The Boxscore Geeks Show: Hot Starts, Steve Nash, and 'Simple' Stats

This Week's Show

We talk about Anthony Davis' hot start to the season, Steve Nash's greatness, and why stats are hard.

Hosts

Sources

Video Show

This Week's Poll

Also, last week's poll ended up a draw! Good job Klay!

Show Notes

Anthony Davis and Hot Starts

Anthony Davis' current stat-line is ridiculously impressive. In fact, in the modern era, only two other players have matched it. Guess who!

The MVP award requires you to be on a contender. But with how Anthony Davis is playing, could he break the streak of needing 50 wins to get an MVP nod?

Speaking of surprising starts. As of this writing, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade are playing at star level, while LeBron and Love are not.

Of course, we've seen players start surprisingly. Chris Kaman started hot before regressing in Dallas.

Al Harrington was once playing at "George Karl MVP level" (that is, "average").

Basically, it's hard to tell with small samples, and easy to overreact to stuff fresh in our minds. We'll have to wait and see.

Steve Nash and 'Simple' Stats

Steve Nash's facebook post on his injuries is heart-wrenching to read.

Based on Nash's points, the Mavs had an interesting point when they let Nash go. Essentially, it wasn't a question of if Nash could have kept playing ball, but whether he should have.

I wrote a long post comparing Steve Nash to Kobe Bryant. It's really difficult to notice the small things that make Nash one of the greatest ever, and Kobe's not at the same level.

Of course, this point was made long ago (about baseball) in the book "Wages of Wins."

Well, let's look at batting average. We see that Cobb's lifetime mark was 0.366. When Gwynn retired his career mark was 0.338. So Cobb hit safely 37% of the time while Gwynn hit safely on 34% of his at bats. If all you did was watch these players, could you say who was a better hitter? Can one really tell the difference between 37% and 34% just staring at the players play? To see the problem with the non-numbers approach to player evaluation, consider that out of every 100 at bats, Cobb got three more hits than Gwynn. That's it, three hits. If you saw every at bat for both players, could you see this difference?

We also talk the issue with athletes being honest with the media. Alex Kennedy summed it up best.

Shout Outs

Steve Nash(@SteveNash), of course!

I just watched ESPN's 30 for 30 on the Pistons aka the "Bad Boys". I have to give Bill Laimbeer a shout out for his great interviewing, great play, and the phantom call.

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