[unluckyseventeen]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/playoffodds

Hollinger has really outdone himself this time saying the Jazz, apparently, have the 2nd-best chance to win the title out of any team in the league... not sure how the hell he came to that conclusion. Or, rather, how his crazy, drug-fueled math formulas came to that conclusion, but apparently that's the most likely thing to happen.

This guy is really out of his mind.

[dwade3]

all the ESPN writers start jockin teams for no reason whatsoever, read my post about what Adande said....

[NewAgeBaller]

Hollinger was always a bit of an idiot so eh..

[EHL]

Point differential, strength of schedule, etc. Lots of factors. Jazz are an elite team but I wouldn't call them a contender for the simple fact that Boozer and Okur anchor their D.

[Basel57]

That changes every week...one day, it's the Lakers...then it's the Spurs...now it's the Jazz. Next week it'll be the Warriors.

[unluckyseventeen]

Originally Posted by Basel57

That changes every week...one day, it's the Lakers...then it's the Spurs...now it's the Jazz. Next week it'll be the Warriors.

Haha, it might be.

I just stumbled across this and hadn't seen the numbers earlier in the season. But, how can people be expected to take this guy seriously when he's throwing this kind of crap in a blender and then it regurgitating this result without any real explanation for it. If you go read what he has to say about it, it really doesn't make any more sense than what you assume.

As far as I can tell he just says "who has been good recently - OK, they are more/less likely to win a championship"... since they were good over a stretch of a month...? The Jazz were awful in December and I'd heard somebody tell me they were even one of the highest rated teams by Hollinger even then.

[Diophantos]

First of all, let me say that I like Hollinger's work a lot; I think he's the best basketball writer ESPN has.

That said, I don't really agree that Jazz/Celts is the most likely finals. But I think if you actually asked Hollinger himself, he wouldn't pick Jazz/Celts in the finals either. This "playoff odds" thing that he set up is in it's early stages, it's just a formula and as such it doesn't know everything we know. It knows strength of schedule (the Jazz have had a hard one so far), how many home/road games are left (Jazz have more home games left), who's in what division (Jazz have a good chance of winning theirs), etc.

What is doesn't know, however, is a lot. It doesn't know the experience history of the Jazz related to teams like San Antonio and Dallas. It doesn't know that San Antonio usually picks up its play in the second half of the season. Most importantly, perhaps, it has no clue about the Pau Gasol trade, which could throw a lot of things out of whack.

So that's why it breaks with our intuition and says the Jazz have a high chance of going to the finals. Hollinger has said that it's a work in progress--mainly it's a way to see what teams are likely to fade down the stretch (due to hard, road-intensive schedules), which teams are likely to rise (high point differential, easy remaining schedule), and which teams are likely to have favorable playoff matches. It's a fun tool at the moment, but I wouldn't put much stock in its overall predictions, and I don't think Hollinger would either.

[unluckyseventeen]

Originally Posted by Diophantos

First of all, let me say that I like Hollinger's work a lot; I think he's the best basketball writer ESPN has.

[Diophantos]

Originally Posted by unluckyseventeen

Yeah, you're right. I'd much rather read Bucher spout cliches or let Marc Stein tell me how he thinks Stephen Jackson is the MVP of the west.

[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 .

[Diophantos]

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.