The ’95-96 Chicago Bulls v the Golden State Warriors

 

For me it’s the Bulls. Which is hard for me to say because I never liked the Bulls, and I love this year’s Warriors team.

 

When we’re talking about a Bulls team that won 72 out of 82 regular season games, and a Warriors team that will win either 72 or 73 games, we’re talking about teams of roughly the same level of ability and achievement. Despite what former Bulls’ Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant say, either team could win a hypothetical seven-game series.

 

The Bulls have the slightly higher point differential; +12 more points per game than their opposition, compared to the Warriors’ +11. The Bulls’ point differential is more impressive when you factor in that less points per game were scored in 1995-96.

 

But what underlies that differential? I don’t buy the argument that the Bulls were better simply because they had Michael Jordan. Stephen Curry this year has been pretty much as good as Jordan ever was. His shooting is considerably better than Jordan was in his ’95-96 season, with a true shooting percentage of .67, compared to .58 for Jordan. His rebounds per game are slightly lower, but his assists per game are higher. Jordan’s defense is generally considered as better; he did win Defensive Player of the Year once, whereas Curry has never generally been considered as a candidate for that award. In sum, Curry shot better and Jordan probably made his opponents shoot worse, but overall Curry’s 2015-16 season could be considered about as good as Jordan’s 1995-96 season.

 

Where the Bulls have the edge for me is Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. The Warriors’ Draymond Green is a fantastic all-around player, but Pippen I think surpasses him because his shooting efficiency was better. And there was never a better rebounder in the NBA than Dennis Rodman. Curry's fellow guard Klay Thompson is a great shooter, but Rodman’s value is to me significantly more. Which again hurts to say because I never liked Rodman on the Bulls.

 

The Warriors do have more depth. Outside of Curry, Green, and Thompson, the Warriors have several productive players in Andre Iguodala, Andrew Bogut, Shaun Livingston, Festus Ezeli, Brandon Rush, and Harrison Barnes depending on which metric you use. For the Bulls, outside of Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman there was Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper, and Steve Kerr, and that was about it.

 

But that higher point differential, and the Pippen-Rodman combination, still tips it towards the Bulls for me. I do love the current Warriors though, and I hope they break the Bulls’ record tomorrow night. Jordan still has enough records anyway.

‘A Journalist Comes To Wakanda’: Black Panther #1

Black Panther’ #1 sees the long-awaited comics debut of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates regularly writes for ‘The Atlantic’, has worked as a journalist for several publications, and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his most recent book, ‘Between The World And Me’. That book, which expresses Coates’ anger at the past and present treatment of black people in the US, is my only exposure to date of his writing.

 

Given the heavy theme of race in that book, and the Black Panther’s skin colour and fictional history, had half an expectation that Coates’ first issue of ‘Black Panther’ would be in a similar vein. The Panther was the first black superhero in comics, which has made him a sort of figurehead for dealing with issues of race, as he was during his early ‘Avengers’ appearances. Of course, that aside, there is no real reason why Coates’ ‘Black Panther’ should recall the themes of ‘Between The World And Me’: if nothing else that was a book that was distinctly about the experience of African-Americans, whereas the Black Panther character is African, not American at all.

 

Instead ‘Black Panther’ #1 does feel more African than American, both in setting and politically, dealing with the Panther’s business of trying to rule his country while rebel groups look to overthrow him. T’Challa has been the subject of these types of stories before, dating back to Don McGregor’s ‘Panther’s Rage’ epic in the 1970s. But Coates’ story has some more modern elements. For example, while a relatively progressive writer like McGregor may have been able to include a group like the Dora Milaje, who are the Panther’s all-female bodyguards, in a ‘70s Marvel comic, it is hard to imagine that he would have gotten away with developing a close and intimate relationship between two of its members. (Christopher Priest, who created the Dora Milaje in the late-‘90s, may have had more of a chance.)

 

But in other ways the setting is not quite like Africa either. The Panther’s fictional land of Wakanda, as we are told on the introduction page, is the (Marvel) world’s most technologically advanced nation. Its citizens walk the streets holding advanced gadgets, and presumably enjoy a pretty high standard of living, which seems hardly reflective of the poorest continent on Earth.
 

Reviews of this book have generally been quite positive. Coates and artist Brian Stelfreeze both note in their text pieces at the end that it is Coates’ first comic ever. Writers from other mediums, such as Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, and J. Michael Straczynski, have in the past, been fairly successful with little comics writing experience, showing that some people can succeed in the medium just by being a good writer overall. Coates’ transition though is even a bit different to that, in that I don’t think he even has much experience as a fiction or genre writer. But he is according to his text piece a comics reader, and therefore is probably, like those other authors, pretty familiar with how comics work. Anyway, it’s not like his ‘rawness’ in the comics field shows at all, at least not for me, so it doesn’t seem like it will be a barrier.
 

I was listening to the guys on the iFanboy Pick of the Week podcast, and they were a bit more reserved in their praise, although they said that they would definitely keep reading. Their main problem was that it felt like you were thrown into the middle of a story, and it was hard to work out who the characters were, even for readers familiar with the Panther character. They suggested this could be a bit confusing and daunting for readers, particularly the new readers that Marvel hopes to attract.

 

It will be interesting to see what kind of audience this book gets. The comics world often hopes that bringing in well-known writers from other mediums will mean that their usual audiences come with them. I suspect that there won’t actually be a huge flood of ‘The Atlantic’ readers picking up ‘Black Panther’ (although I’m not sure that there even is a huge flood of ‘Atlantic’ readers). But at the least it feels like a distinct offering in a field where often the major titles seem largely indistinguishable. I’m pretty sure I’ll follow all 11 issues of Coates’ run. Quality of story aside, it’s the type of expansion in scope that I want to see Marvel do more of, and hopefully it’s enough of a success to encourage them to keep looking beyond NYC’s borders.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 3 2016

My Dad’s club the Bulldogs have not won a premiership in his lifetime. They are the only AFL club outside of Gold Coast and GWS not to make a Grand Final in my lifetime. But they don’t come to mind as having been particularly bad during the time I’ve been following football. Is their lack of premierships indicative of having been generally bad throughout their history, or more indicative of their not just being able to win the big finals?

 

First, historically they have been relatively bad compared with other clubs. The Bulldogs have won 45 per cent of their matches throughout their time in the VFL/AFL which, of the clubs that have been around more than ten years, is only better than North Melbourne and St. Kilda. (They’ve won closer to 50 per cent in the time I’ve been following football, which is likely why I feel they haven’t been too bad.) Still North Melbourne have won four premierships, several more than Footscray’s one. Melbourne have won 45 per cent of their matches too, and have managed to win 12 premierships. So there must be something to the Dogs not being able to win the big finals as well.

 

As you may have already known or guessed, unlike Melbourne, the Bulldogs have never really had any great sides. They’ve never won more than three-quarters of their matches in any season, which is the equivalent on having won no more than 16 matches in a 22-round season (which they did in 1985 and 1992). Melbourne have won more than three-quarters of their matches 12 times, including six times from 1955 to 1964. Brisbane, though they’ve never won the minor premiership, have done it twice. The Bulldogs have had some very good sides; they’ve just rarely been great.

 

The current Dogs side, by the rankings, also looks to be very good rather than great. But over their past ten matches, particularly over their past three, they have been great. Essentially they have been the equivalent of Hawthorn, which was neatly reflected by their coming close to beating the league’s best side on the weekend. Maybe then this is their best chance yet of finally bringing my Dad the premiership he’s kind of kept an eye out for.

 

 

AFL Power Rankings: Round 2 2016

FootyMaths alerted me this week to a new thread on Reddit which collates the various AFL Power Rankings there are around the net. It includes my rankings, along with those of FootyMaths, Matter of Stats, Fox Sports, The Roar, Sportsfan, Footy Prophet, Squiggle, ASAP, and /u/ Statisticc. (I won’t include all the hyperlinks here – you can click on the Reddit page and follow through to the individual ranking systems from there.)

 

The comments were relatively fair, in that there weren’t too many of the ‘these rankings are stupid, so-and-so obviously knows nothing about football’ variety. One thing that I did note though was that there seemed to be a general feeling among commenters that early-season results, such as Geelong beating Hawthorn, should have a higher weight.

 

 

Is this the right view to take? I’ve dealt with this topic before as early season results seem to make a lie of my and other rankings. There are reasons to think that clubs do change more in ability between seasons than within seasons. Players get half a year older, their abilities have more time to improve or deteriorate, and there are important changes in playing lists. You wouldn’t dream of, for example, having a National Basketball Association rankings system that did not account for events like LeBron James moving back to Cleveland.

 

It occurred to me that I could test this by comparing how much my rankings changed at the start of the season with the middle of the season. I didn’t compare this against the end of the season in case some clubs partially throw in the towel once their finals hopes are gone. If a new year does bring big changes, then my thinking is that my rankings should have larger changes at the start of the season as they scurry to adapt to the new season’s order. More specifically I looked at the changes in ranking points across clubs from Rounds 1-6 for each year (from 2011) compared with changes from Rounds 8-14 (because of byes, these seven rounds typically cover only six matches for each club).

 

Are there bigger changes at the start of the season? Not really (this actually surprised me a little). I won’t put all my results here – the more mathematically-minded among you can probably go back and basically verify this for yourselves if you want – but the variation in changes don’t appear to be any larger on average at season’s start. Maybe this changes if you look at a longer period than five years, but at least it’s not clear to me yet that I should be attaching any special significance to the first few rounds’ results.

 

Big changes happen within seasons too. For example, last season Fremantle fell away in the second half of the season. If a new season had started in say, July, then perhaps more may have been made of the Dockers’ drop, instead of this only being focussed on now the new season has started. Fremantle’s fall really started in mid-2015, but fewer people noticed because it was the middle of the season and they were still sitting on top of the 2015 ladder. Another example, in the opposite direction, is Sydney picking up steam in the middle of 2014.

 

There is another way of looking at this question though, which may be more pleasing to those who hold that you should attach a lower weight to last season’s results. That is, I did find some evidence that there is a stronger relationship between changes in rankings points at different points within the same season than between seasons. For example, West Coast and the Bulldogs started well in 2015, and their ranking points kept on improving throughout the season as it became clearer and clearer that they were big improvers last year.

 

Anyway, getting back to the rankings themselves, this week the big developments are Adelaide moving into the top four after thrashing Port, and Carlton returning to the bottom after getting thrashed by Sydney – Essendon actually winning a match also had something to do with that. The big improver two rounds in is the Gold Coast Suns, who have picked up ten ranking points so far, while Fremantle have lost around the same number of points. Not that you should be placing too much weight on these early season results. (Or should you … ?)

 

AFL Power Rankings: Round 1 2016

Welcome back to The Wooden Finger’s AFL Power Rankings, for 2016. These rankings have been a proud and (relatively) popular part of this blog since 2011.

 

How do they work? Basically, each club accumulates ranking points from a match like so:

 

·       first, take the club’s net margin for the match – e.g. a six-goal win is +36;

·       second, adjust the net margin for home ground advantage – e.g. Perth clubs are considered to have a two-goal disadvantage when playing in Melbourne, so a six-goal win in Melbourne for a Perth club is adjusted to +48; and

·       third, weight the match according to how recent it is, with the most recent match having the highest weight.  

One can then interpret a club’s ranking points as its expected net margin in a match if playing a club of average ability on a neutral ground. For example, according to the rankings Hawthorn would be expected to beat a Victorian club of average ability by about six goals.

So here we stand at the start of another AFL season, and many people are giving their predictions for the premier and the final eight. Based on the rankings, my best prediction for the premier is easy: it is Hawthorn to win a fourth straight flag. But that only means Hawthorn is the most likely club to win, not that it is likely Hawthorn will win. With any backward-looking ranking system generally the premier of last season is a good chance to be the system’s favourite for this season.

Predictions for the final eight are less clear, although again a backward-looking system will pick many of the finalists from last season. Hawthorn, West Coast, Sydney, and Richmond are all rated as likely finalists. With other contenders the ease of their fixture plays more of a part. Port Adelaide and Geelong, both decent clubs but non-finalists in 2015, have relatively favourable draws, while North Melbourne and Adelaide have relatively tough ones. Western Bulldogs and Fremantle are somewhere in the middle.

And then there is the move of Patrick Dangerfield to consider. No individual player is likely to affect a club’s results too much – see Geelong post-Gary Ablett and Hawthorn post-Lance Franklin – but the best are probably worth a few points per game over a replacement player. [Note: I drafted this before Dangerfield picked up 40-odd possessions against the Hawks.] Dangerfield moved from Adelaide to Geelong after last season, and the Cats added a few other handy players as well.

Put all that together and this is my predicted final eight: Hawthorn, West Coast, Sydney, Richmond, Port Adelaide, Western Bulldogs, North Melbourne, and Geelong. Yes, that does not include Fremantle, who were last season’s minor premier, but who tailed off considerably in the second half of the year. [Note: I drafted this before Freo got belted by the Dogs.] But there is a good chance that a club, or two, will improve significantly to knock out some of the aforementioned teams – I just can’t predict who.

Many scramble to alter their pre-season predictions after the first round, but not here: at Power Rankings HQ we (by which I mean I) do not weight the evidence of one match more than the previous twenty or so. A poor Richmond performance against Carlton drops them down a bit, but I’m sticking with them for the finals. A great Geelong performance against Hawthorn lifts them up a bit, but I’m not declaring them the premiership favourite yet. Steady but adaptive adjustment of expectations is the way of thinking here. I am changing my prediction to Essendon for the wooden spoon though.

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 121

BASKETBALL: NBA players JJ Redick and Kyle Korver talk about their beautiful jump shots. [The Vertical Podcast]

 

MUSIC: 25 songs that tell us where music is going. [The New York Times]

 

WOMEN: Caitlin Moran on 12 things about being a woman that women won’t tell you. [Esquire]

 

 

 

BOARD GAMES: Computers overtook humans at chess some years back, but it seemed like Go may be safe. Not anymore. [The New Yorker]

 

FOOTBALL/HUMOUR: Referee determinedly stands his ground after taking vicious kick from player. [Dirty Tackle]

Rugby League Analytics: A Possible Path Forward

Rugby league is a sport that does not seem to lend itself much to analysis, let alone analytics. But that is part of what has got me to thinking about it. Myth-making looms large in league: which of those myths would analytics confirm of dispel?

 

A search for ‘rugby league analytics’ does not exactly reveal a lot of findings to draw from. So what may such a thing look like? These are some of my thoughts, based on what I see as the logic of how the game works.

 

It seems reasonably obvious that a team stands a greater chance of scoring the more metres it gains. And a quick look at the metres gained for each National Rugby League team in 2015 suggests a strong positive relationship between metres gained and winning. Hence it seems that one could start to work out a player’s value by how many metres they gain, lose, or stop.

 

The importance of metres gained is why I lean towards the ‘spine’ being more important than the ‘pack’. The ‘spine’ seems to be the major influence of what I see as the most useful thing a team can do during its set of six tackles apart from score: get another six tackles. In particular a well-placed kick on the fifth tackle gives a team another six chances with which to gain metres or score, or better yet yield a try in itself.

 

Conversely giving away penalties seems to me particularly harmful, as it gives the opposition another set of six tackles and from further down the field. Although from looking over the team statistics for errors perhaps these more or less even out over time, unless one of your players is a particular hothead.

 

In terms of the ‘pack’ stopping the other team gaining metres seems to be their main contribution. I thought this may be hard to pick up in the statistics, since it is hard to tell the counterfactual of how many metres the opposition would have run if a team had not stopped them. I also thought tackles may not be much use in terms of picking winners, as it seems not to be in Australian Rules, as it may be more indicative of a team that tends not to have the ball. But again looking at the NRL team statistics from 2015, the more successful teams do look like they tended to have more tackles. They also look to have lower missed-tackle-to-tackle ratios.

 

I think then that a possible way to value league players is in terms of their net metres – that is, adding together their metres run or stopped, less their metres lost or given away. Obviously league is still a team game, and it may be hard sometimes to ascribe a particular play to a particular player. But even these simple steps may reveal a bit about the ‘true’ value of players.

 

Of course if anyone has done anything like this already, let me know …

The Wooden Finger Five – March 2016

5.Vader’s Redemption

 

Someone has put Darth Vader’s Imperial March in a major key and it no longer sounds foreboding and evil but foreboding and triumphant! A little transposition when Vader made his entrance and those Star Wars films may have been totally different.

 

4.untitled unmastered – Kendrick Lamar

 

i can’t think of one particular track off kendrick’s new album to spotlight here. that’s what happens if you don’t title your tracks people don’t remember which is which. in fact trying to think back over it i can’t recall much about the album at all. i remember in the middle of a track near the end of the album kendrick sounds like he’s in his basement with some other guy or guys and someone is strumming listlessly on a guitar and kendrick talks about doing a 15 minute jam. i remember ‘pimp pimp hooray!’ because that reminds me of the title of his last album. is it that titles help a lot with remembering music by giving you something to associate the music with? do they signpost what an album was about? i do like this album i just can’t remember much about it

 

3.Genghis Khan – Miike Snow

 

‘I get a little bit Genghis Khan / I don’t want you to get it on with nobody else but me’ It’s a great line, but isn’t it a tad over the top? Genghis Khan massacred whole populations after all; the singer may be jealous, but is he really thinking of committing mass murder? Maybe a little bit Othello instead? ‘I get a little bit Othello / I don’t want you to get it on with another fellow’. Now that is a better metaphor, don’t you think?
 

2.DVP – PUP

 

The website Kill Screen alerted me to this beauty. PUP have put together a bunch of snippets from old video games but have replaced the original text with lyrics from their song. So you get scenes like Super Mario saying ‘I DON’T GIVE A SHIT’, and the Dark Queen from Battletoads ruing that ‘3 BEERS AND I’M SO MESSED UP’. It would be mainly a novelty if the tune wasn’t so damn catchy. That ‘WOOOOOOOO-OOOOO-OOOO’ in the chorus is fantastic, and the ‘she says that I need to grow up’ at the end just tops it off. This is a perfect track for people in their 30s who remember what it was like when they were 11 – perhaps because they still act like it.

 

 

1.Madness – Lucius

Lucius have finally achieved Brooklyn goodness on their new album ‘Good Grief’. There are many strong tracks, but opening track ‘Madness’ feels like the one that kicked off this new and better era of Lucius for me as it was also the first tune I heard from the new album. In keeping with its title ‘Madness’ is a slightly twisted song where the lyrics make the narrator sound a little not herself: ‘You were standing there with a gun up to my head,’ says the first verse, ‘I cannot lie, there is a tingling down my spine …’ The madness theme is continued later on the album with ‘Going Insane’, in which both singers repeat those words over and over again, trying their best to sound like they are going off the deep end. On ‘Madness’ though the crazies are kept at bay, and it has beautiful orchestration, which brings the piece to a satisfying and theatrical conclusion.