Some Sentences, One Outcome (Unless I hedge), I lose or I Win.

2013 NBA Playoff Predictions

The West

Rockets, Thunder

The Thunder win in 6 games.  James Harden will torch the Thunder the whole time; however, Westbrook and Durant will torch the Rockets the whole time too.  Omer Asik will have to cover two people and Serge Ibaka will only have to cover one man.  The Rockets get their two wins because Harden goes off one game and system teams always earn an extra win (Jack threes, run fast, aggressive switching, don’t settle for midrange shots).

Clippers, Grizzles

Memphis will win in 5 games.  Memphis is just too tough and has big men that have skill instead of brute retard strength.  The biggest factor is going to be all the 4 on 5 situations Memphis is placed in because Baby Blake and Dad Paul are telling referees to “suck it” metaphorically.   Chris Paul is a wizard though and wizards always win, but they eventually run out of powers, so I give him enough power points to win one game. 

Spurs, Lakers

The Lakers win in 7.  This is the upset series.  I love Tim Duncan, but the uptick in minutes against Dwight Howard is going to do damage to him.  Eventually, Howard will have to be double teamed which will lead to the new form of 1 in, 4 out ball:  1 in, 1 trying to get in, and 3 out.  Pau Gasol is going to be trying to get into the post but will honestly be stuck around the foul line.  This is going to help Howard out by being an outlet pass to a smart man that can make the right pass to an open three shooter.  Pau Gasol is going to systematically destroy Greg Popovich’s defensive rotations.

Calm down, I'm only dismantling Popovich

Nuggets, Warriors

Nuggets win in 4 games.  The Nuggets love to run. The Warriors also loves to run.  Do you remember the shitty Warriors of last year?  They are the same team as this year, but they didn’t play defense by slowing down their pace.  The Nuggets are going to turn this game into a race.  The Nuggets know how to run this race while the Warriors don’t.  The Warriors are going to trick themselves into losing. 

The East, I don’t care about them at all and haven’t really watched any of their games, can you tell?

Miami, Bucks

Miami will win in 4.  LeBron James. LeBron James.  LeBron James.  Dwayne Wade.  Shane Battier.  Ray Allen.  Chris Anderson.  This team feels like it is super stacked because it is.  It’s the opposite of a feel good team of semi has beens (these are players I grew up secretly loving, but feeling bad for loving) like the Mavericks that won in 2011 (Shawn Marion, Jason Kidd, JET).

Nets, Bulls

Bulls will win in 6 games.  I can’t find a reason to pick either of these teams.  The Nets have more superstar power sort of, but the Bulls have a precise system.  Hopefully, Joakim Noah is back to stop Brook Lopez.  Otherwise, that paint is going to open up like a malnourished bums mouth opens for booze.  Brook Lopez will pour like Colt 45 into that rim if Noah is out.

Knicks, Boston

Boston will hopefully win in 6.  One time I tried to shave a moustache like Carmelo Anthony’s.  You have to actually shave above your moustache.  I felt like an asshole while I did this and even looked like one afterwards.  What’s this have to do with anything you ask?  I’m going to give Boston the benefit of any doubt I had because Carmelo made me feel like an asshole that one time.  Jeff Green can cover Carmelo Anthony, while Paul Pierce can pick apart the Knicks defense.  I’ve watched some of the Knicks game and their defense is weird because they cover the paint and the three line.  They don’t get suckered into covering the worst shot in the game, the midrange jumper.  That’s the shot the Celtics make coincidently.  The Celtics defense is also very solid with no weak people aside from Jet.

 

Shaq's working on my catchphrase right now, "Can you shave it?"

Pacers, Atlanta

The Pacers will win in 4.  I haven’t watched much of either of these teams, but I know that Roy Hibbert is a defensive beast along with the rest of that team.  Atlanta was good for two streaks if my memory is right, but I don’t trust Josh Smith or Al Horford.  They may be better than their opposing Pacer counterparts, but they aren’t pick apart a whole defense better. 

Conference Finals Predictions:

West:

Nuggets, Thunder

East:

Miami, Pacers

Done For The Year

I'm taking on any topic, person, or animal that mean mugs me this coming year. 

Well, I forgot to post that the Dwoog will be on a one month hiatus for Christmas, my work vacation, and general tom-foolery like my female partner visiting. 

I also need to mention I lost my entire music library this week too, so that means I’m stuck with only what I have left on my Ipad, phone, and shuffle.  During the new year I’m going to try and rebuild my library, so one of the off day features is going to be music reviews of what I’ve added. 

The Cavs will still be here and still sucking, so I’ll still be covering them.  If they get good, maybe I won’t.  Let’s hope we find out about that soon.

I hope everyone has a great holiday and New Year’s celebration.

If I have a chance, I’ll add some Haiku reviews of games I watch during my break. 

See you guys in full swing on January 19^th, 2013. 

MODE

I want to know something about the Cavs.  Does anyone keep track of their mode on points per quarter and their average deviation from that?  It seems like a fairly simple stat, but I think it would give a lot of information about them/teams.  Are the teams consistent in their specific quarter by quarter play throughout games the most successful teams?  Is it actually the quarter to quarter relation in scoring within a game that’s what makes a team successful?

I want to know if we were to consistently have great first quarters followed by a slumping second quarter and average third and fourth quarters if we have a better chance to win than when we have fluky out of proportion scoring quarters like during the Lakers's game.  Is mode an effective analytic tool?

Here are the quarter by quarter points for the Cavs’s wins:

31 19 24 20

31 26 27 24

19 21 24 28

27 29 26 31

25 14 32 29

What do the numbers say then?

When looking at the Cav’s wins, which is a very small sample, mode doesn’t appear to be an effective evaluator for us.  Our mode for quarters in general is 31, which happened only three times.  I’d love it if we could just always get 31 points in a quarter every game, but that is not going to happen. 

31 happens to be the only number we actually repeated in a specific quarter by quarter matching in a won game too.  I think this is just a result of small sample size and coincidence.   However, it did happen in the first quarter.  That definitely hints the Cavs need a cushion to win their games.

Since mode is so ineffective apparently, I’ll let you know some other things I’ve noticed.  We have a dip in our second quarter points.  We have only one win where we scored more in the second then the first.  Furthermore, if we win we have outscored our second quarter  3/5 times. 

What’s left to say?  We are inconsistent in our wins.  However, 31 has to be a magic number in some sense..  It is involved in 3/5 wins.  That means something right?

I’d love the opportunity to examine a bigger sample size.  Too bad, the Cavs fucked that up tonight. 

It’s Good That Tradegies Are Sensationalized

I’m happy the Sandy Hook Tradegy is being sensationalized.  I’m not happy for some odd reason such as wanting the shooter to be glorified or wanting these innocent victims to become images of sad heroes.  I’m not concerned with either of those things. 

I’m happy that this incident is being sensationalized because it says that America is in a great spot culturally and politically.  When I heard about this incident, I (probably unfairly) thought about how many countries deal with these type of mass murders events monthly, maybe even weekly.  However, they just play it like regular news.  It’s a common occurrence for them and the reasons are obvious such as political, racial, or religious.  I’m thinking about countries such as, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, any country with habitual conflict.

These countries offer up clear reasons because these events are systematic for them.  In America, this is simply not the case.  We don’t have common occurrences of politically, religiously, or even mentally motivated killings.  It’s out of the norm here, so when it happens it takes us by shock.  It eclipses everything because we can’t imagine how or why in any manner someone would go to a place and kill random people. 

I know over the next few weeks the media, crimnalisgosts, investigators, etc.. will be pushing theories about the shooter's motive.   Good.  Right now, people are saying things that blame gun control, mental institutions, and eventually his family’s lack of awareness.  It’s probably some of those things.  I wouldn’t doubt that.

However, at the end of the day, it was one man acting alone to commit a terrible crime.  We should never forgot that it was an individual that committed this atrocity.  He had individual motives.  This monster wasn’t created, so much as he was born and maybe ignored. 

While some people reading this will inevitably say that mental health experts missed this man.  He fell through the cracks.  He is an example of the failure of America’s mental system. 

He isn’t.  If we weren’t sensationalizing him, he would have been a failure of the mental health system.  This system does its best to offer individual treatment while at the same time battling the tendency to try and group every into something: ADD, ADHD, bipolar, depression etc.  That’s the worst possible thing for the mental health discipline.  This tradegy is terrible, but let’s take something from it.  Let’s remember that in America (the whole world even) we are all individuals and some individuals are just fucked up.  Trying to group this killer with anyone else is ridiculous.  He is simply his name.  He is not a patient with a disorder.

That’s the hardest realization for me; it’d be a lot easier if I thought that we could stop the next person to perpetrate a tragedy like this.  We can’t because no set pattern creates this.  It reminds me how a particle randomly appears in a total vacuum on occasion.  It shouldn’t happen, but it does.

The Masked Ones

The Mask forces your mouth to constantly gape open.  This allows excessive efficiency that must go into the box score.

Kyrie was the Fuck Truck driver during Knicks game with his 41 points.  I think the mask had something to do with it.  No, I know it did.  Adding a third mask to the roster was the perfect idea.  Kyrie must have done it on purpose knowing that both Tristan Thompson and Tyler Zeller would also become hyper efficient along with himself.  The big pair combined for 32 minutes, 9-10 shots, and 10 rebounds.  As Tony the Tiger would say, “They’re Great.”

The Masks of the Cavs

Fifty-nine con masks,

Three masks make a mega man,

Where is the poster?

The Buck’s Fuck Truck Was Us Loving to Turn The Ball Over

Somehow, he out Varejaoed Varejao.

This four point lose to the Bucks was not as close as it appears to be.  The Cavs had a little luck in the end of the second quarter and the start of the third.

First Quarter:

The first quarter was the quarter of Larry Sanders.  Sanders just seemed to avoid getting boxed out and managed to score six points, while Varejao only had two points.  Sanders just kept sneaking around Varejao and causing issues.  The Cavs had a lot of turnovers and bad passes that the Bucks didn’t convert, which kept the score a lot closer than it should have been.

Second Quarter:

The first four minutes of the quarter were really closely played.  Both teams were missing and fouling.  The second four minutes the Bucks were able to get the lead up to 16 by just capitalizing off of our bad shooting.  The last 4:54 of the quarter was all about the Cavs; we made seven straight shots, including 3 threes.  Then we followed up our next miss with an offensive rebound and finish.  During this stretch, the Cavs were really playing fast ball and exploiting the Buck's defense before it could set up.  We managed to get within six, but gave up a three right before half.

Third Quarter:

We picked up the defense to get some stops early, so we got ahead by 1 for a few seconds before it fell apart.  Then the Cavs did what they usually do at the end of the quarter in the middle of it.  They turned the ball over a ton, and they committed bad fouls to help the Bucks go up by 11.  The Bucks did the same thing because they were copying us,  but we are better at giving up leads so we only moved up six points to not even tie with the Bucks.

Fourth Quarter:

We couldn’t score for close to three minutes to open this quarter because the Bucks locked us down on defense.  This is where having a pure scorer could really help the Cavs.  These droughts just kill any hopes we have of coming back.  The Bucks didn’t score for three minutes this period just because of misses, but we couldn’t capitzlize too much because we turned the ball over a lot.  At the end of the game, we turned the ball over on two charges and a bad pass while allowing too many offensive rebounds.  Monta Ellis got a two to put the Bucks up by six off of a second possession with 2:41 left.  With 28 seconds left, we let them get another offensive rebound that forced us to foul and put them back up to six off of one free throw made.  That was the dagger to the two poesssion game.

The Issues:

The issue this game was the turnovers.  We had the most terrible passes I’ve seen from us all year.  It seemed like our bigs were making terrible choices when passing the ball back out, and our guards were often forcing passes through too many people down low.  The game was lost by only four points, but we had 27 turnovers and they only scored 23 points from them. That’s very lucky. 

We also had a little trouble rebounding.  It seemed like they got some crucial second possessions at the end of the game that made a difference.  Maybe, Varejao is a little bit tired because it seemed like he was missing some rotations this game and not getting back when helping others as quickly as usual on defense.

CJ Miles is a black hole at times when he gets the ball.  The man loves to shoot, but I can’t complain because was scoring.  He’s looking like a solid bench sixth man for when Dion Waiters returns.  Or, maybe as I would like to see Dion Waiters will come of the bench in a James Harden style role and Miles will keep starting. 

The Cavs should not be playing a slowed down game.  If we play faster, it seems like the guys who can’t really score don’t have as hard of a time with scoring.  Even when we run pick and rolls, they seem more effective if we do it while the offense is still setting up and just seeing what happens with the wing guys if we have to pass out.  The Cavs looked their best during the scoring runs because they ran the floor and took all the advantages they could with mismatches. 

The Fuck Truck driver of the game is Kyrie.  He gets it because he definitely sparked the run we had at the end of the second half when Tyler Zeller entered the game.  Kyrie found Zeller and then continued to power up the team.  It helped that Kyrie hit a three and then followed it up with a two, since it gave a general confidence to the team during this run.  It helps the team want to play harder knowing  that they have a chance to win, since one of their players can score at will. 

A Memory Vs. None

I'll remember that punch.  Will Pacquiao?

I watched the Marquez Vs. Pacquiao IV fight only 1 week late. It was still exciting for me because I somehow managed to avoid seeing the knockout highlight on any media outlets, but it probably would have been exciting either way. 

I thought that Pacquiao beat Marquez’s ass continually and habitually during the whole fight.  There was no round, even the third, where Marquez won. Still, Marquez won. 

I like boxing for a lot reasons, but the biggest is that there’s a sense of gambling just embedded in fights. 

The reason I like gambling is because there’s a sense of ambiguity in who wins with the spread.  Do I as a person win my personal bet or does a team win?  Or do both win?  It’s weird to me that a team I’m betting against can win, but in my own life, I’ve won because they didn't cover the spread against the team that lost.

Boxing has this aspect self contained in it.  A boxer is playing with the spread in every single one of his fights if he doesn’t score a knockout.  He’s a winner in the personal sense because he made it through 36 minutes; however, unless he has won the judges over, he’s going to lose. 

That’s what makes me love the sport.  How does it feel as a fighter to make it through 12 rounds and lose?  Is it still as heartbreaking as being knocked out?  Is there a sense of hopelessness that you made it through and still can’t win, or is there a sense of I didn’t get knocked out at least?

So what do I remember from the fight then with this in mind?  I remember that Marquez knocked Pacquiao down early.  I remember a seemingly insanse number of clean head shots to Marquez.  I also remember Marquez just going for shots on Pacquiao’s body. 

What’s more telling about boxing is what I don’t remember.  I don’t remember what round any of the knockdowns happened.  I don’t remember when any of the actual really ferocious trades of punches happened or even pivotal one shots.  I probably won't remember any of the things I think I remembered while writing this in a couple of weeks. 

I will remember that Paquiao threw a punch the shifted his momentum towards Marquez at the end of the sixth round.  Marquez was being beat around and pushed towards the corner before that punch.  Somehow, he dodged the punch and drove a right hand into Pacquiao’s head that left him on the ground with no time left.  Paquiao wasn’t paralyzed but he lost.

Maybe now, I’ve answered my own question here about if a boxer prefers to lose by decision or be knocked out.  Thinking back, I didn’t even remember who Paquiao fought in his last match or the match in general without being refreshed by the announcers previous to this fight.  He lost by decision. It's a decision I forgot.  I’m going to remember that he lost from a knockout punch last Saturday.  That is clear.