The sad story of a bear
February 7, 2010How the Lakers and Cavaliers Have Reversed Roles in the NBA’s Top Tier
February 7, 2010The NBA stats guru at ESPN strikes yet again with his latest blow to the Cavaliers franchise. Despite the fact Cleveland is currently on an 11-game winning streak, has the best record in the league at 41-11 and is directly on par with their 66-win mark a year ago, John Hollinger ranks them as the third best team in the NBA.
This is the second time is as many weeks that Hollinger’s rankings have caught my eye. First, I saw that Utah held the #1 spot and now, the Lakers have also passed Cleveland on the heels of their win last night against Portland. These are statistics-based rankings and Hollinger did issue a statement when Utah started moving all the way up. No matter what though, it seems that the rankings are just as out of touch with reality as the BCS standings. Ask any player or coach and they will say Cleveland is the top team, and deservedly so as they are two games better than any team right now in the league.
[John Hollinger’s daily rankings via @TheAkronHammer on Twitter]
25 Comments
What a joke.
Probably can be traced back to some of those games we had huge leads and started slacking and ended up winning by 5.
Either way, overall record should count for something Hollinger.
I like the idea of stats based ranks, but I really think he needs to rework the formula. Teams move up when they lose, etc. I think he needs to look at the weight each category gets.
I think the formula is fine. It places a heavy weight on strength of schedule over the last ten games, no?
Both the Lakers and Jazz have been playing much tougher games over the last ten or so. They deserve to be higher.
Remember these are Power Rankings. Who’s hot right now? Who’s hot against good teams?
It’s not a ‘who is the best team in the league?’ list.
It’s all ball bearings nowadays.
I like Hollinger. He has a level of analysis beyond most other sports writers. I’m sure he’d be the first to admit that a formulaic approach to rankings has inherent weaknesses.
Who cares about power rankings? Let’s keep winning basketball games and not flinch at every perceived slight!
In all honesty, I’d like to see them get stiffed at least in some media. I want a chip on the shoulder come playoff time.
I don’t mind NOT being rated number 1 in Hollingers Power Rankings..ESPN is just straight up biased. We were number 1 last year? where the hell did that take us …no where? Utah is number 1 ? who thinks the Jazz are championship contenders I mean seriously?
GO CAVS
LETS GO WIN THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP.
The Cavs are usually pretty high on his rankings. This seems like an anomaly. The Cavs were ranked #1 at the end of the regular season last year and that didn’t turn out to be true…
The Cavaliers were number one basically all last year in his rankings. It seemed to help vs the Magic.
Hollinger’s rankings place a disproportionate weight on the last 25% of games, rather than weighting games using some continuous weighting system. That is, the 12th game might be worth very little compared to the 11th game, which leads to some anomalous things, depending on what happened recently and what game just got dropped in weight.
This post is such a non-issue. Hollinger is far from a “Cleveland Hater”. He is an incredibly objective analyst that uses statistics to make conclusions and support his arguments.
Hollinger even explained why the Cavs dropped in the rankings (and why Utah zoomed ahead) a few weeks back and acknowledged it as a function of his formula. Marc Stein has the Cavs as #1 for six straight weeks.
Also, Hollinger listed Andy as his first half Defensive MVP. Is that what a hater does? The rankings are fine when you understand its obejective, and it is actually a pretty good indicator: “it can be very useful because it allows us to see what the landscape looks like when we remove our usual filters”.
Jacob’s last two sentences sound like a homer who is upset his favorite team isn’t listed #1.
Who cares what another so-called expert thinks although I personally think #3 makes no sense considering the Cavaliers have the best record, have won 11 straight and are basically playing with their third string point guard. Let the slights continue though because it’ll just make winning all that more sweeter!
Btw Jacob is far from a homer especially around here!
Also useful to remember is that the number I actually care about (likelihood of a Cavs championship) still puts the Cavs on top. As others have said, Hollinger is one of the few analysts out there who actually analyzes objectively about what makes teams good.
@SFCavsFan – As the resident stats guy, I am generally not always a big fan of what Hollinger does at ESPN. Certainly, one can appreciate what he brings to the table with the worldwide leader, but I do have faults with his two main stats affiliated with the NBA.
– PER = As with any stat in basketball, it is incredibly hard to enumerate what players really do produce. The problem with PER is that it is very influenced by field goal attempts. For example, why does Shane Battier have a 10.95 PER while Kyle Weaver is at 29.98? Weaver shoots much, much more and thus, I would rather use such a stat alongside the wins produced numbers that Dave Berri does over at Wages of Wins.
– Power Rankings = I dabbled in power rankings a few years back. I began with college football and for a pair of seasons, tried to do the numbers for both MLB and NBA. The major issue I have with Hollinger’s rankings are that they are too influenced by one particular game. For example, if a team has one bad loss or even a mediocre win, and then it suddenly enters or exits their most recent 25% of games, it can drastically change their rating.
The title of Cleveland Hater brings to attention that these power rankings are out of touch. Statistics can do that to people and I say that as a avid sports statistician. That is the issue with the BCS and that is the issue with the rankings from Hollinger here. When I first noticed these rankings, it did not surprise me all that much but still frustrated me.
My favorite team just happens to be the team that is 41-11 with an 11-game winning streak. Regardless of their most recent margin of victory, they remain the currently best team in the league.
Despite the rigor that Hollinger surely applies, public perceptions, based largely on head-to-head match-ups and wins and losses overall, get wrinkled by what look like skewed rankings when the team with the best record, winning consistently, consistently sinks in the rankings.
Could the Cavs win 25 straight and still not reach number one in Hollinger’s rankings? At this point, it seems to be at least a statistical possibility. If things got that bad for the power rankings, Hollinger would surely want to consider tweaking the criteria. Otherwise, people would just stop taking his rankings seriously–assuming they take them seriously.
Rankings don’t win championships. I rather be ranked 30th and win a title than ranked #1 and lose to the Orlando Magic in the ECF.
I don’t think Hollinger is a hater – he just has a particular statistical model. Interestingly, the same man also does a “playoff odds” section that simulates the rest of the season 5,000 times. According to that model, the Cavs are ranked as the best chance of winning the title at 24.5% (Lakers are second at 21.1%). Obviously these mean about as much as the power rankings, but I only bring this up to show that Hollinger has different data that ranks the Cavs positively as well…
http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/playoffodds
Hollinger has enough data to rank any team wherever he wants (except the Nyets, who will obviously always be last). Creating any type of composite formula introduces all kinds of bias. It’s just choosing which bias you want to use. One of the BCS guys uses an entirely idiotic system (seriously), but that’s just because he chose to weight some areas more heavily. Who gives a crap about power rankings or ANY rankings based on statistics? If you can find a good correlation (like a really high coefficient) between combinations of statistics and win/loss or playoff records, sure. Go ahead. What’s your correlation coefficient? 0.4? 0.5? Doing this nonsense with so much time left in the season is just that, though – nonsense.
The Cavs are not the number one team. They play medicore clubs and look like world beaters. The Cavs did the same thing last year and look what happened. Just look at how the lowly Knicks made it a game the other night. The Cavs thanks to Danny Ferry are a one man team that will be exposed yet again in the playoffs.
Eric – um, I know you read Jacobs other post about the Cavs & Lakers (this year vs last year) as you commented on it. But then again, when you make an observation as stupid as the one you just posted here maybe you didnt read it.
Lets see – best record (check), beat LA twice (check), beat Orlando (check). The Cavs have a .696 win % against the top teams. Yes, Eric, I can see how the Cavs only look like world beaters when they play mediocre clubs. I espically enjoyed how you then contradicted yourself by pointing out the struggles against the lowly Knicks.
Look, if you think the Cavs are flawed and will have trouble in the playofs, fine. But why dont we stick to the facts when judging this team. They are tearing through everyone right now. You would have to be foolish not to see them as the best team right now.
Eric? The same Eric who used to post on Cavalier Attitude? Given the tone and content I feel free to make this connection.
WFNY readers, do not give this man any credit what-so-ever. He will occasionally pop-up spewing anti-Ferry/Brown/anyCavNotNamedLeBron rhetoric. The mostly likely timing is after a loss, rarely spotted during winning streaks (only reason I’m not 100% on this classification). Whenever he is wrong he disappears back into the intertubes for a couple weeks, and when he’s right will pound his chest.
/sorry for that rant
Please never link to the Akron Hammer ever again. Worst nickname in the history of Cleveland sports.
/Thanks!
bitmatt +1 for the Gordo
Wasn’t the last Cavalier loss against the Jazz? Shouldn’t that count for something?
Oh wait, it does, and that’s one of the many reasons that the statistical analysis puts the Jazz ahead of the Cavs in these rankings.
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