Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
Electoral Math
Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
Law and Medicine: Japan | Home | In Which I, Nick Beaudrot, Claim to Have All the Answers
On a more serious note: for those who think its worth surrendering in the War on Drugs check out this six-part series on the impact of methamphetamines on a Montana town in one of the ski-resort areas.
In the same way that urban centers in the '80s and early '90s experienced large drains on manufacturing employment, the rural West (and to a lesser extent the rural South), has seen many jobs in extraction disappear, only to be replaced by lower-paying seasonal service-industry work, or worse, not replaced at all. For both political reasons and simple humanity, finding ways to reduce methamphetamine use, restrict the sale of common ingredients, and provide work alternatives would be a great idea.
Via Mark Kleiman.
Matt's right that John Hollinger has pulled a bit of a bait-and-switch by discussing offensive efficiency versus the pace of play when trying to determine if the old adage "defense wins championships" is true. But then Matt pulls the trick himself:
The best way to score tons of points is to play really, really fast. But teams who rely on this strategy seem to underperform in the playoffs. Be that as it may, I have mixed feelings about the Suns. My personal preference is for slower, defense oriented basketball à la Detroit. But I think the conventional wisdom that success for the run-and-gun Suns would help "save the NBA" from its relative unpopularity has something to it. Certainly most people seem to prefer the basketball fast and sloppy.
Fun-n-gun teams seem to underperform in the playoffs because they're aren't enough of them. Really, there have only been two such teams in the last five years: Dallas and Sacramento (well, some of the Antoine Walker-Paul Pierce Celtics teams might fit the bill). Considering the Kings were one Robert Horry three-pointer away from making the NBA finals, I'd say they're not doing terribly. What's more, there's no reason to think that playing fast implies playing sloppy. To the contrary, the Phoenix Suns are second in field goal shooting and in the middle of the pack on turnover per game. Dallas, one of the other supposedly banal "fast and sloppy" teams, ranks fifth in field goals and has the fifth fewest turnovers per game. Sacramento is seventh in shooting and third in fewest turnovers per game. Considering the fun-n-gun teams hold more possessions per game than the average team, it's likely that they're actually more careful with the rock on a per-possession basis than, say, the Heat, which rank just below Phoenix in turnovers per game
The best slow and precise defensive team on the market is probably Minnesota, which ranked fourth in shooting, had the fewest turnovers per game, and ranked seventh in holding down opponents' field goal percentage. You could ask Kevin Garnett how well this style of play works, but busy he's making tee times, so that might not work. Detroit, with its plays-the-way-old-people-make-whoopee* style of basketball, ranks 17th in shooting and seventh in turnovers per game (they make up for this performance by ranking 5th in defensive field goal percentage). I suspect if faced with a legitimate high-octane team (either Phoenix or Dallas) from the Western Conference this mediocrity will shine through. But it won't happen, because the Spurs will go all the way this year.
Speaking of Garnett, Matt is probably right that the marginal value of a superstar simply isn't as great as everyone thinks. To wit, based on Hollinger's top 50 PER ratings, the difference between the worst viable MVP candidate (Dwayne Wade), and the worst best player on any non-Chicago playoff team --Marcus Camby of the Denver Nuggets--is only about 6 points of PER, which I think translates into three wins over a full season. That's simply not enough to make an appreciable difference in a team's overall talent level. Further, the presence of three basically superstar-less teams in the playoffs--Denver, Detroit, and Chicago--suggests that there is more than one way to build a high-quality team.
Meanwhile, in more interesting sports, the wrestling of three slightly-above-average teams continues in the NL East, but it's too early to draw any conclusions based on anyone's record or Pythagorean Projection.
* slow and sloppy. $1 to George Carlin
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 01:48 24 April 2005
