The Cavaliers trounced the Knicks tonight. They were up by 49 at one point, and I even thought for a minute that the NBA record for margin of victory (68 points, set by the Cavs, against the Miami Heat in December of 1991, during a game that me and DAD attended) might be in jeopardy. It wasn’t - DDR, Jawad Williams, and Darnell Jackson made sure of that - but, suffice it to say, the outcome of the contest was never in doubt.
We use stats in a lot of our posts on JMID for reasons I shouldn’t necessarily have to explain but will anyway. They’re a great way to validate or invalidate our own perceptions, which can often be tricked by extremes, e.g. Glitch mishandling a perfect pass from Bron may make me want to criticize him more than Shaq getting called for offensive three seconds - but really, both plays hold more or less the same value. Additionally, stats can be quite disruptive to widely accepted beliefs that have little or no basis in reality, like the presumption by some in Cleveland that Mo Williams should’ve been an All-Star this season because the Cavs had the best record in the NBA at the break. Since we’re not exactly writing this blog to cooperate with the general consensus or to support the average opinion, stats can be great tools for us.
Most of all, they are based in logic and science, and not the irrational emotions that often emerge from fandom. We’re trying to kill the hysteria of the curse.
Stats help man the guillotine.
(They may also be the underlying reason the Cleveland Plain Dealer still refuses to cite us in their morning sports blog round-up, but I digress.)
There’s one more, very important, point to make on this, and that is that stats always have to be looked at intelligently (saying something like “the Cavs are 35-5 when three or more players score at least 15 points” proves nothing) and in context (rebound rate is more telling than rebounds per minute is more telling than rebounds per game).
Which is why the ‘09-‘10 Knicks are a complete clusterfuck.
Why?
Job psychology.
People who study statistics will tell you that, overall, numbers for basketball players are much more consistent from year-to-year than they are in other sports like football and baseball. Age and injury are the two biggest reasons given for large discrepancies in players’ stats; I would argue that things like fit and shot selection also play a role in smaller variations from one season to the next (Mo Williams never shot above 38.5% from 3P until he played alongside LeBron; since then, he’s hit 43.6% and 43.2% of his attempts from long distance while also taking more attempts per 36 minutes than ever before).
After watching tonight’s game, I have a new probable cause for statistical variance: Donnie Walsh’s strategy to clear cap space for the summer of 2010.
Can you imagine going to work every day knowing that the front office doesn’t give a damn how well you play because, in their mind, your best trait is that your contract expires after the season? Would this make you play hard? Would it make you want to work on your game with your teammates? Would it make you want to listen to your coach?
I think it would make you feel like shit, personally, to wake up every day knowing, “Hey, nobody wants me to be here!”
We’d have to do a thorough analysis to prove this - and, problematically, the sample size isn’t incredibly large since, as far as I know, no one in the history of sport has pulled the cap space maneuver as drastically as Walsh has - but I think this is one of those cases where psychology will have an effect on his efficiency and production.
Cavs-Nets on Wednesday. I may have to be drunk for that one.
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