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Friday, June 03, 2011
“Championship-caliber chemistry”
Those words, or words to that effect, were uttered by former NBA player Derek Harper a few minutes ago on WFAN(*). He said this with respect to the Mavs, and gave some other example of them coming from behind against Portland. But, he also said, games are so close that anything can happen.
(*) Why I was listening to WFAN is really uninteresting. I was bored, NPR was boring, ESPN was boring, and WFAN I had hopes for.
And, that, I think, is what fans wrestle with. On the one hand, they accept that you have two high-caliber teams (Heats, Mavs), and so, if you base it strictly “on paper” and ask the fans to give odds, they’ll give… whatever it is. (According to this, and if I understand how to interpret -180/+160, it’s 63/37 for the Heat.) But, then they want to throw in some gut instinct number. This “championship-caliber chemistry”. Since Harper is betting on the Mavs, he must be giving at least a 14% point swap (to put Mavs at 51/49 over Heat).
That is one enormous amount of chemistry to bet on. I don’t know how the odds would change if say the Heat’s 3rd best player were to go down, but I’m guessing we’d see a 14% drop in win% (for the series… implying 7% for each game). So, that’s what Harper is saying… that “chemistry” can be traded for mid-level talent.
I’m not saying he’s right, and I’m not saying he’s wrong. But, he is saying that he, Harper, has been able to spot this chemistry parameter, and that relative to the Heat, the Mavs have oodles of it, enough that whatever the bookmakers think (and they presumably also factor in “chemistry"), it’s alot more than others think.
The problem: if the Heat win, then Harper will just say that “anything can happen”, since you have two evenly matched teams (if you consider chemistry). And if the Mavs win, then Harper will point to the fact of chemistry. Even though, sans chemistry, the Mavs still had a 37% chance of winning to begin with. But, the chemistry-crowd will be emboldened. And the media will definitely sing the praise of chemistry over talent.
We’ll be seeing this motif until the day we die.
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