I'm going to take these points one at a time:
@HighEliteMajor said:
The best teams are not the teams the blow teams out regularly. Stats don't measure character, and chemistry, and what it really takes to win consistently.
No, stats don't measure character, chemistry, or other intangibles. They measure results and compare them to the results of other agents engaged in a particular activity. But if you have a group of teams that produce a similar number of wins against similar competition, on the whole, when they began to play one another, you'd assume that the ones that beat their best opponents by the largest margins most frequently would prevail more often than not. And if you did so, your assumption would be rewarded more ofthen than not too.
Winning close games does not point to being less fundamentally sound. You say that is what is attempting to be proven. Those two events -- close games vs. being less fundamentally sound have nothing to do with one another. The entire discussion assumes that connection to have validity. I have coached several teams in each sport .. baseball, football, and basketball. And the best teams I've ever coached played a lot of close games, but had the knack for regularly winning close games (and did not regularly blow people out).
This is a nice anecdote, but completely irrelevant. More on why in a second...
Winning more close games doesn't point to a lack of fundamental soundness. Playing more close games than what teams similar to you does, however. The idea isn't to quantify what is, but what isn't. What is it that you lack that is allowing weaker teams to hang with you more often than your peers? If it's your style to play in a way that keeps games close inherently (like playing slowly), then yes, you're going to wind up playing more close games than teams that don't, but that's not what the comparison is based on. If you're not like your peers, that's meaningful. The fact that you'd refer to the result as a 'knack' just goes to show it's a factor you don't consciously control. In fact, in this context, you can use the terms 'knack' and 'luck' interchangeably. KU has the most 'knack' this season of any D-1 team. In 1988, their 'knack' got them title. But however you describe it, I would think you'd be disconcerted with your team if they're regularly putting in close performances against teams they should handle easily.
UConn was 40th in scoring margin last season. But I understand the circular nature of this discussion .. "oh, that's not what we're trying to show." Or "the NCAA tourney is luck." Or whatever.
There's nothing remotely circular about this discussion. Of course the NCAA tournament isn't 'luck' or 'all luck' or anything of the sort, but I think anyone would be able to plainly see that luck, or the term I prefer, variance, plays a bigger part in determining the NCAA tournament champion than it does with say, a conference champion. Because it is single elim, you have less of a margin for error in the tournament, and thus events that are totally out of ones control, such as a bad call in the example above, have a bigger impact on that outcome than in other circumstances.
Here's what the article said: "A measure of the deviation between a team's actual winning percentage and what one would expect from its game-by-game efficiencies. It's a Dean Oliver invention. Essentially, a team involved in a lot of close games should not win (or lose) all of them. Those that do will be viewed as lucky (or unlucky)."
That is just complete b.s. A team "should not win (or lose) all of them"? Right, they "should not." It's just a fundamental flaw to assume that it is "luck" when they do. The mistaken premise is the assumption that they "should not." That does not consider that good teams, the best teams, actually "should."
Do you actually understand what Oliver and Pomeroy are saying? I'm not trying to be condescending, but your comment makes no sense. It might be true that given two statistically similar teams where one has played and won a lot of close games, and the other hasn't that the team winning close games is actually better. It might be true that it's because of character and heart or whatever. But when you're talking about 351 teams and 15 seasons, it becomes harder to swallow that everyone who's won more games than similar teams playing similar schedules is just more virtuous than everyone else.
Kenpom's statistics rate which teams are the best based on the results they actually produce, so he'd agree that the best teams should win close games more often than the lesser ones, but he's already taking that into consideration. It's when they are actually playing more close games than comparable teams and winning that he's quantifying as luck. But perhaps it's better to defer to what the actual inventor of the metric himself says:
The principle behind the method - that a team's won-loss record is closely related to the number of points it scores and allows - should be no surprise. It just makes sense that teams that win 60 games outscore their opponents by more than teams that win 50 do. However, one of the things that the Correlated Gaussian Method has added is that consistency also plays a role. Teams that win 60 games do not have to outscore their opponents by more on average than teams that win 50. They just need to be more consistent from game to game.
On the other hand, luck resulting from 'well-timed scoring' is a weak force in the NBA. It doesn't separate the good teams from the bad teams; it just separates two teams of similar quality. Taking the luckiest and unluckiest teams in the NBA, we usually find a total deviation of 10 to 13 wins. Luck has a place in basketball, just as the weather has a place in football and as Wrigley Field has a place in baseball. Each has an effect on the game, but, in the long run, the better teams win with or without the advantage or disadvantage of such factors. (In the short run, like the playoffs, luck can be pretty important. Witness the 1995 Houston Rockets.)
Occasionally luck plays a major part in a team's season. The '85-86 Clippers won 32 games, while their point totals led to an expectation of only 21 wins. A third of their victories (!) came out of the Twilight Zone. The '86-87 Clippers came back to reality, going through a pitiful 12-70 season in a daze. The '86-87 Warriors exceeded their Pythagorean projection by eight games, winning 42 instead of 34 games. They, too, crashed the following season, winning only 20. Both the Clippers and Warriors lost key personnel in their follow-up seasons, but neither ever showed any signs of life anyway. This sort of collapse can be seen throughout the history of basketball, but it's also seen in baseball (and probably other sports). The baseball people called this the Johnson Effect. It's the same effect in basketball so it gets the same name.
It assumes that good vs. luck is defined by the margin of victory. Only someone who has not been around sports would even consider that as a measuring stick. It ignores the concept of consistency, which is a key component of great teams.
NO, not even close. He's assuming that teams that are more efficient offensively and defensively will produce greater margins of victory (adjusted for tempo) on average than teams with similar styles that have played similar opponents. Consistency is entirely the basis for this conclusion. If it were just margin of victory, you'd have a point, but it simply isn't.
Look, I know I won't convince you. So I'm not even trying.
You won't convince me because your arguments are uncompelling, not because I refuse to be swayed. If you have a valid point, raise it. I'm all ears.
Not sure how much you've coached, or been in that situation. But you certainly approach it with a certain arrogance .. perhaps one that is lacking from practical experience.
Arrogant, eh? Pot, may I please introduce myself, Mr. Kettle. I bet we both seldom walk into a room and think we aren't the smartest guy there.
I've seen this stuff first hand. I coached a basketball team, and we rarely won by double digits. But we never lost. We beat teams that would blow out the teams that we beat by a handful of points. Same in football. Style of play dictated that in some years, we were going to have smaller margins of victory. And certainly in baseball, where a pitching/defense teams .. such as the Royals .. are not going to win by large margins. But the Royals, actually, were not a "lucky" team. They had perhaps the surest of things, a lockdown bullpen. The baseball team I coached this past summer couldn't seem to blow anyone out, but we kept winning, and kept getting tourney trophies. We were consistent.
I don't particularly care if Ken Pomeroy has never even dribbled a basketball in his life, but I'm going to go out on a very short and steady limb and guess that you, me, and Pomeroy have coached the exact same number of D-1 basketball teams as one another. Do I have that right? It makes no difference to whether or not his assertions are valid. What matters is how consistently his model makes valid predictions, and what he claims that rate to be. No more, no less. But now to revisit the issue of UConn and raise that of the Royals.
It's incredibly easy to say, now that the season is over, that it was obvious or predictable that such and such an outcome could result. Anyone can do it. It takes no insight, so your assertion that the Royals weren't 'lucky' for factors that you can now name holds no weight. Predictions are what matter and you seem to believe that coaching experience is required to make accurate predictions about who future champions will be, and that statistical predictions are rubbish. Why, then, did no pundit who actually was a former D-1 coach predict UConn's ascension to greatness prior to the dance? Not one even had them in their Final Four predictions. With the Royals and the Giants, it was the same story. Not a single professional pundit or former coach picked either team to make the World Series, let alone both of them. In fact, I can't find even one example of a pundit advancing both teams beyond the first round of the ALDS and NDLS respectively. Pointing out that UConn, UK, the Royals, and the Giants were all 'lucky' should be a no-brainer regardless of who's insights or intuitions you trust. Nobody saw it coming for a good reason. It was highly unlikely.
When one connects margin of victory and luck, it denotes a lesser level of skill or "earning it." And a lower reliability in repeating the result. And that just isn't the real world of sports. It ignores one important variable -- consistency. Great teams have consistency. And that ain't luck.
Luck and 'earning it' are mutually exclusive ideas. I know that UConn earned their national championship because they have a banner ready to hang that says so. The Giants have a trophy in their stadium. As I've already said, consistency is factored in with the luck stat. It's all predicated on the results that statistically similar teams produce. Consistency is accounted for by default because the data derives from actual results. If it wasn't, advanced statistical models for anything, sports or otherwise, wouldn't work. This isn't to say that statistical models are flawless or that statisticians don't make mistakes. They do, but they try to account for that, and these models are constantly being revised in order to make more accurate predictions. When a statistician says that he's 90% certain an event will take place, he's also saying he expects to be wrong about 10% of the time. The worth of a model can be shown when, over time, the predicted value does or does not indeed correlate to that assertion.
I think, honestly, that you're umbrage at the descriptor 'lucky' is completely irrational. Being lucky doesn't diminish your accomplishments. You can be a great coach, and still be lucky. I'm very willing to bet that all those games you coached with close margins of victory you still never escaped defeat every time, probably losing at least once because a ref or an ump made the wrong call. If have gone undefeated in all your endeavors, great, but then do us all a favor and get rid of that bum Self because I and every other one of the Jayhawk faithful are champing at the bit for a run of NCAA Championships that would embarrass the ghost of John Wooden.
As I said above, luck, by it's very definition, refers to things that one can't actually control, but that those who do better at managing what they can control are more often poised to capitalize on good luck, and insulated from bad luck, and that the people who don't or won't control things that they could are the ones that constantly bemoan it. The only reason to think that there's no such thing or that those who profit from it are somehow less deserving (or the corollary that those who failed to do so are entitled to recompense) is if you truly believe that all factors within an outcome are yours to control, but I somehow I can't convince myself that the portion of some landfill that is dedicated to my losing Power Ball tickets doesn't exist because of my lack of gumption.
@JayHawkFanToo
This is a fundamentally flawed premise because it assumes that you are playing the same competition and luck is allowing you to win. 20-30 years ago a game between a major conference program and Mid-major was a one sided affair; now...not so much and mid-majors beating a major conference team are common place; scores are getting closer and closer every year a result of the parity that exists in the sport . If KU switches to an all punch bag schedule, they would win by 20+ points most every game or it could switch to a tougher schedule (like now) where it still wins by virtue of being the better team, but score margin would only be in the single digits, does this mean that KU is lucky?
As I said above, of course not. But SOS is already factored in. You can't just pull one stat out of a set of data and say it's bs while ignoring the way it's compiled. The whole purpose of the stat is to identify why you have an outlier and how likely that is to last. There are a lot of ways to interpret what the stat means. @Jesse-Newell has said he thinks it denotes toughness, guys hanging in there and gutting out wins. I interpret it to mean just the opposite. How man times have you seen KU under Self run up a huge lead only to get complacent and allow the opposing team to get back into the game? How many tournament exits were predicated or punctuated by not stepping on the throat of an opponent and then falling apart at the last second? Hell, in 3 of 5 meetings with MSU under Self, Kansas has had a considerable lead under the 6 minute mark and watched it slowly be picked apart.
