Me: My two wings had season highs in turnovers inexplicably, three of their players matched or bested season highs. They weren't playing FCP, their OD was only a meager inept(high) and I've played better teams all year. Even the GS difference was only +1, and my superior players get completely tooled?
Captain Obvious: You lost because you commited too many turnovers. And because your guard shot a low percentage.
Me: Nice job Captain Obvious, and if you hadn't noticed, the other team shot a lower percentage than I did, that had nothing to do with it.
Captain Obvious' Companion: Well he gave you an answer so that must be it. Dur...
Not trying to throw fuel on the fire here, but as somebody looking from the outside in, it doesn't look to me like yours is somehow the obviously superior team. Looking at the match-up ratings, you had an advantage at PF, he had an advantage at C and SF, and PG/SG were about even. Without looking any deeper than HCA, match-up ratings, and a slight GS advantage for your opponent, I think people in general would probably predict this to be a close game, maybe 60/40 in favor of the home team. So I don't think this game was some kind of massive upset.
Additionally, I'd dispute that you've played better teams all year: with the exception of 7ward, I would say that you'd played pretty much the scrubs of your league up until the game against Newark. And even in the game against 7ward, it looks like both his SG and SF are scorers more than anything. So I would guess that until this game, your SG/SF had never played a full game of man-to-man covered by good defensive players. And I would say his players probably are the best defenders you'd seen up to that point; they may not have had quite so many steals before your game but they've both had a few 3-4 steal games previously.
So my impression of this game is that you happened to run a low post offense with your SG/SF/PG matched up against the best individual perimeter defenders they'd seen all season (his PG also looks like a decent defender), and your perimeter players (who look more scoring focused vs moving the ball into the post focused) ended up having trouble getting the ball inside, and had to settle for tough shots.
(edit)
Re: the inept(high) OD team rating- Ignoring the fact that inept(high) OD is still better than either inept(low) outside scoring or awful(high) offensive flow, or the fact that the team ratings aren't usually very insightful, while the OD team rating is probably weighted toward the perimeter players, I am pretty sure it also takes into account PF/C outside D to some extent. So the OD
team rating could be dragged down a bit to inept(high) by big men with very poor OD, even if the wings (who are the only ones guarding you in a man-to-man) actually have a higher OD.
Last edited by J-Slo at 2/2/2010 1:13:01 PM