Hollinger --> proof that relying on stats to evaluate players and teams in the NBA is a flawed belief system at best.
When I see people on the site quoting stats to back up their beliefs about the C's (good or bad), I can't help but equate them with Hollinger and his track record on this team (which isn't very good).
Watching the games is a far better tool at evaluating the play of a team. It can lead to subjective opinions but watching a team reveals a lot more about how they're playing
As much as stats can go completely awry, especially when you lean heavily on a few like Hollinger does, absolutely nothing compares to the error rate of subjective opinions.
Subjective opinions only look good when evaluated...well, subjectively, and usually by the person holding the opinion. The easiest example of this is selectively remembering your opinions that were correct, forgetting the ones that were way off, and spinning the kinda-right, kinda-wrong opinions into having been right all along.
Stats aren't perfect by any means, but they help to provide structure and context to what we actually see on the court. That's why so many fans now use them to some degree.
My favorite example of this is the post in another thread bashing Hollinger's predictions with GIFs where he was wrong.
08 Finals
10 First Round
10 Second Round
10 ECF
They leave out the 10 Finals, the 08 First Round, 08 Second Round, etc...
Yeah I know which post you're referring to - the irony of the whole thing is that I'm not really a fan of Hollinger or his pet stats, but a lot of the opinions here are so off-the-wall that I wind up defending him all the time. He's not some guru but he's no clueless idiot either.
But if I had to classify him as one, at least when it comes to basketball, I'd pick the latter.
Seems I kicked off quite the feedback string.
My personal opinion of statistical analysis for sports is that of all the sports, the sport that it applies to fairly well is baseball and to a lesser extent, football. Basketball (and hockey even more so) is such a fluid game that stats can only provide a small glimpse into what's going on in the game and a player or team's chances of success (or failure).
Take the rebounding debates that have been a popular topic here. There is one person (above all others and I'm not picking on that person, just using this as an example of someone that sticks to statistics adamantly to back their opinion/viewpoint. I actually think this person has made some good commentary when not quoting stats.) that continuously points to rebounding statistics to say the C's are actually a good rebounding team regardless of what the rest of Celtics Nation sees occur in a game.
Personally, when I watch the game and see the other team getting offensive rebounds, regardless of whether they're multiple ones during a few trips down the floor and even if the other team doesn't eventually score, I have an issue/concern with that and consider it a problem. If the other team gets over 10 offensive rebounds, I don't care if it's because the other team missed 40 or 50 shots (which makes the C's look like they're getting 75% - 80% defensive rebound rate respectively), that total number of offensive rebounds is still 10 (or more) extra shots the other team is getting that could (or did) result in extra points.
From that standpoint, observation (IMO) is a better evaluation tool. I think Hollinger's devotion to his statistical model is an extremely flawed method for evaluating this team's potential success.
Topic: Hollinger says "Heat will breeze past us easily in the second round" (Read 51998 times)