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!

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

     Page 157 of The Book of Basketball is the first page of a chapter called "The What-If Game." This book is 701 pages long; couldn't it have survived without sixty pages of pure conjecture? It's not like TBOB was so weighed down with dispassionate analysis to necessitate a chapter like this.
     Bill's number one choice for the greatest What-If in NBA history is: What if the 1984 draft turned out differently? That question is so broad as to render it almost meaningless. Differently for who? Which player? Which franchise?
   But Bill Simmons is far too smart to box himself in. "Oh, and you thought #1 would simply be 'What if Portland had taken MJ over Bowie?'" Bill must have anticipated that question because it's the most natural one to ask. But he explains his reasoning behind his lack of specificity:

     This draft was so complicated (emphasis mine) that it inspired Houston and Chicago to create the concept of "tanking" during the regular season.

     What exactly was complicated about the 1984 draft? Is he referring to the strategy of tanking, which is only as complicated as "You got a game tonight? Good, go lose it."? Is the famous depth of that draft the complicating factor? Because I would think a low-talent draft would be more complicated than a high talent draft. No larger point; I just thought it was a very poor choice of word.
     As usual, Bill Simmons is confused. He says from the outset that he's not focusing on Portland's failure to draft MJ; but that's almost entirely what he does with this question. In laying out the back story, Bill makes the following enumerated points:

The highlighted numbered points in dark blue bold are my paraphrasing of Simmons. Some of what he wrote was just imprecise enough to allow for some confusion. I'm still putting Simmons' verbatim quotes in bold and quotation marks.

1. Portland and Chicago were each willing to swap their pick for Ralph Sampson. Not about Jordan, but Bill can't resist devoting part of this paragraph to Jordan. And there's something else I need to point out here.

Remember that our theme is that Bill Simmons undermines his points or outright contradicts himself frequently. And in this #1, Bill sets the stage for one of many self-contradictions in just this What-If alone. After quoting Dr. Jack Ramsay of Portland saying that they had to have a center and would have made the Sampson trade, Simmons' comment is "I sure hope so." This tells me that Simmons' agrees with the idea that Portland needed a center. Keep this in mind, and refer back to it as you need to.

2. Many teams offered deals for Chicago's #3 pick, which lends weight to the idea that Portland screwed up by taking Bowie. "Eventually, the Bulls started feeling like they were sitting on a winning lottery ticket. And they were."

Uh, Bill? You know that it was no lock that Jordan would fall to #3, right? Teams were offering deals because it was a very deep draft. If Olajuwon or Jordan were off the board by #3, they could take Barkley or Stockton. Or even Kevin Willis, Otis Thorpe, or Alvin Robertson. My point is that teams were not out there saying, "If we get that number three pick, we'll get to draft the best player in NBA history!"

3. Patrick Ewing almost declared for the draft. "...Bulls GM Rod Thorn told Filip Bondy that Chicago had rated Jordan higher than Bowie because they were afraid of his injury track record." (Boy, what a horrible sentence) What's not clear is whether Thorn told Bondy this before or after the draft. I'm guessing after based on how teams typically operate, but who knows?

***THIS IS WHERE IT ALL GOES TO SHIT FOR BILL SIMMONS***

Just another reminder: We're discussing Bill's truly impressive ability to contradict himself, and boy does he.
(The next highlight is a verbatim quote)

"4. Jordan's potential was unclear because he played for Dean Smith in the pre-shot-clock era."
Okay, thesis established. First supporting sentence: "Everyone knew he was good, but how good?" We're all with you so far.

Then Bill starts the contradiction process.

"...Bobby Knight [Jordan's coach in the 1984 Olympics] called his buddy Stu Inman (Portland's GM) and implored (emphasis Bill's) him to take Michael. When Inman demurred and said that Portland needed a center, Knight reportedly screamed, 'Well, play him at center, then!'"

We're not there yet, but in passing this anecdote along Bill seems to think that Bobby Knight was a supreme judge of NBA talent. This is funny for two reasons: 1) In a footnote, Bill lists some of the players that were cut and some that were kept on the 1984 US men's team. The cut players? Karl Malone, John Stockton, Charles Barkley, Joe Dumars, and Terry Porter. The kept players? Jeff Turner, Joe Kleine, Steve Alford, and Jon Koncak. Bill makes a joke about David Duke being involved in the selection process, but I'm certain that most/all of the power rested with Bobby Knight. (Would a maniac like Knight even bother with coaching the Olympic team without that power?) 2) Bobby Knight coached Isiah Thomas, Calbert Chaney, a few guys who played a season or two in the NBA, and a zillion guys who were lucky if they made it to the CBA. Bobby Knight won national championships, but he wasn't doing it with future All-Stars the way Dean Smith did. So to appeal to Bobby Knight's authority on this matter just isn't true.

(Did that last sentence end poorly? It was on purpose and you'll soon see why)

"We also know that Nike (based in Portland) built an entire sneaker line around Jordan before he played an NBA game."

And you know, no one ever gave out a bad shoe deal before.

"So for anyone to play the 'We didn't know how good Jordan would be' card just isn't true." (emphasis mine)

See what I did there?

Oh, how badly I wished that was the biggest problem with this whole paragraph. The biggest problem was...well, I'll put the first sentence of the paragraph and the last sentence of the paragraph together and you tell me what's wrong:

"Jordan's potential was unclear because he played for Dean Smith in the pre-shot-clock era."
"So for anyone to play the 'We didn't know how good Jordan would be' card just isn't true."

Part two comes later.

Wilt versus Russell, Part Five: The Alternate Universe Edition

     Let's recap what I began in the previous post: Bill Simmons thinks, when comparing Wilt's supporting cast to Russell's, that it's a wash. On paper it doesn't look that way, but the 76ers had challenges that the 76ers didn't in the form of the big midseason trade. So in my attempt to justify Simmons' assertion, I recast the 1965 season in a way that saw Wilt Chamberlain start the season as a Sixer. And because he did so in this alternate universe, I reasoned that Philly would have had a better record; to get there, I just improved their luck in the close games. In this universe, Wilt Chamberlain had one Hall-of-Fame teammate; in the alternate, Chet Walker has recieved the honor due, and thus giving Wilt two HOF teammates. (Russell had four that season, but never mind)

And now, the 1965 season in an alternate universe:

     Yet again, I am amazed (not in the good way) by Simmons’ claims. I moved a few beads around, bumped Philly from 40 to 44 wins, turning their Point Differential positive in the process – and they’re eighteen games behind Boston. If I had tripled those four wins, Philly would still have finished 10 games back. Let’s look at this from another angle:

Again, that's counting Chet Walker as a Hall-of-Famer, which leads me to this:

In the 1964-65 season, Boston played a total of 19,275 player-minutes. 47.7% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers, minus Russell.
In the 1964-65 season, Philadelphia played a total of 19,275 player-minutes. 24.8% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers, minus Wilt.

     Remember, Simmons’ thesis is that the talent level on the 1965 Celtics was basically even with that of the 76ers. In an alternate reality where Wilt Chamberlain began the year as a Sixer with HOF teammates Hal Greer and Chet Walker, and when Philly takes care of business against the NBA bottom-feeders, the 1965 Philadelphia 76ers are still waaay behind the Celtics. Matter of fact, no other team is in the same area code – not in this universe, nor in the other one.

Many of you aren’t convinced by my reasoning. You believe that the regular season is irrelevant, an unreliable indicator of the strength of a given team. Well, my next post will address this very objection.