Handlogten's Heros
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I understand that. I think measures like Raptor are useful for player projections but can have deficiencies in projecting team performance. I get that a player can have both good and bad games but Mike is a very steady force for good. I think THT has some wild swings and so does Collin but since our margins are pretty thin here those swings will end up costing us games.When Mike is out and we lose closely, yeah it's going to feel like we could have won with him. But what people don't think about is that there will also be games that Mike does play and plays poorly. Even if one player is better than the other, he's not playing better 100% of the time and even if he does it might not make the difference between W/L. Take two parallel universes where we have Mike and we don't have Mike. There will be times where it doesn't matter because both he and his replacement both play well or both play poorly and it doesn't change the result. There will be times where Mike plays better than the replacement, and it makes the difference. There will also be times where he plays better and it doesn't make the difference between winning and losing. There will also be times where the placement, even if he's worse overall, will perform better than Mike and it could make the difference. You have to consider all that, not just the times where Mike plays better and it makes the difference. It's very easy to look back at a game and say, "ah we would have won with Mike".
Dismiss it because "math" if you want, but Mike would have to have a superstar level impact to make a 5 game difference in 32 games. RAPTOR had 6 guys total in the NBA produce at that level last season. Say that's totally off and there's actually 5x more players who can do that in the league. Is Mike a top 30 player right now? I don't think he's close. 10x more players that can do that, he's still not close to being a top 60 player. I think he's actually pretty similar to Collin Sexton's level, who we are 5-8 without btw. I think the impact of losing Conley would be very similar to losing Sexton. The bench would drop, and that would make a difference, but probably not a ton. This is also assuming we get no player back better than THT.
Numbers aren't everything of course, but I won't dismiss them unless there is something overwhelming that overrides that. And all of this just to bring up the real question, do we care if we win 1, 3, or even 5 more games with Mike? If we do win 5 more with Mike, do we actually want to win those 5 games anyways? You can be dead set that Mike wins us a lot more games, but that also servers as legitimate rationale as to why we SHOULD trade him.
The example that illustrates how I think on this is Bogey and the Denver series. If Bogey plays in that series I am fairly certain everyone here would say we win... likely in 6 games. Does that mean that Bogey is a 23 WAR player? No not at all. Could he make a 2 win difference in a 7 game set? **** yes he could.
13 of our 50 games have been decided by 3 points or less. We are 7-6 in those games. We should have 8 or so of those games the rest of the year. Could two of those games flip on us without Mike in between now and the end of the year? What happens if we move Mike and Collin or NAW miss 5-6 games? Do 2 or 3 of those games flip.
WS, box plus minus, WAR all that **** is valuable for player comparisons and such but I think the math is imperfect and won't capture exact win/loss effect over a sample of 32 games.
Read my signature... I do see it as a benefit of the trade... I just think its hilarious that folks can't see that Mike helps us win and think its paint by numbers and we will fill the hole he leaves.