From: terry@garfield.Stanford.EDU (Terry Wong)
Subject: Re: Some Warriors jokes
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 08:51:18 GMT

In article <1993Jan26.204543.13150@cs.ucla.edu>, cheese@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Charles Alpert) writes:

|> 
|> Oh boy, I'm licking my chops at this one.  What is Hardaway now,
|> 2nd in the league in assists.  He's also 2nd in the league in minutes
|> played.  Let's look at the league leaders in minutes/game:
|> 
|> Mullin		1662
|> Hardaway	1646
|> Jordan		1539
|> Pippen		1526
|> 
|> Wow, Mullin and Hardaway have quite a lead.  I don't want to bother
|> figuring out how many more minutes Hardaway has than any other point
|> guard, but it's got to be around 200, and it probably averages around
|> 300 (e.g. Stockton's minutes are 1350).  Thus, I think a comparison of
|> assists totals would be more accurate if we consider assists/48
|> minutes.  I'll also add FG% for fun.  Here's a partial incomplete list:
|> 
|> Stockton	17.21	45.7 %
|> A Johnson	13.80	51.0 %
|> M Bogues	12.66	47.4 %
|> Hardaway	12.56	43.7 %  OUCH !!
|> Douglas		11.95	44.6 %
|> H Williams	11.82	42.5 %  YIKES !!
|> Skiles		11.75	49.3 %
|> Price		11.75	51.8 %
|> G Grant		11.49	37.6 %  But he's a backup
|> Anthony		11.33	38.8 %  (Another Hardaway in the making)
|> Thomas		11.20	41.8 %  Can we stick a fork in him?
|> Murdock		11.00	46.6 %
|> Wiley		10.98	32.1 % (but just 81 FGA. and 81 assists)
|> Adams		10.86	43.9 %
|> 


Chuck, you have made a good point that Hardaway shoots too much and
needs to try and pass the ball more.  But due to whatever obsessive
bias you possess, you have gone way overboard and 
your arguments are starting to look stupid.

I think you take the cake when it comes to mindless and selective
use of statistics. 
Sure, Hardaway handles the ball more than
these other guys, but he also scores a lot more.  He's averaging
nearly 23 points per game as well as over 11 assists per game.


|> But the Warriors suck right?  He has to shoot!  Which Warriors
|> shoot better than Hardaway?  How about Mullin, Owens, Marciulionis,
|> Sprewell, Jennings, Hill, Grayer, Gatling, Alexander, Houston,
|> Pressey, Lister.  The only Warriors that shoot worse are Buechler
|> (barely) and Nealy.  12 Guys shoot better than hardaway (2 being
|> hurt)!!  12 !!  There is absolutely no question that Hardaway
|> hurts the Warriors by his gunning.   He is one of the worst
|> shooters on the Warriors.  He is one of the poorer shooting 
|> point guards in the league.  At least most of the other point
|> guards who can't shoot don't shoot.  His assists totals are 
|> nothing special.  He clearly has the talent to become the best
|> point guard in the NBA if he simply took fewer and better shots.
|> His assists would go up, his FG% would climb and the Warriors
|> would win a lot more.  Right now he's not even close.
|> 
|> Price, Stockton, A Johnson, Payton are all clearly having
|> much better years.
|> 
|

Anyone who says that Hardaway is a worse shooter than Tyrone Hill, Owens,
Jeff Grayer, Gatling, Alexander, Houston, Pressey, and Lister is
either (a) somebody who has never actually watched the Warriors play
or (b) a total idiot who knows nothing about basketball.

Here again you have selectively used statistics without the aid of
any thought to skew the facts.
If you knew anything about basketball, you would know that FG% is not
a good indication of shooting ability.  A player's FG% has a lot to
do with the range and difficulty of his shots, and the role that
he has on the team.  The players with the best FG% are generally big
guys who score a lot on layups, tip-ins, and short jumpers.  Just look
at last year's leaders in FG%.  The top 3 were Buck Williams at 0.604,
Otis Thorpe at 0.592, and Horace Grant at 0.578.  Nobody in their
right mind would mistake these guys for great shooters.   Chris Mullin,
probably the best shooter in the NBA is 19th on the list at 0.524.

Anybody who knows the Warriors would say that only Chris Mullin,
Marciulionis, and possibly Sprewell are the only outside shooters
that are better than Hardaway.  And there is nobody other than
Marciulionis that is a better penetrator to the hoop.

For the Warriors to be successful, Tim Hardaway has to score a lot of 
points.

|>  The spirit of the joke was he's never coached a team to
|> the NBA finals in many years of coaching, hence putting him up
|> there with the coaching elite is a crock.  But the media does,
|> he won coach of the year last year and at least one other time.

Actually, Nelson has won the award 3 times.  Coaching the
Warriors with the level of talent they had last year to 55 games
was an incredible coaching feat.  He is also 8th on the all-time
list of career coaching wins and 2nd on the active list.  It is not
only the media, but people in the know such as other coaches and
GM's in the NBA who revere Nelson as one of the best.  I think that
I would rather believe in their opinions than in those of a person
who has already clearly demonstrated his ignorance.

|> 
|> There's no question he's a lousy GM.  Everyone talks about how
|> he does so well with so little talent.  Well why does he have so
|> little talent?  Whose fault is that?  Anyone can build a .500
|> ball club with no chance to contend.  Look at what they're doing
|> in Philly.
|> 

Mediocre, yes, but you are really stretching it by saying that
Nelson is a lousy GM.   Certainly, there are many GM's around the NBA that
have done a far worse job.  Nelson has had his share of both
successes and failures.  

|> Finally, as far as Nelson's "coaching ability", why on earth
|> do Mullin and Hardaway have 100 more minutes logged in than
|> Jordan?  

Nelson himself would agree with you that Mullin and Hardaway need
to play fewer minutes.  However, the Warriors are not that deep
a team and they would have to sacrifice some wins to rest Mullin
and Hardaway more.  At the beginning of this season, Nelson stated
that one of his primary goals was to reduce the minutes of both of
these guys.  However, events conspired against his plans.  First,
Marciulionis and then Jennings were injured, so there went Hardaway's
rest time.  Also, without Marciulionis and Owens, the Warriors need
Mullin's scoring. 


					terry@garfield.Stanford.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.pro