Your "science" career?

Based on your posts here, I was pretty sure you're like a research coordinator some **** like that, feel free to prove me wrong or ignore it. After all, we're talking about your job here because you keep bringing it up!

That the only reason? That's not what the phrase means either way. Also, really interesting how poorly you deal with insults given how easily you dish them out (though to be sure, you don't do it very well - candypants? Really?)

You continue to ignore the fact that Pippen and Grant played substantially better in ‘94 than ‘93. And the Bulls added multiple other players, including several excellent role players. The team was not the same. Any particular reason why you’re ignoring that, and you keep doing the thing you say you’re not doing where you’re attributing it all to one player?

Oh wait: you’re attributing the Cavs drop off in ‘11 solely to LeBron leaving even though there were 30 other things impacting that. But when the Bulls get better (minus Jordan) in ‘94 so drop from 57 to wins to only 55 it’s because Jordan was just pretty good and he 3 peated twice because of Horace Grant and Dennis Rodman. Wade Bosh Kyrie and AD were just role players. Thank you for that maximally well adjusted and not at all mentally ill argument, candypants.

Candypants, statistics (including point totals) always get MORE meaningful the larger the sample size. Not less. This is why it’s a bad idea to cherry pick a single season or a 20 game sample size. This is like intro to junior high statistics 101.


I mean, it wasn’t intended to be a gotcha. But it accidentally turned into one due to your lack of critical thinking skills.

A stat that is better predictive of future team performance is going to be better predictive of future team performance compared to the inferior metric regardless of sample size, unless the distributions somehow change (and they don’t in this case; I encourage you to think really hard about this one. Consider it a learning experience.)

So, rather than distracting from the question with your BS: why did you focus on record for the regular season instead of point differential, yet did the opposite for the playoffs? Please tell me this wasn’t a cherry picked stat manipulation candypants. I was rooting for you this time big guy, don’t let me down.


Still leaving out the massive improvement from one year to the next in their best two players. How come? In your response, I would advise you to call me deranged again. It’s an excellent tactic to distract from the fact you are lying about the core argument. It also makes you look intelligent and well adjusted when you follow that up by asking about my employment in a thread (that you’re not super mad in) about LeBron James.

I promise you, I’m not. Try not to let the hallucinations take hold. You just turbo posted 3 times in a row asking about my job. Yet you are saying I’m the one that keeps bringing it up. Can you please ask your therapist about “psychological projection” next time you are evaluated?

Related note: I do hope you’re ok. We’re venturing into Alice in Wonderland territory here. Next thing you know candypants is going to be yelling off with their head to anyone who used to like Michael Jordan.

It’s not cherry picking and no one (at least recently) is saying Jordan was only worth 2 wins or anything like that. Just pointing that those Bulls lost Jordan on an established team where a lot of his primary skillset could be partially picked up by other players with smaller roles. It was a very strong cast and that got proven out by their performance the next season despite losing a high end MVP level player.

This is contrasted with LBJ’s Cavs team where the players really couldn’t make up for the loss of LeBron because they weren’t actually good players. It’s really that simple lol. The ‘93 Bulls had a lot of good players and the ‘10 Cavs did not. Even considering that, losing LeBron was worse than losing MJ for the team because LeBron dominated scoring and playmaking while having insane versatility and what he brought to the team wasn’t as partially replaceable. Not really debatable there.

Forming a new team is also different than losing a player from a strong 3-4 year championship core, for obvious reasons. Look what happened to Miami after 2011 when they got some more time together and added some role players that fit the system.

I’m pretty sure the guy who is writing fan fiction about laughing with his supervisor about posts is the guy who is losing it, but to each their own

It was a joke — candybar keeps asking about my job, but I promise you our chief science officer doesn’t give a crap about his bad arguments. I was just playing along.

Curious: do you think it’s weird that he keeps asking about my employment in a thread about LeBron James, or just that I keep responding and playing along with it?

Some people were very very specifically saying that the Bulls lost Jordan yet only went from 57 to 55 wins. I notice you do this thing where you pretend things weren’t said that were very specifically said, and then completely twist the argument around. It makes it hard to take you seriously.

I agree that the ‘92-‘93 Bulls were a very solid team. They won three championships in a row lol. And then when they picked up several solid role players, and Pippen and Grant got substantially better, they lost in the second round of the playoffs the next year without Jordan. Then 3 peated again with a totally new team, aside from Pippen, Jordan’s first full year back. Lol see what that actually sounds like when you use honest wording instead of cherry picking win totals from one year to the next?

Why are you leaving out the part where the team totally collapsed in every way possible? Here is an article from 2011 describing the situation:

http://20secondtimeout.blogspot.com/...eland.html?m=1

I’m sure you distilling this situation down to “just no LeBron lol” wasn’t you being biased, and you just accidentally left out all the context. Mistakes happen and stuff.


Yes, it is indeed dumb, in general, to evaluate how good a player is by looking at team record differentials the year after he leaves (or the year he joins). There are too many other factors at play. I agree that looking at team record of the 93 Bulls vs 94 Bulls to determine how good Jordan was, and leaving out the context and rest of his career, is perhaps the stupidest thing written in this thread. Good talk. When someone brings up this argument again in 6 months can I count on you to remind them how dumb they’re being? Let’s make this a team effort mullen.

Exactly. Winning 3 titles in a rows makes you one of the greatest, most dominating teams in NBA history. Going from that to, "hey they were still a contender, the next year, so it's basically the same thing" is such a major LOL.

That's fine. Look at the individual contribution to team achievements when they were actually on the team -- not the year after they left when they literally gave zero contribution.

If you guys admit what Bron did in Cle 1.0 was otherworldly, and he can't be faulted for not winning a title with them, then there's not much debate.

Will you all do so?

The Cavs sans Bron vs Bulls sans MJ is rooted as a counterpoint to that.

The Bulls going from 57 to 55 wins is a factual statement. No one is saying Jordan was worth two wins is my point, obviously there are other factors at play. They were still a very good team. My contention (can’t speak for other but it’s likely similar) is that Pippen and Grant didn’t suddenly take a leap as players, they were able to take on larger roles in the offense and thus increase their production because they were capable of that. LeBron’s Cleveland cast wasn’t able to because they weren’t actually good.

I already made pretty extensive posts on this in the last couple days in the thread - the fact that you did not read them is on you, not me.

I took a look at the blog. The claim that Delonte West, Shaq, and Big Z were not adequately replaced.

Delonte West was traded for Ramon Sessions. Here are West’s stats in 2010, and Sessions in 2011:

West: 9/3/3, 53 TS% 0.7 BPM in 1500 mins
Sessions: 13/3/5 56 TS 0.3 BPM in 2100 mins

Seems like a perfectly adequate replacement to me. You can’t really argue West’s production would have increased much either, otherwise he would have caught on with another team. Instead he was unable to really get rotation minutes and was out of the NBA shortly after.

Big Z had a -3.8 BPM in 1339 minutes and Shaq had a -0.2 BPM in 1240 minutes. These minutes were largely soaked up by Ryan Hollins and JJ Hickson, probably a small overall downgrade but not that significant.


No one is saying the sole measure of Jordan is 93 vs 94 Bulls, but it’s an interesting datapoint to look at Jordan’s overall impact on team wins and how good his supporting cast was relative to all time greats. As far as I know we don’t have on/off data until 1997 when he had declined already, so we have limited data on this type of stuff for him and other players from that era.

2011 Cavs:

Lost:
Mike Brown
Lebron
Shaq
Big Z
West

Kept:
Jamison -- led the team in minutes & points per game. Only started 38 games (played 56)
Varejao -- led the team in rebounds per game. Only played 31 games
Mo -- led the team in assists per game. Only started 34 games (played 36)

Lebron is an amazing player but let's not act like this was the same team.

The Cavs were 8-25 when Varejão was shut down for the year, 10-47 when Mo Will was traded, and 11-48 when Jamison got shut down for the year in 2011.

Give it up.

Most Jordan stans are of the mindset that he is the greatest there ever will be. It's now my only basketball dream to see a player crush everything Jordan did in every way, just to see how the Jordan stans hate on it.

So please Jokic, start your 10 peat now.

Meh, I think Jordan is the GOAT, doesn't mean I don't think someone could over take him.

Both Luka or Joker could.

Another crazy thing I've only realized lately is how many idiots are out there who think Kobe is in this discussion. Somehow casual fans have him as somewhere between 2-5 all time, when the reality is you have to be generous to him to even put him in the top 10. I wonder how much death hyped up Kobe's legacy. Don't get me wrong, he was one of the most beautiful players to watch, graceful, athletic, and skilled. But when it came to helping teams win he's nowhere close to this discussion. He won 3 titles as clearly the 2nd most valuable player to his team, and somehow 20 years later history is rewritten and Kobe is somehow above Shaq. The only thing Kobe had on Shaq was consistency and longevity. The exact things LeBron clearly has over Jordan. So imo anyone who has Kobe over Shaq is a huge hypocrite if they have Jordan over LeBron. But most people have Kobe over Shaq, and Jordan over LeBron, which is incredibly contradictory.

And as someone who started watching basketball in the mid 90's, peak Shaq is the most dominant player I ever saw. And Kobe got to ride along with that. And then win with stacked teams later, with a lot of team failures in between. Teams that were actually carried by peak Kobe couldn't even sniff the playoffs. Kobe was closer to Iverson than he was to the real GOATs.

If Kobe was actually a top 5 all time player, he'd had at least 7 rings with the teams he got stacked up with.

Yeah, Kobe somewhere around 15 on my list.

Peak Shaq might be the best peak of all time.

He's probably the 6th on the GOAT list, and I still see it as a massive underachievement for his career.

They proly coulda won in 2011 but Lebron did quit. Kinda.

I do wonder how his legacy looks if they lose in the finals against Kobe.

Kobe once said if Shaq trained as hard and cared about his diet/professional approach as much as he, himself did, then Kobe would have had 10 rings.


Thoughts?

Literally ever dumb clickbait Facebook thingy about Jordan vs LeBron is full of guys saying Kobe is number 2 lmao.

Probably true. That Lakers team underachieved and probably should've won 5 or 6 straight titles and be regarded as easily the best team ever.

Shaq literally traded eating endless Big Macs for a couple more championship rings.



Kinda sad when you think about it.

Why not bofem dot Jay peg