This Week's Show
We talk more about implicit racism, the Jeff Green trade, the Atlanta Hawks, and Patrick gets on his soapbox about the Timberwolves.
Hosts
- Andres Alvarez(@nerdnumbers)
- Patrick Minton(@nbageek)
- Produced by Brian Foster(@boxscorebrian)
Sources
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Video Show
This Week's Poll
Show Notes
Implicit Racism - Again.
Patrick wrote a good piece on implicit racism.
I discussed it on last week's show.
Tune in to hear some followup thoughts from Patrick.
A lot of the books we like explain how, despite our intelligence, how hard it is to always act intelligently. See "Thinking Fast and Slow", "Predictably Irrational", and "Fooled by Randomness."
It's easy to be unable to see our biases. For example, in orchestras the ratio of men to women drastically changed after the addition of blind auditions.
Malcolm Gladwell has a great piece on profiling. He points out it is a moving target and often silly. He compares this to banning pit bulls, which is silly.
A big example of "fooling" profiling is of Ellen and William Craft. Ellen was a black female, who posed as a white male to escape slavery. Profiling is not so straight forward.
Trades Galore!
Sheridan Hoops gave the Memphis Grizzlies an A for acquiring Jeff Green. I'm not so sure about that. I will say, Sheridan Hoops has three auto-play ads on the article, making me give it an F.
Jeff Green is six years into his career. The problem is, it's unlikely he'll "turn it around."
The reality is most players that aren't stars. A majority of trades are "shuffling deck chairs."
As Patrick points out, one or two wins is good. However, with mid tier players, it's hard to know a trade will be worth that. Often with a good team, it's better to do nothing. As Freakonomics has discussed though, we judge inaction much harsher than action, even subpar actions!
Kevin Love drum solo!
The Cavs, letting subpar shooters like Waiters and J.R. outshoot Kevin Love, is foolish.
David Blatt doesn't think Kevin Love is a max salary player. Either he can't properly evaluate talent or he doesn't know facts (Love does make the max salary.) Neither of those should give Cleveland fans hope.
By the way, Kevin Love is amazingly versatile on offense. He's not the point guard though, so he still needs the ball!
The Hawks
Kyle Korver explains his offense on BBall Breakdown
The 6-1 Division bet on the Atlanta Hawks that Patrick put down to start the season is looking really good.
Reminder, Kyle Korver is really good.
Tune in to hear Patrick talk about how Korver plays "the right way."
Dear Timberwolves...
Patrick has some words for the Timberwolves about letting Jeff Adrien walk and picking up Miroslav Radiluca for "need".
Also, height on its own isn't everything. Another important factor is wingspan.
Shoutouts
Layne Vashro gets a shoutout for the great conversation that turned into yesterday's post.
@NerdNumbers Unlike cars, some of them go way up in value. Better analogy might be.... lottery tickets?
— Layne Vashro (@VJL_bball) January 9, 2015
Thanks to the great commenters on yesterday's piece. Eitan Rosenberg (@FutureNBAGM), Dodgson, and everyone else, thanks for the good dialogue!
coxygen gets a shoutout for his comments on Patrick's racism piece.
Coach Nick(@bballbreakdown) gets a shoutout. As Brian points out, we used several of his videos in discussing tonight's show.