Is He Cured?

[AHF]

Good one excusodus, going away from the point at hand to talk about another sport with a player in a completely different context. Do I claim that all failures stem from shirking and incentives? NO! You are pulling a ridiculous move right here and you know it. Whats really lame is its a veil attempt to win an argument by trying to make a mockery out of what I have been saying. You know this has nothing to do with my arguments. Again you are sidestepping my claims, throwing lame excuses at why my claim fails and failing to give any alternative explanation besides claiming the unexplainable (a "mental block" duh!).

Either give me a solid case for what a "mental block" entails or admit your claim of a "mental block" is an inexplainable answer (i.e. a non-answer). Then take a step back and see that it appears to be your only beef with my arguments is "well that can't explain all of it!"

Your entire premise is that free throw shooting directly correlates with practice time and that no players have mental issues where their confidence and performance radically deteriorates.

I think that is asinine. Throwing back to the catcher and shooting free throws are both highly controled, largely independent repetitive motion skills. The fact that the simpler of the two (throwing back to the catcher) has been repeatedly observed without any sign of shirking suggests that it is not impossible for the more complex of the two (free throws) to be the result of a mental issue as well. Guys like Chuck Hayes, Nick Anderson, and others have seen dramatic drop in their free throw % that I don't think are explainable by the laughable idea that any marginal difference in free throw practice that Hayes had during his much more limited practice time at UK compared to the more regimented practice time in the NBA just boggles the mind.

You make the assumption that it is laziness on the player's part even when the player is lauded for work ethic.

And the entire premise for your argument is nothing more than circular logic:

Assumption:

"I assume that free throw performance is driven by practice and there are not situations where it is more heavily driven by confidence issues or other mental factors."

Application:

"Any significant drop in free throws is therefore the result of inadequate practice."

Conclusion:

"Even though none of the significant players on the Hawks has had their best FT shooting season in their contract years and that all have had their career highs in the middle of their contract I am certain this is motivation based even though that doesn't at all correlate with my theory on incentives driving performance. I also will pretend that free throw shooting is entirely different from throwing the ball to the pitcher because I recognize that my entire argument breaks down at my initial assumption unless I am willing to call Murphy a shirker like I do Hayes and I am not willing to do that. So I'll try to act like my performance incentive theory is unique to basketball and that baseball players are not driven by performance incentives. Done and done."

If that is the sole reason for putting those incentives in, then why is it that we do not see these incentives in all NBA contracts? If the reason for incentives is a way to reduce risk of injury and to reward players for being healthy, then all owners would stipulate that we should have minimum games played incentives in all contracts. But we do not see this. Since we do not see this behavior, either all owners in the NBA are not acting rationally (I'm willing to say at least one collective group is like this) or the reason for an incentive is not based on this.

I hope you know the reason for this is the same reason that only a minority of contracts in the NBA are non-guaranteed. It is about leverage. If teams could force these incentives into every contract or make every contract non-guaranteed they would do it. It would, however, require illegal concerted activity among the owners resulting in them fixing contract terms instead of competitively bidding for FA talent.

When agents negotiate with teams they promise certain levels of future performance and then argue that the money for that performance should go to their client. Incentives are one way to bridge the gap for teams that aren't willing to guarantee salary to the agent's expectations because they don't have confidence the player will be able to deliver -- whether due to lack of ability, injury concerns, age, work ethic, or any other reason. This isn't a hard concept. The risk of performance (not necessarily the effort) is thereby managed. If the player delivers he earns the money - regardless of whether he works harder. If he doesn't perform he doesn't earn the money - even if he works harder than any other player in the league.

[exodus]

Like they say common sense isnt that common.

Smith's FT% is up over 10% from last year and his contract isn't up until 2013. Bibby's foul shooting is down 20% from last year. Both dramatic moves that have nothing to do with their contracts.

Dwight Howard shot 67% from the line his rookie year and hasn't cracked 60% since then. Did he suddenly stop working on his foul shots after his rookie year?

Stupid argument.

[AHF]

Name one piece of evidence indicating that Chuck doesn't put in the work the Rockets expect from him. The only thing you point to is "his free throw percentage dropped" and he has contract incentives which may be totally unrelated to free throws.

Guys like Tom Izzo don't say they will "give their right arm" for a lazy player. Obvioiusly, Tubby Smith and his current coaches make similar comments about how impressed they are with his leadership and effort. The guy went undrafted and busted his way into the NBA. He is the shortest center in NBA history yet we are supposed to believe he has done this while shirking his practice responsibilities. He has vastly improved his skill set over his NBA career without even a whisper that anyone thought he was shirking and yet this is your conclusion - that he suddenly and dramatically lost the ability to shoot free throws because he wasn't practicing.

Since you are basing this on nothing more than your circumstantial (circular) argument, you should be able to find that theory applicable on at least a consistent basis, right? Yet it seems like every single significant Hawk has had their career peak during the middle of a contract and not during the contract year that your theory predicts.

So let's look at some Rockets with 4 or more years in the league:

Shane Battier - Career high in the beginning/middle of a contract

Chuck Hayes - Career high in the beginning/middle of a contract

Jared Jeffries - Career high in the beginning/middle of a contract

Kyle Lowry - Career high in the beginning/middle of a contract

Kevin Martin - Career high in the beginning/middle of a contract

Brad Miller - Career high in the beginning/middle of a contract

Yao Ming - Career high in the beginning/middle of a contract

Aaron Brooks - Career high in contract year

Is this suggestive of anything more than random chance for how many of the people put in the most effort and achieve the best results in their contract year?

(If you are going to apply your logic here, you have to apply it to Dale Murphy as well. Sorry - but trying to blow that off without explaining how baseball players are fundamentally different from basketball players or explaining why one should believe Chuck is shirking more than Murphy is just avoiding the fundamental disconnect between your underlying assumption and many real world examples of mental blocks. There is no logical difference between the numerous baseball players having trouble throwing and basketball players struggling from the line unless you believe that throwing the ball to the catcher is somehow less related to the practice invested.)

[ATownWhatup]

he is making 7 out of 10 so that is def a big step for him in a positive direction. I am really hoping that he can continue to build.

[AHF]

My theory has to do with incentives and shirking. The Dale example does NOT involve a contract, therefore it doesn't fall into the subset of where my theory would apply. So I have responded to your example, and the response is it just doesn't fit. Now if Dale Murphy was given a large guaranteed contract and then all of the sudden he couldn't throw the ball back to the catcher then maybe that has some legs. As is, it doesn't.

So you recognize a mental block for Murphy but believe it is not a mental block for Hayes.

Why?

Moderator Hat On - Don't tell someone they have their head up their *** on this forum.

Edited February 4, 2011 by AHF

[AHF]

For one, my argument is not circular unless you twist my words around. And this isn't a courtroom, its a guess as to why FT% dropped. What if I spin your tactics against you?

Now we get to the heart of it.

You are just guessing.

Again, I don't believe that a change in incentives accounts for a drop in FT% from the 60s/70's by a professional basketball player to the 30's/40's. Again, I have followed Hayes' career closely enough that I think there is a LOT of evidence the guy has not been a shirker. Thus, I suspect the root cause of his problem during the 30's/40's period was more akin to another non-shirker who had a similarly mysterious problem with a repetitive motion skill, Dale Murphy. For those reasons, I don't buy into your guess.

[Duff_Man]

Yay for him. Shame he doesn't play inside anymore because he could be shooting 10 FTs a game. He doesn't even have one attempt in his past two games. And he is a POWER Forward.

[AHF]

I'm just deleting the remainder of the post since I don't think this is going anywhere. We'll have to agree to disagree on this issue. I don't see a lot of persuasive evidence on Chuck Hayes being a shirker or the incentive theory correlating with performance (for example, the correlation between career high ft% and contract years is closer to a negative correlation looking at the significant players on the Hawks and Rockets). Again, I do agree that incentives are sometimes used to inspire improved effort and that some shifts in ft% (generally not enormous drops) are more likely to be caused by a change in the amount of practice devoted by a player to free throws. I just don't buy your argument that contract incentives are not used to manage performance risk outside of a player's effort or to close gaps in negotiations or that radical shifts in ft% are most likely due to changes in the amount of practice free throws where such change was inspired by a player's contractual terms.

Edited February 5, 2011 by AHF

[lethalweapon3]

Apparently, Josh refuses to shoot another free throw until you folks resolve this Chuck Hayes issue. ;-)

~lw3