Trae Young - The Man, The Viper, and The Prosecution aka The MVP aka Ice Trae

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[ATLHawks3]

 

Lol Zacch, use this as motivation to be a franchise player.

[AHF]

7 minutes ago, ATLHawks3 said:

 

Lol Zacch, use this as motivation to be a franchise player.

I'm glad for Zac that he won't be perceived as a failure by falling short of being a franchise player but I'm with you in rooting for it to happen all the same.

[ATLHawks3]

2 minutes ago, AHF said:

I'm glad for Zac that he won't be perceived as a failure by falling short of being a franchise player but I'm with you in rooting for it to happen all the same.

If not a franchise player, at minimum, he has to be the best player in this class. That's the bet the franchise took by selecting him number 1.

[Gray Mule]

"Role player."  Every NBA player, small or great, is a role player.  They may be the leading star in the drama of any NBA game, or they may be a bit player.  He has a role to play and, most of the time, how well he plays his role will determine the outcome of the game.  Not every time does the star win the Oscar.  Sometimes it's the supporting player.  Same idea applies to the NBA.

[benhillboy]

Trae putting on his analyst projection/ GM hat, I can dig it.  And adding herbs and spices to the Sarr draft beef.  
 

There’s gotta be at least 2-3 future AS tho.  Teams are emphasizing two way play much more than they did just recently in the mid ‘10s when even the MVP of the league was a walking blooper reel on D and defensive specialists like Andre Roberson and Thabo were regularly hitting the side of the glass on corner threes

Edited August 13 by benhillboy

[AHF]

1 hour ago, ATLHawks3 said:

If not a franchise player, at minimum, he has to be the best player in this class. That's the bet the franchise took by selecting him number 1.

Best player in his class is what you want from any #1 overall pick but I will be content if he is right up there with the very best of this class.  Dirk turned out to be the best player from his class but if you used an earlier pick on Paul Pierce or Vince Carter I don't think it is a failure at all.  It starts getting bad if you pass on those guys to take Mike Bibby or Antawn Jamison and gets really ugly if you passed on all those guys to take Cuttino Mobley or Raef Lafrentz or Jason Williams and that isn't even touching on the true busts like Kandi Man.

If Risacher is among the best then I'm not going to be too made at us for having missed on whoever the better player is.  It happens.  

[JayBirdHawk]

2 hours ago, ATLHawks3 said:

 

Lol Zacch, use this as motivation to be a franchise player.

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[RedDawg#8]

Interesting that his 23-24 season didn’t make it despite a career best in assists. Curious how Quin’s system plays in to the “context neutral” equation.

[JayBirdHawk]

How do I not remember this 

 

 

[AHF]

On 8/17/2024 at 2:12 PM, RedDawg#8 said:

Interesting that his 23-24 season didn’t make it despite a career best in assists. Curious how Quin’s system plays in to the “context neutral” equation.

Not sure how the metric worked but missing 1/3 of the season might also be the reason.

[JeffS17]

On 8/16/2024 at 9:36 PM, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

Elite playmaker.  Must be looking at a combination of usage/assists in tandem with total offensive output of the team while on the floor. Or something similar... 

[Atlantaholic]

On 8/13/2024 at 2:46 PM, benhillboy said:

Trae putting on his analyst projection/ GM hat, I can dig it.  And adding herbs and spices to the Sarr draft beef.  
 

There’s gotta be at least 2-3 future AS tho.  Teams are emphasizing two way play much more than they did just recently in the mid ‘10s when even the MVP of the league was a walking blooper reel on D and defensive specialists like Andre Roberson and Thabo were regularly hitting the side of the glass on corner threes

Well, I mean, there could be 2-3 players that make an All star team at some point of their careers, but I doubt there are 2-3 perennial all stars anywhere in this draft. Outside of Reed Sheppard I wouldn't put any money on any other player being a consistent star. It's certainly possible it happens, surprises happen every draft, but we'd need 2 pretty big surprises in this one draft just to get to around 3 perenniall All Star guys (assuming Reed Sheppard is one).

Zach was drafted first overall and barely anyone would bat an eye if he ends up averaging around 14ppg for his career. After his catastrophic summer league -- and yea I know summer league but still, hard to overstate how ridiculously awful Sarr looked in his only action outside of the low level Australian basketball league --- If Sarr ends up averaging a double double that would seem like a win. Just a weak draft, no other way to slice it.

[kg01]

1 hour ago, JeffS17 said:

Elite playmaker.  Must be looking at a combination of usage/assists in tandem with total offensive output of the team while on the floor. Or something similar... 

I know you didnt mean to, but this illustrates my issue with analytics.  You can literally... literally ... just change the formula and it can shift the entire analysis(sic).

Nothing about the player, his impact, his value would change.  The user just adjusts his or her own emphasis.

And people eat that tripe up like it's caviar.

It's literally made up!  It's unfathomable!

Ok, I'm off my soapbox now.  Not because I stepped down tho.  I just fell. 

[RedDawg#8]

4 hours ago, AHF said:

Not sure how the metric worked but missing 1/3 of the season might also be the reason.

Ah shit, you’re probably right. I keep forgetting he didn’t play his usual 70+ games. 

[JeffS17]

1 hour ago, kg01 said:

I know you didnt mean to, but this illustrates my issue with analytics.  You can literally... literally ... just change the formula and it can shift the entire analysis(sic).

Nothing about the player, his impact, his value would change.  The user just adjusts his or her own emphasis.

And people eat that tripe up like it's caviar.

It's literally made up!  It's unfathomable!

Ok, I'm off my soapbox now.  Not because I stepped down tho.  I just fell. 

Yeah, even the most honest-intended metrics are still biased to some degree.  Like all these "LEBRON" and "RAPTOR" and whatever stats.  They run all the math through the algorithms then based on the results, tweak the formulas.  There is no source of actual truth that isn't subjective, so it all becomes a way for people to push their opinions in a way that appeals to data-driven fans.  This is why the older I get, the more I prefer basic stats combined with eye test.  And defense is pretty much just eye test.  You really need to watch players play a lot of minutes to get good opinions on them.  I don't even trust my own judgement with how limited a sample size I get of non-Hawks players, with the exception of guys who show up 20 times a year on national TV.

[kg01]

51 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

Yeah, even the most honest-intended metrics are still biased to some degree.  Like all these "LEBRON" and "RAPTOR" and whatever stats.  They run all the math through the algorithms then based on the results, tweak the formulas.  There is no source of actual truth that isn't subjective, so it all becomes a way for people to push their opinions in a way that appeals to data-driven fans.  This is why the older I get, the more I prefer basic stats combined with eye test.  And defense is pretty much just eye test.  You really need to watch players play a lot of minutes to get good opinions on them.  I don't even trust my own judgement with how limited a sample size I get of non-Hawks players, with the exception of guys who show up 20 times a year on national TV.

I wish I could like this post more than once.  I wish I could marry it and have kids.

Seriously though, this is a near perfect articulation of my irrational hatred for analytics.

Don't get me wrong, I get what they are and how they can be used.  I just vehemently disagree with peoples blindness w.r.t. what they actually mean. 

[AHF]

Stats should be valued based on their predictive value.  If you can use numbers to make better predictions of future events those are way more valuable than something that is just arbitrary.  As it turns out, teams have found a lot of predictive value from analyzing the numbers.  That is why teams have invested a lot of time and money into analytics and successful organizations in nearly every sport have embraced them.  It certainly doesn't mean every number is useful but, as a whole, analytics have led to much better decision making by organizations.  I think this works best in sports like baseball where so much of what is on the field is able to be captured in numbers but it also means a lot in basketball.  I think the league is much more sophisticated today than they were back when I was a kid and a huge part of that is their emphasis on deeper dives into the numbers.  

(On a very simple level, I think basketball numbers work well for individual players on offense but not as well at measuring an individual player's defense.  There is no question the league has been changed by teams understanding how successful different approaches and types of plays are compared to others that were valued very different historically.  That has overlapped with some rule changes that have molded the game as well.  It makes for some very different eras over the time most of us have been watching the game.)

[JeffS17]

5 minutes ago, kg01 said:

I wish I could like this post more than once.  I wish I could marry it and have kids.

Seriously though, this is a near perfect articulation of my irrational hatred for analytics.

Don't get me wrong, I get what they are and how they can be used.  I just vehemently disagree with peoples blindness w.r.t. what they actually mean. 

You see it all the time when players switch teams and get into a different environment, with no real change in their skill level, but their advanced stats go up or down because who they're sharing the court with changes.  This even happens when players don't change teams but rotations change so their +/- and on/off stats shift because who they share the court with shifts (same team and opposing team).  And most of the comprehensive advanced stats are all anchored to on/off or +/- and then trying to adjust for what I'm talking about, which is not really possible in any fair way across all players on all teams.

For instance, look at the LEBRON stat for John Collins and it shows he got better when he moved to Utah.  Did he?  I don't see it, but that's what you'd see using that stat and imo it's because he was playing with worse teammates.  Trae looks like he became a worse player using the same stat because he was sharing the court with Dejounte Murray.  IMO Trae has been playing his best basketball the last half of the '22-23 season through the last season until he sat with injury.  So ultimately, you can write all the algorithms you want to create all kinds of difference statistics, but you still need to watch the players play the games to pair with the stats if you want to derive any kind of meaningful opinion.  So I look at basic box score stuff now (excluding +/-) and maybe a couple of the advanced stats (TS% for example)