The Shrine

Since Warriors actually have a legitimate shot at breaking the Bull's 72 wins in regular season record there's a lot of buzz. What I don't get is all the guys, including the players/analysts/whatever that are saying championship matters more than records, and someone will always bring up that nobody remembers the Patriots when they choked in Superbowl despite being 16-0. It's like by mentioning that shows you do remember they went 16-0 and choked at Superbowl, and I sure have no idea who won the Superbowl that year but I know the Patriots choked after going 16-0. These things aren't even an either/or proposition to begin with, as in there's no guaranteed not going 16-0 means you win the Superbowl. I guess you can frame it as an either/or question if say some team was going for a record hardcore and then have someone injured for the season, but I don't know of any team that's actually dumb enough to do that. The only thing I can think of was one year the Showtime Laker had some hardcore practice for a finals they're expected to win and then I think Magic Johnson and a few guys got injured during practice and they end up losing the finals, and that's got nothing to do with going for a record and it does illustrate how dumb you'd have to be to have something like that happen in the first place.

As a sidenote, the Warrior's dominance is forcing the analytics guys to come up with reason explaining why the Warriors are that dominant because they actually fall behind Spurs in point differential which I guess is supposed to be the Holy Grail of analytics. I mean, the Spurs are likely historically great, but the Warrior's record is currently unprecedented, and if you listen to the analytics it's supposed to be the Spurs that are chasing for 73 wins even though they obviously have no shot at that record. I get that points differential is probably a very good starting place for team strength, but I think Spurs pretty much run up the score similar to how in college football back when the automatic rankings use margin of victory as part of the ranking and you see people run up the score on purpose. Of course, I doubt Spurs are doing that to appear more powerful in some hypothetical ranking, but they literally have a ton of relatively old guys who are chasing rings who are actually pretty decent and want to prove they still got it, so the Spurs's second unit tends to continue to build a lead even after a game is decided, while Warrior's bench is pretty average and generally doesn't expand a lead because there's no reason to play that aggressively while you're already ahead by 15. Obviously having a strong bench helps, though both traditional stuff and analytics tend to agree that a strong bench is overrated in playoffs just because the starters play more at that point.

I think the Giants won that Super Bowl? With the famed helmet catch?

Ive been paying attention to see if the Warriors set the record, but it doesnt look too likely anymore. They need to win out! It'll be a big game against the Spurs tonight, but i wonder if both teams are sitting starters and not taking it seriously..

I really don't pay too much attention about football, but I'm pretty sure more people will remember the Patriots choked after going 16-0 compared to a random Superbowl winner of a particular year, and I certainly don't know the Superbowl winner the year the Patriots choked. Looking at the discussion for this online it reminds me of something in Hunter X Hunter where they talked about how Leorio always pick the 'bad, but there's a silver lining' choice, which is pretty much exactly the case here. I mean, losing in a regular season should never be considered a good thing, but Spurs have almost a cult following where losing is no big deal if the silver lining is that you get rest. Of course, the Spurs had a 1st round loss last year that's pretty much because of their inferior seeding (determined solely by regular season record) since there's almost no way the Spurs would not have finished as the #2 seed if they weren't habitually throwing away games in the name of rest, and that would've avoided Clippers in first round let alone playing the Clippers without the home court advantage.

There's an article I saw on the Patriots that said their dominance is somewhat self-reinforcing because all the extra postseason games they play means they can hold more practices (NFL limits the number of practices you can hold during a season) and having more games/practices makes your guys more experienced at doing just about anything, and I find that to be a quite compelling argument especially if you're talking about a team that is still growing. Sure maybe someone breaks their leg in practice but in general having more experience as long as you're not ancient like Tim Duncan is supposed to be a good thing. I guess according to all the experts, after the Warriors are 69-7 they should have just played all benchwarmers for the next 6 games and finish 69-13 and, assuming that in reality Warriors do finish the season without any significant new injuries (they're not really playing any different than normal, other than perhaps the fact Warriors sucked recently may have led to starters playing a bit more), this hypothetical world where Warriors purposely lost the last 6 games makes them more powerful than anyone else can possibly imagine. Oh, and by finishing 69-13 that gives Spurs a nonzero chance of getting the #1 seed, which is probably still the #1 most easily measureable effect in terms of increase your chance of winning. Or, put it another way, I've seen all kinds of stats, old school or new, that turns out to be misleading or overrated during playoffs. But nobody I know of says having an extra home game is overrated and it's certainly not misleading. It is a material advantage your team has that the other team has, and while that doesn't guaranteed victory, you're certainly always better off having the home court advantage than not. I mean, I get why people are scared, as in even if you're a Warriors fan you should know that there's a very good chance to fail at beating the all time 72-10 record so as a safety mechanism you'd say something like 'oh I don't care about 73 wins as long as we get the ring'. But throwing the last 6 games on purpose has no material impact on your ability to win the playoffs to begin with. I remember Cavs and Rockets had like a 25 game winning streak or whatever in one year and the same fans/experts say that the Rockets flamed out and the Cavs choked in finals because they spent too much energy on winning 20+ games in a row. So again according to both fans/experts both team should've purposely lose games when seeding is nowhere near locked in case they end up winning too many games in a row!

Then again, this is probably why you have manga like One Outs where in a playoff race, the main character's team gives up 67 runs in one game against their divisional rival with their ace pitching (who normally has an ERA of 0.XX) that game, and must win the next 3 games in a row and we see the main character laughing because he got his opponent exactly where he want them, because scoring 67 runs apparently tires out the other team from running around the bases so much that this sealed their fate, and I actually see discussion on this stuff that thinks this is a totally plausible strategy.