Hollinger's Power Rankings

If Aaron Stampler were any kind of gracious deity, he’d provide us with his own numerology and Spurs flow charts. Instead, he rambles on about bollocks and knickers.

Matthew Powell is kind of emo at times, but his latest rant about Ikea makes me think he knows the whereabouts of some fight club…

I on the other hand, have taken to composing war hymns about our useless players. I feel eccentric.

I think a lot of things they say they get away with because they get paid to do it. I don’t necessarily agree with a lot of what they say though. Actually, I usually don’t agree with most of what they say.

I think Hollinger is making an honest effort at trying to make the numbers predict a winner. I’ll give him props for trying and not being biased. He did predict the Lakers beating the Spurs in 5 games last year…much to my dismay he was right. I don’t hate him or his power rankings, but I think the point has been made that nothing is for sure and nobody knows what’s going to happen in 4 months.

“Past results do not guarantee future performance…”

Hollinger’s statistically based Power Ranking’s are a curiosity but not much more. To me they just describe what happened in the past.

For example, most teams with home court advantage win a playoff series but that obviously doesn’t mean any particular team won’t win without it.

However imperfect though it is nice to have some way to measure teams current state against the competition during the season.

With regards to the Mavs vs. Warriors series, Hollinger wrote an article shortly thereafter whose topic was “what the f*ck just happened?” He analyzed the play of both teams and found that over the 30 or so games preceding the playoffs (when GS was healthy and had all their players together) their point differentials were very similar, so you would expect a close series.

I agree that point differential is a better gauge of a team’s quality than win loss record, and it can be demonstrated that it is more predictive of their future outcomes.

My favorite thing about Hollinger is that he acknowledges that basketball outcomes are probabilistic in nature. If you say one team has a 90% chance of beating another team, that still leaves 10% of outcomes where the inferior team wins. If you predict that the 10% team wins, and they do, are you “right,” or just lucky?

As fans, we tend to think that because something went a certain way, that that was the only way it could have gone. Of course, you can’t simulate it, so the small sample sizes will lead to results that some would argue “disprove” the numerical theory. In the aggregate, though, the numbers are on Hollinger’s side. It’s like counting cards in blackjack: you don’t win every hand, but you tilt the odds in your favor enough that over many hands, you’ll make money.

Who needs stats, anyway?

well i didn’t read what everyone said, but hollinger definately seems like he knows what he is doing with the celtics and spurs winning the last two championships when they were ranked #1.

You make great points though on the “iffy-ness” on how teams win though. The past 3 years that i’ve paid attention to ESPN, i’ve learned about taking things with a grain of salt. sure hollinger gives you an idea of who might win, but seriously, i don’t need to make a ridiculouslly complicated formula to tell you the 4-5 teams that will be 99% certain to win the title. Look at their record, watch a few games, predict.

seems to be very accurate at predicting the genuine contenders, and even the champion alot of the time…..that being said…

You can throw that and all the other statistics out the window when your talking about San antionio.

No other team skews the hollinger machine statistics up like San Antonio…….in part because the spurs dont actually start playing until february……this season in particular, the spurs will confuse hollingers little formula.

Don’t look now, but we’re suddenly 4th in Hollinger’s little machine-thingy.

but i place no value in them. they mean nothing. if some crappy 6th place team decides to play much better in the playoffs and escapes amazing deficits, throttles powerhouse offensive teams, and sweeps the eastern conference winner, what did the rankings mean?

damn, i hate the rockets so much that using them as an example pisses me off.

But honestly it’s always a toss-up. I’m actually in the anti-ESPN boat. I’m of the mind that for the most part Adande, Thorpe, and Hollinger are too set in their ways of looking at things to be super useful (except maybe rookie talent analysis).

Mr. Aaron Stampler, would it be possible to obtain your email, I have a question I’d like to ask you for a piece I want to write, if you would email me it’d be much appreciated. Thanks!