Extremely bad luck with injuries. Two career ending injuries to two guys that were probably destined to be top 20 players in the NBA over that time span.
Also they ran into GSW at their peak a lot, right?
Is "Purgatory" in the NBA a myth?
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Also they ran into GSW at their peak a lot, right?
This is a great post but only because it aligns with my existing opinion 
But seriously, great work. Draft position is not necessarily what drives the success of a franchise. The end result of a team a cumulation of so many different decisions, we should be careful to put too much weight on simply having a higher draft pick.
Humans have a really hard time processing probability, it does not come natural. This is especially the case in stochastic or markov sense. When it comes to tanking, I think people are too biased because the championship is low probability to begin with. When people are met with a low probability decision, they typically will favor of a wider range of possibilities.....even if the initial low probability was the best you would get.
A good example of this is the situation where you're down 2 points on the last possession. Traditionally, teams would favor shooting a 2....but the stats would say you should shoot a 3. Even though your chances of losing in regulation are higher, the chances of winning the game as a whole are higher. Tanking is not the same as going for the 2, but it invokes a similar kind of decision.
But seriously, great work. Draft position is not necessarily what drives the success of a franchise. The end result of a team a cumulation of so many different decisions, we should be careful to put too much weight on simply having a higher draft pick.Humans have a really hard time processing probability, it does not come natural. This is especially the case in stochastic or markov sense. When it comes to tanking, I think people are too biased because the championship is low probability to begin with. When people are met with a low probability decision, they typically will favor of a wider range of possibilities.....even if the initial low probability was the best you would get.
A good example of this is the situation where you're down 2 points on the last possession. Traditionally, teams would favor shooting a 2....but the stats would say you should shoot a 3. Even though your chances of losing in regulation are higher, the chances of winning the game as a whole are higher. Tanking is not the same as going for the 2, but it invokes a similar kind of decision.
How many teams fit y'alls definition of purgatory of the past 10 or so years?
How long do you have to be in the win/seed range of a purgatory team to be considered in purgatory?
How long do you have to be in the win/seed range of a purgatory team to be considered in purgatory?
Hearsky
Well-Known Member
I think most NBA teams are trying to make money. Championships are a nice side benefit. I think most hardcore fans only see championships. The average fan is more than willing to support teams like the Jazz that have never won a championship and won't in the foreseeable future, but put out a nice competitive product by making the playoffs more often than not. Especially in a small market like SLC that doesn't have any real entertainment competition. Would you say LHM was a successful NBA owner, even though his team never achieved a championship? I would say he was wildly successful with his six million dollar investment.
seattlejazzfan
Well-Known Member
it's not mutually exclusive, my friend. you can make money and win championships. that should be and is the goal of every nba team. there is a reason Ainge traded rudy and don. he wasn't satisfied with the status quo - to be sure, he wasn't satisfied with just making money. thank goodness.
you go be a fan of portland. must be a blast
It also helped they were absolutely pathetic in the playoffs. Wasnt really a hard decision.
That's one of the things I was thinking of.
I've provided a forward-looking analysis here (if you have a certain record now, what's your future likely to look like.) But you could also go backward based on the idea that the only thing that counts is championships (see what kind of records NBA champions had in the years that preceded their championships).
This would actually be much easier, since there's only a relatively few teams that have actually won championships over the past 20 or 30 years. (But that also means it's probably less statistically reliable -- that is, it's based on much smaller sample sizes and situations that may or may not be replicable for other teams). You could do it probably pretty easily. Or maybe if I have time, I might get to it some time.
As I implied to my response to @Pinhead, yeah championships are the really interesting things. Problem is there's very likely too few teams that have actually won them to actually figure out a reliable path toward one. They probably each have their own ideosyncracies (which would kind of strengthen my point that there's not just one path). But if anyone can figure out a record-based path that likely leads to a championship, I'm willing to be persuaded.
I'm pretty sure I've been hearing "purgatory" a lot more than "hell" in how people talk about things. But in any case, I think the data here seem to indicate that the around-.500 records (which you seem to be focusing on) are really not any worse place to be than most other places. Sure, it's not as good as an above .600 record, but it's really no worse than having a bad record.
Yes, this is exactly what I think the analysis seems to imply (or at least the interpretation I take from the data). It's not the record that's most important. It's having a good foundation in place that likely has the biggest impact.
Right. The plan/path is more important than the record. The only place I think we might (slightly) disagree is in what the appropriate definition of "blowing it up" is. It's not going to be the same, necessarily, for every team's situation.
But I do agree that this summer has been a very appropriate time for the Jazz to blow it up.
Yes, I agree. That's probably where correctly identifying the best path for your own team comes in. The biggest problem I see in trying to do this additional analysis is small sample sizes. We're already dealing with fairly small sample sizes in the analysis I've done (as well as coming up with a definition of small, medium, and large that everyone agrees on when it comes to NBA markets). And how far back can you go to get the proper sample size. Has the situation (with how teams strategize, the draft lottery, the relative monetary rewards for winning and losing, etc.) changed enough that what may apply for the 1980s no longer applies in the 2020s, for example?
And then you have other confounding factors. Let's take the latest Lakers championship, for example. Would you say that that happened because they properly recognized that they needed to be bad before they built back up to good again? Or would you say that they were just fortunate that they're the Lakers in LA and Lebron wanted to go there and then that Lebron had enough power to force AD onto the team? If you look at the trajectory of their record just by the numerical data, the first explanation looks possible, but in reality the second explanation may be better. The statistical data can't easily tell the difference between the two.