Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 460 Location: Washington, DC
Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:11 am Post subject:
Analyze This wrote:
Wizardskev I've already stated that there will be several factors that had an impact in the three knock out international losses of the USA.
Good, we agree then. I guess I was just sorta puzzled by your doggedness in knocking these ephemeral "fundamentals" and your persistence in accusing folks of making excuses. This is a board given to analysis -- it makes complete sense to me that a variety of factors would be raised and considered. Just curious, if you agree that there are many factors at work, why are so prepared to dismiss so many of these factors as "excuses?"
Quote:
I also wrote before that allthough several reasons will have had an impact on the international losses in my opinion one of the major ones is overlooked (fundamentals).
Here's the thing -- there's considerable disagreement over just how much these "fundamentals" have declined. There are some of us who don't think it's by much. If your argument is that the last few groups of American players are not as good as the Dream Team players were, I think you'd have widespread agreement. Those were some of the best players who ever lived. The current team is NOT a Dream Team in any sense -- several top American players stayed home. Perhaps what you're perceiving as a decline in fundamentals is in fact a decline in talent.
Quote:
Perhaps the opinion that the fiba rules have had an impact is valid, perhaps not. I can understand that people search differrent reasons for what happened. I can not understand that most of them primaly search the reason for the loss not with the strength of the opponent or with shortcomings of the own team but with every other possible reason. It seems like everything that could have had an impact (an almost none of these reasons are backed up with evidence, allthough I agree with some like I also posted before) is put into a spotlight so that the strength of the opponent or problems with some aspects of the own game can be largely ignored or at least made less important. If you do that in my opinion you are making excuses. You are also diminishing the value of the performance of your opponent.
I don't see any analytic value in saying -- "The opponent was better." Or, "The other team was really good." The scoreboard already told us who was better that day. The question is about what factors are most important in making that opponent better on that day. You seem to think the biggest factor is this decline in fundamentals -- something I don't agree with.
Quote:
On truehoop I read a remark of a different ballsize that could have had an impact. After research with the producer of the basketballs that idea was put to rest. This whole thing is also an example of an attitude. Just like not staying for the end of the tournament like the other countries, or naming people with numbers. In my opinion it's a form of disrespect and misplaced arrogance. And to use an expression of mister Rosenbaum that pisses me off.
I thought the thing with the international ball was that it's slicker than a typical NBA ball. I don't think it made much difference considering that the US team was among the tournament's best offensive teams. But, if you think the ball isn't a relevant factor, experiment with it yourself -- get a high-quality ball and shoot with it awhile. Then get something that's much slicker and try using it -- you won't shoot with the same success.
Personally, I don't see the disrespect or arrogance in calling opposing players by their number. You're entirely within your rights to be pissed off by it (and Dan too). Just seems to me like making a mountain of a molehill.
Quote:
You have also some people on this forum who zoom in on what's perfectly clear namely that there was a defensive problem with the USA. But when they search reasons of why this happened they are again very quick to blaim it on a lack of practice time or because the Americans are not used to defend some European systems. They are almost not considering that perhaps it could simply be because the players have worse defensive fundamentals.
Let's say for a moment that the problem is a lack of defensive fundamentals. What would the solution be? Hmm, more practice time?
Quote:
So possible reasons are again put into the spotlight and others are almost ignored. And because it was so obvious that the defensive efficiency of the Americans was bad, they ignore also that some offensive aspects of that game (or other games) could have been much better. I have not stated that the USA can not score effficient but I think that the different ways in which they can do that efficient are diminishing.
I don't think anyone's arguing that it would be impossible for the Americans to be better on the offensive end. I think the point is that it doesn't make sense to expend a ton of effort in that area. The team was already very good on the offensive end. At best they're going to get marginal improvement by fine-tuning the offense. The problem area was on defense so it makes sense to focus there. Say you've been in a car accident. In the accident, you bump your right elbow against the steering wheel and get a bruise, but your arm works just fine. In the same accident, your left leg gets crushed. Would you want your doctor treating that perfectly functional elbow, or repairing your badly damaged leg? _________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
I don't think that a couple of extra days of practice with an international team will turn a bad nba defensive player into a good one on the national team. The same with offensive fundamentals. A player who is not an effficient jump shooter or is a bad ft shooter will not fix these problems when training a couple of weeks with his national team. This again shows the problem. You are looking to the defensive problem as a minor thing. And you don't see an offensive problem because the general number was good. You don't see the need to break the offense down in subparts. Let them practice some more and it's fixed. I don't follow you in that. Being an excellent defender or a good shooter takes years of hard work.
WizardsKev wrote:
If your argument is that the last few groups of American players are not as good as the Dream Team players were, I think you'd have widespread agreement. Those were some of the best players who ever lived. The current team is NOT a Dream Team in any sense -- several top American players stayed home. Perhaps what you're perceiving as a decline in fundamentals is in fact a decline in talent.
Wizardskev was the original dream team in your opinion a better team than any team you could assemble now with American nba players (if you could choose from all of them)?
Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 971 Location: Delphi, Indiana
Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:32 am Post subject:
WizardsKev wrote:
... The current team is NOT a Dream Team in any sense -- several top American players stayed home. ..
On my list of top guys from last season (counting only Americans), it looks like we took 3 of 6 superstars (by one definition: we brought Wade, Lebron, and Brand; did not take Garnett, Duncan, or Kobe). And then it falls off pretty fast.
While player rankings may vary quite a bit, I'm guessing most systems would come up with a similar estimation to this quick-and-dirty. It looks like this USA team had about:
-- 3 of our top 10 players
-- 7 among the top 20
-- 9 who were top 30
-- 11 from the top 40
So at any level, we may as well have randomly selected 1 player out of every 3, to arrive at the same talent level. Of course, the idea was to build a Team (of complementary parts), and particularly one that could return mostly intact to the next Games (i.e., younger players).
The Dream Team (I'm so glad people aren't still calling them all Dream Team X, etc.) arguably contained 11 of our best 15 players at that time. This is probably not an ideal for which to strive, every 2 years. The young core of the current squad should be hungry as well as experienced. _________________ 40% of all statistics are wrong.
The FIBA ball diameter is the same as NBA, if there is minimal diference is something you canīt feel it. The "strong" diference between them is clock time and the fouls you can give. Offensive clock time is longer in FIBA though game time is shorter, and you can pass and move the ball a little more (penalized with less seconds in NBA, we all know why and what for) and slow the pace, and desperate players not accustomed to care too much time of their opponent man.
(1) Dan, I believe that you noted (many pages back) something to the effect that you had found evidence of a decrease in the quality of players in the NBA begining at the end of the "Dream Team Generation". Could you elaborate?
(2) It has also been noted that the current USA team exhibited an offensive efficiency that was roughly on par with that of the Dream Team. Furthermore, I presume that there is a common belief that in the last quarter century the quality of defensive performance has improved on the international level. The inference then is that, at a minimum, the current USA team should not be considered worse offensively than the Dream Team. But what about a defensive comparison?
The Dream Team racked up huge average victory margins. Is this because of the greatness of their defense or the relative ineptitude of the offenses faced? To get a good first approximation of an answer to this question, we should compare, team-wise, the offensive efficiencies of games played against the Dream Team versus those played against others in the tournament. Does anyone have these data?
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 413 Location: Greensboro, North Carolina
Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 9:23 am Post subject:
schtevie wrote:
(1) Dan, I believe that you noted (many pages back) something to the effect that you had found evidence of a decrease in the quality of players in the NBA begining at the end of the "Dream Team Generation". Could you elaborate
What I did was compared the minutes played (or minutes-weighted production) of different cohorts with the thought being that better cohorts would play more minutes throughout their careers than weaker cohorts. Thus, by comparing how the share of minutes played (or production) varied across cohorts, I could get a sense of the relative quality of cohorts.
This analysis suggested that the best cohorts were those of players born between 1955 and 1964 with not too much of a dropoff until about 1970. The cohorts born from 1970 to 1974 (a group that just left their prime) were dreadful and the next cohorts born from 1975 to 1979 were not too good either. The cohorts after that seemed to show a lot of promise (perhaps even more than 1955 to 1970 cohorts) - although the influx of early entrants may be biasing that estimate.
The cohorts born from 1940 to 1954 were also pretty poor in this analysis, although 1945-1949 showed up fairly well.
Now this analysis is affected by (a) trends in early entry, (b) expansion, and (c) rapid changes in how training or sports medicine affects the length of players careers, but I think this sort of analysis squares with my qualitative assessment of NBA play.
The Bird/Magic/Jordan/Olajuwon/Robinson/Pippen/Malone/Stockton generation - the Dream Team generation - was the most productive in NBA history. After that there was a big dropoff in talent that recently has changed course. There is some evidence that the young generation that formed the heart of Team USA may be as good or better than the Dream Team generation. But remember some of that is due to the influx of young, talented international players.
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 460 Location: Washington, DC
Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 3:12 pm Post subject:
Analyze This wrote:
I don't think that a couple of extra days of practice with an international team will turn a bad nba defensive player into a good one on the national team. The same with offensive fundamentals. A player who is not an effficient jump shooter or is a bad ft shooter will not fix these problems when training a couple of weeks with his national team. This again shows the problem. You are looking to the defensive problem as a minor thing. And you don't see an offensive problem because the general number was good. You don't see the need to break the offense down in subparts. Let them practice some more and it's fixed. I don't follow you in that. Being an excellent defender or a good shooter takes years of hard work.
It might be helpful if you'd stop telling me what I think. Go back and read what I posted. I view the defensive problem as a major issue -- one that should be the USA basketball's primary focus moving forward.
I don't see an offensive problem at all. Maybe they're marginally less efficient in the mid-range. I don't see the problem because they're more efficient from the 3pt line and/or in the paint. Guys take and make a lot more 3pters. I just don't see the point in suggesting that an extremely efficient offensive team spend time working on something that will only marginally improve their chances of winning. Why not spend the limited practice time working on something that if improved markedly increases the team's chances of winning (that would be the defense)?
Your argument seems to be that because of a lack of fundamentals, the US is incapable of improving their defense. If that's your argument, I disagree. Learning to be a good defender does take hard work, but it can be learned. And it can be learned a lot quicker than you're suggesting. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Rick Carlisle when he was coaching the Pistons. I asked him why Richard Hamilton was a poor defender in Washington, but was solid in Detroit. Carlisle's answer: "Anyone can be a good defender in our system if he plays with effort and follows our rules."
Then we spent some time talking about those rules and how their system works. An awful lot can be accomplished when 5 guys defend as a unit. In Carlisle's system, Hamilton only had to take away certain things -- he didn't have to prevent penetration, for example, but rather direct it to certain areas where there'd be help. And Hamilton could focus on only those things because he KNEW the help would be there. Hamilton's defensive "fundamentals" didn't suddenly get better overnight when he got traded to Detroit -- he got put into a better system, which enabled him to contribute in spite of weaknesses.
Quote:
Wizardskev was the original dream team in your opinion a better team than any team you could assemble now with American nba players (if you could choose from all of them)?
Yes, I think the original Dream Team was a better team than could be assembled now with American NBA players. The Dream Team had several historic players including Magic, Jordan and Bird. Those 3 go on virtually everyone's list of the 5 greatest players who ever lived. The only Americans in the NBA now with the potential for that kind of stature are Shaq, then maybe Duncan. Of course, neither of those guys wants to play. _________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
In 2008 they might be able to have PG Billups James SG Bryant Wade SF Anthony Battier PF Marion Odom C Brand Amare S. More minutes to the best players like a normal NBA rotation, but really emphasize the best combinations considering offense and defense with these ten or whatever it ends up.
By thinking that simply using another system can make weak defenders good/decent you indeed think that the defensive problem is a minor one. If you surround a weak defender with strong defenders and you make him for example concentrate on directing an opponent to an area where there is help that player is not suddenly good but his good defensive teammates just make partly up for his weakness. The problem is that a lot of the American players are weak defenders.
So you think that the dream team was better than the current generation. In which subparts of the offense and/or defense are the current players worse, in your opinion?
WizardsKev wrote:
I don't see the problem because they're more efficient from the 3pt line
36,9 % is less accurate than 40 %. And on the ft line the % is also down. You want to leave the possibility open that they are perhaps less accurate with the mid range jumper.
WizardsKev wrote:
Maybe they're marginally less efficient in the mid-range.
And which pf and c's would have had the best post moves, the ones of the dream team or the ones of the WC 2O06 team? So I could agree with you that they are very accurate in scoring in the paint after penetrations.
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 460 Location: Washington, DC
Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:09 am Post subject:
Analyze This wrote:
By thinking that simply using another system can make weak defenders good/decent you indeed think that the defensive problem is a minor one.
Again, stop telling me what I think. I think team USA's defensive problems are correctable, not minor.
Quote:
If you surround a weak defender with strong defenders and you make him for example concentrate on directing an opponent to an area where there is help that player is not suddenly good but his good defensive teammates just make partly up for his weakness.
Yeah, and there's a name for it -- it's called teamwork.
Quote:
The problem is that a lot of the American players are weak defenders.
Mixed bag. I think they brought some pretty good defenders this time: Wade, Brand, Bosh, Battier, Hinrich. They also brought some bad ones. I do think they could use another good defensive big in that group. Duncan would be ideal, but he doesn't want to play.
Quote:
So you think that the dream team was better than the current generation. In which subparts of the offense and/or defense are the current players worse, in your opinion?
I think that overall, this group of American players is not as good as the Dream Team was. That's not surprising considering the quality of that group -- as MikeG pointed out, 11 out of the league's 15 best players and at least 9 Hall of Famers. This latest group remains very much a work in progress -- I'd be surprised to see 9 HoFers out of this group of 12.
Quote:
WizardsKev wrote:
I don't see the problem because they're more efficient from the 3pt line
36,9 % is less accurate than 40 %. And on the ft line the % is also down. You want to leave the possibility open that they are perhaps less accurate with the mid range jumper.
I should have been more precise with my words there. My point is that the offensive performance of the US team in the World Championships was more than acceptable -- more than good enough to win...if they'd played better defense.
The 2006 World Championship did shoot a little...well "worse" isn't all that accurate here...less spectacularly than did the Dream Team.
I'm not convinced that these small differences are all that meaningful -- by that, I mean that there's few enough games (9) that the ft% dip might just be random fluctuation. In a larger sample size (the NBA season), most of the Americans shot better from the line. Overall, these shooting percentages (except for ft%) are at very least acceptable.
The important change from 1992 to 2006 was on defense. In 92, the Dream Team allowed an efg of .414 -- in 06 it was .515. In 92, opponents had a 2pt FG% of .393 -- in 06 it was .511. In 92, opponents shot .305 from the 3pt line, and .682 from the FT line -- in 06 it was .349 and .775.
Again -- I don't see the need to spend time making marginal improvements to an overall strength when there's a significant weakness that can be addressed. _________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
The only way you can fully correct the fact that more players of the current dream team were weak defenders is replacing them by better defenders. And the base for being a good defender is formed in high shool and college with years of hard work. In another defensive system the strong defenders can try to help the weak ones, but the weak ones will not become good defenders. And you won't fully wipe out the fact that a lot of your players are weak defenders by just using another system. It's nothing more than damage control. Another system will not make a bad defensive team a good one.
So we agree that the current generation is not as good as the dream team. But I asked you in which subparts(!) of the offense and/or defense are the current players worse, in your opinion? And I also stated that I mean with the current generation all usa nba players and not just the ones that represented the USA in the last WC. I'm still waiting on your answer.
On the offensive end, the ft % is down. You can look to a small sample size or to the average ft % of the dream team members and the lost to greece members in the nba. The ft % is still down. Because of the difference with the 3p line, you need to look to the small sample size of the WC for 3P %. And it's down to. I asked which players would have had the best post moves, the pf and c's of the original dream team or the ones of the current selection. You have not answered. In my opinion the answer is the players of the original dream team. You left the possibility open that the current dream team could be not as good with 2 p jumpers as the original dream team members. That leaves us that they are very good in scoring in the paint after penetrations. In my opinion a team that can only score very effective with one offensive weapon is easier to defend by the top teams than a team that can mix it up in al least certain game situations.
Data is too unreliable to estimate possesions. I think I have the final video somewhere and may take a look at it.
FWIW, I've watched the Barcelona final, and the Dream Team - Spain game. Some loose ball rebounds were indeed counted as steals, and there are just three turnovers missing in the boxscore. Data:
That was a mid-range shooting exhibition. Jordan, Mullin, Drexler, Malone, Ewing, Petrovic, Radja, Perasovic, ... everyone was making their jumpers. The other game:
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 413 Location: Greensboro, North Carolina
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 1:45 pm Post subject:
cherokee_ACB wrote:
cherokee_ACB wrote:
Data is too unreliable to estimate possesions. I think I have the final video somewhere and may take a look at it.
FWIW, I've watched the Barcelona final, and the Dream Team - Spain game. Some loose ball rebounds were indeed counted as steals, and there are just three turnovers missing in the boxscore. Data:
That was a mid-range shooting exhibition. Jordan, Mullin, Drexler, Malone, Ewing, Petrovic, Radja, Perasovic, ... everyone was making their jumpers. The other game:
I didn't track rebounds this time, but it was quite evident the Dream Team dominated the boards.
This is great. Thank you very much. The "steals" field in the aggregate and box score data is way off from actual steals and cannot be used to extrapolate turnovers. So, like you said, these data really cannot be used to extrapolate possessions - even approximately. I stand corrected.
From these two games (and given the scores of the other games), I think we would have to conclude that the Dream Team was significantly more efficient offensively than the current Team USA. It is also interesting that in these two games, the defensive efficiency of the Dream was very good, but not great.
How much worse are the opponents the Dream Team faced compared to the ones the US Team just faced? The efficiency numbers tell us that the Dream Team was far more efficient on offense and defense against the opponent they faced. Is there a way to project what kind of efficiency numbers they'd have if they played against the current crop of international teams? I can't imagine it would have looked that good.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
