Hollinger Wrong - Cs won't be in lottery

[ChiefDK]

I'm a huge stat geek, but I have to say Hollinger's overreliance on stats only for his analysis is maddening. He basically said in his chat that Boston will miss out due to a more difficult schedule as compared to MIL and NY. He never looks at intangibles, like the fact that Boston is a proven tough playoff/pressure team with a strong veteran presence. I don't see any way the veterans on this team will let this happen, especially now that they are 4 up on the Bucks with 22 to play.

Milwaukee is more likely to fold under the pressure than Boston.

[KGs Knee]

Hollinger being wrong is nothing new.

I don't care for his use of stats as a basis for analysis, but, I will defend him in one regard.  He doesn't have bias, at least when quoting his stats, so when he gets labled as a "Celtic hater" I am just amazed.  He isn't hating on them, or any other team for that matter, he's just quoting his stats and nothing more.

Last night C's/Bucks game proved one thing though.  The Celtics are by far the better team.  Hollinger's stats are once again wrong.

[ChiefDK]

Hollinger being wrong is nothing new.

I don't care for his use of stats as a basis for analysis, but, I will defend him in one regard.  He doesn't have bias, at least when quoting his stats, so when he gets labled as a "Celtic hater" I am just amazed.  He isn't hating on them, or any other team for that matter, he's just quoting his stats and nothing more.

Last night C's/Bucks game proved one thing though.  The Celtics are by far the better team.  Hollinger's stats are once again wrong.

You make a good point in that he isn't biased. And I do enjoy reading his stuff. But sometimes you need to call it as you see it (I assume he actually watches games as well), and not rely 100% on statistical analysis.

[KGs Knee]

Hollinger being wrong is nothing new.

I don't care for his use of stats as a basis for analysis, but, I will defend him in one regard.  He doesn't have bias, at least when quoting his stats, so when he gets labled as a "Celtic hater" I am just amazed.  He isn't hating on them, or any other team for that matter, he's just quoting his stats and nothing more.

Last night C's/Bucks game proved one thing though.  The Celtics are by far the better team.  Hollinger's stats are once again wrong.

You make a good point in that he isn't biased. And I do enjoy reading his stuff. But sometimes you need to call it as you see it (I assume he actually watches games as well), and not rely 100% on statistical analysis.

The thing is, that's his shtick.  It's what he's paid for.

Now, in an honest moment, if he was asked whether he actually believes his stats or his eyes, I don't know how he'd respond.  There are definitely times when it's blantantly obvious his stats are wrong.

[ManUp]

We're simply too good (in the east) to miss the play-offs. Especially when our biggest threats are Milwaukee and Cleveland. I don't see us finish better than 8th though.

[RyNye]

Hollinger puzzles me, because not only is he a stat geek, but he's not a particularly GOOD one. I mean, no pure statistical analysis is going to predict basketball performance. (Heck, by its very nature, statistics is DESCRIPTIVE, not PREDICTIVE ... that is, it models past performance, without making a claim as to future performance).

But, that said, there are a half dozen statistical measures that are significantly better/more accurate than PER. None are perfect, obviously, but Win Shares, Wins Produced, even simple Plus-Minus all have pretty good track records, which PER does not. PER is decent for explaining individual performance, but is heavily biased towards offensive production and scoring, and is just terrible at any sort of team analysis.

I just think if you are going to base your analysis SOLELY on statistics, why use the measure that every statistician in the business dislikes? (I mean, there have been lectures at Sloan about how bad it is...)

[Kane3387]

I'm a huge stat geek, but I have to say Hollinger's overreliance on stats only for his analysis is maddening. He basically said in his chat that Boston will miss out due to a more difficult schedule as compared to MIL and NY. He never looks at intangibles, like the fact that Boston is a proven tough playoff/pressure team with a strong veteran presence. I don't see any way the veterans on this team will let this happen, especially now that they are 4 up on the Bucks with 22 to play.

Milwaukee is more likely to fold under the pressure than Boston.

Might as well be 5 up on Milwaukee. We have the tie breaker since we have already won 2 of the 3 games we will play them this season.

[LB3533]

C's record is 10-5 since KG moved to Center.

Our record after the AS break is 10-4 with 2 of those losses were blowout losses (Sixers/Kings) and 2 were closely contested 4th quarter games (Lakers/Nuggets).

If we continue our current trend we would finish 14-6 with our last 20 games for 39 wins.

Orlando would have to go 9-9 to finish the season and we'd tie them with 39 wins.

The Magic's schedule isn't that difficult, but it doesn't surprise me if they lose 8 or 9 games the rest of the way.

Atlanta has two difficult stretches, one at the end of March and one at the end of the season, they have been playing .500 ball the last 10 games, but with Joe Johnson back, they could go on a roll.

Indy has struggled (6-6) since the AS break. They are currently in a back2back2back and next week play 4 games in 7 days to close the month out. They start of the month playing 5 games in 7 days followed by 2 weeks of 4 game sets. Indy's month of April is kinda brutal with 4 back to backs.

Our month of April is no joke either with 5 sets of back to backs against some top teams, but I think we really get up for the top teams and we just end up losing close ones due to poor control of our turnovers. I don't think we have any real control of over rebounding or else we would have fixed it by now or at least improved a little bit by now.

Turnovers are something we can control with better decision making, starting our offense's quicker, not going for flashy, homerun passes.

Basically, if we can win out the rest of March and just lose the games in April to teams we are supposed to lose, and we beat the teams we are supposed to beat, we can finish 14-6 and a good chance to win that 3rd seed. 

[Marcus13]

Idk.  I want to believe we arent going out that way, but our April schedule is absolutely brutal.  12 games in 17 nights is going to have out veterans undoubtedly stumbling to the finish line

[Fafnir]

Idk.  I want to believe we arent going out that way, but our April schedule is absolutely brutal.  12 games in 17 nights is going to have out veterans undoubtedly stumbling to the finish line

Yeah his projections had use losing the tiebreaker to the Bucks and Knicks before last night and stumbling mostly due to the SoS factor. We have a nasty end to the season.

[Boris Badenov]

We're up to 83% as of today, and Mil is down to 50/50. That win was big.

[phonic1]

I think any reasonable person would be happy with us getting a lottery pick.  It would be a nice consolation prize since we lost out on picks/youth at the trade deadline.

[xmuscularghandix]

I think any reasonable person would be happy with us getting a lottery pick.  It would be a nice consolation prize since we lost out on picks/youth at the trade deadline.

So teams were going to trade picks AND young players for Ray Allen? What teams would do that? If a guy is old your going to get one or the other plus filler. C'mon.

[phonic1]

I think any reasonable person would be happy with us getting a lottery pick.  It would be a nice consolation prize since we lost out on picks/youth at the trade deadline.

So teams were going to trade picks AND young players for Ray Allen? What teams would do that? If a guy is old your going to get one or the other plus filler. C'mon.

Who said it just had to be Ray?  Bass was desirable.  So was Rondo.  As was Pietrus.  Why are there no post about Pietrus???  Hope he's OK.

[Greenbean]

C's are getting hurt in Hollinger's rankings by some big blowouts in the last 25% of their games without having any blowouts of their own. It is the one flaw of using scoring margin so heavily.