How To Undermine Your Own Point (part two), by Bill Simmons

   In my previous post, I was demonstrating that Bill Simmons has a truly remarkable ability to contradict himself or to undermine the very point he's trying to make. Let me just quick-hit the main points of part one.

• Bill claims that his What-If scenario about the 1984 draft isn't only about Portland passing on Michael Jordan, but Jordan is a significant figure in every one of his first four supporting paragraphs. Four supporting paragraphs out of a total of five. VERDICT: CONTRADICTION
• Bill says that MJ's potential was unclear going into the draft in the opening sentence of paragraph four, but in the last sentence of that paragraph Bill says that no one at that time could honestly make that claim. VERDICT: CONTRADICTION
• In paragraph three (I failed to point this out previously), Bill claims to have tried to imagine what would have happened if Ewing had declared for the 1984 draft. In short, Bill gave up because it was too much of an undertaking. This admission of defeat, and the argument leading to it, is basically a smokescreen. Read pages 209-217 and try to argue that this What-If isn't solely about the Bowie-over-MJ thing. Bill wanted to come off as some sort of counterfactual genius, but the slivers about a Ralph Sampson trade and Patrick Ewing entering the draft are just padding. Your mileage may vary here, but for me...VERDICT: UNDERMINING
• ***Bonus Fallacies!*** In paragraph two, Bill recounted how several franchises were making Chicago huge offers for the #3 pick, which in his view is evidence that Portland (picking #2) screwed up.
• Question #1: Was Portland drafting Bowie a foregone conclusion?
• Question #2: Was Michael Jordan definitely the player Dallas, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Golden State were looking for?
• Question #3: Isn't it possible that no one really knew what Michael Jordan's ceiling was and that all of these teams were just trying to get someone in an especially deep draft?

VERDICT: FAULTY PREMISE, FAULTY CONCLUSION, HINDSIGHT BIAS

So much wrong in just a page and a half. And now we're getting into the best of it.

PAGE 211: "It's a myth that Portland 'desperately' needed a center."

PAGE 209: (Bill quoting Dr. Jack Ramsay, HEAD COACH OF THE PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS) "We had to have a center. We would have done that [trade of their #2 pick for Ralph Sampson]."

Portland would have traded their #2 pick in a famously deep draft for a guy who was 7'4". They ended up using that pick on a seven-footer with an "injury track record" (courtesy Bill Simmons). Portland was certainly behaving like a desperate franchise. But let me give Bill the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's arguing that Dr. Jack's evaluation of the 1983-84 Trail Blazers was faulty. What say you, Bill? What did Portland need in 1984?

"What they really needed was a rebounder."

If Bill is allowed to evaluate Portland twenty-five or so years after the fact, then so am I. In 1984, Portland was 3rd in Offensive Rebound Percentage (OR%) and 10th in Defensive Rebound Percentage (DR%). Tenth out of twenty-three doesn't sound so great, but they were second in the Western Conference among playoff teams. That ain't bad. They were #2 in OR% among playoff teams, the best of the Western Conference playoff teams. This team did NOT have a rebounding problem.

Portland was #6 in the NBA in SRS, #2 in the West. They had the second-best Offensive Rating in the West, (#3 overall). Their Defensive Rating was a mediocre #11 overall, #9 among playoff teams, #2 among Western playoff teams. Not great, but competitive. Most of Portland's major markers were mediocre to positive: SRS, Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating, Effective FG% (#4), Turnover Percentage (#11), OR%, Free Throws per Field Goals Attempted (#4). But Portland's fatal flaw in 1983-84 was Opponents' Effective Field Goal Percentage: they were #21 in a twenty-three team league. For what it's worth, with Sam Bowie and his #12 Defensive Rating, Portland improved from #21 in eFG% in 1984 to #12 in 1985.

Did Portland know this back in 1984/85? Certainly not as it is, but I'm sure that whatever metrics they used back in the day probably told them something similar to what our modern metrics say now. (Hell, regular old "Opponents' Field Goal Percentage" for Portland was the same as their Opponents' eFG%. eFG% is pretty straightforward when teams don't take many threes, as it was in 1984) And yes, Portland did get worse in other areas and won fewer games in 1985. But who was more likely to fix what was wrong with Portland in 1984 - a defensive center or an offensive guard? I'm guessing that Portland made their pick based on this issue.

Bill undermined his point on two fronts: In declaring that Portland did not "desperately" need a center, he overlooked or omitted the fact that Portland behaved as though they did. If that doesn't count as undermining his point, then his failure to properly evaluate Portland's shortcomings in 1984 certainly does. I expect someone with his reputation to be able to see these things.And I can't figure out what prompted Bill Simmons to say that Portland needed a rebounder. They had a positive rebound margin in 1984 and were #2 in rebounds allowed.

VERDICT: UNDERMINING

The rest of this What-If is just more stupid hindsight bias by Bill Simmons, in which it's obvious as hell that Portland should have drafted the greatest player in the history of the world.

Coming up: Blurbs!