Quote:
Originally Posted by unluckyseventeen
Stein and Bucher are wankers, yeah... come to think of it, just about all of ESPN's writers are wankers, but you can't get worse than Hollinger. The guy tries to boil the entire NBA down to a math formula and has written the most laughable NBA articles to my recollection.
I was moreso stunned not to hear that he is their best NBA writer (maybe only because their whole staff sucks), but you also said you were a big fan of his work. That, itself, is worthy of a  . |
Don't see what's so stunning about it. He's one of the few NBA writers out there (certainly the most famous) who makes his living off actual analysis, rather than vague generalities. Of course, since, unlike the Stein-Bucher school, he actually makes logical arguments and cites facts, he's bound to be caught with wrong (or even ridiculous) statements once in a while.
But he's a good writer, and he's made numerous contributions to the field of basketball statistics. When he says things, he can back them up. He may not always be right (nor does he make any claims of infallibility), but he provides arguments and evidence.
Your comment about "boil[ing] the entire NBA down to a math formula" just smacks of statistics-phobia to me, because that's not really what he does at all. (Not that I'm exactly sure what you mean by that anyway). He uses stats, math, and numbers to try and find out what's actually going on in the game of basketball. Sometimes what that reveals is obvious, and sometimes it's at a level deeper than what our eyes perceive unaided.