The Return of QFTR: What's Cooking at one of the World's Most Sophisticated and Important Basketball Sites
Quest for the Ring (QFTR) the Site that explains in detail how high level basketball games are won and lost) is gradually coming back to life during October 2011 after a shutdown that lasted about 2 1/2 months. October will be a partial return and things will probably be kind of sluggish in October. But by sometime in the first half of November 2011 QFTR will be back to producing at standard speed. By sometime in the second half of November or at the very latest by the first of January 2012 QFTR will be in overdrive (producing at about 25% higher than standard speed). Overdrive will continue until the entire production deficit is wiped out. We strongly suspect that we will be able to wipe out the deficit by the end of 2012. So in other words 2012 is scheduled to be a very, very productive year here at QFTR, both because we are more productive than ever and because production time will be 25% higher than before.
Unlike previous temporary shutdowns, this time the exact reasons for the shutdown were posted; see them in this Report. As with previous temporary shutdowns, the reasons for the shutdown were (a) completely beyond our control (meaning we are not in any way responsible!) and were (b) due to the failure of others to produce a competent, reliable service or product and were (c) due to losses and threats and mayhem created in the wake of the failures. To put it simply and using an analogy, there were big or huge messes created that we had to clean up.
HIGH LEVEL TEXT REPORTS
QFTR is introducing a new designator for the type of Report that (a) is at the very core of the reason for being of the Site, that (b) is ultimately the most important type of Report that we do (but keep in mind that there are other types of Reports that themselves are more important and useful than anything you see on most other basketball sites) and that (c) we wish we had far, far more time to produce. This type of Report is non-formatted and basically consists of text discussion supplemented by evidence. The evidence is often mathematical / statistical in nature.
As you are probably already aware, what we are doing with this project is determining and explaining exactly how basketball games (especially high level ones) are won and lost. So the type of Report referred to here is one that directly discusses the latest information we have about that core mission.
The new designator will be “High Level Text Report” or HLTR for short. In the future, if time ever permits we might go back into the archives and label the existing HLTRs as such. Google blogger has a built in labeling system that has never been used by QFTR and we are gradually building up motivation to spend a lot of time to retroactively use it.
However, anyone who is smart enough to read an HLTR is also smart enough to find them on his or her own right now. Lists of titles can be used to spot HLTRs and we have several lists of titles systems in place. Or, smart people can use the Google custom search; there are about four search boxes scattered throughout the QFTR home page. Although I can’t guarantee anything regarding Google Search and although in the early years Google completely ignored QFTR, in the last 18 months or so Google has been indexing many QFTR reports into the Google search engine, meaning I presume that the results you get from a custom search are much better now than they used to be.
If it were me looking for stuff I would use BOTH lists of titles AND Google custom search to find what I was looking for at QFTR. For example, after looking through some title lists I might type “point guard” into a custom search box and go from there. On another occasion, I might type “reserves” to see what QFTR has reported about non-starters. On another occasion, I might type “good coaching”. On another occasion, I might type “bad coaching”. And so on and so forth.
Again, HLTRs are NON-formatted (or free-flowing if you prefer). Formatted Reports are very carefully designed, hard wired presentations of information, generally statistical in nature. Real Player Ratings, Real Team Ratings, and Real Coach Ratings are the most important and most common types of formatted Reports. Formatted Reports efficiently and effectively feature a very large amount of information in a small amount of space.
Before we get back to regularly scheduled Reports there will be a High Level Text Report (HLTR) on Rick Carlisle.
SORRY HATERS, BUT QFTR WAS NOT CALLED INTO QUESTION WHEN CARLISLE WON THE 2011 QUEST
One annoying thing about both high level projects in general and about your writer/producer’s production experiences in particular is that things happen on a regular basis that at first glance seem to call into question the whole validity of the project. For many years, I have been thinking of myself as having the “worst luck of anyone”. And also, as being “the victim of my own success”.
For example, we had the 2009 “George Karl miracle” where seemingly by dumb luck Karl and the Nuggets stumbled onto a half way decent strategy and won two playoff series even though we had predicted that he would not win any playoff series that year (back before we realized that no one can possibly reliably predict the future in that way).
What just happened last year is another perfect example. In late 2010 we produced (at very high time cost by the way) and posted a much improved Coach Rating System, backed up by more hard information than ever. With great fanfare, it was reported that there was another current NBA head coach besides George Karl who has a track record as a terrible playoffs coach. And it was Rick Carlisle! Yes, that Rick Carlisle, the one who months later swept one of the all time best basketball coaches Phil Jackson and went on to win the 2011 NBA Championship! And QFTR reported about seven months prior to that that Carlisle was just about the worst playoffs coach in the NBA!
So doesn’t that mean that QFTR is worthless and should be shut down? No, only in the dreams of the haters does that make QFTR worthless.
QFTR CAN NOT BE AND IS NOT IN THE OFFICIAL PREDICTIONS BUSINESS
QFTR is mostly out of the prediction business, not because we don’t stand by our ratings but because the ratings can not officially or automatically predict the future. Players, coaches, managers, and owners sometimes change their ways, sometimes for the worse but more often for the better. Every single rating report we put out tells you how the player, coach, team, manager, or owner did for the time period covered, up to the present. At one time we thought it might be possible, but QFTR no longer pretends to know what is going to happen in the future.
Although basketball is more complicated than most people think it is, it is not so complicated that players, coaches, teams, managers, or owners can not change their ways and suddenly start to win games that they used to lose. Keep in mind that the core objective of QFTR is to tell people exactly how games and playoff series are won and lost. So the whole idea is to get the players, the coaches, the teams, the managers, and the owners who are doing the wrong thing(s) to change their ways and start doing the right thing(s). So for example if a player with a low Real Player Rating or a coach with a low Real Coach Rating changes what he is doing and becomes a much better player or a much better coach than that is exactly what QFTR wants to happen. If players and coaches were rarely going to change QFTR would be much less valuable, but players and coaches can and do change.
We can not and do not pretend to know which players and coaches are going to be smart enough to optimize their games or their coaching in the future. For one thing, we don’t really have any idea how smart these players and coaches are. For example, there have been numerous debates at QFTR headquarters about how smart or dumb Carmelo Anthony is, laugh out loud. And about how smart or dumb LeBron James is, and so on and so forth.
We pretty much know what the CURRENT basketball IQs of Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James etc. are (which by the way puts us way ahead of most other basketball sites) but we can’t predict how those IQs will be changing in the future because for one thing, whether a basketball IQ will go up or not in the future depends on how smart in general someone is and we just don’t have enough solid information on that. I mean, we might think that LeBron James is kind of dumb overall, but we don’t know exactly how dumb he is, and because as mentioned previously basketball is complicated but not extremely complicated, even a relatively dumb but very experienced basketball player might be able to play smarter in the future (because experience playing and winning and losing the game can teach someone the realities and the "secrets" of the game). And the same applies to coaches.
For another thing, we don’t really have any idea whether if those players and coaches and managers and owners did read QFTR whether these people would believe the information or not. (We provide more than enough evidence for everything we claim but chances are you would not believe how many doubting Thomas’s and haters there are out there). Finally, even if a player or coach or manager or owner reads QFTR and believes it, that still doesn’t guarantee they are going to change their ways. They might stick with doing things the wrong way because they think they can’t successfully change, or because they are worried that if they do change they will end up with less playing time, and/or a lower salary, and/or or a greater chance of being traded or fired.
The point is, making predictions about how players or coaches or teams or managers or owners are going to change for the better or worse in the future is a mostly hopeless venture. Back in the early days of QFTR, it was nice to dream that you could predict some of this, but the reality is that you can not very successfully predict any changes in these people and teams.
So official, valid predictions are extremely difficult and so QFTR is just about completely and totally out of the official predictions business. The User Guides to the various QFTR Ratings Reports remind users that players, coaches, teams, managers, and owners can and do change so that the Reports are historical summaries and are not intended to be used for future predictions.
UNOFFICIAL PREDICTIONS
Of course, having said that, the Reports often do accurately and actually predict the future; for example, players with very high Real Player Ratings continue to be very good players in the years that follow. And QFTR can not resist the temptation to unofficially predict the future from time to time. But over the years we have gradually reduced the number of unofficial predictions that me make. We generally only predict the future when we know for sure that a player, coach, team, manager, or owner is so dumb or so stuck in a rut that he, she, or it will not be making any changes for the better (or worse) for the foreseeable future.
RICK CARLISLE
Therefore, when Rick Carlisle won the 2011 Quest for the Ring there was no hand wringing and there were no discussions at QFTR about “what went wrong” or about how QFTR should be shut down. Nothing went wrong because (a) the Real Coach Rating Report in question was the situation as it existed at the time and was not intended to precisely or automatically or officially predict the future and (b) Rick Carlisle could and actually did have a very different team in 2011 than he did in the years when he lost playoff games that he should have won and (c) Rick Carlisle could and actually did change his coaching from when he was losing games he was supposed to win to 2011.
As previously mentioned, before we get back to regularly scheduled Reports we will treat ourselves and our readers to a particularly important High Level Text Report (HLTR) on Rick Carlisle. We are determining and will be reporting exactly how Rick Carlisle’s 2011 Dallas Mavericks team was different from his 2002 Detroit Pistons team when Carlisle lost a series to the Boston Celtics 4-1 that he should have won by about 4-3. And we are determining and will be reporting exactly how Rick Carlisle changed his coaching from the one year and team to the other.
So we are actually quite happy that the Real Coach Rating Report from late 2010 reported Carlisle as almost as bad as George Karl and then nevertheless Carlisle won the 2011 Quest. This allows us to efficiently and effectively make progress on the core mission: to explain exactly how high level basketball games and playoff series are won and lost. So don’t miss the Report on Rick Carlisle that will be posted in early October.
RICK CARLISLE VERSUS GEORGE KARL
The Real Coach Ratings Report from late 2010 identified Rick Carlisle and George Karl as the worst playoffs coaches in the League: two peas in a pod statistically. But had we been asked at the time for an official statement, we would have stated that we are virtually 100% certain that George Karl can not possibly win the Quest but that we can’t know with that kind of certainty whether Carlisle will ever win the Quest or not. There is a very simple reason for this. At that time (and to a lesser extent right now) we knew George Karl in much more detail than we knew Rick Carlisle. So we would have said (and indirectly did say in the User Guide) that it is quite unlikely but not at all impossible that Carlisle will someday win the Quest.
So in general we can not and do not make official predictions. The one current exception is that, yes, we unofficially AND officially predict that George Karl can not ever and will not ever win The Quest for the Ring. At the moment, Karl is the only player, coach, manager or owner for which we will issue that statement. In the future, expect that it will be as rare as it is now. It’s not only that we know exactly what Karl does wrong. It’s also that we know Karl well enough to know that he REJECTS the strategies and tactics that allow players and teams and teams to win The Quest for the Ring. And we know that Karl is very stubborn about his beliefs in this area. Unless Karl radically changes (which is close to impossible) he will continue to follow bad and inferior strategies and tactics and will continue to refuse to follow good strategies and tactics for as long as he works in basketball. Right now we can’t say anything like that about any other coach.
By the way and for the record, at this point, QFTR has already in five years been so useful and successful overall that there is probably nothing that could happen (short of the end of the world or at least the end of the US) which would warrant even a discussion about shutting QFTR down. Not so long ago, specifically when the Denver Nuggets were chock loaded with offensive talent (before most of them left town for one reason or another) QFTR was theoretically in some jeopardy, but at this point, even if George Karl did win The Quest for the Ring we would most likely NOT shut down QFTR.
THE RETURN OF QFTR: REPORTS ON THE WAY
When the shutdown struck we were roughly two thirds of the way through posting the final 2010-11 Real Player Ratings by team. We will soon be posting the remaining teams (the ones alphabetically following Oklahoma Thunder). Besides those team Ratings Reports, we will be posting, during October and into November as necessary:
--How Dallas Mavericks Coach Rick Carlisle Went From Worst to First
--Real Player Ratings for NBA Players League Wide, Final 2010-11 Ratings
--Total Real Production of NBA Players League Wide, Final 2010-11 Ratings
--NBA Players Rated and Ranked by the Real Quality of Their Offense, 2010-11 Season, League Wide
--NBA Players Rated and Ranked by the Real Quality of Their Defense, 2010-11 Season, League Wide
--NBA Point Guards Final Real Player Ratings and Real Player Production, 2010-11
--NBA Point Guards Final Offensive and Defensive Sub Ratings, 2010-11
--NBA Shooting Guards Final Real Player Ratings and Real Player Production, 2010-11
--NBA Shooting Guards Final Offensive and Defensive Sub Ratings, 2010-11
--NBA Small Forwards Final Real Player Ratings and Real Player Production, 2010-11
--NBA Small Forwards Final Offensive and Defensive Sub Ratings, 2010-11
--NBA Power Forwards Final Real Player Ratings and Real Player Production, 2010-11
--NBA Power Forwards Final Offensive and Defensive Sub Ratings, 2010-11
--NBA Centers Final Real Player Ratings and Real Player Production, 2010-11
--NBA Centers Final Offensive and Defensive Sub Ratings, 2010-11
ENTIRE PROJECTS HAVE BEEN SLASHED AND BURNED!
I am happy to report that whatever needed to be cut in other Quest Internet projects (up to and including entire projects) has been cut to pave the way for the full preservation of this project. I’ll be damned if the failures of electric power, computer systems and services, or even the collapse of parts of society are going to leave me with no Internet production at all. I take a lot from the Internet and one way or another I am going to give something valuable back.
So welcome back y’all to Quest for the Ring (QFTR): “The World’s Most Sophisticated Basketball Site”.
POST SCRIPT
I am so happy that so many Nuggets players have escaped the George Karl trap. But J.R. Smith took it a little too far for my tastes by escaping the whole freaking country. He went to China. What bugs me is that since China likes to hide things and since I don't know Chinese I tend to doubt I am going to be able to track exactly how Smith is doing over there. (But if anyone among those who can't understand Chinese can dig that up it will be me). But I was looking forward to tracking J.R. Smith on a NBA team other than the Denver Nuggets and now I get denied that anticipated delight. So I am a little pissed, but just a little because at least he escaped George Karl, laugh out loud.