benji's mind is impossible to change, rememeber her is right, you are not
Thanks for that, really added to the discussion, just like normal. You should try and read the threads for a change.
I never said it was impossible to have all the data.
Alright, but it was worded in such a way it was one of the possible meanings of it.
I just said that you don't have the data. Shannon has most the data, but unfortunately, most of it is in his head and cannot be retrived.
I do not believe Shannon has the most data at all. He already stated he only remembers a handful of possessions. We have statistical data that describes the result of every single possession.
If you were to analyze a player, what source would you trust more to come to a conclusion on - statistics or game footage?
Any idiot will take game coverage since you can take stats from footage, but not the other way around.
It depends. Let's take an upcoming rookie, Kevin Durant. Are you offering me all 82 games to come of his season in game footage, or just a few games. If so, I would prefer the current available systems (eg, nba.com, 82games.com, popcornmachine) seasons worth of stats over a handful of games to watch.
Sure, if I have those handful of games, I will naturally observe and remember more than almost everyone on here because of my OCD. But I still would not trust my limited subjective perspective over hard data to draw conclusions from.
With complete footage, I could go over and over again I would prefer that, as I could chart everything. There is a website you can already do this on, but it's $2000 a year. Next season this data will start to be available to everyone as some ABPR people have bought in.
Also, one last note, if you do not think teams pour over stats, you are mistaken. If the Bulls are using Hinrich because he is the better defender, and not because he's on the floor more due to being a better overall player, there is a good chance they have some sort of stat system to determine this and not just "watching him" during the games. The biggest failing on stats teams tend to have are: (and a lot of people make the same mistakes like in all emperical studies.)
1. They sometimes buy into silly systems that are logically flawed.
2. They sometimes focus on the wrong things to analyze.
3. They keep the data to themselves, holding everyone back, because they think other teams will take advantage of it. Even though most of it is basic mathmatics anyway.
The point I have been trying to make is that instead of instantly dismissing stats because "they don't tell the whole story" (stats can't tell stories, people do) or don't match your opinion we need to consider the possibility our opinions are wrong. If we find trends in stats, over and over again, over the last decade, there is probably something to it, even if it seems wrong on the face.
If we can do and believe in emperical studies of regular life things, there is absolutely no reason we cannot do it in sports with their rigid rules and possiblities.
