Ty Lawson

I just found out that the draft is in two hours, so…good timing!

So Matthew Yglesias has a post about Ty Lawson, arguing that he should go higher in the draft than he’s projected to go (21st by nbadraft.net).  He was criticized for being short (6′0″), even for a point guard, and not fast enough.  I just don’t get the speed complaint, since Lawson was possibly the fastest player currently in college.

The height issue is possibly even weirder.  As for the height issue, the weirdest thing is that Yglesias’ comment thread didn’t mention the most relevant comparison.  Namely, three years ago, UNC sent Raymond Felton, an extremely fast 6′1″ guard to the NBA, and that’s…working out nicely.  They have a similar style and played the same system in college.  And Lawson has at least one thing going on Felton–his three point shooting was substantially better than Felton’s.  Actually, Felton had bad 3-pt shooting in college, and continues to be bad in the NBA, while Lawson is an outstanding three point shooter.  There are differences–Felton is actually a mutant who can just throw the ball through defenders to make a pass, and he’s probably faster than Lawson by a bit.  Still, Felton fully justified his status as the 5th pick, so it feels safe to say Lawson would justify a lottery pick.

Last fun stat, Lawson’s assist-turnover ratio? 3.48, which is just sick.  And it’s doubly important, because he always looks out of control, like he’s about to throw the ball in one direction and then careen into the stands.  But the stat shows that’s just an illusion.

Tacked on at the last minute: I see that Felton’s PER isn’t great, so maybe I was followed by superficially impressive stats.  Hollinger points out that the Bobcats made an obvious mistake playing Felton at the 2.  Or maybe I’m just out of my league trying to comment here–I don’t really follow the NBA, except sometimes during playoffs and to check on players I liked in college.

Watching the draft: When I saw that Minnesota had drafted Ricky Rubio, Jonny Flynn and Ty Lawson, I thought of the scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker faces three of a dead mobster’s henchmen, breaks a pool cue in half, and tells them he’s taking auditions, which will conclude in 5 minutes.  I think that’s a much better storyline than trading Lawson.

Preparatory Reading For Tonight

My friend JT shared an article from basketball prospectus on the UNC team that’s worth reading.  It argues that playing a fast paced game is almost completely unimportant to UNC’s offensive success.  That’s surprising, since UNC is one of the fastest teams in college basketball, and this style of play is characteristic of Roy Williams’ teams.  However, so far as I understand statistical analysis of basketball (ED: And that’s not far at all…) the argument seems legitimate.

A second article focuses on Tyler Hansbrough’s game.  Nice paragraph:

The broadcast did do a great job of highlighting a three-possession sequence early in the second half where Hansbrough showed off the breadth of his offensive skills. On the first play, he caught the ball at the three-point line, put it on the floor and used a spin move to free himself for a banker off glass from about 10 feet. Next, Hansbrough established deep post position early in the offense and scored on a soft hook shot. Lastly, Hansbrough caught the ball just outside the paint, saw a double-team coming and dished to teammate Ed Davis for a dunk. Few big men in the country could have made any two of those plays, let alone all three.

The biggest thing keeping Hansbrough from being a major factor in the high post is the fact that he is so good at playing nearer the basket. I anticipate this element of his game being developed at the pro level…

The comforting upshot of the piece is that Hansbrough could be a strong role player in the NBA, despite the fact that many elements of his game are unlikely to be effective in professional play–he’s neither tall enough nor athletic enough to play the same role he has in college.

Super Bowl

I feel pretty smart for not sharing my prediction that the Steelers wouldn’t do well in the playoffs this year.  In my defense, I didn’t expect the Giants, Titans and Eagles to all lose.  No, the Eagles were not an amazing team, but their previous game vs. the Steelers was quite lopsided.

STILLERS!

Oh, Yeah…

STILLERS!

STILLERS! STILLERS!

STILLERS!

I Now Resent American Professional Wrestling Even More

(via SeoulBrother)

Why Is College Basketball Even Happening This Season, Given How Obvious It Is That UNC Will Win the Championship?

Because basketball is the most aesthetically perfect of all sports.

Now that we’ve settled that, it’s pretty rare that I get a direct request to blog about a given topic, so I should honor it when it comes.  In conversation, Miloš expressed surprise that I hadn’t mentioned how Pitt (my current school) was ranked #1 in college basketball while UNC, my alma mater, is #3.  Here’s what I told him: “It’s bullshit.”

Allow me to elaborate.

I think it’s pretty cool that the kids at Pitt are doing so well (disclosure: I haven’t watched any games this season–I’ll have to fix this, now that there will be so many good big east games).  You can’t argue with 14-0, and you can’t argue with beating Georgetown by 16.  So three cheers for them, and they deserve the #1 ranking for now.

The problem with the college basketball polls is that they’re subject to large order effects (does anyone in college basketball not realize this?).  Run the season with the same teams playing and the same results, but reorder the games and you’ll get entirely different rankings. The latter games dominate. I’m not talking about cases where a team suffers a clear and protracted slump (or surge) late in the season–think of every Virginia team Pete Gillen coached. The problem is clearest in pre-conference play, where there are ten different teams with 12-1 or 12-2 records accumulated by playing a series of mediocre or cupcake opponents plus two or three good teams.

A good approximation of the way the polls work early on¹ in the season is that each time a ranked team loses, the coaches roll a die to determine how many spots they should move that team back.  Two teams will move towards each other if they have a string of wins, but whichever one loses latest will end up behind the other.

Case in point: Duke is #2, and UNC is #3 in the coaches’ poll.  Why? Because Duke had its loss a month ago, and UNC’s was the game before last.  The teams they lost to are of comparable ability (Michigan and Boston College respectively).  Duke also has some quality wins–Michigan by 16 in the first game, Davidson² by 12, Purdue by 16.  This is a really good Duke team.³

I just think the 35 point victory that UNC had over Michigan State, a team that’s ranked 12th in the nation, is pretty sweet.

¹ Maybe I’m being overly deferential.  One might argue that this is how it goes all the way until selection sunday.

² I’ve been a fan since before it was cool.  Of course I can’t claim any insight here–Miss Lady just happened to go there.

³ One might think that this post doesn’t need to involve pot-shots against Duke, when they’re obviously a good team this year.  Not like some of their recent embarassing seasons.  But that won’t stop me.

⁴ I didn’t think of a good way to work it into the flow of the post, but UNC is playing Wake Forest on Sunday.  The winner of that game will probably be our new best guess at the top team in the ACC, unlike our current 2-3-4 ranking.  I have no clue about this Wake team–their appearance at #4 was a shock, and I haven’t seen them play.  I’m optimistically noting that they don’t seem to have played any real tests.

In Which I Wake Up and Pay Attention to College Football for the First Time in Years

With regard to college football, I’m a horrendous fair weather fan, without the “fan” part.  It’s a weird season in football, but I think UNC’s cracking the top 25 is one of the weirdest events.  You might think that UNC would have a good football team, being a large state school, but you’d be wrong.  In the six completed seasons since I matriculated at UNC, they had a 23-48 run.  They didn’t manage to win even a third of their games.  Their 4-1 start gives them more wins than they got in four of those seasons.

In other weird news, Duke got a vote in the USA Today poll.  Duke is perhaps the only team that has been consistently worse than UNC in the ACC.

STILLERS!

Stillers! STillers! Stillllers! STILLLLLLERS!

This has been a public service announcement.  In other news, I live close enough to the stadium that I can hear the announcers and that it’s impossible to park on my street during game days.

New Sports

Matt Zeitlin’s idea that the American men’s basketball team should be tested by competing against a non-American dream team (i.e. Yao, Pau, Nowitzki, Ginobli and Nash) is hilarious.  I understand the sentiment, but in how many sports is the test of a team’s dominance whether it could win against any conceivable other team?

This dovetails with a conversation my friend Michael and I had: if we’re going to stop the Chinese Olympics juggernaut, our only hope is to invent sports that we can continue dominating.  So we’ll keep Basketball, open Baseball up to the pros, institute some weird baseball spinoffs (batting practice? home run contests?), and keep ridiculous competitions like BMX going. We could also create more medal events in track and field, since China seems unlikely to ever unseat us there.  Weak events like “Martial Arts” could be balanced out by “killing people with guns,” or “firing guns into the air,” events which I can presume we’d do well in.  As far as new sports, we’re currently #1 in competitive eating.  Any further suggestions?

The 16th Season

It looks like the Pittsburgh Pirates will tie MLB’s record for the longest streak of consecutive losing seasons at 16.  Earlier in the season they were doing well, but now they’re 9 games off of .500, which is a big deficit to overcome.  As a dispassionate observer, it’s easier to root for them to get the record than to root for them to be good.  Besides, Pittsburgh needs a team this bad.

Some are not athletes

I lied when I said I wouldn’t be posting for two weeks (surprise, that!). See, it turns out that someone on the internet is wrong.

Matthew Yglesias has linked to a post claiming that colleges know how to take care of students, and ensure high graduation rates. The offered advice is: treat ‘em like athletes. Contrary to the stereotypes, athletes have better graduation rates than the student populace at large, and the gap grows the less advantaged the athletes are in the first place–unsurprisingly, there’s a large gap in graduation rates between middle class second generation students and poor first generation college students. However, there are three reasons to doubt the model will extend to students in general.

First, there’s money issues. The constant observation and interventions for athletes aren’t cheap for universities, so it’s an open question how many of them have the resources to extend them to the student body as a whole. At the same time, athletes’ graduation rates will be boosted by the fact that they are often on scholarship. The full scholarships that basketball and football players get at big universities are rare, but even a bit of money matters given that monetary difficulties are a huge reason for students failing to complete college. Even when students don’t drop out because of money, the need to work long hours is often a severe obstacle to getting good grades.

Second, there’s the issue of leverage. Perhaps it’s too bold of a conjecture, but I think not that many students quit college because they just can’t handle the work, but that they’re insufficiently motivated (or they’re so bogged down with none-college obligations that they can’t put in enough effort–see above). Even in logic, a course that is quite hard for many students (and oddly easy for others), the students headed for failure are more likely than not the ones who I can’t recognize because they don’t come to class, or those who can’t be bothered to turn in homework.

Athletes have a very compelling and immediate instrumental motivation–they can’t do something they love this year unless they keep their grades up. Non-athletes have the compelling motivation of lifetime earnings and such, but we know just how good Homo Sapiens is at reacting to anything not right in front of its face. More than that, some of the measures described by Rotherdam are unlikely to sit well with students: “they live in special housing and often eat in special facilities.” Leaving aside the question of how those special facilities work when extended to the student population at large, how many kids are going to sign up? Athletes also often have 7 AM weight training–picture the average student’s reaction to that prospect.

Third, many of the ways that athletes are treated undermine the educational goals of the university. The author of the post suggests that the stereotype of athletes enrolling in easy majors is just a stereotype. I’m very curious what he bases that on. Cases like Georgia’s basketball course, featuring questions like “how many points is a three point goal worth” are probably rare, but there are subtler ways of rigging the game. Athletic departments often compile lists of recommended courses, going so far as to guide students away from courses taught by particular teachers because of the workloads involved. The point is that what athletic departments are motivated to do is keep graduation rates up for their own sake, regardless of whether that amounts to giving the students a well rounded education.

#1 Seeds

I’m disappointed that Davidson didn’t make the final four, but let me highlight the fact that two tournaments ago I was calling bullshit on the whole “OMG, all four #1 seeds have never made the final four” meme. Just going by probabilities, having all four #1 seeds make the final four should be quite rare–but also the sort of thing that we should expect to eventually happen. So it’s no surprise that it took 29 years until it just now happened.

I, for one, am quite curious to see what other cliché will replace this one for the sportscasters next year.

On an unrelated note, have a look at this delightful image of “Psycho T”

Liveblogging at Halftime

Note to ESPN talking heads–when Stephen Curry has 15 points in the first half, that does not constitute Kansas doing a good job defending him. It is an ok job, or a not terrible job. But 30 points would be a good total, even if the first half was on 5-12 shooting.

Followup: Was that five points in the first 1:30 of the second half? I guess when that’s the alternative, 15 points is good.

Way to Go

Not only did Davidson beat Wisconsin, they made it look easy in the second half, winning by 17 points despite being a serious underdog.  My bold prediction is that they’re playing well enough to match up with anyone right about now.  That’s not a guarantee, but I predict that this game with Kansas will be good (and no, Kansas has not yet won).

Stephen Curry posted 33–his four game average in the NCAA tournament.

Well Played, Mr. Curry

40 points, 30 of them in the second half, of which he played all 20:00 minutes. With that, Davidson wins its first NCAA tournament game since 1969 IIRC (Ed: Was Miss Lady responsible for you calling it? Yes, she was). Sadly, Drake is about to lose and finally mar my bracket.

Followup: Well, Drake made a nice run to take this in to overtime. And Western Kentucky seals it with a great 3-pointer at the buzzer.

Competition

Both of my teams won in Virginia tonight.  But while Obama had a huge victory, the heels won by a single point–with the game coming down to a rebound in the last few seconds.  Nice job to pull it out with Ty Lawson out of the game.  But I’m gonna have to put my foot down–no more close games.  You’re gonna have to crush the opposition from now until the NCAA tournament.

Truly Important Bad News

The Duke-UNC game just started and Ty Lawson is still out with an ankle injury.

Update: Goddamnit.

What I Do With My Life

Michael Bérubé has a characteristically witty post about Bill Belichick’s maleficence. I appreciate Bérubé’s analysis, and have greatly praised him in the past. Unfortunately, Bérubé is a professor of literature, and we know that nothing good can come of that. In particular, while he quotes Wittgenstein to great effect, he seems unaware of a few developments in philosophy that have happened since the days when “ordinary language” philosophers were kings. Ordinary language philosophers are a curious subspecies of professor that lived in middle of the last century. They were quite fond of abruptly declaring your ideas to be nonsense. We now return the favor, by attributing absurd opinions to unspecified ordinary language philosophers.

In particular, progress has given us new theories of vagueness. I’ll just consider one, since I’d need a lot of scotch to cover the whole field.† Epistemicism is the view that when we have a vague predicate, such as “is tall,” “is a heap,” or “is the 12th NY Giants player on the field,” then there is a precise cutoff in any sequence of cases delineating the cases in which the predicate is true from those in which it is false. If you have one grain of sand, it’s not a heap. Nor is two. But at some point, perhaps 14916, you add one more grain and suddenly you get a heap. For extra fun, there is no way to determine where that line falls. Take some case where the player is out of bounds and move one atom. If you are lucky, you will have thereby caused him to be inbounds.

There are two reasons why epistemicism is popular. First, its main proponent is a brilliant man. Disclosure: I’ve read half of this book and it is a delight. I haven’t read any of the relevant one. I am speaking in my official capacity as a philosophy grad student not interested in the subject. Second, no philosopher has come up with a single good theory of anything since the predicate calculus was invented. Relatively speaking, epistemicism looks quite good (try someone more charitable than me: Bryan Frances).

The upshot? Wittgenstein was wrong and the rules of football are correct in every detail.

† Only beer tonight, thank you. I’ll only need scotch after I finish this monstrous post.

One and Done

Via Matthew Yglesias, I see early predictions concerning the 2008 draft.  Conveniently for my purposes, all four of the top prospects are freshmen in college.  So these are exactly the guys the new set of rules cover–as of 2006, they’re forced to wait a year after their high school class graduates before entering the draft.  So they go to college, playing for a year before going to the NBA.  This is a brilliant arrangement for the NBA–they don’t have to pay these guys while they get a year to develop their skills.  It doesn’t do a damn bit of good for anyone else though.

All four of these guys were top prospects coming out of high school–each year it’s going to be that way.  They don’t need the year of college to make themselves look good to NBA teams.  Some of them may have a genuine interest in playing college ball, or going to college–but I’m concerned with the ones who would just as happily have gone straight to the NBA.

First off, the only have one year of college.  I’m pretty high on the value of a college education, what with being a teacher and all.  Still, I wouldn’t advise someone to show up, come to my classes for a year, then depart with no plans to come back.  What’s the value of that? Worse, since they’re only planning to play for a year, they don’t even have an incentive to do that well in school–they don’t have to maintain eligibility.  And they’re not going to be harmed by going straight to the NBA–these are the guys who have million dollar a year contracts waiting for them.  With even a modicum of sense they could save the money to come back to college if they need to (and if you think the first year of college teaches good judgment, I have a bridge for sale).  Nor do the colleges benefit.  Individual colleges get to gamble that they can pull a Syracuse, but overall it just leads to volatility as programs have a cycle of players entering before leaving in a year.

Overall, this rule is a complete farce.

Basketball Season Coming Up

The first UNC game is on November 14th against Davidson. This should be fun both because Davidson should be good this year with Stephen Curry, and because it’s Miss Lady’s alma mater (dare I irrelevantly mention that she carves a nice jack o-lantern?).

Duke is mysteriously ranked at #11 in the ESPN poll. I have two theories for this: the voters overrated Duke’s eighth in the nation recruiting class or they figured that losing McRoberts to the NBA would just be cutting deadweight. In any case, I call Duke overrated–they’ll finish in the low part of the top 25 or unranked this season. I’d like them to stay good, though, since it would be no fun beating up on a weak team year after year (and in truth, I don’t think there’s much danger of it, Coach K. is too good for that). NC State is also in the top 25–I wouldn’t mind seeing them edge out Duke.

In the interests of fairness, I’ll admit that UNC may be too highly ranked. It’s hard to be anything else when you’re the pre-season #1.