap Sennheiser — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:28:35 +0000

I think certification is good in some cases, but often not worth it.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 19:45:01 +0000

Again, these are not intended to represent the teams' "true" probabilities of winning the championship; it's what we would expect their probabilities to be based on regular-season winning % alone.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 19:24:15 +0000

Looking at the results compared to the probabilities is troublesome for this method. The favorites to win the championship only did so 1 out of 5 - the 2008 Celtics. The favorites from each conference only reached the Finals 4 out of 10 chances. The actual champion had probabilities of 3%, 6.1%, 63.5%, 34.2%, and 13.2% against favorite probabilities of 49.2%, 64.2%, 63.5%, 44.7%, and 36.8%.

By: King Kong

King Kong — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:02:18 +0000

There are lots of great players that haven't won a ring, or only won one ring. The problem is that LeBron was (and is) endlessly hyped by everyone, and his continual failure is constantly excused.

I do think he and Kobe are the two best players in the league, but wait until he proves himself to suck him off or you're going to end up with even more excuses

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:33:37 +0000

Hard to say. An equal question might be: 'just how many wins during the regular season should teams like the 2009 & 2010 Cavs have had?' The post season in some sports seems to be a different animal than the regular season and relying on regular season success alone to predict post season success can be foolhardy. Sports where you play 'best of' series tend to be like this. The preparation is different. Playing the same opponent 7 games in a row or even 4 games in a row, home and away is different than different day/ different city. You are dissecting an opponent and countering counter-moves from the same foes over a week/ 2 week span. With hockey it gets whacky with the 'hot goalie' effect, baseball has it's 'how's your rotation set up' effect and nobody forgets your moves night after night in basketball if you keep playing the same guy(s)... LeBron can be figured out. A strong team will take away what you do best, then it's your move. LeBron maybe doesn't have enough ways to beat you in a long series if you're a good team. He does during the regular season, perhaps because he's flying into your city, playing one game, then leaving. You can't make adjustments. The travel is different in the playoffs... and older team like the Celtics may have benefited from staying in a city for extra days during a series. There's a lot that makes the post season different.

By: Gil Meriken

Gil Meriken — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:27:38 +0000

111.

Ask yourself, what is "true basis"?

By: Ryan.

Ryan. — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 06:46:10 +0000

Daniel, why is it that you offer rhetoric as opposed to method? This seems - and forgive me for being judgmental here - like one of the all-too-common charades constantly haunting the hallway of stat analysis. I guess what I'm saying is, until you provide true basis and not just poetics, I'll call BS.

By: themojojedi

themojojedi — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:36:29 +0000

Thanks for the info Daniel, interesting to get a betting perspective on officiating.

By: Jason J

Jason J — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:39:50 +0000

No argument regarding the annoying overabundance of flopping in today's game. Fisher was driving me insane in this last finals, but like JVG said, he's been doing it to great effect since he came into the league, no reason to expect him to stop now.

By: Daniel Song

Daniel Song — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:38:51 +0000

You could be right, but my goal was to find a way to cash more tickets. I'd rather have a biased and flawed analysis lead to the right answer than to have a completely numerical analysis lead to the wrong answer. I've seen several attempts to predict NBA outcomes simply by using regular season statistics. All of them failed miserably, including my own. However you do make a good point in that Pierce is yet another one of those floppers who get bogus free throws. I think Kevin Durant is yet another player that has shown potential in that arena. Unfortunately we've gotten to the point where flopping is the most important skill to have on offense and I would love to see that change. If I wanted to watch flopping all day I can always watch soccer. I would like to see something different in basketball.