🔥Hot Hand Theory Ep #70🔥 XJ and Geoff dive into the surging Miami Heat and do a deep dive on their early success, including: 🔷Erik Spoelstra's malleability 🔷Noah LaRoche's system 🔷Bam Adebayo's career season 🔷Are the Heat still a move away? Watch: https://t.co/jfVTgy1xOS

I wanna hear what @xavierjdesigns & @GeoffRasmussen_ gotta say about this on @HotHandTheory.

Below is my latest Substack article: Beauty, Bias, and the Breakdown of Employment Law Imagine two different worlds. In the first world, job advertisements are the constitution of hiring. If a skill or trait is legitimate, needed, and job-related, it is written explicitly. If

Almost **never** an acceptable defensive approach, especially when maintained for several mins on end. Just can't play this way unless you're down HUGE and your only chance of winning is your opponent going ice cold on wide open 3s.

SGA decided that after winning MVP, a title, and Finals MVP, he'd become an elite 3-pointer shooter. He's playing at a special level right now https://t.co/eRo8PD7tsO

Close loss, no OG, poor JB effort. Oh well. What DOES matter in the long run (IMO): 1) Ceding open 3's to role players in an effort to stop the stars is typically a bad strategy 2) No matter how well Josh Hart shoots, Mazzulla will live with him being open. Gotta figure that out

As good as Jaylen Brown is, you live with the inevitable isos with Jalen Brunson guarding him. If he cooks he cooks. The Celtics are too good at exploiting this strategy. This will NOT deter them from giving Brown the ball. It will encourage them to set up open 3's & rim attacks.

The Knicks blitzed or doubled Jaylen Brown almost exclusively in the 4Q. The Celtics gladly obliged. In an attempt to "get the ball out of his hands," the Knicks turned an All-Star level player into one of the most impactful offensive players in the NBA. https://t.co/BFtqQfAzme

Fresh off winning defensive player of the month, Scottie Barnes seals a much-needed Raptors' victory with a huge block on Deni Avdija https://t.co/dmtjzW524Y

Jamal Shead, who has been excellent guarding on the ball this season, shows his off-ball chops here negating a Donovan Clingan before going coast to coast for the and-1 https://t.co/ks3vRlPnfD

One of my favorite watches right now, Bam is a unique player and Herro adds a new level

The Heat are 24th in OREB%--part of the reason Noah LaRoche's system emphasizes the short midrange (Miami leads the NBA in attempts from 5-9 feet) is to create more offensive rebounds. They can get more of their own misses and they'll make more 3's. Their offense should improve.

Are we supposed to just forget that he tried this in a playoff series and then ducked the media after it didn't go his way lmao

Noah Clowney with the poster of the night Holy shit 😲 https://t.co/OZOu6a8Mdm

There are far more examples of this general idea. All of this is to say: we need to put an end to the idea that analytics are anathema to watching and loving the game. It’s a guide, not a fence. We just need to have the humility to acknowledge the limitations of our intuition.

For eg: say someone with an elite eye watched two players navigating screens. It’s definitely plausible they could say, “player A is superior as a screen navigator than player B.” But to what degree? And how much should screen navigation be indexed when discussing overall impact?

There’s another level to this. I believe certain people are more gifted than others at watching. Some just have a natural eye. But even if they knew exactly what to watch…how would they possibly know how deduce relative value without data? It’s like Charlie trying to count gas.

Yet somehow this NEVER gets talked about. “The stuff stats can’t see” typically ends up being remarkably tangible and relatively superfluous. It’s only when you have a true understanding of the data that you understand just how impactful that elite shooter moving off the ball is.

The most essential form of passive impact is the ability to be guarded and monitor attention without the ball. Across 100’s of possessions non-stars will play off-ball for a large majority of them. Disallowing your defender from pre-rotating is a micro-transaction that adds up.

Some feel they can get a sense for who is helping intangibly. “Player Y does so many things that don’t show up in the box score.” But the data helps us understand what forms of passive impact are the best. Hint: it’s not diving for a loose ball or fighting for an extra rebound.

For eg: many eye test folks judge defense on what is happening on the ball. “Player X is getting cooked.” The best metrics show a high correlation between elite individual defense & high off-ball impact. Stunts to negate advantages, making multiple rotations in a possession, etc.