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Originally Posted by Diophantos
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.
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I find it remarkable that he's getting paid to do what he does, but I don't find it admirable. There's a difference.
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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.
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I am far from statistics-a-phobic...
... Yeah, it's a word now. Seriously, though, I was really into stats in high school and for a little bit in college and learned a lot about them. I understand the numbers, I just don't think they matter.
But anyway, it's hard for me to believe that he's got it all figured out. Going deeper into the game is noticing tons of subtleties about the game is what I consider analysis of the sport. Hollinger has practically made it an art form (whether ridiculous or not) to take every statistic he can find and somehow blend them all up into some magic number with hardly any reasoning behind it (he often says that the system doesn't really reflect actual basketball analysis)... so what is he really doing? He's just getting paid to make up numbers and formulas that I guess he sees as fairly balanced. Again, the numbers are subjective, so even that makes me less likely to hold any value in it.
Continuing on the whole analysis thing, it's actually HARD for me to name a single analyst that I can say really understands the entire game of basketball and has a solid opinion on the current day's NBA. The first thing that comes to mind as far as valuable analysis is Doug Collins, and even he is sometimes mediocre and redundant, but it certainly beats out tons of unreliable (and still biased) systems that Hollinger cooks up.
The amazing thing is how bad basketball analysis is as a whole. I can watch Sean Salisbury on ESPN for 3 minutes and learn way more about football and appreciate the analysis than I could watching Greg Anthony, Legler, Stein, Bucher.. anybody combined for 24 hours. It's kind of sad, actually. I trust the analysis and opinions of more people on this board than I do the so-called "experts".
Anyway, this is all going to boil down to a plain disagreement on a level of opinions, but that doesn't mean that either of us are right or wrong. I suppose I can respect your opinion if you take value in it, but I guess my point is that I don't, and I understand what's going on with everything, so it's not due to a lack of education.
And one final note, I wouldn't even call Bucher and Stein analysts. They are nothing but messengers for trade rumors and whatnot.