Hollinger can't be wrong...he can only be 'unluckily inaccurate'

[indeedproceed]

So two things before I get going. One, I like John Hollinger most times. I think his "numbers will one day rise up and cast us down into dungeons made of 'words' and 'hunches'" mentality is pretty narrow minded, but he's not lacking for passion.

Two, yes. This is just another John Hollinger rant.

John Hollinger published today an article featured in the Per Diem called "Celtics working on surprise ending".

In the article he broke down other NBA teams that finished 4th or worse in their conference (as the Celtics did) and showed their similarities to the current Celtics franchise. Out of 100 conference champions there were only six that finished the regular season 4th or better.

Out of those six franchises, one of which being the 68-69 Celtics, only two of them were 'suitable' comparisons. One, the 77-78 Bullets, the other was the 94-95 Rockets
.

First, what were the criteria to the other 4 teams not being suitable comparisons? Well the 99-99 Knicks were a lockout year that played though a terrible Eastern Conference so I suppose they really don't count. The 80-81 Rockets were allegedly part of the worst conference finals in history (I don't know, I wasn't alive yet.), so they're not a good comparison either(Hollinger doesn't say this, I inferred it).

However the other two teams that don't match up are for different reasons. The 77-78 Supersonics don't compare because as he says,

The 1977-78 Sonics, for instance, like several recent champions, muddled through the first half of the season before getting scorching-hot late in the season. That Seattle team began the season 5-17, then changed coaches, swapped out a few starters and finished 42-18. In other words, it was the exact opposite of the 2010 Celtics.

So, there he covers one of his eventual points. He covers the "don't just look at the record when examining these Celtics, look at just how BAD they were in the last half of the season."

The second team he says you cannot compare the 09-10 Celtics is the 69-70 Celtics, which is a point of some contention. User drjman's post about this:

A team that parallels the current squad in many facets is the 1968-1969 championship squad. This was the last edition of the Bill Russell era dynasty. They finished the regular season with a 48-34 record and were limping through the regular season. This was a team that everyone in the NBA thought was vulnerable and past their prime. Maybe they were but they had experience and heart. The Celtics  battled their way to the NBA finals and the stage was set for another showdown with the Lakers.

Something was different this time though. This time around the Lakers were so confident that they were going to knock the Celtics, who had tormented them so much over the years, off that they planned a huge celebration for the conclusion of Game 7. Tommy always references how L.A. had balloons strapped up in the raftersand were poised to drop them as soon as the Lakers finished off the Celtics. The great irony was that the Celtics would those balloons as a sign of disrespect. This fueled the veteran team and motivated them to defeat their rival.

What the rest of the NBA and the Lakers didn't know was that this Celtics team was like a wounded animal, backed into the corner. They knew that this was their last hurrah. Player coach Bill Russell and Sam Jones each were poised to retire at the conclusion of the NBA Finals and were considered a step slower at this point in their career. Sound familiar? Despite being an extremely long in the tooth veteran team, these Celtics came together and percevered all the way to a championship.

Here is Hollinger's reasons why not: (I like to think it is a personal rebuttal against Celticsblog)

We also can eliminate the 1968-69 Celtics, who fell to the No. 4 seed in the East almost entirely because they were phenomenally unlucky during the regular season. Boston had the league's second-best point differential and normally would have won 55 games with that scoring margin but went only 7-15 in games decided by five points or fewer.

(The 1968-69 Celtics are also the pièce de résistance in the case that, as I have pointed out for years, a team's record in close games essentially comes down to luck. Given that the Celtics were 11-time champions, I don't think "knowing how to win" was the problem that season.)

What was he trying to prove here? The thesis of the article is summed up in the final paragraph.

Nonetheless, our takeaway is the same. The Celtics' ability to suddenly dial it up for the playoffs has been remarkable, but we shouldn't start expecting this as a normal occurrence. Out-of-the-blue conference champions come along about once per decade, and out-of-the-blue title teams appear with even less frequency. It would be a mistake to glean from this one example that those will now become annual events.

So what is his message? "I couldn't have seen this coming, and it probably won't happen again anytime soon. My system works. Seriously. Seriously it works and nobody could've seen this coming and please don't fire me please please ESPN I cannot go back to working the 'guess my PER' booth at the harlem globetrotters summertime bash carnivale. Please ESPN, please!"

This is why I cannot stand John Hollinger sometimes. He allows his own defense of his system to get in the way of a good article. I think the defense of "The 68-69 Celtics were way better than their record anyways so they don't count either" is fundamentally invalid. Then, to couple it with an 'I told you so' at the end is just self serving. Instead of being our statistical tour guide through the NBA wilderness, he's becoming like an egotistical NBA referee that thinks because of the unchecked influence (in Hollinger's case it's his ESPN carte-blanche) they have, they can make the facts be whatever they think they 'should' be.

[BudweiserCeltic]

Hey there, not need to get nasty with those racial slurs. I never would have expected this from Captain Kirk.

[indeedproceed]

Hey there, not need to get nasty with those racial slurs. I never would have expected this from Captain Kirk.

Okay...I re-read the post 25 times, and I still have no idea what you're referring to...and Captain Kirk will NOT be slandered without consequence!!

[Prof. Clutch]

Good post IP.  Definitely deserving of a TP.

I used to think Hollinger couldn't be wrong and really bought into his statistics even though I didn't understand most of them.  But it's situations like this Celtics post season that make it clear that the use of statistic alone can be very flawed.

Hollinger is clinging to his guns, but I would respect him and many other sports writers a lot more if they would just acknowledge when they are wrong rather than trying to justify their bogus predictions/statements.

btw, your Kirk image reminded me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr9kts27eaw&feature=related

MENDOZAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lucky17]

He's just another calculator jockey.

When the outcomes don't conform to his projections, he can conveniently claim statistical anomalies or outliers.

He knows about as much about basketball as any other talking head paid to churn out "by subscription only" content. I pay him as much mind as I do the others.

[FallGuy]

So two things before I get going. One, I like John Hollinger most times. I think his "numbers will one day rise up and cast us down into dungeons made of 'words' and 'hunches'" mentality is pretty narrow minded, but he's not lacking for passion.

Two, yes. This is just another John Hollinger rant.

John Hollinger published today an article featured in the Per Diem called "Celtics working on surprise ending".

In the article he broke down other NBA teams that finished 4th or worse in their conference (as the Celtics did) and showed their similarities to the current Celtics franchise. Out of 100 conference champions there were only six that finished the regular season 4th or better.

Out of those six franchises, one of which being the 68-69 Celtics, only two of them were 'suitable' comparisons. One, the 77-78 Bullets, the other was the 94-95 Rockets
.

First, what were the criteria to the other 4 teams not being suitable comparisons? Well the 99-99 Knicks were a lockout year that played though a terrible Eastern Conference so I suppose they really don't count. The 80-81 Rockets were allegedly part of the worst conference finals in history (I don't know, I wasn't alive yet.), so they're not a good comparison either(Hollinger doesn't say this, I inferred it).

However the other two teams that don't match up are for different reasons. The 77-78 Supersonics don't compare because as he says,

The 1977-78 Sonics, for instance, like several recent champions, muddled through the first half of the season before getting scorching-hot late in the season. That Seattle team began the season 5-17, then changed coaches, swapped out a few starters and finished 42-18. In other words, it was the exact opposite of the 2010 Celtics.

So, there he covers one of his eventual points. He covers the "don't just look at the record when examining these Celtics, look at just how BAD they were in the last half of the season."

The second team he says you cannot compare the 09-10 Celtics is the 69-70 Celtics, which is a point of some contention. User drjman's post about this:

A team that parallels the current squad in many facets is the 1968-1969 championship squad. This was the last edition of the Bill Russell era dynasty. They finished the regular season with a 48-34 record and were limping through the regular season. This was a team that everyone in the NBA thought was vulnerable and past their prime. Maybe they were but they had experience and heart. The Celtics  battled their way to the NBA finals and the stage was set for another showdown with the Lakers.

Something was different this time though. This time around the Lakers were so confident that they were going to knock the Celtics, who had tormented them so much over the years, off that they planned a huge celebration for the conclusion of Game 7. Tommy always references how L.A. had balloons strapped up in the raftersand were poised to drop them as soon as the Lakers finished off the Celtics. The great irony was that the Celtics would those balloons as a sign of disrespect. This fueled the veteran team and motivated them to defeat their rival.

What the rest of the NBA and the Lakers didn't know was that this Celtics team was like a wounded animal, backed into the corner. They knew that this was their last hurrah. Player coach Bill Russell and Sam Jones each were poised to retire at the conclusion of the NBA Finals and were considered a step slower at this point in their career. Sound familiar? Despite being an extremely long in the tooth veteran team, these Celtics came together and percevered all the way to a championship.

Here is Hollinger's reasons why not: (I like to think it is a personal rebuttal against Celticsblog)

We also can eliminate the 1968-69 Celtics, who fell to the No. 4 seed in the East almost entirely because they were phenomenally unlucky during the regular season. Boston had the league's second-best point differential and normally would have won 55 games with that scoring margin but went only 7-15 in games decided by five points or fewer.

(The 1968-69 Celtics are also the pièce de résistance in the case that, as I have pointed out for years, a team's record in close games essentially comes down to luck. Given that the Celtics were 11-time champions, I don't think "knowing how to win" was the problem that season.)

What was he trying to prove here? The thesis of the article is summed up in the final paragraph.

Nonetheless, our takeaway is the same. The Celtics' ability to suddenly dial it up for the playoffs has been remarkable, but we shouldn't start expecting this as a normal occurrence. Out-of-the-blue conference champions come along about once per decade, and out-of-the-blue title teams appear with even less frequency. It would be a mistake to glean from this one example that those will now become annual events.

So what is his message? "I couldn't have seen this coming, and it probably won't happen again anytime soon. My system works. Seriously. Seriously it works and nobody could've seen this coming and please don't fire me please please ESPN I cannot go back to working the 'guess my PER' booth at the harlem globetrotters summertime bash carnivale. Please ESPN, please!"

This is why I cannot stand John Hollinger sometimes. He allows his own defense of his system to get in the way of a good article. I think the defense of "The 68-69 Celtics were way better than their record anyways so they don't count either" is fundamentally invalid. Then, to couple it with an 'I told you so' at the end is just self serving. Instead of being our statistical tour guide through the NBA wilderness, he's becoming like an egotistical NBA referee that thinks because of the unchecked influence (in Hollinger's case it's his ESPN carte-blanche) they have, they can make the facts be whatever they think they 'should' be.

First of all, if John Hollinger is found murdered by an unknown assailant, I'm turning you into the police. You and about twenty other members of Celticsblog.  

Second, his conclusion is completely accurate. What we're seeing from the Celtics this year is an anomaly and something we shouldn't expect to reoccur regularly. I don't know how that summary is in any way biased or bizarre.

[Birdbrain]

My disdain for him is not that he was proven so epically wrong (well that is part of it) but, it's how when proven so epically wrong he'll deflect by creating a straw man argument still using his same horrible stats as proof.  
(NOT PLAUSIBLE) thanks johnny LOL

He is sadly what happens when the internetS meet sports. Ironically those that defend his stats as some sort predictor of team or player (PER!!!) strength will say it's a more intelligent way of determining it.  I say just opposite it's lazy (internetS) way of viewing the game without actually having to understand it.

ESPN and Hollinger are a match made in ....

No it's not accurate it's what happened in this series nothing more.  Just like every game is it's own game and every series is it's own series.

[indeedproceed]

First of all, if John Hollinger is found murdered by an unknown assailant, I'm turning you into the police. You and about twenty other members of Celticsblog.  

Second, his conclusion is completely accurate. What we're seeing from the Celtics this year is an anomaly and something we shouldn't expect to reoccur regularly. I don't know how that summary is in any way biased or bizarre.

Okay, maybe in my Hollinger bias I insert tone where there is none. But when I read the article I thought it was more of an attempt to validate his own predictions (round by round and as the season wore on) highlighting just how freak and unexpected a turn of events this is. Hollinger rather than admitting any real credit here works real hard to make it into just a statistical anomaly.

EDIT: And I'm not saying what he's saying is not accurate. It is. The unaccurate part of the title was referring to how many times over the season he has been wrong. It was a tongue in a cheek joke that obviously was poorly executed.

And you know why I can admit that? Because I'm no John Hollinger.

[LB3533]

Aren't all statistics based upon past data?

Hollinger extrapolates an outcome based upon past statistical evidence.

The human factor doesn't remain constant (like for the most part as numbers usually do).

The past Celtics are not the same Celtics.

[Evantime34]

So two things before I get going. One, I like John Hollinger most times. I think his "numbers will one day rise up and cast us down into dungeons made of 'words' and 'hunches'" mentality is pretty narrow minded, but he's not lacking for passion.

Two, yes. This is just another John Hollinger rant.

John Hollinger published today an article featured in the Per Diem called "Celtics working on surprise ending".

In the article he broke down other NBA teams that finished 4th or worse in their conference (as the Celtics did) and showed their similarities to the current Celtics franchise. Out of 100 conference champions there were only six that finished the regular season 4th or better.

Out of those six franchises, one of which being the 68-69 Celtics, only two of them were 'suitable' comparisons. One, the 77-78 Bullets, the other was the 94-95 Rockets
.

First, what were the criteria to the other 4 teams not being suitable comparisons? Well the 99-99 Knicks were a lockout year that played though a terrible Eastern Conference so I suppose they really don't count. The 80-81 Rockets were allegedly part of the worst conference finals in history (I don't know, I wasn't alive yet.), so they're not a good comparison either(Hollinger doesn't say this, I inferred it).

However the other two teams that don't match up are for different reasons. The 77-78 Supersonics don't compare because as he says,

The 1977-78 Sonics, for instance, like several recent champions, muddled through the first half of the season before getting scorching-hot late in the season. That Seattle team began the season 5-17, then changed coaches, swapped out a few starters and finished 42-18. In other words, it was the exact opposite of the 2010 Celtics.

So, there he covers one of his eventual points. He covers the "don't just look at the record when examining these Celtics, look at just how BAD they were in the last half of the season."

The second team he says you cannot compare the 09-10 Celtics is the 69-70 Celtics, which is a point of some contention. User drjman's post about this:

A team that parallels the current squad in many facets is the 1968-1969 championship squad. This was the last edition of the Bill Russell era dynasty. They finished the regular season with a 48-34 record and were limping through the regular season. This was a team that everyone in the NBA thought was vulnerable and past their prime. Maybe they were but they had experience and heart. The Celtics  battled their way to the NBA finals and the stage was set for another showdown with the Lakers.

Something was different this time though. This time around the Lakers were so confident that they were going to knock the Celtics, who had tormented them so much over the years, off that they planned a huge celebration for the conclusion of Game 7. Tommy always references how L.A. had balloons strapped up in the raftersand were poised to drop them as soon as the Lakers finished off the Celtics. The great irony was that the Celtics would those balloons as a sign of disrespect. This fueled the veteran team and motivated them to defeat their rival.

What the rest of the NBA and the Lakers didn't know was that this Celtics team was like a wounded animal, backed into the corner. They knew that this was their last hurrah. Player coach Bill Russell and Sam Jones each were poised to retire at the conclusion of the NBA Finals and were considered a step slower at this point in their career. Sound familiar? Despite being an extremely long in the tooth veteran team, these Celtics came together and percevered all the way to a championship.

Here is Hollinger's reasons why not: (I like to think it is a personal rebuttal against Celticsblog)

We also can eliminate the 1968-69 Celtics, who fell to the No. 4 seed in the East almost entirely because they were phenomenally unlucky during the regular season. Boston had the league's second-best point differential and normally would have won 55 games with that scoring margin but went only 7-15 in games decided by five points or fewer.

(The 1968-69 Celtics are also the pièce de résistance in the case that, as I have pointed out for years, a team's record in close games essentially comes down to luck. Given that the Celtics were 11-time champions, I don't think "knowing how to win" was the problem that season.)

What was he trying to prove here? The thesis of the article is summed up in the final paragraph.

Nonetheless, our takeaway is the same. The Celtics' ability to suddenly dial it up for the playoffs has been remarkable, but we shouldn't start expecting this as a normal occurrence. Out-of-the-blue conference champions come along about once per decade, and out-of-the-blue title teams appear with even less frequency. It would be a mistake to glean from this one example that those will now become annual events.

So what is his message? "I couldn't have seen this coming, and it probably won't happen again anytime soon. My system works. Seriously. Seriously it works and nobody could've seen this coming and please don't fire me please please ESPN I cannot go back to working the 'guess my PER' booth at the harlem globetrotters summertime bash carnivale. Please ESPN, please!"

This is why I cannot stand John Hollinger sometimes. He allows his own defense of his system to get in the way of a good article. I think the defense of "The 68-69 Celtics were way better than their record anyways so they don't count either" is fundamentally invalid. Then, to couple it with an 'I told you so' at the end is just self serving. Instead of being our statistical tour guide through the NBA wilderness, he's becoming like an egotistical NBA referee that thinks because of the unchecked influence (in Hollinger's case it's his ESPN carte-blanche) they have, they can make the facts be whatever they think they 'should' be.

First of all, if John Hollinger is found murdered by an unknown assailant, I'm turning you into the police. You and about twenty other members of Celticsblog.  

Second, his conclusion is completely accurate. What we're seeing from the Celtics this year is an anomaly and something we shouldn't expect to reoccur regularly. I don't know how that summary is in any way biased or bizarre.

I guess you could call it an outlier year.

However, I believe sports should be looked at in both a statistical AND a personnel manner. Teams should not be looked at as probable outcomes based on past data but living breathing things. This is where his model falls short. Sure, statistically this year is odd in terms of past historical prediction based on records.

In order to fix his model his statistics need to be expanded. Since styles and players change with age looking at past team results might not always be accurate. He should attempt to look at how often a player wins themselves as a predictor of his "unexplained success". In other words he needs to attempt to quantify (as Rudy T. would say) what the "heart of a champion is". This would bring a human element to his statistics that leave them flawed.

His inability to tweak his system and just say that the team is essentially a statistical outlier is lazy. His belief that his system is perfect is what causes people (like myself) to dis like him.

[papa shuttlesworth]

I agree with the basic idea of his article, which is that teams with a mediocre regular season record don't often win the championship, but he picks and chooses his spots.

It would be a totally different article if he looked at the first half of the season, when the Celtics were playing well and extrapolated from there, with the idea that that was the true team and injuries/desire to stay healthy led to the crappy 2nd half of the season.  Instead, he overlooks this whole concept.

Technically, he is correct because he looks at the whole season, but it is another case of him having an idea for a story and then finding the best way to present the data to prove that point, conveniently leaving out key findings like a 6th grader's science project.

[papa shuttlesworth]

I also should point out that I like Hollinger most of the time and think his concepts are usually good and a nice reprieve from the "this guy is my favorite player" or "I'm from LA, so I my world only includes the Lakers and Suns" slants of other writers.

(And also I admit that I often pick and choose whether I like a writer based on how well their stories line up with my views/teams, but I'm not a journalist so I think it's ok)

[indeedproceed]

I agree with the basic idea of his article, which is that teams with a mediocre regular season record don't often win the championship, but he picks and chooses his spots.

It would be a totally different article if he looked at the first half of the season, when the Celtics were playing well and extrapolated from there, with the idea that that was the true team and injuries/desire to stay healthy led to the crappy 2nd half of the season.  Instead, he overlooks this whole concept.

Technically, he is correct because he looks at the whole season, but it is another case of him having an idea for a story and then finding the best way to present the data to prove that point, conveniently leaving out key findings like a 6th grader's science project.

I think this is pretty well said, although not completely accurate. While on one side you are 100% correct and it is something that did not occur to me either when i was thinking about this (TP)..if he looks at the first part of the season before the injuries started and the crappy play ensued, this shouldn't me that much of a surprise.

However, he does address this somewhat when he states that a direct comparison to the 77-78 Sonics is not plausible, because they got hot later in the season after a terrible start, while the Celtics got hot on opening day, then lamed into the playoffs.

Also let me add, that if he would've said "You could've seen this coming back on Christmas" or anything of the sort and whipped out some early season stats, I would've crucified him for that too, because that is also just part of the story.

[FallGuy]

Aren't all statistics based upon past data?

Hollinger extrapolates an outcome based upon past statistical evidence.

The human factor doesn't remain constant (like for the most part as numbers usually do).

The past Celtics are not the same Celtics.

Which is why we're all so happy these days!

[BballTim]

  He's looking for too exact a match. He's just trying to look for teams that played poorly for an extended period of time and then made it to the conference finals. That is, as he discovered, exceedingly rare. What he should have done, and still hasn't (IMO) is to look at *why* the Celts did poorly and *why* they aren't playing poorly now. Namely the health of some of their top players.

  What he needs to do is look for instances of teams who had either their best player or two of their better players injured for much of the year and healthy for the playoffs. Do those teams tend to exceed what would be expected of them in the playoffs? Even at that, there still aren't a lot of similar cases. But at least he'd be understanding what's going on. He's looking for teams that had records over the course of a season that resemble ours without looking at why we performed the way we did.