Extreme Philly Sports Forum

Smarter people need less data to derive truths.

Something I learned in HS when the class genius figured out the hidden alleles in our fruit fly experiment after just 3 generations after the teacher herself swore it would take 6 at minimum.

“Smarter people need less data” is a wild way to say I’m just guessing aggressively.

The trendline on Walker is up, the trendline on Watford is flat.

I'm fine with Watford even if he never even attempts a 3.  Frankly speaking I prefer that over him forcing up a few attempts a game at a 30% clip.

lol you’re basing this off the amazing 28 3s he hit all of last season? Haha

9 times out of 10 when Howie "reworks" a contract, he's simply spreading out the cap hit to what ends up being void years.  The total cap hit ends up being the same.

If Carter sucks, he'll just be cut.  We're too good to waste roster spots on scrubs.

If he looks great, he has little reason to take a new deal that would net him less hard cash than what he's already owed.  Howie can defer the cap hit with void years, but the total cap hit will remain roughly the same.

That’s cause normally there are guarantees there. This contract has minimal guarantees left. There’s nothing to spread out. It’s basically ripping up a contract and giving a new one. And he’d be all about it because no player wants to play on a non guaranteed deal.

Let me get this straight, after last seasons debacle of injuries and bad play, it doesn't mean this current team is now outta danger.  They win absolutely 0 of these games last season, so I'm glad they at least compete and persevere now.  With that being said, I'm prolly most happy that they've found an identity w/o Jo and PG.  I gotta give NN his props for finally realizing that an Embiid focused offense and defense is not gonna be the reason they succeed or fail again. 

Y'all remember the numbers..... 2019 EC Semifinals...6ers were a +90 in Embiid's 237 minutes on the court & -109 in his 99 minutes off the floor. 

Insane numbers.  Some of us had been wanting the Embiid centric offense to end years ago, but BB, Doc, and even NN kept it going in hopes that Jo would enter the playoffs healthy.  Never happened and the odds are it never will.  So at least now, they have found other ways to get it done.

1.  They have decided to put the ball in Maxey's hands first & foremost.  He went thru the fire of being a #1 option last season.  It was a learning process for him and he got hurt figuring it out.  However, he did figure it out.  The way he's playing so far w and w/o Jo has been electric. 

2.  With Jo on the bench in limited mins now, NN has figured out which C he needs.  One game its Drummond w his rebounding, the next its Bona w his interior defense and athleticism, and sometime its Barlow at C when they go small.  Giving Bona those mins last season is gonna help this season.  Yeah, he still fouls too much, but he's still only 62 games into his career.  He hasn't even played a full seasons worth of games yet.  As he matures and as his teammates learn to funnel drivers he will get better

3.  Pace is everything w this team.  IND figured it out and it got them to he Finals.  Rick Carlisle figured it out.  When you're a team that is young, can shoot and are athletic, go go go.  Put the ball into your best players hands and don't look back....don't wait on the defense to load up, nor wait on your C to get downcourt.  Pass the ball upcourt and less dribbling.  You got 4-5 ball handlers on the floor at one time.  Let's see who's in better shape.  PHI finally has youth to its advantage.  They have shot makers and guys who can shoot.  Load up on Maxey... VJ, Grimes, and Oubre kill you.  Load up on VJ.... Maxey, Grimes, and Oubre kill you.   And you still got the big fella when things bog down.  Last night, he entered the 4Q down 16, he left down 9.  He didn't score, but he rebounded and assisted.  So, he had some positive effect. 

4.  Defense is an issue.  They play in spurts right now, and not a complete game.  They give up 120ppg....in contrast SAS has the best def and they give up 104.  OK, they have otherworldly Wemby so thats everything for them, but the Celtics are 8th at 112ppg, they don't have any real otherworldly defenders.  Neither do the Bulls at 106ppg.  PHI is top 10 offensively and bottom 10 defensively.  So, defense is an issue. 

5.  The bench & role players are NIGHT and DAY better.  So far, Grimes is leading the charge off the pine and if he keeps it up will be in 6MOY talk.  McCain has yet to play.  Bona & Drummond have shown up.  Barlow will go to the bench upon DG8 return and Edwards is slowly coming outta his funk shooting. 

6.  They're fun to watch.  We know it's not gonna be this way the entire season, but right now I can honestly say I look forward to watching them.  Im kinda worried what the team will look like at full strength though.  Bringing back DG8, McCain, Watford, and still Jo getting back may bring some congested moments and make the offensive look bogged down, so I hope NN has a plan

Defense is definitely my biggest concern. I would tho hesitate in looking at pure ppg given up given the pace we are playing at. We will always give up a high ppg due to that. However looking to see where we are in points per 100 possessions is the better way to gauge how our defense is doing. And we are very bad there too. Currently we are 28th in the league. If our offense keeps this up we would just need that rating to get more to middle of the pack and then we’d be in great shape

I see this mistake made all the time by biomeds, prioritizing granular piecemeal metrics over more comprehensive metrics.

Classic example is the Covid vaccines.

In the double blinded randomized controlled clinical trials the viral vector vaccines (AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson) demonstrated robust and statistically significant all cause benefits, the mRNA vaccines did not.

But people in the industry point to piecemeal metrics like neutralizing antibody and targeted t-cell levels as proof that the mRNA vaccines are better, despite the viral vector vaccines having the undeniably superior all cause results.

Similar thing here, the "all cause" result points to Logan's defense being better than average.  And all cause metrics in any field tend to be more reliable than the more granular piecemeal metrics.

What is this nonsense lol. It’s not not an all cause results point. You literally have zero understanding of war. Idk how many times I have to explain it to you. Defensive war only takes into account balls in play. For a catcher that’s maybe 1-2 balls a freaking game. So ok Logan is better than average at fielding bunts and catching pop outs. Mazel tov. There’s a million more aspects behind being a good catcher. Bringing up random covid nonsense isn’t changing the fact. What’s next you’re going to be bringing up irrelevant world war 2 facts that have absolutely nothing to do with your lack of understanding of mlb war stats.

Yet his defensive WAR has been positive this year and last.

There is such a a thing as hyper analysis.

I already explained it to you defensive war for catchers is very flawed. Defensive WAR is built primarily on fielding runs above average which comes from play-by-play data (who fielded which balls in play, and what the result was).
But for catchers, most of their defensive value isn’t reflected in batted balls. The value depends on game calling, framing, blocking, throwing runners out. That isn’t accounted for in defensive war.

ESPN WAR>fangraph's WAR.

Or we can believe that Marsh was playing like a $20M+ dollar player in LA 🤡🤡🤡🤡

You do realize espn uses baseball reference war right? And also the only real difference between bwar and fwar is how defense is calculated. Bwar uses DRS and fwar uses UzR ( tho they are moving away from that to use more statcast type of metrics)

This is like a 3rd grade temper tantrum