September 15, 2022 • 51 mins
Miles and Jack were pleased to be joined by the author of "The Midrange Theory" and NBA analyst Seth Partnow for this episode. Beyond discussing the fantastic book 'The Midrange Theory'. the trio did a bit of a deep-dive into some of the misconceptions and misrepresentations of analytics in the NBA.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fifteen days. That's how many days separate us from the
first preseason action of the new season, when the warriors
actually head off to a country that's very close to me, Japan,
to face the wizards. But we'll be talking about the
latest news and notes, as well as discussing some of
the concepts introducing the book the Mid Range Theory with
author and former Bucks Director of research, Seth Part. Now,
(00:23):
I'm miles gray and I'm Jack O'Brien and this is
miles Jack Got Mad madot nailed it. That was actually
one of the best ones. I think I sounded like
I was coming in over a radio. That was John Out. Yeah,
what's up, seth, seth part, now, welcome, welcome to the
(00:46):
most wonderful, hilarious show about basketball. It's part Um Fun
I had with your name. Look, I was just saying,
look at the freeze right. It's like right as you
introduced technology. Nailed it. So I gotta ask you what,
first of all, what was your favorite team? Uh So,
(01:08):
growing up I was a celtics fan. I grew up
in Alaska, but my dad is from Boston and so
came by. Came by honestly, but I went to my uh,
my saw, my freshman year of college was, I think, kg's.
I'm struggling to remember back now. It was either like
the year before Kg's rookie year or his second year.
(01:29):
Was My freshman year of college in Minnesota. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah,
my Freshman Year of college was his uh whatever. So
long ago, like I basically I was in I was
living in Minnesota for the start of the kg year.
So I became a temperwolves fan for basically until I
lost fandom by starting to do basketball professionally. That's funny.
(01:53):
We talked about that at like a lot of people
who are essentially at a certain point, the fandom does erode.
Like I'm actually just enjoying what I'm seeing. Yeah, I
like things that are good. Now it's hard for me
to be like you know that. It's growing up a
Celtics Fan. It's all be honest. It's hard for me
to not take some chat fraud over bad things happening
(02:14):
to the Lakers, like that's never gonna go away. But
the other fair, fair, fair, but that's what that's what
gets us out of bed, right. So, small victories, right.
And so now you're a pure basketball asteete. You just
sit back with a you know, in a white robe,
like what, like an ancient Greek philosopher, and just observe
(02:36):
the sport for the pure beauty of it. Yes, and
I never get into arguments or have strong opinions or
have play favorites or no, that's not that's not true.
It's not remotely true. But no, it's. But it's it's,
rather than being tied to a team, being tied to
concepts and and things like that. Right, and your book
(02:57):
is about analytics, but you kind approach it from an angle.
I this quote from the book, I think is a
good is a good way of saying what you think.
Analytics are a mode of thought hoping to reduce the
impact of the cognitive biases we all suffer from, um
(03:18):
which I that that's pretty cool. I I know that
makes it sound it's not like a catchy pool quote
that I've pulled out, but that that's the one that
really made it make sense to me. You know, I
I did not set out to be in basketball analytics.
I was a basketball fan and player first and sort
of by I don't know, by education and sort of
(03:44):
bent it kind of led me back to it in
sort of an economic slash numerican way and figuring out
a way to discuss the game in numbers and finding
out sort of what works rather than from a standpoint
pint of of I'm smarter because I'm doing it this way.
(04:04):
I mean, I hope that comes across in the book,
but that's that's really the approach to it is. It's just,
you know, I've I've kind of always thought of things
in that way. Um, all right, it's any any time
you do something on the court, you're not doing something else.
So figure out which is better. And you know some yeah,
and there's sometimes you can figure it out just by
(04:25):
sort of watching, and there's sometimes where you can't. I
mean the the classic example from like baseball analytics is
the difference between a three h hit and a two
seventy five hitter is one hit every two weeks. Now,
without without writing stuff down, watch two weeks of baseball
and tell me if you can tell one apart from
the other. Right and and so that's where you know that.
(04:48):
There there's stuff that and there's you know, there's shades
of gray as to win something is something you can
just you can tell purely from sort of observation when
something you need to collate more is uh, and everything
exists sort of along to continue on them. But there's
a lot of stuff that you you know, you can
watch a guy shoot a couple of jumpers, but you
probably get a better understanding if you can shoot in games,
(05:10):
by letting him shoot five jumpers and games right and then,
you know, seeing how many made it missed. I've always
said that the reason I didn't end up in the
NBA is because people just judge it too much on
watching me shoot a couple of jumpers here and there
and I didn't give me the chance to get up
five hundred shots in the N B A, like I
(05:31):
like I told them, hold, give me a run of
games real quick. You know what I means. The flawed
data set just because, okay, maybe I hurt my wrist
real bad shooting that free throw. I do like I
I do think there's a pretty of all of all
the like analytics, shifts, like big, big shifts, and the
understanding and how we approach a major sport. I feel
(05:54):
like what we saw with the N B A, I
guess it was like decades after the advent of the
three point shot, everyone just being like, oh, that is
a lot more points than a two pointer and just everyone,
you know, realizing how much of an advantage that was,
even though it kind of always been there, is pretty
(06:17):
like that's pretty wild and I do feel like people,
people now, when they think of analytics, are like so
they're gonna say something radical like that, and that's no
longer like that. There's not a hidden gem like threes
are actually worth a whole lot more than two's uh,
waiting to be discovered out there. It's more finding little
(06:39):
edges uh here and there. Right, yeah, there's, there's, you know, there's,
there might be more than one, but there aren't that
many big things. And I feel like the people who
are kind of anti the three to begin with maybe
get a little bit of a rod deal Um because,
if you think about it, we've only had like detailed
(07:00):
data on where shots come from in the NBA since
and that data didn't get like reliable till about eight so, okay,
I yes, you're gonna shoot better from eighteen feet than
you are from and you could be forgiven for thinking that. Well, no,
eighteen feet, I'm gonna make that half the time and
I'm gonna make the Otto One. Thirty percent of the
(07:21):
time and the math is still in my favor. Until
you can actually see the see it collated that way,
steither data pulled out, it's like actually, no, you shoot
a little bit better, but it's like thirty eight percent
if nobody's guarding you. And so, yeah, the extra point
is worth a ton more, but we'd have the information
needed to make it that obvious until like the late nineties. Uh,
(07:44):
and then, you know, combined that with some of the
rule changes in the early two thousands. I'm actually not surprised.
It kind of took until some of that happened and
then people had success, had success with it, for it
to start to accelerate. And then, you know, you start
to like then the Quantz came and ruin the game.
You are a former quant right, like you, you worked,
(08:06):
as we mentioned, does the Bucks Director of research. So
you've kind of you're you're saying that self effacing. Yeah, yes, no,
and I I yeah, and and you know I also
I say that it self effacing Lee in both directions,
both that know, the quants didn't ruin the game and
on the scale of those things, I am certainly on
the less quantity side than than than some people like
(08:29):
you know, they're the people who are coming in from
like an engineering computer science backgrounds. You know can go
much further in that direction, but you you do still
need kind of people in the middle that to to,
I mean translate, is a little bit strong of the language,
but you know, you do have to the language of
math and Statistics and the language of basketball are not
(08:50):
the same thing and you have to make them talk
to each other for for any of the information to
make any sense and, you know, affect decision making, whether it's,
you know, do we need a three here, or who
should we take in the draft right? What's kind of
like the tension between those two sides? You know, like
we're on one side, you're like it's in the numbers
(09:10):
right here, like this is something we need to address,
versus like you're saying these are different languages. What's that like?
Reconciliation Process, like when you're trying to like have the
proper acknowledgement of what what's born out of the statistics
sort of be properly processed and, like you're saying, end
up in a decision being made? I think there's a
little bit of a misunderstanding on both sides. If you
(09:33):
will as to what's actually happening. Uh, this is something
that I've you know, I've told the students, have told
the people who worked for me. Is the last thing
I want to hear you say is, well, the numbers
say this, like there's my maximus. The numbers don't say
you say if if it was self evident from the numbers,
you wouldn't need someone to work on the numbers. You're
(09:53):
making an argument about basketball based on sort of of
of numerical values and why this thing means basketball concepts
Um and I think from the from sort of the
traditional basketball side, I think there's a misunderstanding of that. Also,
there's there's a perception that, oh, this guy with his
numbers thinks he has all the answers, like no, here's
(10:16):
here's a possible answer, and here's why I think it's true.
Hear me out now. I think it's incumbent on the
the the analysts side to be able to speak the
language of basketball, because we're doing basketball here. So I like,
I'm not going to teach linear Algebra to you know,
assistant coach. So I have to like, okay, I just
(10:37):
here's maybe two sentences on what I'm doing. Trust me,
I know what I'm doing. Here's the implications, here's what
it means on the floor. Let's talk about it. Do
you think it helped your argument that you kept an
abbocus on the sideline and would say I'm actually at
half now. I'm just talking. I'll be honest. What helped
(10:58):
me more than anything else is the fact that I
had that I had played, like I played division three basketball.
So we could get on the court and I could
make a jumper and it's like then that rightly or wrongly, okay, well,
that's that's a well, all right, he's not a total
he's not a total tool about this stuff. Like numbers, numbers,
(11:18):
gotta go. Alright, numbers. There was. There was that like
my first year with the bucks, we were playing, like
the staff was playing a pickup game and one of
the coaches walked by. Then I hit a step back
three and the guy was like, okay, numbers. So I
already felt that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was always numbers, numbers.
(11:39):
So because I'm like really interested in I love like
data analysis and I love how much it offers people
like a glimpse into the game and how that can
affect decision making. But can you kind of give me
an example of just sort of like when you look
at when you're looking at the numbers and you're trying
to sort of find something, uh in the data that
(12:00):
you're looking at, like what are some what are some
trends that you're seeing, like in terms of underrated statistics
that you feel are starting to begin sort of taking
a little bit more, you're getting a little bit more attention,
whether it relates to like play style or even identifying
like effective players? Um, this is an interesting question. I
(12:21):
think that that I would I would rather than focus
on specific metrics. I think like the the thing that
is that is moving forward more is the idea of
starting with ways to talk about players skills, not just
saying this player is good, but this player does this
well and what. Okay, this, but they're like, okay, so
(12:44):
this player, you know, in in in these circumstances, this
like like this. You know, for example, with you know,
the tracking data that we have in the NBA, you
can say, all right, this player has made of done
contested threes. Ya, averages thirty eight. That's pretty good, so
he's he's good at this. Now you you you put
(13:04):
a contest on him, you put movement on him, you
make you make him shoot off the move. How does
that change? And you can start to describe, you know,
he you know, is he a stand still shooter or
movement shooter? Now we're getting into basketball concepts and and
you can you can quantify that in a way that
you know it's not perfect because there aren't enough. There
aren't that many players who actually shoot like two movement
(13:25):
threes in a season to give you a really good idea,
but against okay, if he's hit his of his catching shoot,
Dan still catching shoot, and of his off movements, even
if you only have a hundred shots of each, it's
not you know, it's not despositive, but it certainly gives
you an idea of like yeah, maybe he's better if
we just kind of stick him there and don't run
(13:45):
him off screen and stuff like that. Um. So that's
I think that the details, you know, kind of event
level data that we now have allows you to look
at things more that way. And it's not just shooting.
All of the shooting stats of being been the most
developed because, for whatever recent people care about buckets the
most Um and that's that's you know that that holds true. For,
(14:06):
you know, for for analysts as much as it does
for bad twitter. So there's that, there's rebounded, there's playmaking.
Defense is still hard. Um, there's a lot of kind
of bad attempts at quantifying defense out there because some
other you know, learning lessons from other sports. It's sometimes good,
but I think in many ways lessons from baseball in
(14:28):
particular have served as poorly when measuring defense. I mean
there's been a lot of stuff. You can tell, okay,
you can tell who the closest defender is to shoot
her and therefore you can say something about his defense
by what players shoot against him. Right. No, you can't.
I mean you can't, like there's there's places on the
floor you can. But there's a thing that's missing when
(14:48):
you're looking at that from a defensive perspective, which is,
what about all the times the guy doesn't shoot? You know,
baseball this analogy like these all the time baseball. You know,
great left handed hitter comes up, other team brings their
their left eat layer, left he headed, specialist receiver out
of the out of the bullpen. The guy can't be
like now, wait, yeah, where you get where you get
(15:11):
a kick out on the perimeter the guy closes out. Well,
it's like well, I got to shoot. There was a kickout,
like no, let me, let me do something else with it. So,
like from a defensive side, that's a pretty good outcome
and that shows up nowhere right. Yeah, so if you're
using like like, you know, jump shot defense is a
way to evaluate what a certain player is doing, you're
(15:31):
missing almost their best their best preps. Can you because that?
You know, the quote I mentioned up top was like
the ability of analytics to address cognitive biases. Can you
talk about like something like a journey you personally took
when you, you know, as somebody who played basketball and
(15:52):
presumably watched a lot of basketball, was a big basketball
fan coming into your career, a cognitive bias you had
that a lytics kind of helped you overcome? I think so.
I mean I you know, the player types when I
was when I was sort of a UH look, coming
out up more from a fan Ang or maybe play
some fantasy stuff like that. There was a player type
(16:14):
I kept missing on, which was, you know, coming in
the draft, I thought he's gonna be good like Randolph childers,
he's gonna be like, you know, it's kind of this
small scoring guard who you know, has a lot of
Moxie and makes big shots in college and stuff like that,
and it's like a you know, you get this now
is he's a winner. And so, like, I I was
with that. And then you start to study and he
(16:35):
realized actually that that's sort of mid range rocket guy
to sleep pull up. That's the province of just like
the very best players. So yeah, some guys are going
to do that, but you gotta be good to do that.
Like the guys who just do that, okay, right, are
actually pretty bad and being players. I mean they're bad
basketball players, but it means they're you know, you end
(16:57):
up being like Shane Larkin or something like that, who is,
you know, like a Euroleague all star but because of
his combination of size and skill set, isn't necessarily an
effective NB player. And so you know, kind of seeing
those weird things where a skill given depending on like
(17:17):
the context, then you need to be very valuable or
not valuable at all. That's wild. I hadn't thought about
Shane Larkins since he came into the League and you know,
he was very Barry Larkin's kid and I think he
was like a you know, definitely a first round draft
pick right and I yeah, I hadn't looked him up
since then, but that that makes sense. Very good, very
(17:39):
good European player. You know, the best, best player I
ever played pick up against was Kalid El Amy, and
he kind of fell into that, into that, into that
same kind of thing. That's same, like just not, you know,
not quite big enough, not quite good enough, but you
put him over in that, you know, in a slightly
different context of basketball, and that's pretty good. What skill
(17:59):
do you look for in a kind of smaller guard
that that yields a Chris Paul or someone like that?
I mean that's you look for them to be Chris Paul,
like measuring, like measuring decision making is is you know,
that's that's a little bit the holy grail right now. Um,
that's something that, uh, I think right now football actually
(18:22):
probably has the lead on because you can you can
actually you know, the quarterbacks past decision is actually a
little more straightforward then, because okay, I can throw to
this guy, I can throw that guy, I can wait
a little bit, maybe I can scramble around, but your
decisions are a little bit more cabin than they are,
whereas the guy's coming off a pick and roll. It's
like I can throw the ball here, I can take
(18:43):
another dribble, I can put the guy in jail. So
how do you even break down what the different decisions are?
And you can, you can start to look at some
sort of very abstract examples, but that's just like one
tiny aspect of it, and in the game of basketball
it's so many. Any you're making so many decisions that
you might not even realize you're like a players making
(19:05):
in a short span of time. And the player who
does that well, I was like, Oh, look at the
look at look at how he knows how to be
on the court, where to be on the court. Look
at just feel, look at his basketball. Like you whatever
you want to call it, that's the sum of like
you know, twenty decisions a second that the guy is
making better than the next player. So how do you
like so how do you even start to quantify that?
(19:26):
Like we have some things that proxy for that. Like
people wonder why, like college steel rate is such a
strong projector of NBA success, and I think that's it.
It's like, okay, you have a combination of physical ability
to get there and sort of mental recognition and like
speed of of translating thought to action that you can
(19:46):
then use whatever your physical abilities are. So, like, I
got the ball now, I saw it coming, I got
the ball and that and that, like that sort of
represents I can I know how to play amazing. All right.
Should we take a break and come back and keep
asking you questions, like who's your favorite player? Like, do
you think anyways that we'll be right back? And we're
(20:21):
back and yeah, just I'm having a great time sort
of hearing you kind of talk, talk about these things.
I was I was curious to hear if you have
a current player or a former player and or a
former player that you feel like contributed to more wins
than people realize because of cognitive biases or like just
(20:44):
kind of what what we look for on a basketball
court versus what's actually happening out there. So, I mean
the the the easy answer for the current players, the
player who seems like there's the biggest disconnect between how
they're perceived and how good they are is Rudy Gobert.
Like people just clown rudy so much. I can't the
I can't believe the timberwolves traded all this form is like, okay,
(21:06):
he's a walking top and defense and it's not sexy.
He's he's annoying, like people are annoyed by his personality,
which that's fine. There's players who annoy who's personally annoyed me.
But like, and maybe maybe his game isn't perfectly suited
to playoff basketball. That's all fine. He's still like like
a top three defensive player in the League and probably
(21:27):
a top twenty overall player who just it's it's because
he doesn't get buckets. It's like the stuff he does
is just like undervalued. And it's weird because, like there
are other players who, you know, similar like the other
kind of great, top level defenders who are, you know,
top twenty. You know, you know, maybe draymond has kind
(21:48):
of aged out of being a top twenty player, top
twenty player, but the other kind of defense first guys
who are up that high, like Draymond, Bam Ada, bio,
they don't seem to get the same maybe because they
have a little bit more at the ball, but neither
of them are really bucket getters. But it's rudy is
just like because his offensive game is like dive and
catch lobs and get foul and rebound. It's sort of well,
(22:11):
that doesn't matter. It's like, well, that's actually pretty impactful.
The draymond thing that you know, it took. It took
for him going out last year them being absolutely rolling
and dominant, uh for a while, him going out with
an injury and then being completely like seeming to be
completely average, him coming back and then winning the title.
I was like, all right, there might be something going
(22:34):
on here. Uh. That like, I mean I think I knew,
like you can kind of watch and be like, he
really does a lot of smart things out there, but
that that was pretty pretty clean case that that was
made last season with regards to Draymond and what he
does kind of off ball. Yeah, and I think that's
(22:54):
a that's a you know, not to go too deep
into that. I think the worry is is how much
longer you have sort of at that level because, like,
as you say, you saw healthy draymond the start of
the year, no Draymond, and then kind of hurt draymond
second half of the year, ramping into form, draymond over
the players, draymond forgetting how to play offensive basketball for
(23:15):
a few games to the finals and like from what
was it like? Late in game four of the finals
to the end? He was spectacular again, and she's like, Oh, yeah,
that's that team suddenly becomes you know, you can have
a you know, a third point guard on the floor
WHO's also your defensive center. Yeah, that's kind of Nice.
The other part of the question was a past player.
(23:35):
I don't know if I want to go impactful because frankly,
don't have the tools to measure this player's impact. But
my favorite player of all time is Reggie Lewis Um both,
you know, both, because he so I grew up in Alaska.
He came to the Great alska shootout, which is a
really good college tournament until it wasn't and doesn't exist anymore.
He was with North he was at northeastern, northeaster, and
he gave, he gave buckets and then and then he
(23:58):
went to the Celtics and was like the next Great
Celtic Star and like and also his game was so
interesting because he they still don't see a lot of
players like that. Jimmy Butler might almost be the closest.
Was He. You know, there's a certain rhythm that guys
play with. You know, you can kind of like pump, fake,
jab go, whereas you know, uh, he sort of he
(24:19):
sort of played the in between notes, like like pump,
fake and go like like and not bring it down
to like like playing, you know how like reggae is,
playing on the upstroke a little bit, a little bit
like that, and that was just super I was always
super intrigued by that. And also he was like one
of the guys who guarded him j the best, which
I which I thought was cool. That's right. Yeah, I'm curious,
(24:42):
like with the all the information that we have right sometimes,
in any industry or just job whatever, a lot of
information can be a good thing. Sometimes it can be
not a great thing because it can maybe complicate people's
thinking or whatever. They get too in focused on things
like that. How do you see like, because when I
(25:03):
look at just a lot of sports right and I'm
seeing just this general push to really embracing the analytics,
to really finding these margins to play more efficiently, whether
that's to get score more baskets, score more goals or
whatever in another sport, there's a lot of really like
I'm constantly blown away at like how people are looking
(25:23):
at a sport and how much it's influencing it is?
Do you see that like this sort of, you know,
influx of analytics and things like that is helping to
create like change even how people even set a team
up to play, like because they're really really focused or
really acknowledge that, like some of these things, they add
up over time, these margins and that's really something to
(25:45):
focus on? Or is it still kind of like, okay,
I like what you're saying, that's food for thought, but
I won't completely impact the strategy or the X is
and Os. I mean again, this is one of those
things where you you don't want to say that, uh,
you know, you can analytics, did this or that. I
think that that I've always find those comments pretty funny,
(26:08):
because that's like, I I wish I had that kind
of power. But I imagine on one level it's a
it catalyzes the process of something for sure, because we're
going from an information desert to one where it's very rich,
right like well, you know, Mike d'antoni didn't need me
or anyone else to tell him, Hey, let's put let's
put some shooters around and give give Steve Nash and
Mari Stdomier some space, like you know, you don't have to.
(26:32):
You don't have to come out of from a numerical
stands to see like yeah, that makes more sense. If
this guy standing at twenty four feet instead of eighteen feet,
there's more space for this thing to happen. Great, Um.
So I think that the that the analysis can can
work in candom with that. But again, I don't think
it's I don't think we should, we should force it
(26:52):
from strategy completely and we can't because it's like, okay,
that's a good thing to do. How he sient need
to so you do. They do need to work in hand,
hand in hand to implement. You can't just like, you know,
just shoot more threes. That's not what happens. You know,
it's not like you know, maybe now there are a
few players who can literally just lock the ball up
(27:13):
the floor and Jack Three. That's like there's three guys
in the League can do that. Two guys in the
League who should do that? Maybe one, depending on, you know,
if if if Dame's ABS or are are better or not,
like staff like trade as it probably shouldn't, um, but
but it was like, okay, so how do we get
more threes? Well, part of it is okay, instead of
(27:35):
having the guy on the opposite side of the court
stand at the in the short corner, have him stand
all the way in the corner. And and so that's
a that's that's a strategic thing. That allowed there to
be more threes. And then there's some additional benefits like well,
if he's actually that far out, all of a sudden
his defender has more ground to cover. That seems good.
And so it's it's so it's sort of builds on itself,
(27:56):
by the way. And so I again I'm I'm read
sent to say that it's all, or primarily part. I
don't mean part of. I don't and I don't even
mean to suggest that it's like. Well, what do you what?
Do you come in with your notebook and tell them?
But more just like what do you say when someone goes,
all right, the what I need you for? I knew that.
That's honestly, that's great, like that's that's sort of because, no,
(28:18):
that's that's sort of the almost some of the better
best way to get stuff implemented is you know this,
but right, you know, but but here's here. Let me
let me show you the degree to which this is true.
It's like, Oh, so, you know, you can, you can
look at like, you know, rebounding data and see, okay, yeah,
if I shoot from the right side, rebound is gonna
(28:39):
go over here to the left side and like, you know,
but it's but it's still it's useful to have that
reinforced and confirmed. Like I think that's one of the
things that's least understood, is like the stuff we study
probably confirmed sort of the conventional wisdom, because coaches have
been you know, it's not like it's not like there
hasn't been an off rewards to being a winner. Keep
(29:04):
keeping your job. Keeping your job is a pretty good
incentive to to do things better, and so a lot
of the things that are done are, you know, have
been tried and true and true and like no, you
win more games by doing it this way. And some
of that trial and error. And maybe we can speed
up that trial and error process a little bit by
suggesting a thing that seems likely to work. But I mean,
(29:26):
you know, some pretty some pretty dedicated people over sixty,
seventy years have been picking at this thing for a
while and you know, a lot of them do some stuff.
So it's not like you're gonna come in and say, Nope,
you're all wrong, throw it out from the book out.
Not True. I mean, you go like you go. As
you know, the foundation of like basketball analytics is the
(29:47):
four factors, and that's effective field goal percentage, turnover percentage,
free throw a rate, defensive rebound rate. What does every
coach you've ever had tell you? Get good shots, to
take care of the ball, gets the free throw line,
protect that's all it is. It's basically that for me. Yeah,
you know everything you ever heard, and it's just like
the basis of of you know, how you look at
(30:09):
a team from a statistical standpoint is those four things. Yeah,
but I guess that's where like, because everyone does have
the same sort of agreed upon way to do things.
I think that's where it's probably beneficial now to say,
given that we all believe these things, now, where are
these where can we find these other ways to be
more effective, and how important is each of them relative
(30:30):
to the other? Like, yeah, that's this is one of
those those areas where I found that sort of people
who come at things from a more observational are very
good at identifying things, not always as good at weighing
them against each other. M Hm. And so that's a
you know, and and those. And the interesting thing is
(30:51):
those things change, like the environment of the NBA. We
will change the degree to which the ability to hit
a corner three versus the ability stay in front of
a guy on a switch, like. Which of those things
is more, is more valuable, or how valuable it is
or who else is on your team makes it value.
So it's not like these are it's not this is
a set things. Do this and it's good. It's like,
(31:12):
in this environment this is more helpful than it's maybe
given credit for. Um, there's UH, there's a clip of
golden states gm Bob Meyers at the sports analytics conference
talking about like the difference between playoff basketball versus regular
season basketball. Like has that? Is that something that kind
(31:34):
of came up from an analytic standpoint in terms of
like the shift in Style and overall approach for playoff
teams versus regular season teams? Yeah, I mean I I
wrote about this in the in the playoff chapter in
the book. And there's so I have a among the
professions I've done before this, that was a professional poker player.
And there's there's Um, kind of two modes of play
(31:59):
Um and again, as with most things, it's not like
one or the other. It's somewhere in between. But there's
it's there's what's called Game Theory often, which is I
don't know what you are as a poker player, but
amongst the set of poker players I know about what
that means you do. So how do I play, knowing
you're from this group? First exploit of play is I
(32:19):
know exactly how you play. What can I do best
to beat you? Now tell me. The first bit doesn't
sound like regular season, where you're playing Sacramento Tonight, Houston Tomorrow,
Orlando the other the third night. And the exploit of
play is the playoffs. So it's a very different like
you know, design how to do best in each of
those things. It's it's not surprising. The different coaches, different players,
(32:42):
different skill sets function better in one environment versus together.
All right, a piece of news that we've been kind
of putting off, but I'm definitely eager to like kind
of bring it up and get any thoughts that you have.
Is The news about Donovan Mitchell going of the calves,
which that got me very excited. I feel like in
(33:05):
terms of fit for him. Continuing to have a great
defensive stopper behind him is great for his game. The
one thing that occurred to me is like usage. I
guess I hadn't even realized, but he's a top ten
usage guy in in the NBA in terms of how
much he dominates the ball, and then Garland is also
(33:26):
a big usage guy. But I mean, first of all,
it just overall, this makes me more excited to watch
NBA basketball next season having Donovan Mitchell on the calves.
So I'm excited. Yeah, I love that trade for both sides.
I really did. I thought I thought that jazz did
a you know in terms of pivoting off of their
(33:47):
looking at sort of their off season as a hole,
like all right, we knew that team was kind of
had reached it its conclusion. It's a pretty strong pivot
to what you know, going to whatever's next. And I
don't know how much you guys followed draft stuff, but
this would not be a bad year to end up
with the first pick. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's if
(34:09):
you you know, basically, if you had color film of
what Luell sender looked like in high school, I think
I look a lot like victor when Banyana Yama's use
film does so. Like, no pressure, young man, but but, um, yeah,
and then at the same time I like, like I
love the fit with Mitchell and Cleveland. I'm amused by
(34:32):
the fact that he's going to continue to be sort
of the face of the team and if they're going anywhere,
he won't be the best player on the team again. Um,
that's you know, that's essentially it's a pretty huge bet
that Evan mobiley is gonna be like that guy. Anybody's
gonna be that guy without having to be like throw
him the ball and get out of the way kind
of version of that guy, which I think is frankly,
(34:55):
is probably beneficial to him because maybe he develops that.
But they're actually isn't a lot in profile at this
point that suggests that's hugely likely. So, you know, turning
him into sort of the the the almost the next
iteration of Anthony Davis, rather than than having to be,
(35:17):
you know, having to be like Joel and bead or
something like that. Yeah, yeah, the Jabari in the comments
is like Kig and Boston is supposed to Gig many.
I think that's the reason to play and and frankly,
like kg and and many tried to play like I
think they like they were always trying to get him
to be more like that was the biggest difference between
him and Duncan. Was Dunk I was like, Oh, I
(35:38):
gotta get a bucket, I'm gonna get a bucket, whereas
kg always sort of was like it's moving around and
do some stuff, and I can, I can, I can
blend a little bit and and never quite got to
the point of wanting, of needing to just have the
ball in his hands at all the time. Uh, we got,
we got very off track. where, where am I going?
I think we were all gonna talk about the fact
(36:00):
that the real story, despite Donovan Mitchell, is that Montrase
harrold is with Philly and that makes Philly just undoubtedly
the championship rockets assemble the no, and I so to
your point about like Mitchell and Garland. I don't think
(36:22):
we've seen much in the last couple of years of
NBA basketball to suggests that it's bad thing to have
multiple guys who can make plays with the ball in
their hands. I think that that's sort of the and
as the person who unwittingly coined the term Um. I
don't think the heliocentric style is I don't think it's desirable.
(36:42):
I think certain teams have found expedient and necessary, but
having two dudes who can do that is probably better
than one, especially if they can, if if neither of
them actually needs to have the ball. But both Garland
and Mitchell are good enough shooters, that's Um and willing enough,
you know, catch and shoot players. That, uh yeah, you know,
from a pure basketball standpoint there's no reason it shouldn't
(37:05):
work offensively. But I'm very excited to see that team
because I think there could be a lot of fun too.
Speaking of having like multiple people who could who can
put it in like what? I'm just curious for your
thoughts on the nets. You know, when they were peak
form nets, they were so fun to watch, so unstoppable,
(37:27):
like even in that first round against Boston, and then,
you know, injuries got in the way. But like, I
think people are now like sort of settling into this
idea that like, well, that didn't work, and I don't
know that that's true because when it was working it
was wildly dominant, like on a game by game basis.
(37:48):
Even was that anomalous? I mean, like the way we
talked about that stuff is so jacked, like jnness couldn't
be the best player on a championship team until he was,
you know, and it's just like, okay, how many teams
work in a given a year, like last year? Would
you say one and a half, like the warriors in Boston,
but then they got to the finals and Oh no,
(38:08):
like's I think. I think that Boston worked. I think
that Cleveland worked last year when they were healthy. Like
like our definition of that is like, you know, you
think about the rockets teams that took the warriors, that
pushed the like the K D warriors in in the playoffs,
like this is one of the great teams ever assembled
and you took them to seven games in the conference
finals and that didn't work. Like what are we talking
(38:31):
about here? Yeah, like, I don't know. I so I
I you know the same. You know, those so like
the Jazz, the Mitchell Gobert jazz teams, like they were
plenty good and just you know, did they catch every break? No.
Were they the best team? No. Could they have made
the finals or win a championship if things broke their
way a little? I mean it's counterfactional. But yeah, I
(38:52):
think so. Like the hard rockets have won a champion.
I think so. Good. Last year's Celtics have what you know,
it's Lakers, you know. I mean that's know. I'm gonna,
I'm gonna, I'M gonna put my foot down there. But even, like, even,
like last year's bucks, like they could they have repeated
if Chris Middleton doesn't get hurt. Right like. Would I
have picked them over the weirds? Probably not, but like,
(39:16):
you can't dismiss it. Yeah, all right. Should we take
another break and come back firing rapidly with rapid fire?
Time for the rapid fire question. Oh, hold onto your
butts everyone, and we're back and it's time for the
(39:42):
Jack and miles or miles and Jack Got Mad boost
these rapid fire round of questions. They almost forgot what
the bit was, but I came back to it. Optimal podcast,
we're optimizing. Yeah, so you might listen to it and
be like wow, they're kind of dumb about basketball and
this is a basketball podcast, but then when you actually
(40:04):
dig into the numbers, it's pretty impressive. Wildly engagement per
point made its safe uh seth. You may or may
not have heard about this infamous segment on the show.
This is the rapid fire round of questions. We are
going to hit you with questions back to back at
lightning speed. Do not think, just respond with whatever your
(40:27):
brain or your heart is telling you. Don't ramble on.
This is rapid. Okay, here we go. Start the clock.
So angry to play the feud. Oh, I just have
to get you know what. I have to set a baseline.
You know, just here for what? where? This is going energetically? Okay, rapid.
Here we go. The clock is taking you want to go?
(40:48):
or WHO's got you? Um, I'll go for yeah, let
me just see where it yeah, let me go for you. Okay. Well,
I was gonna. I want to do the third, third,
but no, okay, you go, you go, you go. Okay,
you want to do a third, all right, let me
just yeah, just move that copy. You're putting in the
wrong doc. Now that's the tz dock. Alright, start the clock.
(41:13):
I'm actually using hot keys here. UH, cutting. Alright, cool, alright,
so Seth Uh Jack from Myles and Jack at Mat
boostie's here asking you a question. We're asking all of
our guests. Note a throwing one better chance of happening.
Building on last year's playoff birth, the timber wolves, the
(41:36):
NBA team from Minnesota, make the conference finals or we
get copious amounts of what that trick in the Western
Conference Finals says the Grizzlies take it to the next level.
That is a good one. Thank you. That is that is.
That is I think, man. I think I I trust
(41:58):
the roster up and down from mem it's a little
bit more so. I think that's where like the top
end talent on Minnesota, I think, is here. But I
just you know, there's some question marks about who's going
to be on the floor. Wind and there's and and,
whereas Memphis has some versatility, they can make choices, whereas
the timberwolves have questions, even though you yourself were saying
(42:22):
Rudy Gobert was the best player in the League mere
moments ago. No, that's not what you were saying, uh,
but that is probably how it would happen on first take.
Or what one of those shows where? Um, anyway, I
gotta I'm sorry, Seth, I gotta tell you gotta keep
the answers just a little bit quicker. Okay, let's keep
this moving, uh, seth, what are we underrating about the
(42:46):
upcoming season the number of teams that legitimately think they
have a chance, number of the teams that think so.
Usually you go into a season you think there's about
five teams that that really I think that number is
closer to ten this year. Okay, so you think, legit,
(43:07):
there are ten teams that could win it. I mean
I like, I have to go through, but you think about, no,
let me just start ripping them off a buck. Celtics, Warriors, sixers, nets,
Um Nuggets, clippers, you know, grizzlies, like you just you know,
you go like, yeah, there's a lot of people keep
(43:29):
getting a lot of the teams. Okay, now, a lot
of these teams. Yeah, it said Clippers, but a lot
of these teams like things are going to have to
go right for them. But like that's a lot more
teams than usually enter the season really thinking like that legitimate,
like a lot of teams like talk themselves into think,
but there are a lot of teams that over legit
like we're right there and like, okay, I'm I'm low
(43:52):
on Dallas, but you gotta Put Dallas on that list too, because,
like Luca could be the best player in the league
this year on that list. I completely forgot about the sun's. Yeah,
that is exciting and even at this time last year,
would most people have even put the warriors on that
list as one of the teams that it has a
(44:12):
legit shot? I went on Bay Area Radio on the
eve of last season and questioned whether they would be
a top six seat. Wow, so now I'm an idiot,
but I don't think a lot of people saw that coming, right,
I don't think. O. No, and then there's reasons to
(44:33):
you know, had been a little bit since since Steph
did that over a full season. We didn't know we're
going to get from draymond. They had a lot of
questions and and you know things. You know they're there.
Their support players all broke right. Clay came back better
than we could expected. Jordan's developed, Kevin Looney stayed healthy.
(44:53):
Like these are all things that were pretty important to
them last year. WE'RE gonna keep it moving. So I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, but we got to keep it moving. Next question. Well,
some of the Eurobasket success from guys like or Lori
Marken in translate into the upcoming regular season. What do
you think for the player that I'm prepared to take
my biggest hell on a long time Franz Wagner. Oh Yeah, yeah,
(45:18):
I did not think you good. Uh, can they play
that way in the NBA? It's always the question, I think,
you know, on those three guys, like from the scale
of Yes to no, it's probably like Wagner Marketing Chengoon
in terms of can they play the same way and
haven't work at the NBA level? So, yeah, yes, there
(45:40):
they are. They are good players, but I don't think
you're like you know as as like I said, Kaide
was a hipster guy, like Chengun is the hipsterist of
hipster players, and I'm still not completely convinced. Like, I
think he's a good player, is gonna be a good
player in the league for a long time. And then
we're like a legit star. I'm not sure. We will
ask you to just keep a little tighter. Um, if
(46:01):
you could change one rule to the game, to the
NBA game, that was like just for fun, just to
make it you know, throw throw things off balance, make
it fun, what would it be? UH, time limit on
replay review. Yeah, that would make it much more watchable.
Like what are we limiting it to? Three seconds, just
super quick first glance, the first thirty seconds or minute,
(46:25):
something like that. If you can't figure it out by then,
keep it. Movement like there's a little bit of there's
a little bit of what are we doing here? Two,
it's like like we're we're making a TV show here.
We're not. It's it's not a court case. So we're
looking at the refs have ordered pizza, so it seems
(46:46):
like they might have a decision soon or, conversely, extend
the amount of time to an infinite amount of time
for them to make a decision. The refs are upset.
The concessions have closed in the arena by now and
so they are testing by dragging this out. Those carvery
sandwiches are done. Well, I can't work under these conditions. Okay,
(47:07):
next question. Uh, this kind of goes along with how
you said. You know, we maybe have ten teams contending,
but what is to you? Maybe we're going to be
the biggest surprise contender that no one is considering. And
I get that you're not saying that they are going
to win, but someone if you said, Oh, they surprise people,
I'm not surprised about that. The Grizzlies from last year said, Um,
I think people haven't haven't been given the nuggets enough,
(47:32):
like I think, I think every like everything people are
saying about the clippers. Why aren't they also saying about
the nuggets? Right, okay, that's a that's a great question. Um.
And the final question, another great one. Is it Jack,
which is me, or miles? That guy over there has
been kind of rude like to you during this Jack,
(47:54):
I think he was actually kind of rude to me
talking about reality based analysis. I mean, I prefer I
prefer people a little spike here. So I'm gonna go, miles, go.
He's done it again. I haven't won a single one. Alright, wow,
that's my man. Sorry, but I knew where people when
(48:17):
he was talking about the reggae bubble on the on
the end, you know what I mean. I was like, okay,
now we're talking meter. Okay, I like this. I like
this sad part. Now you blessed guests. Thank you so
much for stopping by. Miles and Jack Got Mad boost these.
Where can people hear more from you? Read Your analysis
or read your book the Mid Range Theory, which, oh
(48:38):
by the way, we never get got to touch on it.
But that has something to do with tribe called quest
because we're like, all right, this got someone to do
low end theory. Was it inspired? It does so like
one of the I think that was probably the second
hip hop album I ever owned. We don't have to
talk about what the first one was. It might have
been policed hammer. Don't hurt him. See, you're good in
the bay as run up on hammer as no, and
(49:03):
so that was. So I've always been a big fan
of of of tribe, and then when we were starting
the blog that became nylon calculus, we were thinking of
like uh, thinking of names. So like because I had
I liked that album and just like the idea of
theory and how that works together with politics, like the
mid range theory. And that's so that we voted and
(49:23):
that finished second. So I always had in my back pocket,
or if I ever write a book I think I'll
call the mid range theory. And here we are. Alright,
respect that tribe question, by the way, or the tribe
observation that there might be a connection. There was me
actually it's pretty CLU didn't pick. So we let you know.
(49:43):
I think probably and the State Warriors, me and the
Golden State Warriors, looked like two people. Seth underestimated, Seth
didn't believe. said. Where can people find you? On twitter? Um,
at seth part now on twitter. Um, I'll I rate, uh,
you know. UH, once every couple of weeks at the
(50:04):
athletic I have a weekly podcast with David four and
modaquil on the athletics and gay show on Murdish, your wrote,
which is, you know, of course I. Um, I do
my own podcast on on the Colin App and Um,
and the book is available range. Theory. The paperback edition
comes out at the beginning of November and is available
(50:28):
for pre order now wherever books are sold. Gift for
your NBA and uh, you know, an NBA, NBA season
starting to say. Well, yeah, so happy NBA season, happy
NBA to you and and also to you. Uh. And
don't forget, guys, you can follow us on twitter at
(50:49):
mad boost these also instagram, m a D B O
o s t I e s. That says bout boosts,
so follow us there. Until next time, I'll be my
I'll be all right and we'll be mad boosey
Fifteen days. That's how many days separate us from the
first preseason action of the new season, when the warriors
actually head off to a country that's very close to me, Japan,
to face the wizards. But we'll be talking about the
latest news and notes, as well as discussing some of
the concepts introducing the book the Mid Range Theory with
author and former Bucks Director of research, Seth Part. Now,
(00:23):
I'm miles gray and I'm Jack O'Brien and this is
miles Jack Got Mad madot nailed it. That was actually
one of the best ones. I think I sounded like
I was coming in over a radio. That was John Out. Yeah,
what's up, seth, seth part, now, welcome, welcome to the
(00:46):
most wonderful, hilarious show about basketball. It's part Um Fun
I had with your name. Look, I was just saying,
look at the freeze right. It's like right as you
introduced technology. Nailed it. So I gotta ask you what,
first of all, what was your favorite team? Uh So,
(01:08):
growing up I was a celtics fan. I grew up
in Alaska, but my dad is from Boston and so
came by. Came by honestly, but I went to my uh,
my saw, my freshman year of college was, I think, kg's.
I'm struggling to remember back now. It was either like
the year before Kg's rookie year or his second year.
(01:29):
Was My freshman year of college in Minnesota. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah,
my Freshman Year of college was his uh whatever. So
long ago, like I basically I was in I was
living in Minnesota for the start of the kg year.
So I became a temperwolves fan for basically until I
lost fandom by starting to do basketball professionally. That's funny.
(01:53):
We talked about that at like a lot of people
who are essentially at a certain point, the fandom does erode.
Like I'm actually just enjoying what I'm seeing. Yeah, I
like things that are good. Now it's hard for me
to be like you know that. It's growing up a
Celtics Fan. It's all be honest. It's hard for me
to not take some chat fraud over bad things happening
(02:14):
to the Lakers, like that's never gonna go away. But
the other fair, fair, fair, but that's what that's what
gets us out of bed, right. So, small victories, right.
And so now you're a pure basketball asteete. You just
sit back with a you know, in a white robe,
like what, like an ancient Greek philosopher, and just observe
(02:36):
the sport for the pure beauty of it. Yes, and
I never get into arguments or have strong opinions or
have play favorites or no, that's not that's not true.
It's not remotely true. But no, it's. But it's it's,
rather than being tied to a team, being tied to
concepts and and things like that. Right, and your book
(02:57):
is about analytics, but you kind approach it from an angle.
I this quote from the book, I think is a
good is a good way of saying what you think.
Analytics are a mode of thought hoping to reduce the
impact of the cognitive biases we all suffer from, um
(03:18):
which I that that's pretty cool. I I know that
makes it sound it's not like a catchy pool quote
that I've pulled out, but that that's the one that
really made it make sense to me. You know, I
I did not set out to be in basketball analytics.
I was a basketball fan and player first and sort
of by I don't know, by education and sort of
(03:44):
bent it kind of led me back to it in
sort of an economic slash numerican way and figuring out
a way to discuss the game in numbers and finding
out sort of what works rather than from a standpoint
pint of of I'm smarter because I'm doing it this way.
(04:04):
I mean, I hope that comes across in the book,
but that's that's really the approach to it is. It's just,
you know, I've I've kind of always thought of things
in that way. Um, all right, it's any any time
you do something on the court, you're not doing something else.
So figure out which is better. And you know some yeah,
and there's sometimes you can figure it out just by
(04:25):
sort of watching, and there's sometimes where you can't. I
mean the the classic example from like baseball analytics is
the difference between a three h hit and a two
seventy five hitter is one hit every two weeks. Now,
without without writing stuff down, watch two weeks of baseball
and tell me if you can tell one apart from
the other. Right and and so that's where you know that.
(04:48):
There there's stuff that and there's you know, there's shades
of gray as to win something is something you can
just you can tell purely from sort of observation when
something you need to collate more is uh, and everything
exists sort of along to continue on them. But there's
a lot of stuff that you you know, you can
watch a guy shoot a couple of jumpers, but you
probably get a better understanding if you can shoot in games,
(05:10):
by letting him shoot five jumpers and games right and then,
you know, seeing how many made it missed. I've always
said that the reason I didn't end up in the
NBA is because people just judge it too much on
watching me shoot a couple of jumpers here and there
and I didn't give me the chance to get up
five hundred shots in the N B A, like I
(05:31):
like I told them, hold, give me a run of
games real quick. You know what I means. The flawed
data set just because, okay, maybe I hurt my wrist
real bad shooting that free throw. I do like I
I do think there's a pretty of all of all
the like analytics, shifts, like big, big shifts, and the
understanding and how we approach a major sport. I feel
(05:54):
like what we saw with the N B A, I
guess it was like decades after the advent of the
three point shot, everyone just being like, oh, that is
a lot more points than a two pointer and just everyone,
you know, realizing how much of an advantage that was,
even though it kind of always been there, is pretty
(06:17):
like that's pretty wild and I do feel like people,
people now, when they think of analytics, are like so
they're gonna say something radical like that, and that's no
longer like that. There's not a hidden gem like threes
are actually worth a whole lot more than two's uh,
waiting to be discovered out there. It's more finding little
(06:39):
edges uh here and there. Right, yeah, there's, there's, you know, there's,
there might be more than one, but there aren't that
many big things. And I feel like the people who
are kind of anti the three to begin with maybe
get a little bit of a rod deal Um because,
if you think about it, we've only had like detailed
(07:00):
data on where shots come from in the NBA since
and that data didn't get like reliable till about eight so, okay,
I yes, you're gonna shoot better from eighteen feet than
you are from and you could be forgiven for thinking that. Well, no,
eighteen feet, I'm gonna make that half the time and
I'm gonna make the Otto One. Thirty percent of the
(07:21):
time and the math is still in my favor. Until
you can actually see the see it collated that way,
steither data pulled out, it's like actually, no, you shoot
a little bit better, but it's like thirty eight percent
if nobody's guarding you. And so, yeah, the extra point
is worth a ton more, but we'd have the information
needed to make it that obvious until like the late nineties. Uh,
(07:44):
and then, you know, combined that with some of the
rule changes in the early two thousands. I'm actually not surprised.
It kind of took until some of that happened and
then people had success, had success with it, for it
to start to accelerate. And then, you know, you start
to like then the Quantz came and ruin the game.
You are a former quant right, like you, you worked,
(08:06):
as we mentioned, does the Bucks Director of research. So
you've kind of you're you're saying that self effacing. Yeah, yes, no,
and I I yeah, and and you know I also
I say that it self effacing Lee in both directions,
both that know, the quants didn't ruin the game and
on the scale of those things, I am certainly on
the less quantity side than than than some people like
(08:29):
you know, they're the people who are coming in from
like an engineering computer science backgrounds. You know can go
much further in that direction, but you you do still
need kind of people in the middle that to to,
I mean translate, is a little bit strong of the language,
but you know, you do have to the language of
math and Statistics and the language of basketball are not
(08:50):
the same thing and you have to make them talk
to each other for for any of the information to
make any sense and, you know, affect decision making, whether it's,
you know, do we need a three here, or who
should we take in the draft right? What's kind of
like the tension between those two sides? You know, like
we're on one side, you're like it's in the numbers
(09:10):
right here, like this is something we need to address,
versus like you're saying these are different languages. What's that like?
Reconciliation Process, like when you're trying to like have the
proper acknowledgement of what what's born out of the statistics
sort of be properly processed and, like you're saying, end
up in a decision being made? I think there's a
little bit of a misunderstanding on both sides. If you
(09:33):
will as to what's actually happening. Uh, this is something
that I've you know, I've told the students, have told
the people who worked for me. Is the last thing
I want to hear you say is, well, the numbers
say this, like there's my maximus. The numbers don't say
you say if if it was self evident from the numbers,
you wouldn't need someone to work on the numbers. You're
(09:53):
making an argument about basketball based on sort of of
of numerical values and why this thing means basketball concepts
Um and I think from the from sort of the
traditional basketball side, I think there's a misunderstanding of that. Also,
there's there's a perception that, oh, this guy with his
numbers thinks he has all the answers, like no, here's
(10:16):
here's a possible answer, and here's why I think it's true.
Hear me out now. I think it's incumbent on the
the the analysts side to be able to speak the
language of basketball, because we're doing basketball here. So I like,
I'm not going to teach linear Algebra to you know,
assistant coach. So I have to like, okay, I just
(10:37):
here's maybe two sentences on what I'm doing. Trust me,
I know what I'm doing. Here's the implications, here's what
it means on the floor. Let's talk about it. Do
you think it helped your argument that you kept an
abbocus on the sideline and would say I'm actually at
half now. I'm just talking. I'll be honest. What helped
(10:58):
me more than anything else is the fact that I
had that I had played, like I played division three basketball.
So we could get on the court and I could
make a jumper and it's like then that rightly or wrongly, okay, well,
that's that's a well, all right, he's not a total
he's not a total tool about this stuff. Like numbers, numbers,
(11:18):
gotta go. Alright, numbers. There was. There was that like
my first year with the bucks, we were playing, like
the staff was playing a pickup game and one of
the coaches walked by. Then I hit a step back
three and the guy was like, okay, numbers. So I
already felt that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was always numbers, numbers.
(11:39):
So because I'm like really interested in I love like
data analysis and I love how much it offers people
like a glimpse into the game and how that can
affect decision making. But can you kind of give me
an example of just sort of like when you look
at when you're looking at the numbers and you're trying
to sort of find something, uh in the data that
(12:00):
you're looking at, like what are some what are some
trends that you're seeing, like in terms of underrated statistics
that you feel are starting to begin sort of taking
a little bit more, you're getting a little bit more attention,
whether it relates to like play style or even identifying
like effective players? Um, this is an interesting question. I
(12:21):
think that that I would I would rather than focus
on specific metrics. I think like the the thing that
is that is moving forward more is the idea of
starting with ways to talk about players skills, not just
saying this player is good, but this player does this
well and what. Okay, this, but they're like, okay, so
(12:44):
this player, you know, in in in these circumstances, this
like like this. You know, for example, with you know,
the tracking data that we have in the NBA, you
can say, all right, this player has made of done
contested threes. Ya, averages thirty eight. That's pretty good, so
he's he's good at this. Now you you you put
(13:04):
a contest on him, you put movement on him, you
make you make him shoot off the move. How does
that change? And you can start to describe, you know,
he you know, is he a stand still shooter or
movement shooter? Now we're getting into basketball concepts and and
you can you can quantify that in a way that
you know it's not perfect because there aren't enough. There
aren't that many players who actually shoot like two movement
(13:25):
threes in a season to give you a really good idea,
but against okay, if he's hit his of his catching shoot,
Dan still catching shoot, and of his off movements, even
if you only have a hundred shots of each, it's
not you know, it's not despositive, but it certainly gives
you an idea of like yeah, maybe he's better if
we just kind of stick him there and don't run
(13:45):
him off screen and stuff like that. Um. So that's
I think that the details, you know, kind of event
level data that we now have allows you to look
at things more that way. And it's not just shooting.
All of the shooting stats of being been the most
developed because, for whatever recent people care about buckets the
most Um and that's that's you know that that holds true. For,
(14:06):
you know, for for analysts as much as it does
for bad twitter. So there's that, there's rebounded, there's playmaking.
Defense is still hard. Um, there's a lot of kind
of bad attempts at quantifying defense out there because some
other you know, learning lessons from other sports. It's sometimes good,
but I think in many ways lessons from baseball in
(14:28):
particular have served as poorly when measuring defense. I mean
there's been a lot of stuff. You can tell, okay,
you can tell who the closest defender is to shoot
her and therefore you can say something about his defense
by what players shoot against him. Right. No, you can't.
I mean you can't, like there's there's places on the
floor you can. But there's a thing that's missing when
(14:48):
you're looking at that from a defensive perspective, which is,
what about all the times the guy doesn't shoot? You know,
baseball this analogy like these all the time baseball. You know,
great left handed hitter comes up, other team brings their
their left eat layer, left he headed, specialist receiver out
of the out of the bullpen. The guy can't be
like now, wait, yeah, where you get where you get
(15:11):
a kick out on the perimeter the guy closes out. Well,
it's like well, I got to shoot. There was a kickout,
like no, let me, let me do something else with it. So,
like from a defensive side, that's a pretty good outcome
and that shows up nowhere right. Yeah, so if you're
using like like, you know, jump shot defense is a
way to evaluate what a certain player is doing, you're
(15:31):
missing almost their best their best preps. Can you because that?
You know, the quote I mentioned up top was like
the ability of analytics to address cognitive biases. Can you
talk about like something like a journey you personally took
when you, you know, as somebody who played basketball and
(15:52):
presumably watched a lot of basketball, was a big basketball
fan coming into your career, a cognitive bias you had
that a lytics kind of helped you overcome? I think so.
I mean I you know, the player types when I
was when I was sort of a UH look, coming
out up more from a fan Ang or maybe play
some fantasy stuff like that. There was a player type
(16:14):
I kept missing on, which was, you know, coming in
the draft, I thought he's gonna be good like Randolph childers,
he's gonna be like, you know, it's kind of this
small scoring guard who you know, has a lot of
Moxie and makes big shots in college and stuff like that,
and it's like a you know, you get this now
is he's a winner. And so, like, I I was
with that. And then you start to study and he
(16:35):
realized actually that that's sort of mid range rocket guy
to sleep pull up. That's the province of just like
the very best players. So yeah, some guys are going
to do that, but you gotta be good to do that.
Like the guys who just do that, okay, right, are
actually pretty bad and being players. I mean they're bad
basketball players, but it means they're you know, you end
(16:57):
up being like Shane Larkin or something like that, who is,
you know, like a Euroleague all star but because of
his combination of size and skill set, isn't necessarily an
effective NB player. And so you know, kind of seeing
those weird things where a skill given depending on like
(17:17):
the context, then you need to be very valuable or
not valuable at all. That's wild. I hadn't thought about
Shane Larkins since he came into the League and you know,
he was very Barry Larkin's kid and I think he
was like a you know, definitely a first round draft
pick right and I yeah, I hadn't looked him up
since then, but that that makes sense. Very good, very
(17:39):
good European player. You know, the best, best player I
ever played pick up against was Kalid El Amy, and
he kind of fell into that, into that, into that
same kind of thing. That's same, like just not, you know,
not quite big enough, not quite good enough, but you
put him over in that, you know, in a slightly
different context of basketball, and that's pretty good. What skill
(17:59):
do you look for in a kind of smaller guard
that that yields a Chris Paul or someone like that?
I mean that's you look for them to be Chris Paul,
like measuring, like measuring decision making is is you know,
that's that's a little bit the holy grail right now. Um,
that's something that, uh, I think right now football actually
(18:22):
probably has the lead on because you can you can
actually you know, the quarterbacks past decision is actually a
little more straightforward then, because okay, I can throw to
this guy, I can throw that guy, I can wait
a little bit, maybe I can scramble around, but your
decisions are a little bit more cabin than they are,
whereas the guy's coming off a pick and roll. It's
like I can throw the ball here, I can take
(18:43):
another dribble, I can put the guy in jail. So
how do you even break down what the different decisions are?
And you can, you can start to look at some
sort of very abstract examples, but that's just like one
tiny aspect of it, and in the game of basketball
it's so many. Any you're making so many decisions that
you might not even realize you're like a players making
(19:05):
in a short span of time. And the player who
does that well, I was like, Oh, look at the
look at look at how he knows how to be
on the court, where to be on the court. Look
at just feel, look at his basketball. Like you whatever
you want to call it, that's the sum of like
you know, twenty decisions a second that the guy is
making better than the next player. So how do you
like so how do you even start to quantify that?
(19:26):
Like we have some things that proxy for that. Like
people wonder why, like college steel rate is such a
strong projector of NBA success, and I think that's it.
It's like, okay, you have a combination of physical ability
to get there and sort of mental recognition and like
speed of of translating thought to action that you can
(19:46):
then use whatever your physical abilities are. So, like, I
got the ball now, I saw it coming, I got
the ball and that and that, like that sort of
represents I can I know how to play amazing. All right.
Should we take a break and come back and keep
asking you questions, like who's your favorite player? Like, do
you think anyways that we'll be right back? And we're
(20:21):
back and yeah, just I'm having a great time sort
of hearing you kind of talk, talk about these things.
I was I was curious to hear if you have
a current player or a former player and or a
former player that you feel like contributed to more wins
than people realize because of cognitive biases or like just
(20:44):
kind of what what we look for on a basketball
court versus what's actually happening out there. So, I mean
the the the easy answer for the current players, the
player who seems like there's the biggest disconnect between how
they're perceived and how good they are is Rudy Gobert.
Like people just clown rudy so much. I can't the
I can't believe the timberwolves traded all this form is like, okay,
(21:06):
he's a walking top and defense and it's not sexy.
He's he's annoying, like people are annoyed by his personality,
which that's fine. There's players who annoy who's personally annoyed me.
But like, and maybe maybe his game isn't perfectly suited
to playoff basketball. That's all fine. He's still like like
a top three defensive player in the League and probably
(21:27):
a top twenty overall player who just it's it's because
he doesn't get buckets. It's like the stuff he does
is just like undervalued. And it's weird because, like there
are other players who, you know, similar like the other
kind of great, top level defenders who are, you know,
top twenty. You know, you know, maybe draymond has kind
(21:48):
of aged out of being a top twenty player, top
twenty player, but the other kind of defense first guys
who are up that high, like Draymond, Bam Ada, bio,
they don't seem to get the same maybe because they
have a little bit more at the ball, but neither
of them are really bucket getters. But it's rudy is
just like because his offensive game is like dive and
catch lobs and get foul and rebound. It's sort of well,
(22:11):
that doesn't matter. It's like, well, that's actually pretty impactful.
The draymond thing that you know, it took. It took
for him going out last year them being absolutely rolling
and dominant, uh for a while, him going out with
an injury and then being completely like seeming to be
completely average, him coming back and then winning the title.
I was like, all right, there might be something going
(22:34):
on here. Uh. That like, I mean I think I knew,
like you can kind of watch and be like, he
really does a lot of smart things out there, but
that that was pretty pretty clean case that that was
made last season with regards to Draymond and what he
does kind of off ball. Yeah, and I think that's
(22:54):
a that's a you know, not to go too deep
into that. I think the worry is is how much
longer you have sort of at that level because, like,
as you say, you saw healthy draymond the start of
the year, no Draymond, and then kind of hurt draymond
second half of the year, ramping into form, draymond over
the players, draymond forgetting how to play offensive basketball for
(23:15):
a few games to the finals and like from what
was it like? Late in game four of the finals
to the end? He was spectacular again, and she's like, Oh, yeah,
that's that team suddenly becomes you know, you can have
a you know, a third point guard on the floor
WHO's also your defensive center. Yeah, that's kind of Nice.
The other part of the question was a past player.
(23:35):
I don't know if I want to go impactful because frankly,
don't have the tools to measure this player's impact. But
my favorite player of all time is Reggie Lewis Um both,
you know, both, because he so I grew up in Alaska.
He came to the Great alska shootout, which is a
really good college tournament until it wasn't and doesn't exist anymore.
He was with North he was at northeastern, northeaster, and
he gave, he gave buckets and then and then he
(23:58):
went to the Celtics and was like the next Great
Celtic Star and like and also his game was so
interesting because he they still don't see a lot of
players like that. Jimmy Butler might almost be the closest.
Was He. You know, there's a certain rhythm that guys
play with. You know, you can kind of like pump, fake,
jab go, whereas you know, uh, he sort of he
(24:19):
sort of played the in between notes, like like pump,
fake and go like like and not bring it down
to like like playing, you know how like reggae is,
playing on the upstroke a little bit, a little bit
like that, and that was just super I was always
super intrigued by that. And also he was like one
of the guys who guarded him j the best, which
I which I thought was cool. That's right. Yeah, I'm curious,
(24:42):
like with the all the information that we have right sometimes,
in any industry or just job whatever, a lot of
information can be a good thing. Sometimes it can be
not a great thing because it can maybe complicate people's
thinking or whatever. They get too in focused on things
like that. How do you see like, because when I
(25:03):
look at just a lot of sports right and I'm
seeing just this general push to really embracing the analytics,
to really finding these margins to play more efficiently, whether
that's to get score more baskets, score more goals or
whatever in another sport, there's a lot of really like
I'm constantly blown away at like how people are looking
(25:23):
at a sport and how much it's influencing it is?
Do you see that like this sort of, you know,
influx of analytics and things like that is helping to
create like change even how people even set a team
up to play, like because they're really really focused or
really acknowledge that, like some of these things, they add
up over time, these margins and that's really something to
(25:45):
focus on? Or is it still kind of like, okay,
I like what you're saying, that's food for thought, but
I won't completely impact the strategy or the X is
and Os. I mean again, this is one of those
things where you you don't want to say that, uh,
you know, you can analytics, did this or that. I
think that that I've always find those comments pretty funny,
(26:08):
because that's like, I I wish I had that kind
of power. But I imagine on one level it's a
it catalyzes the process of something for sure, because we're
going from an information desert to one where it's very rich,
right like well, you know, Mike d'antoni didn't need me
or anyone else to tell him, Hey, let's put let's
put some shooters around and give give Steve Nash and
Mari Stdomier some space, like you know, you don't have to.
(26:32):
You don't have to come out of from a numerical
stands to see like yeah, that makes more sense. If
this guy standing at twenty four feet instead of eighteen feet,
there's more space for this thing to happen. Great, Um.
So I think that the that the analysis can can
work in candom with that. But again, I don't think
it's I don't think we should, we should force it
(26:52):
from strategy completely and we can't because it's like, okay,
that's a good thing to do. How he sient need
to so you do. They do need to work in hand,
hand in hand to implement. You can't just like, you know,
just shoot more threes. That's not what happens. You know,
it's not like you know, maybe now there are a
few players who can literally just lock the ball up
(27:13):
the floor and Jack Three. That's like there's three guys
in the League can do that. Two guys in the
League who should do that? Maybe one, depending on, you know,
if if if Dame's ABS or are are better or not,
like staff like trade as it probably shouldn't, um, but
but it was like, okay, so how do we get
more threes? Well, part of it is okay, instead of
(27:35):
having the guy on the opposite side of the court
stand at the in the short corner, have him stand
all the way in the corner. And and so that's
a that's that's a strategic thing. That allowed there to
be more threes. And then there's some additional benefits like well,
if he's actually that far out, all of a sudden
his defender has more ground to cover. That seems good.
And so it's it's so it's sort of builds on itself,
(27:56):
by the way. And so I again I'm I'm read
sent to say that it's all, or primarily part. I
don't mean part of. I don't and I don't even
mean to suggest that it's like. Well, what do you what?
Do you come in with your notebook and tell them?
But more just like what do you say when someone goes,
all right, the what I need you for? I knew that.
That's honestly, that's great, like that's that's sort of because, no,
(28:18):
that's that's sort of the almost some of the better
best way to get stuff implemented is you know this,
but right, you know, but but here's here. Let me
let me show you the degree to which this is true.
It's like, Oh, so, you know, you can, you can
look at like, you know, rebounding data and see, okay, yeah,
if I shoot from the right side, rebound is gonna
(28:39):
go over here to the left side and like, you know,
but it's but it's still it's useful to have that
reinforced and confirmed. Like I think that's one of the
things that's least understood, is like the stuff we study
probably confirmed sort of the conventional wisdom, because coaches have
been you know, it's not like it's not like there
hasn't been an off rewards to being a winner. Keep
(29:04):
keeping your job. Keeping your job is a pretty good
incentive to to do things better, and so a lot
of the things that are done are, you know, have
been tried and true and true and like no, you
win more games by doing it this way. And some
of that trial and error. And maybe we can speed
up that trial and error process a little bit by
suggesting a thing that seems likely to work. But I mean,
(29:26):
you know, some pretty some pretty dedicated people over sixty,
seventy years have been picking at this thing for a
while and you know, a lot of them do some stuff.
So it's not like you're gonna come in and say, Nope,
you're all wrong, throw it out from the book out.
Not True. I mean, you go like you go. As
you know, the foundation of like basketball analytics is the
(29:47):
four factors, and that's effective field goal percentage, turnover percentage,
free throw a rate, defensive rebound rate. What does every
coach you've ever had tell you? Get good shots, to
take care of the ball, gets the free throw line,
protect that's all it is. It's basically that for me. Yeah,
you know everything you ever heard, and it's just like
the basis of of you know, how you look at
(30:09):
a team from a statistical standpoint is those four things. Yeah,
but I guess that's where like, because everyone does have
the same sort of agreed upon way to do things.
I think that's where it's probably beneficial now to say,
given that we all believe these things, now, where are
these where can we find these other ways to be
more effective, and how important is each of them relative
(30:30):
to the other? Like, yeah, that's this is one of
those those areas where I found that sort of people
who come at things from a more observational are very
good at identifying things, not always as good at weighing
them against each other. M Hm. And so that's a
you know, and and those. And the interesting thing is
(30:51):
those things change, like the environment of the NBA. We
will change the degree to which the ability to hit
a corner three versus the ability stay in front of
a guy on a switch, like. Which of those things
is more, is more valuable, or how valuable it is
or who else is on your team makes it value.
So it's not like these are it's not this is
a set things. Do this and it's good. It's like,
(31:12):
in this environment this is more helpful than it's maybe
given credit for. Um, there's UH, there's a clip of
golden states gm Bob Meyers at the sports analytics conference
talking about like the difference between playoff basketball versus regular
season basketball. Like has that? Is that something that kind
(31:34):
of came up from an analytic standpoint in terms of
like the shift in Style and overall approach for playoff
teams versus regular season teams? Yeah, I mean I I
wrote about this in the in the playoff chapter in
the book. And there's so I have a among the
professions I've done before this, that was a professional poker player.
And there's there's Um, kind of two modes of play
(31:59):
Um and again, as with most things, it's not like
one or the other. It's somewhere in between. But there's
it's there's what's called Game Theory often, which is I
don't know what you are as a poker player, but
amongst the set of poker players I know about what
that means you do. So how do I play, knowing
you're from this group? First exploit of play is I
(32:19):
know exactly how you play. What can I do best
to beat you? Now tell me. The first bit doesn't
sound like regular season, where you're playing Sacramento Tonight, Houston Tomorrow,
Orlando the other the third night. And the exploit of
play is the playoffs. So it's a very different like
you know, design how to do best in each of
those things. It's it's not surprising. The different coaches, different players,
(32:42):
different skill sets function better in one environment versus together.
All right, a piece of news that we've been kind
of putting off, but I'm definitely eager to like kind
of bring it up and get any thoughts that you have.
Is The news about Donovan Mitchell going of the calves,
which that got me very excited. I feel like in
(33:05):
terms of fit for him. Continuing to have a great
defensive stopper behind him is great for his game. The
one thing that occurred to me is like usage. I
guess I hadn't even realized, but he's a top ten
usage guy in in the NBA in terms of how
much he dominates the ball, and then Garland is also
(33:26):
a big usage guy. But I mean, first of all,
it just overall, this makes me more excited to watch
NBA basketball next season having Donovan Mitchell on the calves.
So I'm excited. Yeah, I love that trade for both sides.
I really did. I thought I thought that jazz did
a you know in terms of pivoting off of their
(33:47):
looking at sort of their off season as a hole,
like all right, we knew that team was kind of
had reached it its conclusion. It's a pretty strong pivot
to what you know, going to whatever's next. And I
don't know how much you guys followed draft stuff, but
this would not be a bad year to end up
with the first pick. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's if
(34:09):
you you know, basically, if you had color film of
what Luell sender looked like in high school, I think
I look a lot like victor when Banyana Yama's use
film does so. Like, no pressure, young man, but but, um, yeah,
and then at the same time I like, like I
love the fit with Mitchell and Cleveland. I'm amused by
(34:32):
the fact that he's going to continue to be sort
of the face of the team and if they're going anywhere,
he won't be the best player on the team again. Um,
that's you know, that's essentially it's a pretty huge bet
that Evan mobiley is gonna be like that guy. Anybody's
gonna be that guy without having to be like throw
him the ball and get out of the way kind
of version of that guy, which I think is frankly,
(34:55):
is probably beneficial to him because maybe he develops that.
But they're actually isn't a lot in profile at this
point that suggests that's hugely likely. So, you know, turning
him into sort of the the the almost the next
iteration of Anthony Davis, rather than than having to be,
(35:17):
you know, having to be like Joel and bead or
something like that. Yeah, yeah, the Jabari in the comments
is like Kig and Boston is supposed to Gig many.
I think that's the reason to play and and frankly,
like kg and and many tried to play like I
think they like they were always trying to get him
to be more like that was the biggest difference between
him and Duncan. Was Dunk I was like, Oh, I
(35:38):
gotta get a bucket, I'm gonna get a bucket, whereas
kg always sort of was like it's moving around and
do some stuff, and I can, I can, I can
blend a little bit and and never quite got to
the point of wanting, of needing to just have the
ball in his hands at all the time. Uh, we got,
we got very off track. where, where am I going?
I think we were all gonna talk about the fact
(36:00):
that the real story, despite Donovan Mitchell, is that Montrase
harrold is with Philly and that makes Philly just undoubtedly
the championship rockets assemble the no, and I so to
your point about like Mitchell and Garland. I don't think
(36:22):
we've seen much in the last couple of years of
NBA basketball to suggests that it's bad thing to have
multiple guys who can make plays with the ball in
their hands. I think that that's sort of the and
as the person who unwittingly coined the term Um. I
don't think the heliocentric style is I don't think it's desirable.
(36:42):
I think certain teams have found expedient and necessary, but
having two dudes who can do that is probably better
than one, especially if they can, if if neither of
them actually needs to have the ball. But both Garland
and Mitchell are good enough shooters, that's Um and willing enough,
you know, catch and shoot players. That, uh yeah, you know,
from a pure basketball standpoint there's no reason it shouldn't
(37:05):
work offensively. But I'm very excited to see that team
because I think there could be a lot of fun too.
Speaking of having like multiple people who could who can
put it in like what? I'm just curious for your
thoughts on the nets. You know, when they were peak
form nets, they were so fun to watch, so unstoppable,
(37:27):
like even in that first round against Boston, and then,
you know, injuries got in the way. But like, I
think people are now like sort of settling into this
idea that like, well, that didn't work, and I don't
know that that's true because when it was working it
was wildly dominant, like on a game by game basis.
(37:48):
Even was that anomalous? I mean, like the way we
talked about that stuff is so jacked, like jnness couldn't
be the best player on a championship team until he was,
you know, and it's just like, okay, how many teams
work in a given a year, like last year? Would
you say one and a half, like the warriors in Boston,
but then they got to the finals and Oh no,
(38:08):
like's I think. I think that Boston worked. I think
that Cleveland worked last year when they were healthy. Like
like our definition of that is like, you know, you
think about the rockets teams that took the warriors, that
pushed the like the K D warriors in in the playoffs,
like this is one of the great teams ever assembled
and you took them to seven games in the conference
finals and that didn't work. Like what are we talking
(38:31):
about here? Yeah, like, I don't know. I so I
I you know the same. You know, those so like
the Jazz, the Mitchell Gobert jazz teams, like they were
plenty good and just you know, did they catch every break? No.
Were they the best team? No. Could they have made
the finals or win a championship if things broke their
way a little? I mean it's counterfactional. But yeah, I
(38:52):
think so. Like the hard rockets have won a champion.
I think so. Good. Last year's Celtics have what you know,
it's Lakers, you know. I mean that's know. I'm gonna,
I'm gonna, I'M gonna put my foot down there. But even, like, even,
like last year's bucks, like they could they have repeated
if Chris Middleton doesn't get hurt. Right like. Would I
have picked them over the weirds? Probably not, but like,
(39:16):
you can't dismiss it. Yeah, all right. Should we take
another break and come back firing rapidly with rapid fire?
Time for the rapid fire question. Oh, hold onto your
butts everyone, and we're back and it's time for the
(39:42):
Jack and miles or miles and Jack Got Mad boost
these rapid fire round of questions. They almost forgot what
the bit was, but I came back to it. Optimal podcast,
we're optimizing. Yeah, so you might listen to it and
be like wow, they're kind of dumb about basketball and
this is a basketball podcast, but then when you actually
(40:04):
dig into the numbers, it's pretty impressive. Wildly engagement per
point made its safe uh seth. You may or may
not have heard about this infamous segment on the show.
This is the rapid fire round of questions. We are
going to hit you with questions back to back at
lightning speed. Do not think, just respond with whatever your
(40:27):
brain or your heart is telling you. Don't ramble on.
This is rapid. Okay, here we go. Start the clock.
So angry to play the feud. Oh, I just have
to get you know what. I have to set a baseline.
You know, just here for what? where? This is going energetically? Okay, rapid.
Here we go. The clock is taking you want to go?
(40:48):
or WHO's got you? Um, I'll go for yeah, let
me just see where it yeah, let me go for you. Okay. Well,
I was gonna. I want to do the third, third,
but no, okay, you go, you go, you go. Okay,
you want to do a third, all right, let me
just yeah, just move that copy. You're putting in the
wrong doc. Now that's the tz dock. Alright, start the clock.
(41:13):
I'm actually using hot keys here. UH, cutting. Alright, cool, alright,
so Seth Uh Jack from Myles and Jack at Mat
boostie's here asking you a question. We're asking all of
our guests. Note a throwing one better chance of happening.
Building on last year's playoff birth, the timber wolves, the
(41:36):
NBA team from Minnesota, make the conference finals or we
get copious amounts of what that trick in the Western
Conference Finals says the Grizzlies take it to the next level.
That is a good one. Thank you. That is that is.
That is I think, man. I think I I trust
(41:58):
the roster up and down from mem it's a little
bit more so. I think that's where like the top
end talent on Minnesota, I think, is here. But I
just you know, there's some question marks about who's going
to be on the floor. Wind and there's and and,
whereas Memphis has some versatility, they can make choices, whereas
the timberwolves have questions, even though you yourself were saying
(42:22):
Rudy Gobert was the best player in the League mere
moments ago. No, that's not what you were saying, uh,
but that is probably how it would happen on first take.
Or what one of those shows where? Um, anyway, I
gotta I'm sorry, Seth, I gotta tell you gotta keep
the answers just a little bit quicker. Okay, let's keep
this moving, uh, seth, what are we underrating about the
(42:46):
upcoming season the number of teams that legitimately think they
have a chance, number of the teams that think so.
Usually you go into a season you think there's about
five teams that that really I think that number is
closer to ten this year. Okay, so you think, legit,
(43:07):
there are ten teams that could win it. I mean
I like, I have to go through, but you think about, no,
let me just start ripping them off a buck. Celtics, Warriors, sixers, nets,
Um Nuggets, clippers, you know, grizzlies, like you just you know,
you go like, yeah, there's a lot of people keep
(43:29):
getting a lot of the teams. Okay, now, a lot
of these teams. Yeah, it said Clippers, but a lot
of these teams like things are going to have to
go right for them. But like that's a lot more
teams than usually enter the season really thinking like that legitimate,
like a lot of teams like talk themselves into think,
but there are a lot of teams that over legit
like we're right there and like, okay, I'm I'm low
(43:52):
on Dallas, but you gotta Put Dallas on that list too, because,
like Luca could be the best player in the league
this year on that list. I completely forgot about the sun's. Yeah,
that is exciting and even at this time last year,
would most people have even put the warriors on that
list as one of the teams that it has a
(44:12):
legit shot? I went on Bay Area Radio on the
eve of last season and questioned whether they would be
a top six seat. Wow, so now I'm an idiot,
but I don't think a lot of people saw that coming, right,
I don't think. O. No, and then there's reasons to
(44:33):
you know, had been a little bit since since Steph
did that over a full season. We didn't know we're
going to get from draymond. They had a lot of
questions and and you know things. You know they're there.
Their support players all broke right. Clay came back better
than we could expected. Jordan's developed, Kevin Looney stayed healthy.
(44:53):
Like these are all things that were pretty important to
them last year. WE'RE gonna keep it moving. So I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, but we got to keep it moving. Next question. Well,
some of the Eurobasket success from guys like or Lori
Marken in translate into the upcoming regular season. What do
you think for the player that I'm prepared to take
my biggest hell on a long time Franz Wagner. Oh Yeah, yeah,
(45:18):
I did not think you good. Uh, can they play
that way in the NBA? It's always the question, I think,
you know, on those three guys, like from the scale
of Yes to no, it's probably like Wagner Marketing Chengoon
in terms of can they play the same way and
haven't work at the NBA level? So, yeah, yes, there
(45:40):
they are. They are good players, but I don't think
you're like you know as as like I said, Kaide
was a hipster guy, like Chengun is the hipsterist of
hipster players, and I'm still not completely convinced. Like, I
think he's a good player, is gonna be a good
player in the league for a long time. And then
we're like a legit star. I'm not sure. We will
ask you to just keep a little tighter. Um, if
(46:01):
you could change one rule to the game, to the
NBA game, that was like just for fun, just to
make it you know, throw throw things off balance, make
it fun, what would it be? UH, time limit on
replay review. Yeah, that would make it much more watchable.
Like what are we limiting it to? Three seconds, just
super quick first glance, the first thirty seconds or minute,
(46:25):
something like that. If you can't figure it out by then,
keep it. Movement like there's a little bit of there's
a little bit of what are we doing here? Two,
it's like like we're we're making a TV show here.
We're not. It's it's not a court case. So we're
looking at the refs have ordered pizza, so it seems
(46:46):
like they might have a decision soon or, conversely, extend
the amount of time to an infinite amount of time
for them to make a decision. The refs are upset.
The concessions have closed in the arena by now and
so they are testing by dragging this out. Those carvery
sandwiches are done. Well, I can't work under these conditions. Okay,
(47:07):
next question. Uh, this kind of goes along with how
you said. You know, we maybe have ten teams contending,
but what is to you? Maybe we're going to be
the biggest surprise contender that no one is considering. And
I get that you're not saying that they are going
to win, but someone if you said, Oh, they surprise people,
I'm not surprised about that. The Grizzlies from last year said, Um,
I think people haven't haven't been given the nuggets enough,
(47:32):
like I think, I think every like everything people are
saying about the clippers. Why aren't they also saying about
the nuggets? Right, okay, that's a that's a great question. Um.
And the final question, another great one. Is it Jack,
which is me, or miles? That guy over there has
been kind of rude like to you during this Jack,
(47:54):
I think he was actually kind of rude to me
talking about reality based analysis. I mean, I prefer I
prefer people a little spike here. So I'm gonna go, miles, go.
He's done it again. I haven't won a single one. Alright, wow,
that's my man. Sorry, but I knew where people when
(48:17):
he was talking about the reggae bubble on the on
the end, you know what I mean. I was like, okay,
now we're talking meter. Okay, I like this. I like
this sad part. Now you blessed guests. Thank you so
much for stopping by. Miles and Jack Got Mad boost these.
Where can people hear more from you? Read Your analysis
or read your book the Mid Range Theory, which, oh
(48:38):
by the way, we never get got to touch on it.
But that has something to do with tribe called quest
because we're like, all right, this got someone to do
low end theory. Was it inspired? It does so like
one of the I think that was probably the second
hip hop album I ever owned. We don't have to
talk about what the first one was. It might have
been policed hammer. Don't hurt him. See, you're good in
the bay as run up on hammer as no, and
(49:03):
so that was. So I've always been a big fan
of of of tribe, and then when we were starting
the blog that became nylon calculus, we were thinking of
like uh, thinking of names. So like because I had
I liked that album and just like the idea of
theory and how that works together with politics, like the
mid range theory. And that's so that we voted and
(49:23):
that finished second. So I always had in my back pocket,
or if I ever write a book I think I'll
call the mid range theory. And here we are. Alright,
respect that tribe question, by the way, or the tribe
observation that there might be a connection. There was me
actually it's pretty CLU didn't pick. So we let you know.
(49:43):
I think probably and the State Warriors, me and the
Golden State Warriors, looked like two people. Seth underestimated, Seth
didn't believe. said. Where can people find you? On twitter? Um,
at seth part now on twitter. Um, I'll I rate, uh,
you know. UH, once every couple of weeks at the
(50:04):
athletic I have a weekly podcast with David four and
modaquil on the athletics and gay show on Murdish, your wrote,
which is, you know, of course I. Um, I do
my own podcast on on the Colin App and Um,
and the book is available range. Theory. The paperback edition
comes out at the beginning of November and is available
(50:28):
for pre order now wherever books are sold. Gift for
your NBA and uh, you know, an NBA, NBA season
starting to say. Well, yeah, so happy NBA season, happy
NBA to you and and also to you. Uh. And
don't forget, guys, you can follow us on twitter at
(50:49):
mad boost these also instagram, m a D B O
o s t I e s. That says bout boosts,
so follow us there. Until next time, I'll be my
I'll be all right and we'll be mad boosey
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