February 1st - New Orleans Pelicans vs Sacramento Kings - 7-11

[NMThreeMVP]

I once thought Austin Rivers would be a good basketball player and my friends never let me forget it. It was quite humbling, because I think highly of my ability to observe and analyze.

But how am I the only one who remembers that MM thought Klay Thompson wasn't any good, Jaylen Brown was going to be a bust, Emanual Mudiay would be a stud, etc... and a half dozen other awful takes supporting Dell's decisions?

It's cool, we all get some things wrong, some things right. But "the you guys are rubes, and I have a superior intellect" schtick gets old.

[MichaelMcNamara]

First off, you are wrong on Klay. But yes, my pre draft evals on Brown and Murray were bad

I do not say I am incapable of being wrong about the future. Everybody is more often than they are right

My argument is that my evaluation of.Pels players and staff is not clouded by hope in any way. I can evaluate them as clearly as you can evaluate a Pistons player

Now, since we are all often wrong about the future whether we have bias or not, i can and will still be wrong. But my case is that I dont go into my evaluations hoping for one outcome over another

[NMThreeMVP]

First off, you are wrong on Klay. But yes, my pre draft evals on Brown and Murray were bad

I do not say I am incapable of being wrong about the future. Everybody is more often than they are right

My argument is that my evaluation of.Pels players and staff is not clouded by hope in any way. I can evaluate them as clearly as you can evaluate a Pistons player

Now, since we are all often wrong about the future whether we have bias or not, i can and will still be wrong. But my case is that I dont go into my evaluations hoping for one outcome over another

Question:

Once you tweet/post a take, how much additional information do you need to see before you change your opinion/expectation?

Or, are you at that point biased based on your stated expectation?

How many games does it take to confirm your assumption or shift your perception, or does that only happen when the result is clear?

[Pelicanidae]

I dont pretend. I am more objective.

Nothing you can do with this clown behaviour.

[13 - 3]

Nothing you can do with this clown behaviour.

Ignore him. Don’t give him attention and he will go away

[MichaelMcNamara]

Nothing you can do with this clown behaviour.

Yeah...I am the clown. I tell you guys how things are gonna play out and you guys cling to hope and look at all the possible bright sides of every deal and every pick and I am the clown

Fans will never do well with someone giving them the truth. The whole allure of Fandom, i suppose, is to live in some fantasy world. Well, enjoy that. Keep laughing at the guy telling you that you are in a cave watching shadows of puppets

[NMThreeMVP]

Yeah...I am the clown. I tell you guys how things are gonna play out and you guys cling to hope and look at all the possible bright sides of every deal and every pick and I am the clown

Fans will never do well with someone giving them the truth. The whole allure of Fandom, i suppose, is to live in some fantasy world. Well, enjoy that. Keep laughing at the guy telling you that you are in a cave watching shadows of puppets

Sure... but you're also the dude who fixates on telling everyone in the cave what a shadow puppet is, meanwhile you completely missed the invention of fire and neglected to tell people about all the pissed on plants you ate while trying to be the first to make a salad.

[MichaelMcNamara]

Sure... but you're also the dude who fixates on telling everyone in the cave what a shadow puppet is, meanwhile you completely missed the invention of fire and neglected to tell people about all the pissed on plants you ate while trying to be the first to make a salad.

How much you wanna bet this board is saying the same stuff I am saying now in three years? Maybe sooner.

Its clear where all this is heading and I am just the jerk who tells it to you guys straight instead of doing the much easier thing -- pumping sunshine and getting love and praise for it

This already played out once. In 3-4 years, you guys will be much more down on Griff and the franchise than even I am, and then I will try to show the other side and talk ya'll back to the middle. Be labeled a Griff optimist. Its a loop we will never get out of

[NMThreeMVP]

How much you wanna bet this board is saying the same stuff I am saying now in three years? Maybe sooner.

Its clear where all this is heading and I am just the jerk who tells it to you guys straight instead of doing the much easier thing -- pumping sunshine and getting love and praise for it

This already played out once. In 3-4 years, you guys will be much more down on Griff and the franchise than even I am, and then I will try to show the other side and talk ya'll back to the middle. Be labeled a Griff optimist. Its a loop we will never get out of

The history of the NBA and the history of this franchise says the safest bet is that this team never wins a championship. Congrats on being a realist. We needed that.

Truth is, as you just pointed out, you enjoy being a contrarian. When folks say one thing - you think you’re being brilliantly clairvoyant by arguing the opposite. And as you say, when the tide turns, you’ll argue the other side. None of that shtick makes you uniquely perceptive or intelligent, IMO. It’s an approach to debate/conversation that only makes you mildly amusing - like our own Pelican’s poor man version of Will Cain.

[new city champ]

I think you're overstating things a bit. No one, or very few, are unquestioning of Griff's performance. I'd very much prefer he take the Memphis approach and build a deeper roster through drafting and player development (a methodology you've questioned the value of in the past). Of course there is optimism bias! What a miserable bunch of priks we'd be without it. But there is also a pessimism bias which relishes stating the very obvious fact that things more often go wrong than right when trying to achieve something difficult.

Fans of all teams make a kind of Pascal's Wager that it is better to believe in a brighter future, on balance, than resign yourself to infinite failure and preordained misery. The Pels have some rational reasons for optimism. You want to jump ahead and preemptively extinguish that hope based on the high probability that most team's fail to win a championship. Why even care at all then? Why sit on the sidelines and throw rocks at the parade? You don't have to "pump sunshine" but why pour on the despair?

You say you've seen enough to draw a definitive conclusion. That seems unlikely. You say this scenario already played out once. Of course it hasn't. As you know full well, the past is often a poor predicator of the future. Many posters here have spent much of the Griffin era saying what we would have done differently, the draft picks he didn't make, the trades he didn't pursue. But there is more than one path to success and setbacks aren't dead ends. I don't think there is anything inherently irrational about believing things might work out. They probably won't but that's always true. In the long run, we're all dead.

[Snarly]

So this is how MM chooses to spend his Taco Tuesday.

[AUSSIE_PELICAN]

Sure... but you're also the dude who fixates on telling everyone in the cave what a shadow puppet is, meanwhile you completely missed the invention of fire and neglected to tell people about all the pissed on plants you ate while trying to be the first to make a salad.

[Funcrusher]

Damn. I leave this board for a day and all hell breaks loose

[HornetGuru]

Well at least Kira looks like he’s gonna be a great PG

[PELICANSFAN]

Well at least Kira looks like he’s gonna be a great PG

Hope so, but pretty early to tell.