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Best article I have read in months, but ironically I am probably biased because I believe in objectivity and reason over optimism and faith. Would love to get the forum's ideas on this- not just on Eric Gordon, because that has been beaten to death, but on everything this implies, including just how tough it truly is to be a GM when there are so many things to consider:
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-tr...-optimism-bias
@mcnamara247
Optimism bias: Charlotte, Washington, Detroit, Sacramento, Milwaukee, Portland, Toronto, Atlanta, and Utah.
What do these teams have in common? They lack players who can and will take them to the next level. They continue to build around pieces that will not get them anywhere. Hence, the reason why the are in the lottery so often.
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That article says 6-8 weeks. Everything I have seen said 4-6. Not that I think he will come back when he is actually supposed to, just wondering if it really got pushed back.
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I like that they mentioned that there's seriously long odds of following the Thunder model. If we were, then Rivers would be on Harden's level. And I'm not sure he is or will be. Time will tell though.
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I think the author just got confused, or is cynical. I've heard nothing about a change.
__________
"Aime la vérité, mais pardonne à l'erreur." - François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
Whoever wrote this is confused with people who believe good things will happen as opposed to people who actively try to make good things happen. Teams like the Hornets and frankly the majority of the NBA has no other choice but to follow the Thunder model. As a matter of fact i's not their model to begin with. They just got lucky in being abel to execute what almost all NBA teams try to do outside of the luxury tax teams.
I did spot this though
It's only natural for the New Orleans brass to be questioning their investment
Except, The Hornets aren't modeling after the Thunder's approach. They are taking the New Orleans approach.
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I hate how all of the best names have been taken. Either to Utah, by a hockey team no one remembers, or by an AFL team no one cares about.
I think 42 did an article that showed the Brass name is free as the wind right now. Nobody has any rights to it in this state.Originally Posted by Eman5805
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Oh? Then the only thing holding us back is because people will associate it with Jazz.
But I say go for it. Because Jazz is OUR thing any damn way.
http://www.hornets247.com/2012/10/19...elicans-brief/
This is true, but there are caveats.
Plus, a great deal can change in a month.
The rumors stated we'd know something in the coming weeks. To me, April-May is more reasonable, but if it's in the coming weeks, that points to Pelicans or Voodoo, and more likely Voodoo in my head. I'm biased maybe because I'd prefer Voodoo, but that's my reasoning.
I LOVE the last statement.
But I will disagree on the teams stated. Portland has one. Washington has one. Sacramento has one. Utah has one. Atlanta has flexibility. So yeah. And let's not go biased here. From what I've seen:
Aldridge is a difference maker. Wall, Cousins and Favors are STILL possible difference makers. All of them have elite skills and athleticism they can still bank on..
Wall draws a lot of FTs AND gets a lot of And1s. This speaks to his quickness, his upper body strength and his concentration on contacts.
Cousins is still a mammoth rebounder, a good roll man (NOT pop guy) and cutter. Like Wall, he makes a lot of And1s which speaks highly to his concentration on contact and/or body strength.
Favors is the least of them all only by virtue of a more experienced and slightly more skilled offensive players in Al Jeff and Millsap. Expect the Jazz to trade one of those before the deadline to open up more minutes for Favors. One thing that's in Favors side -- he's developing into a terrific defender - a pseudo game changer.
Point is, all 3 are still young (they are still 22 years old) and it's still early in their 3rd years (when rookies usually breakout) so it's to early to say he can't be this and he can't be that.
This isn't blind optimism -- this is objective optimism. There's a big difference.
On the subject of the article, I've read it. And for the most part I agree - not everybody can be good. The article also hints at the HoopIdea of attacking tanking. Just search it in the TH Network archives. The problem with his idea of a contender (get good players on good contracts) is that it's rather hard to do that. Because of the system of the market, good players are bidded out of their price ranges, the ones that aren't usually come once in a blue moon (THANK YOU RYAN ANDERSON). Countless of good players became bad assets because their contracts bloated out of their price range.
After that, we suddenly question the "pricing", what counts as "good" for a player, the CBA, tanking etc.. but fact of the matter is that their are sucky rebuilding teams and then their are good rebuilding teams. Sucky ones don't do work every off season, good rebuilding teams do work year round.
I'd count NOLA as a "good" rebuilding team. They made (mostly) the right decisions outside of the obvious drafting of the Brow - Ayon signing that led to Anderson, signing Lopez to a good contract (last 2 years are team options, I believe), trading QPon for Vasquez, drafting Miller in the 2nd round, re-upping Jason Smith to a cheap contract AND their Player Development (PD) is solid - (Vasquez, Smith, early Aminu and Lopez, etc..)
CHA seems like they are in the right track under Cho. Too early to judge Walker and Biyombo. They did pick up Gordon (a better asset because he produces more for the money compared to Maggette) and a future 1st 1st round pick, drafted MKG (right call), Jeff Taylor (right call), picked Haywood of the amnesty waivers (good player on good contract), signed Sessions (good player on good contract). Their PD remains to be seen but so far, Walker's doing great in 5 games.
Sucky rebuilding teams don't do work every off season - teams like Sacramento, Detroit, Washington, and pre-Rick Adelman Minnesota -- they just signed whoever and did not put in the time both on and off the court to develop their talents. *SIGH*
I'm so glad we're on the right track. Hope I didn't jinx it.
I disagree. IMO, None of the players you listed including Wall and Aldridge has the ability to transcend their respective teams into contention. They put up very nice stats but do not have the ability to control the game like a true franchise player can and will. Can they be very good players? Absolutely, but they lack the "it" factor. You can build with most of the guys and compete for a championship but I don't believe that you can build around them and be in contention.
Think of it like guys like Gasol who you can build around but he will never get you into contention. But if you build with him as a #2, he'd be a great asset on a championship contender. That's how I feel about guys like Aldridge and Wall.
Its getting to the point where i truly would like to just keep the Hornets name. How OKC, and Brooklynn been lookig with rebranding, im kinda afraid how our new unis, and brand would look. Also, the arena is being filled with blue seats, so im assuming that rebranding is not something thats serious right now.
No clue how this veered into a rebrand, but I digress:
The thing that was most interesting to me is this idea that as a leader you almost have to have a confidence that your organization is good at everything, but that optimism can cripple you. Demps has to believe that his medical staff is above average and he has to trust them when they tell him that they can rehab Gordon. Skepticism has no place there. Same has to go with believing that your coaches are above average talent evaluators, but math is math and 12-13 teams are below average when it comes to player development, training staff, etc. - yet every GM has to be optimistic and think his staff's are exceptional in that area.
You could see this extend to "troubled players". Every team thinks they can be the one to reign in a JR Smith because of the optimism that overrides the past performance data. And when one team is right, the other teams all see that and forget the 30 failures- they only remember the success and think that they can duplicate it because they are exceptional too.
Recent stats say 90% of people think they are above average drivers. 85% think they are above average looking. Not a joke- those are real. There are plenty of upsides to optimism but here is an example of the downside. Hard to balance it
Dunning-Kruger Effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning...3Kruger_effect
I think this is BS's Irrational Confidence thing.
Also, assumed the average `trait' has half the levels of the trait above it, half below.
The more traits that are important, the more you keep track of. The probability that any given trait is above average is 0.5. For two, 0.25. For 10 traits to be above average (not great, now), is less than 1/1000.
How many traits are important to playing ball? running a team?
Q.E.D. (sort of)
I dunno. "Optimism bias" just seems like a silly concept to try and attack. Every competitive human being has to believe what they are doing is correct. What else are they supposed to do? Look at every potential move and say to themselves, "well this ain't gonna work but i'll do it anyway."?
As for the Hornets, Gordon had just gone through a minor surgery and tried out for team USA. They had seen him in action with their own eyes, live, in person. I'm sure they saw nothing wrong with him at the time. The Phoenix training staff wouldn't have him on the floor no faster than they did with Amare.
Also, the NBA is a for profit business. You can't just go into a season without some kind of star power even if it's just potential and players like Gordon don't grow on trees. You need all the stars you can get to get butts in the seats and suites...especially once the Saints season is over.
This optimism bias stuff just sounds like data mining without any proven causality for the findings other than people tend to believe they are not inept in everything they do. The causes for this, however, are not monotonous.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
The NBA is a profit business.
If the Hornets turned around and told us that Gordon had a serious knee injury and that he would be missing 12 months, how many tickets do you think they would have sold?
I know now having Davis changes things, but back then we didn't know we were going to land him, so it became a game of 'smoke and mirrors'.
By giving us some hope he would return they still sold their tickets......they win!
What this doesn't account for is only one team is a winner a year. You can be competitive, but only a small group will truly look to compete for a title every year. When you are a team like PHX or MIN you have to gamble when the proven players aren't looking to sign with you.
While most fanbase may say they rather a playoff worthy team that is built to win a series and that's better for profits than a bottom feeder. Eventually they get tired of being above average and the pressure to accend to title contender end up costing GM's their jobs if they aren't capable of doing so.
I don't think FO people take gambles solely out of prue optimism as much as desperation.
As far as the Gordon situation I feel like GM's should never operate from a position of weakness. I felt like Demps let the situation get to a point where he was the weak party. The minute we couldn't ink a deal during the season we should have been shopping him around. Either he was worth a max deal and should have been signed during the season last year or he wasn't and we should have traded him ASAP.
Last edited by da ThRONe; 11-13-2012 at 10:39 AM.
^ what about Dell's past actions makes you think he wasn't shopping Gordon around? He most likely did and didn't find anything he considered to be worth it.
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Then he should have signed him last season. Letting Gordon hit the open market was a mistake. You just don't do that with your franchise player.
I like this statement too. If we are modeling after anyone, I think we've been pretty clear that our model is the San Antonio Spurs.
If you write this article, then you must think that you are in the small percentage that doesn't have any optimism bias...thus revealing your optimism bias.
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Some good posts in this thread.
Gordon wanted the max and the team didn't offer it to him. What was wrong with that?
Emeka Okafor - Al Jefferson - Carmelo Anthony - Manu Ginobili - Damon Stoudamire
Brad Miller - Samaki Walker - Mickael Pietrus - Aaron McKie - Shaun Livingston
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