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Game Thread Jan 01, 2022 07:00PM MT: Jazz vs. Warriors

Added to Calendar: 01-01-22

JimLes said:
Moneyball is a great strategy for sports that have a league format without playoffs. Over a 38-game season in the Premier League, numbers will even themselves out. If you have quality players, they will create quality chances and eventually score them. Your players can't keep missing forever and the opposing goalies can't keep having the game of their life against you.

The NBA does have playoffs though, so it's really stupid to think that the numbers will simply work themselves out. Just ask Mike D'Antoni. His teams have won 60+ games 3 times and 50+ games 7 times. He hasn't even got a Finals appearance to show for it. If the NBA operated on the league system, he'd be one of the best coaches of this century. It doesn't though, and you don't get to choose which game your team is going to miss 20 threes in a row. When they do, all you can do is sit there and watch it all unravel because you have no way of making an adjustment.

It's not even that D'Antoni or Quin are unwilling to make them. That's the sad part. We were all yelling at the screen against the Clippers, but at that point, there was nothing anyone could've done. You can't throw defensive schemes that you've never really used before in a win-or-go-home game. You can't suddenly invent players who can defend on the perimeter when you and the front office have spent the past 5 years purposely avoiding signing, developing, and playing players like that.

There has to be a plan B for the playoffs. We all saw last season how over 72 games, numbers do work themselves out. They don't do it over a 48-minute period where you let Terance Mann score 39 on you. He might never score 39 in an entire playoff series again, but what good does that do to us now?
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I think the bigger issue connects what you’re talking about. The way Quin coaches leads me to believe his inflexibility is a result of attempting to more fully and consistently implement moneyball, approximating expected results over longer durations of time, so there’s no sense to develop any other strategies to make yourself more dynamic and able to respond on the fly because you need to cast your line in the water (execute moneyball) and let that line sit to maximize exposure. Even our defensive structure says moneyball and the numbers look good as a composite. But they can be exploited in any given moment. We’re good marathon runners. But that doesn’t help us when deciding who advances boils down to a few sprints. We’re not prepared at all for the sprints because we’re focused so much on the marathon and we pride ourselves on the amount of work and dedication that goes into being in the head of the pack for the marathon (it is undoubtedly impressive). When it’s you and four other people with a quarter mile left, sticking to your pace strategy becomes irrelevant. For Quin doing Ana amazing job getting himself into a position to win it, he mind-bogglingly falls back on his idea that keeping his rigid pace is what got him into contention through 25.95 miles and that there’s no sense in altering that approach, and ends up not being dynamic enough to respond to the specific situation in front of him.
 
I'm not sure I understand where this "moneyball" criticism is coming from. How else was Snyder supposed to coach this game? With no Whiteside we saw the Gay at the 5 minutes everyone has been clamoring for, and we saw what a disaster it was. Gay can still be useful to us but he's not a viable option at the 5. Ingles has declined and you just aren't getting much out of him this season. They were really cold tonight, but they stayed in the game and gave themselves a chance by going inside as much as possible. Do you want them to stop taking threes all together? If we don't take the threes we stand no chance at winning. Maybe we have to get lucky with three point shooting to win the championship, but there is no other option for us to win it. There's no other way we could play. This is our personnel.
 
fallenchicken said:
I'm not sure I understand where this "moneyball" criticism is coming from. How else was Snyder supposed to coach this game? With no Whiteside we saw the Gay at the 5 minutes everyone has been clamoring for, and we saw what a disaster it was. Gay can still be useful to us but he's not a viable option at the 5. Ingles has declined and you just aren't getting much out of him this season. They were really cold tonight, but they stayed in the game and gave themselves a chance by going inside as much as possible. Do you want them to stop taking threes all together? If we don't take the threes we stand no chance at winning. Maybe we have to get lucky with three point shooting to win the championship, but there is no other option for us to win it. There's no other way we could play. This is our personnel.
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The moneyball isn't a reference to this game, and it's not a reference to smallball 5 (I've long said smallball 5 isn't an answer and also that Quin wouldn't use it). Smallball 5 kills us precisely because of moneyball. When we ended up sacrificing our defensive team for an offensive one, we continued to lean more and more into Gobert as a defensive crutch. The numbers on that look great because Rudy is amazing, but it's unfortunate side-effect has created a team-wide lack of defensive accountability. Our guys physically are pretty bad on the perimeter. But I refuse to believe that they are this historically bad on their own efforts and it's drastically exacerbated by years of conditioning in how they play defense. You're supposed to lead everyone to Gobert. Even tongue-in-cheek, every player for the past 3 years has talked about how it's great to have Gobert back there as backup. That's a consistent theme in interviews because that's a very hardly ingrained mentality. Go back to Royce's rookie year and watch the closing possession of when we beat San Antonio to win 10 in a row. Royce could stay in front of his man previously. Funneling everything to Gobert is working one muscle. It's pretty impressive because that muscle is massive. Unfortunately everything else has atrophied beyond functionality. That's the moneyball on the defensive side of the ball. The moneyball on the other side is that we rely too heavily on just being able to make our shots because if we do then we're historic. But then teams will take away the ways we get those and we end up left without a counter. The sum total of moneyball failures stand out most in the Denver and LAC losses. We had no adjustment to make, just a belief that we needed to keep doing our thing and that the "law of averages" would save us. There's always too much emphasis on specific anomalies that we blame for being responsible for losing games, when the bottom line is that every game and series will be filled with anomalies and it's about finding ways to win games. We win games through moneyball, so when we're in these situations when plan to keep moneyballing until the averages catch up. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen over 7 games, as we've seen the past two years.

It's not even moneyball, per se. It's our (mis)understanding of it.
 
It’s worth mentioning that the Warriors were without Draymond and Klay Thompson. And Wiseman (if he becomes a good player).
 
This is pretty disappointing by the Jazz. The 2 spot is right there for the taking. Phoenix is SLUMPING big time. They probably will lose today, making it 4 losses out of 5, with the injuries and COVID outbreak that hit them.

And the Jazz still can't get to 2nd? Major disappointment.
 
I remember fondly how in game 7 of a playoff series in the 4th quarter vs the Rockets that Frank Layden junked his offense and went to a different system because the Rockets seem to know every play. The Jazz performed a miracle comeback in the 4th quarter and won the series. Anyone see Quin doing the same thing?
 
Please do not let this forum turn into the grumpy old boys club that calls everything bad that happens “money ball” and “analytics” lmao. If you think the Jazz lost because of “money ball”, what do you think the Warriors are using? “Penny ball”.

Money ball is not a blanket term for everything you dislike lol.
 
KqWIN said:
Please do not let this forum turn into the grumpy old boys club that calls everything bad that happens “money ball” and “analytics” lmao. If you think the Jazz lost because of “money ball”, what do you think the Warriors are using? “Penny ball”.

Money ball is not a blanket term for everything you dislike lol.
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I’ve been pretty specific in qualifying that it is a particular approach to moneyball where we’re doing things a specific way quite rigidly that works over large samples, and refuse to adapt because of an appeal to a strategy working over larger samples. Putting your money in an index fund is a wise long-term strategy when applied consistently. It takes out a lot of variability when you no longer act like a cat to a laser pointer with your investments. My son was given a school assignment for investing pretend money over a 6 week period. “Put it in index funds” isn’t really an answer that would maximize the time-frame of that particular assignment, even if it’s the right long-term course of action. The fact that we don’t differentiate between these and can’t respond accordingly, just appeal to the success long-term, is what the problem is and not necessarily “moneyball” itself. It’s the flawed view and application of moneyball.
 
infection said:
I’ve been pretty specific in qualifying that it is a particular approach to moneyball where we’re doing things a specific way quite rigidly that works over large samples, and refuse to adapt because of an appeal to a strategy working over larger samples. Putting your money in an index fund is a wise long-term strategy when applied consistently. It takes out a lot of variability when you no longer act like a cat to a laser pointer with your investments. My son was given a school assignment for investing pretend money over a 6 week period. “Put it in index funds” isn’t really an answer that would maximize the time-frame of that particular assignment, even if it’s the right long-term course of action. The fact that we don’t differentiate between these and can’t respond accordingly, just appeal to the success long-term, is what the problem is and not necessarily “moneyball” itself. It’s the flawed view and application of moneyball.
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If the application of money ball is not correct, it’s not money ball! If you don’t like how Quin is making his decisions, you could just as easily say we need MORE or BETTER money ball.

Money ball is a simplified blanket term to begin with, but the way it’s being used right now is 1) to describe poor application of analytics and or 2) as a label for anything we don’t like to begin with.

Just in the last game we tried two different strategies that could not have further rationale for playing those lineups. It’s not money ball that causes Quin to make every decision. People got to stop bringing it up every time something bad happens.
 
jazz4life1992 said:
This is pretty disappointing by the Jazz. The 2 spot is right there for the taking. Phoenix is SLUMPING big time. They probably will lose today, making it 4 losses out of 5, with the injuries and COVID outbreak that hit them.

And the Jazz still can't get to 2nd? Major disappointment.
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Dude, who cares what seed they're at in the end. It's plainly obvious they are not going to make it far again in the playoffs.
 
Jingled said:
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Not surprised. Anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention for the last 5 years. He's easily our most important and impactful player. He should have played all 48. Would have given us a chance to win.
 
Eminence said:
I mean, if the Warriors are reasonably healthy we likely lose. Steph/Dray is an all-timer of a combo.

I like our squad, but we're not at that level.

But folks are really going all in on a game where we shot 32% from 3 and the Warriors shot 53%.
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The problem is systemic. We missed wide open 3s and did nothing to bother their perimeter game. In a 7-game series we will win a couple of these by shooting better. But no way we win the series. And they were missing Green, the anointed DPOY, and Thompson. Add them into the mix and we don't stand a chance as presently configured.
 
infection said:
I think the bigger issue connects what you’re talking about. The way Quin coaches leads me to believe his inflexibility is a result of attempting to more fully and consistently implement moneyball, approximating expected results over longer durations of time, so there’s no sense to develop any other strategies to make yourself more dynamic and able to respond on the fly because you need to cast your line in the water (execute moneyball) and let that line sit to maximize exposure. Even our defensive structure says moneyball and the numbers look good as a composite. But they can be exploited in any given moment. We’re good marathon runners. But that doesn’t help us when deciding who advances boils down to a few sprints. We’re not prepared at all for the sprints because we’re focused so much on the marathon and we pride ourselves on the amount of work and dedication that goes into being in the head of the pack for the marathon (it is undoubtedly impressive). When it’s you and four other people with a quarter mile left, sticking to your pace strategy becomes irrelevant. For Quin doing Ana amazing job getting himself into a position to win it, he mind-bogglingly falls back on his idea that keeping his rigid pace is what got him into contention through 25.95 miles and that there’s no sense in altering that approach, and ends up not being dynamic enough to respond to the specific situation in front of him.
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Quin operates half by half. He only makes adjustments at the half. He rarely makes adjustments between quarters, and almost never during the actual quarter being played. This rings true with the money ball assessments. He can't make an adjustment mid-quarter because it would buck the numbers.
 
I don't get this waiving the white flag by some already. We were playing on a second night of a B2B while they were well rested, Donovan was missing everything, we were missing Hassan (which showed how valuable he is for us in letting us run the same defense as with Rudy). When we were down 16 I thought it would have ended in the blowout yet they rally back and fell short just in the end. Yes, Warriors are great but they are not the super team like before, we are not going to be a favourite against them but we have a chance.
 
Jazzmix said:
I don't get this waiving the white flag by some already. We were playing on a second night of a B2B while they were well rested, Donovan was missing everything, we were missing Hassan (which showed how valuable he is for us in letting us run the same defense as with Rudy). When we were down 16 I thought it would have ended in the blowout yet they rally back and fell short just in the end. Yes, Warriors are great but they are not the super team like before, we are not going to be a favourite against them but we have a chance.
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And playing at home, so there was that obstacle to deal with in addition to all the others.
 
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