Thinking about it.... Maybe....

Why...

Thanks for the nice posts and emails about the blog.  Many guys asked why I stopped, while there were lots of little reasons, mostly it was a couple of main reasons...

1.  There were many guys that at one time or another expressed bumming or angst over there W/L performance either in general or for a particular day.  The last thing I want to do is add to anyone's bumming out by shining a light on a performance they are not happy with.  No one asked to participate in my blog and I don't want to make noon hoops any less fun for anyone because I'm publishing results that bum them out.  This was true for guys rated low, medium and high.  Everyone's expectation for their own performance is highly relative.

2.  It takes a more than a little bit of attention/focus to remember and/or write down the results of all the games.  While I like having the data to do the blog, it takes some of the "hanging out" aspect away from me.  Always having to remember after the game to record the results just takes me out of the "noon hoops experience" and sometimes it's nice to just lose in peace.

3.  If I don't stop the blog, I can't someday have a Triumphant Return!  (just kidding on this one)

It's Over

Been fun, but the blog is deceased.  Thanks for visiting.

How Many Points for This?

Rudy Gay Lords Out & Demar Derozan is Smooth

Power Ratings II

New-fangled ultra sophista-ma-cated coolio Power Rankings.

As I wrote before, the previous PR took your winning % and adjusted it by comparing it to the number of times your teammates were favorites or dogs, thus comparing your win% to the average win% of someone who played with your exact schedule of games.  So guys who played on better than avg teams win% was adjusted down, and visa versa.

Now, I have gone further and not just looked at if you were favs or dogs, but by how much you were favs or dogs.  If your team was average, playing a team with four 55% winners would be a lot easier than one with four 65% winners and you would be expected to win that a little more often.  So I compared every game - who your teammates and opponents were, and how much the avg player would be expected to win or lose in that situation and compared it to your wins.

Then, I had to go a little further...  Since you influence the outcomes of the games you are in (for the better or the worse), I had to look at your opponents and teammates stats in the games where you weren't a participant.  Because some of the reason that it looks like Anthony had an easy schedule is because the guys who play against him lose a lot and that is a subset of their total stats.  So I had to see how they did in games he wasn't in to compare.

Anyway, no one really cares about the math, so here are the new Power Rankings...

AdjSOS = Adjusted Strength of Schedule.  The measure of how good or bad your average teammates and opponents have been.  Positive numbers mean that your schedule has been easier than average, negative numbers mean it has been more difficult than average.  Keep in mind, this is already factored into the Power Ranking, I just put it here for reference.  So if it seems that you are always on crappy teams, now you know for sure.  Tony & Keith have had the worst luck, Mike & Anthony the best.  Again, this stat does NOT include your own numbers, so Ant & Mike don't have a favorable schedule because of their own individual win% - it's strictly based on who their teammates and opponents were, but you can probably guess that they have played together (and with Marc) quite a few times.

Props for the NHL

In a rare non-hoop-related post, gotta give tremendous props to the NHL for their All-Star Game team selection.  If you don't already know, for the game, instead of splitting the teams by Conference or USA vs The World, they selected two captains and then HAD A DRAFT!  That's right, the two captains chose up sides for the All-Star Game.  Pity poor Phil Kessel who was picked last.  Yeah, he's still one of the Top 40 hockey players in the world because he's an NHL All-Star, but last is last.

By the way, does anyone cool say "props" anymore?

Saving their Energy for Friday Night

22 guys today.  Another day of sluggish games.  Lots of walking the ball up and buddy vs buddy one-on-one.  But that's hoops at ICC.  Here are today's stats.  Ant & Evan went undefeated.  Not saying Evan didn't play well, but he sure was blessed with some great teammates all day, 66% on average is huge.  Hard to lose no matter who you are if you have 3 teammates who all individually win 2/3 of the time.

Here are the cumulative stats if you have played at least 15 games...  Congrats to Erik on hitting the century mark on games played.  I now have over 200 games recorded.

More later.

Improved Power Ratings Coming

After Friday's games, I'm gonna have updated Power Rankings.  The previous Power Rankings took into account if your teammates were better/worse than your opponents and then compared your W/L to your anticipated W/L based on if your mates vs opponents were Favs or Underdogs (Favs consistently win 80% of the time).

Now, I've made them MUCH smarter.  Now I take into account BY HOW MUCH your mates vs opponents were favs or underdogs, because losing as an 80% underdog is much more understandable and tolerable than losing as 5% underdog, and so on.  Essentially, I've now created a Strength of Schedule stat to augment your winning % and produce the new Power Ranking.

Just to illustrate the point, if I won half of my games with teammates that all sucked while playing great opponents, that would mean I'm much better and different than if I won half my games playing with great teammates against crappy opponents.  So, the new Rankings will function like the old ones except that instead of just adjusting your win% by the number of times your teammates were favs/underdogs, it will be adjusted by HOW MUCH they were favs/underdogs by.

Surprisingly, to add insult to injury, Anthony has had the 2nd easiest schedule of anyone who has played a bunch (and, yes, that DOES NOT include his own win%, just his teammates and opponents).  To some extent it's possible that it's at least somewhat affected by the fact that all of Ant, Mike, Marc and Kenny tend to arrive very early which increases the propensity of them being on the same team.  So, Strength of Schedule counts against his PR somewhat (good thing he wins so many damn games to compensate).

The Streak is Over

Anthony finally lost today after 35 straight wins.
 
Everyone seemed sort of tired and half-hearted today, the games ended at 1:35 despite there being 16 in attendance.  Today, half were geezers, maybe we all had to leave for the early bird special dinner at 4pm at Country Buffet and that's why it ended early.

Here are today's stats, first time since Dec 8th that no one went undefeated...

 

Here is the Mega-Chart, chock full o' fun.  Cumulative W/L, %, avg teammates & opponents, Streaks and GWS...   sorted by alpha ...   only for players with at least 10 games played.  Remember, you can click on any chart to zoom...

The 5th Most Famous Kardashian

2005 Noon Hoops All-Star Game

In case you missed Jack's link - courtesy of Leeper Enterprises...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUH-DSoB0e0

1977 NBA All-Star Game

Watched some of the '77 All-Star game on NBATV today.  Two things immediately stuck out that made me think I'm playing in the wrong era.

1.  They all had crazy skinny little chicken arms.

2.  All the guards dribbled almost exclusively with their right (dominant) hand.  You so much take it for granted that guards today use either hand - when did that happen?

I could have scored 12 pts in that game with those qualifications.

And Fucking A, Brent Musburger was doing the play-by-play.  34 years ago.  And still doing NCAA Football last week.  Give up the ghost, Brent.  Next time I see him doing play-by-play I expect it to be the Grim Reaper doing the color/analysis.

Charity Begins on the Court

Rob, Erik and I were obviously feeling very charitable today as we gave everyone else a bunch of wins and went 0-7 as teammates all day.

Speaking of winning, Blake did a bunch of it today making 3s and snatching rebounds from the stratosphere with his height, reach & leaping ability.  It's like he had web-slingers on his wrists and could snatch the ball from anywhere.

We were relatively geezer-free today (over 40 years old).  With only 3 of us.  Just last Friday there were 10 geezers - maybe we thought it was Bingo Night. Geezers usually account for 28% of the players.  There are many budding geezers in the wings though, as several regular players are 38 or 39.

Here are Monday's numbers...

It's interesting to note that though Rob, Erik and I played on the same teams all day, Rob's avg teammates (avg 41.8 win%) were worse than my avg teammates (avg 45.7).  That's because my stats include Rob as a teammate (but not myself) and Rob unfortunately had me as a teammate (but not himself).  So, in other words, my avg teammates were better because I had Rob as a teammate and his were worse because he had me.  Same theory goes for Erik & me and Rob & Erik.  The stat is for how strong your avg teammates were not including yourself.
 
Here are the cumulative numbers - with everyone who has played at all (that's 75 folks).

More from Blake & J.R.

Power Ratings I

If you just want to see the ratings, jump to the bottom of this post...

So the premise of the winning % is that you can compare them in the long run if it's random and everyone plays with and against everyone else an equal number of times.

They don't.

Buddies like to play together, guys don't play on bad teams, good teams defer their turn to stick together...  And most importantly, I don't have NEARLY enough data yet for there to be true randomness and fairness in the games.  Even if everyone played randomly, there are just too many players for things to work out well statistically until hundreds of games have been played for everyone.

But, like the BCS and RPI ratings, I can try to figure out how well you are performing based on how good the guys you get to play with AND against have been.

For example, if I always played with Ant, Marc & Mike, I'd probably win 100% of the time, but that doesn't mean that independently my winning % should be 100.  On the other hand if I always played with the worst three players AGAINST Ant, Marc & Mike, I'd never win.  That doesn't mean much about me either.  But, if I factor in who I've played with & against, I should be able to predict better how often I SHOULD have won and then compare that to how often I ACTUALLY won.

So, in analyzing this, the most important number to know is that the Favorite team wins 80% of the time.  That's the average of ALL Favs vs ALL Underdogs for all the games I've kept record of (a couple of years ago and now).  So if somehow, you were ALWAYS on the favorite team (your teammates winning % was greater than your opponents winning %) you should win 80% of your games if you are an average player.

Here's the first chart...  It shows players with more than 20 games.

Here's how to read it.  Alvin is 24-1 when his teammates win % are better than his opponents win % (favorite).  And he is 9-20 when his teammates are worse than his opponents.  And he's 33-21 Overall.  So, he wins 96% when he's the favorite (average is 80%) and 31% as an underdog (average is 20%) - so you can see if much better than average.  For the purpose of this chart, whether your team is a Fav or Underdog only includes your teammates and opponents %, NOT your own - because I'm analyzing how you fare compared to the average.

Some big things stick out here that you'll see on the power rating chart further down.  Tony has had the misfortune of only playing on teams that were the favorite (not including him) 24.4% of the time.  So, in 3/4 of the games Tony has played, his opponents were stronger players than his teammates.  That's part of the reason why he is only 15-26.  Same for Keith.  Keith is only 9-24, BUT he has only had teammates stronger than opponents 27.3% of the time.

On the other end of the scale is Mike Dahm.  Incredibly, in ALL 21 games he has played, his teammates were stronger than his opponents (and remember, I don't include his own rating in that, just the avg of his teammates win% VS. his opponents win%).  That's right, every single game Mike has played, his teammates were stronger players than his opponents.  So, if he were exactly average, he should have won 80% of the time.  Of course, he's better than average and has actually won 95% of the time.

Here's the chart of just games played when your teammates were stronger than your opponents (favorites)... Players with at least 15 total games played.

So Marc and Kenny have never lost with teammates that were favored.  Think about it, if you have 3 guys better on average than the other teams guys and then throw Marc on the pile, their gonna probably always win.

Here's the same chart for just the games when your teammates were underdogs to the other team... Players with at least 15 total games played.

As you can see, Ant is the only player who has a winning record with teammates weaker than the opponent.  Marc is the only other player who has managed 50%.  The average is 20%.  A few guys have not yet won at all as underdogs.

Finally, here are the POWER RATINGS!

The columns after your name are: Games played, % of games your teammates were the favorites, number of games you should have won (80% of the times your were favored, 20% of the times you were underdogs), games you ACTUALLY won, ACTUAL Win % and Power Rating - your actual wins divided by the number you should have won...  Let the arguing begin... Player with 20 games or more played.

Again, I'd like to reiterate this is all VERY EARLY (like the BCS after 3 games).  And all in fun.  But you can see that the better players are at the top, and you can see how much it affects everyone who they have played with and against.

Not a nice "Welcome Back" for Rob

Rob came back to hoops today with his mended broken hand.  Unfortunately, his keys disappeared, so if you find a set, please let him or me know (I can forward an email to him).  Keys aside, it was nice to see him back playing.

Now to today's games... Here's a picture of the ocean....

You won't find my ball in there, because I couldn't throw the ball in the ocean (from the beach) to save my life today.  At least I have my striking good looks.

Here are today's wins & losses...

Not surprisingly, the players who won a lot had very high teammate winning % and the guys who didn't had the opposite.  As a matter of fact, if you look at the average opponent team's win %, it pretty much lines up exactly with who won and who lost.  Remember, a team of 200% is exactly average because it has 4 guys who have historically won 50% of their games.

Saw several more incidents of guys not wanting to play with bad teams and players on great teams deferring their turn to play together more today.  Obviously that fucks the data some, so shortly I'm gonna have to start doing Power Ratings like I used.  This is like the BCS/RPI ratings where I check your teammates & opponents historically, and calculate what % of games you SHOULD win.  Then, I compare that to your actual winning % and come up with a power ranking.  If you care about the math, I'll explain it when I post it.

A quick "for instance"... poor Trent today went 1-6.  Bad, yes.  BUT, his average teammate was only 46.8%.  So, IF he were an exactly average player, his team would be 46.8*3+50 for a total of 190.4%.  Worse for him, the average team he faced today was 234%.  Zoiks.  That means ON AVERAGE today, his teams were -44% underdogs.  I know historically that teams that are -44% dogs lose 84% of the time.  So, while he was 1-6 (14%), in reality, it would only be expected if he were average to win only 16% of his games today.  Thus, the 1-6 was not a bad performance at all.  Totally what would be expected for those teammates and opponents.

Here are the cumulative stats for guys with at least 15 games played...

M & M

Mike & Mark played together all day and won all eight of their games.  In total, there were 17 players and 12 games.  Alvin finally notched his first GWS.  Kenny went down with an ankle, hope he heals quickly.  Here are today's Ws & Ls...

Colin's average teammate today (Marc, Mike, Alvin) had a historic winning % of almost 80%.  That's unheard of.  There was no way they were going to lose.  In fact three teammates of 80% and an average player of 50% would total to 290%.  That would be 90% greater than a perfectly average team of 200% (4 x 50%).  Teams whose winning % total more than 60% greater than their opponents have never lost - they are 45-0.

Kenny was on the other end today with teammates that average 40%.  An average player playing with three 40% winning teammates would total 30% less than a perfectly average team (50+40+40+40 = 170), (170 is 30 less than 200).  Teams that are -30 underdogs lose more than 80% of the time.  No surprise he went 0-3 before his Anklestorm.

Here are the cumulative stats for players with at least 20 games....

 

 

And then there was one...

Erik missed today, leaving me as the only guy who has played every time since I started keeping track again.  Apparently I'm trying to make up in quantity what I lack in quality.


Stats coming later, but here's a preview:  Mike, Marc, Mike, Marc, Marc, Mike, Mike, Marc, etc...

Two of a Kind

Here are the wins and losses for all two-player teammate combos - only those tandems that have played at least 5 games together...

 

The combos of Ant/Zach and Ant/Joey are both 18-0.  The Keith/Steve combo has the unfortunate distinction of having played the most together without a win (8 games).  Steve & I have played the most games together (22) and have won a whopping 4 of them.  Since Erik and are the only ones that have played every day, it's amazing that we haven't played the most games together.