I guess you're not The One, Dave

Dear Reader,

I am sorry to dwell on this topic. You don't care. You just want something entertaining. I'm sorry. I'm stubborn. I wish I had the self-control of this guru (the handsome guy in the black polo).


Watch CBS Videos Online

What would I have done? "Chhhyeah, I know what beirut is. A good way to get my daily value of H20. My nutritious breakfast. Do I know what breathing is?" So I need to write this article. Not for you. For me.

In my article "The Lakers reached the 2008 NBA finals: impressive or not?", I made a three part argument:

1. Impressive feats must be difficult.
2. Odds are the best measure of difficulty we have in sports.
3. The Lakers odds to make the 2008 NBA finals were not very low. Therefore, the Lakers making the 2008 NBA finals was not impressive.

In response, Mssr. David Steinberg (MDS) seems to have gotten angry and banged his fist on his keyboard semi-randomly for 6-7 hours. I can extract a few main criticisms from the written diarrhea:

1. You can't apply odds to sports.
2. Your argument implies that favored teams cannot be impressive. Since that's not true (see the 1996 Bulls or Tiger Woods for counterexamples), you're wrong.
3. Your assumptions that lead to 49.7% odds for the Lakers reaching the 2008 NBA finals are wrong.
4. Your joke about igniting the party wasn't funny.

Response to criticism 1: Odds apply to sports. Period. This is why there's a spread when you bet on sports. The line adjusts the odds so that the both teams have 50% odds of beating the spread. Suppose there weren't spreads (implying both teams have a 50% chance of winning straight-up). I would make money by betting on the Lakers to beat the Clippers. I would be right more than 50% of the time. I would have a deeper understanding of reality than everyone else - like Neo! - and I would make lots of money.

Basketball, and most sports besides track, are intricate and complicated. But you can approximate the chances of one team beating another based on the available information. (Thought: if MDS doesn't believe in odds, why aren't I betting against him all the time? I could steal those mega-bucks he's raking in from the credit-score ads on this side of his blog.)

A clarification: odds do not mean the outcome of a game is predetermined. On a given night, the underdog can beat the favorite. They can even outplay the favorite. Odds simply give an indication of how likely that is to occur. When the odds are long, it is more difficult for the underdog to pull it off. They need to play near perfectly to pull it off. They need to put in an impressive performance to pull it off. The longer the odds, the more impressive the performance needed to win in the game.

A second clarification: when a non-favorite wins, that is not necessarily impressive. How long do the odds need to be for a win or accomplishment to be impressive? That's a matter of taste. How difficult does a feat need to be to really impress you?

Response to criticism 2: MDS misrepresents my point. In a single game, the outcome of the favorite winning is not impressive. That does not mean the win cannot be impressive. It can be impressive in at least two ways:

1. The favorite can win by an impressive margin. The Celtics played the Nuggets in Denver on Monday. Is the fact that they won impressive? I don't think so. The odds that the Celtics would win (away and without KG) were probably in the 40-60% range. What impressed me was the margin of victory. What are the odds that, under those circumstances (away and without KG) the Celtics beat the Nuggets by 40? I won't bother guesstimating. But they're low. The win was impressive because it was such a drubbing - the Celtics put in an impressive performance.

2. A team (which could be the favorite) can win from improbable circumstances. What's a good example here? Let's stick with the Celtics. Is the fact that they won Game 4 of the 2008 NBA finals (an away game) impressive? Not very. Their odds of winning were probably somewhere in the 30-50% range. Fast forward to the third quarter when they trailed by 24 points in the third quarter. At this point, their odds of winning were very low. If you played the game from that point, the Lakers win almost every time. It's difficult for the Celtics to come back from that position. But the game is only played once, and the Celtics were gutsy enough to win it. That's impressive.

(There are lots of similar examples: Tiger Woods winning the 2008 US Open by coming from behind on broken leg and torn ACL, Nadal winning the 2009 Australian Open against Federer on hard courts in five sets after playing a 5+ hour match two nights before, and, yes, Kobe scoring 15 in the fourth quarter to help beat the Spurs in the 2008 playoffs).

In addition, a favorite can impress by winning consistently. A good example is the 1996 Bulls. Take any single game. The outcome of the Bulls winning, with arguably the greatest team ever, is not surprising or impressive. (They could win in impressive fashion in either of the two ways above, but the outcome itself is not impressive). The fact that they won 72 games is impressive. Why? Although they are favored to win each game, the Bulls also have some chance of losing each game. That chance is not insignificant - they're playing other NBA teams, as MDS is quick to point out. To win 72 out of 82 games requires a 88% winning percentage. That means the 19996 Bulls either had a 88% chance (on average) of winning each game, or it means they beat the odds by consistently performing on such a high level.

Finally, individual plays and players can impress in all kinds of ways. They can make really difficult shots. They can make difficult shots consistently. They can perform athletic feats that we thought weren't possible. They can perform well in the toughest/most critical of circumstances (when most would be unable to succeed). They can do all three:



Response to criticism 3: Who cares? Make the assumptions much lower. Assume the Lakers have a 60% chance of beating the Nuggets, a 57.5% chance of beating the Jazz, and a 55% chance of beating the Spurs. They still have a 28.5% chance of making the Finals, and their odds are still better than any other team in the West. The outcome of the Lakers reaching the 2008 Finals is still not that impressive to me. If you had to guess who would make it, you would guess the Lakers.


Response to criticism 4: It was funny. The kitchen smelled like gas. One of the hosts said, "Oh shoot, you're leaning the stove." "Just trying to ignite the party," I shot back, without a moment's hesitation. I counted 3-4 chuckles, ranging from polite to almost-genuine, out of the 5-6 people in earshot. And MDS himself gave a chuckle, nay a short chortle, if I remember correctly. He might say he was laughing at me, not with me. Impossible. Because I was laughing at my own joke.

That's it. I'm done. Stay tuned for fresh material and topics you actually care about, coming soon.