The most insane NBA stat of the moment

[D.o.s.]

Math is hard.

[celticsclay]

Math is hard.

so is being nice to other people for some reason

[celticsclay]

Math is hard.

Since you are so smart please find me another time period when 7 teams combined to win 1 out of 49 games and not one of them had lost more than 9 in a row. I will give you 15 tommy points over the next couple of days. If you can't you can apologize for being a jerk

[fantankerous]

I don't see why the burden of proof should be on others to prove the significance of your point.  You've taken one vapid fact and invested it with a significance I highly doubt it deserves.  If you wish to convince others that they should take it seriously, you do the research. 

[celticsclay]

I don't see why the burden of proof should be on others to prove the significance of your point.  You've taken one vapid fact and invested it with a significance I highly doubt it deserves.  If you wish to convince others that they should take it seriously, you do the research.

I have looked at a number of years at the standings ( I can only find the end of years numbers easily) and haven't been able to find anything close to this. To some (including myself) it may seem interesting that 7 teams have combined to win less than 10% of their games over a 50 game period, especially when there has been substantial talk on this board on how the Celtics matched up with the bottom teams of the league and the likelihood of the Celtics getting a top pick.

If people are not interested then they can say they don't find it interesting or not post at all. Also people can provide counter arguments or points like a few posters did in this thread (which i appreciated). Too come on and say something condescending about math and offer nothing else to the conversation is just the kind of crap that ruins discussions. If the poster is so smart and this is so common he should be able to find something comparable pretty easily.

Regardless, I don't get the sense of why people would be rude over this kind of topic. It is actually just debating math. Not a player. I didn't insult any teams or players. I just debated the likelyhood of a mathematical event.

[marlon.oddo]

Look, there was nothing wrong with the original post.  It is a pretty obscure stat.  If it's accurate, what does it mean?  The obvious answer is there a lot of bad teams.  Are there more bad teams this year than other years?  Who knows?  Why are the teams bad?  Well, a lot of teams have had injuries to star players (Kobe, Melo -should be included, Jennings all gone for the season).  I'm not sure what else that stat would illuminate.

[Fafnir]

Math is hard.

so is being nice to other people for some reason

Taking some criticism of a post/idea you spent some time working on, the hardest thing of all.

[Moranis]

I guess people don't really realize or appreciate how crazy a collective streak this is.

I don't know how crazy it is, but it would help if you gave some comparisons, is there a record for this kind of thing?  How does it compare to other times?  Otherwise it just seems like a very random stat.

The way I think about it, usually after the 1st day of the season, there's a combined 15 game losing streak out there, so I'm not really wrapping my head around what makes this special.

Poking around the wayback machine a little with the NBA standings page (is there a better way to do this?), it doesn't seem like this is anything that special.  Just last year on 3/24/14, Detroit, Milwaekee, Philly, and Orlando had a combined 45 game losing streak, and you could add a couple other teams (to match the 6 teams in the OPs example) on 2 game skids to make it 49.  I'm sure with a little digging just around teams with 20+ game losing streaks, you can find several more examples of such combined losing streaks.

BDM thanks for taking the time to look that up. TP for you. Again like with the other poster that is a streak primarily made from one team (Philly 24 games).

go back 2 days earlier https://web.archive.org/web/20140322124615/http://www.nba.com/standings/team_record_comparison/conferenceNew_Std_Cnf.html?ls=iref:nba:gnav and you have 6 teams all on at least 4 game losing streaks. 

A couple of days before that, 5 teams with losing streaks of at least 5 games  https://web.archive.org/web/20140319103224/http://www.nba.com/standings/team_record_comparison/conferenceNew_Std_Cnf.html?ls=iref:nba:gnav

[celticsclay]

Math is hard.

so is being nice to other people for some reason

Taking some criticism of a post/idea you spent some time working on, the hardest thing of all.

fafnir you are a moderator so I hope you get this point. I haven't gotten chance to read Moranis' math below. I very well could be wrong about this, and while it would be a bit of a bummer to find out, if Moranis showed me I was incorrect I can respect that and in the end am happier for learning. Moranis' and other posters that responded with actual discussion and figures is why i spend time here.

I like to hear other people's opinions and I really don't mind being wrong (although obviously I would prefer being right). What I do have a problem with is someone just swinging by with some insulting one liner and contributing nothing to the conversation. That kind of stuff just makes the board worse and less enjoyable for everyone. I am sure I have probably done it myself before, and it is not the end of the world, but also isn't a behavior that should be supported or commended on the forum. TP's to the people that made it a useful discussion.

[Eddie20]

Rondo is 1 for 9 from the FT line in January. I thought that's where this was going.

[celticsclay]

I guess people don't really realize or appreciate how crazy a collective streak this is.

I don't know how crazy it is, but it would help if you gave some comparisons, is there a record for this kind of thing?  How does it compare to other times?  Otherwise it just seems like a very random stat.

The way I think about it, usually after the 1st day of the season, there's a combined 15 game losing streak out there, so I'm not really wrapping my head around what makes this special.

Poking around the wayback machine a little with the NBA standings page (is there a better way to do this?), it doesn't seem like this is anything that special.  Just last year on 3/24/14, Detroit, Milwaekee, Philly, and Orlando had a combined 45 game losing streak, and you could add a couple other teams (to match the 6 teams in the OPs example) on 2 game skids to make it 49.  I'm sure with a little digging just around teams with 20+ game losing streaks, you can find several more examples of such combined losing streaks.

BDM thanks for taking the time to look that up. TP for you. Again like with the other poster that is a streak primarily made from one team (Philly 24 games).

go back 2 days earlier https://web.archive.org/web/20140322124615/http://www.nba.com/standings/team_record_comparison/conferenceNew_Std_Cnf.html?ls=iref:nba:gnav and you have 6 teams all on at least 4 game losing streaks. 

A couple of days before that, 5 teams with losing streaks of at least 5 games  https://web.archive.org/web/20140319103224/http://www.nba.com/standings/team_record_comparison/conferenceNew_Std_Cnf.html?ls=iref:nba:gnav

Moranis those links aren't loading for me, but I will take your word for it that is happened before. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Maybe in a few more days if everyone keeps losing it will truly actually be historic.

[Fafnir]

Math is hard.

Since you are so smart please find me another time period when 7 teams combined to win 1 out of 49 games and not one of them had lost more than 9 in a row. I will give you 15 tommy points over the next couple of days. If you can't you can apologize for being a jerk

I think you've underestimating how frequently this sort of thing happens, data mining is powerful and even good to average teams frequently have long losing streaks in the NBA.

Furthermore your challenge is by far the "jerkiest" thing in this thread. People weren't rude, you were.

"Debbie Downers", "So is being nice", your above challenge. Just thin skinned reaction to criticism.

In a given sample set the size of the NBA collective games played almost any collective record isn't really that remarkable.

In 2007-2008 the Heat lost 15 in a row from 12-25-2007 through 1-24-2008. Other teams losing streaks at that point:

Sonics: 12 Losses
Nets: 7 Losses
Hawks: 4 Losses
76ers: 2 Losses
Bobcats: 2 Losses
Pacers: 2 Losses

That's 0-44 for 7 teams.

Heck that Heat team went 1 - 26 that year if you count their next 11 game losing streak too. Really bad teams and quite a lot of them are very common in the NBA. That Heat team is tied for the 16th worst win percentage in league history.

I picked 07-08 because the C's were awesome and I like that year. You could perform a similar exercise most years in the NBA I imagine.

[celticsclay]

Math is hard.

Since you are so smart please find me another time period when 7 teams combined to win 1 out of 49 games and not one of them had lost more than 9 in a row. I will give you 15 tommy points over the next couple of days. If you can't you can apologize for being a jerk

I think you've underestimating how frequently this sort of thing happens, data mining is powerful and even good to average teams frequently have long losing streaks in the NBA.

Furthermore your challenge is by far the "jerkiest" thing in this thread. People weren't rude, you were.

"Debbie Downers", "So is being nice", your above challenge. Just thin skinned reaction to criticism.

In a given sample set the size of the NBA collective games played almost any collective record isn't really that remarkable.

In 2007-2008 the Heat lost 15 in a row from 12-25-2007 through 1-24-2008. Other teams losing streaks at that point:

Sonics: 12 Losses
Nets: 7 Losses
Hawks: 4 Losses
76ers: 2 Losses
Bobcats: 2 Losses
Pacers: 2 Losses

That's 0-44 for 7 teams.

Heck that Heat team went 1 - 26 that year if you count their next 11 game losing streak too. Really bad teams and quite a lot of them are very common in the NBA. That Heat team is tied for the 16th worst win percentage in league history.

I picked 07-08 because the C's were awesome and I like that year. You could perform a similar exercise most years in the NBA I imagine.

Thanks for taking the time to contribute that. I would argue that my point was it was pretty unusual for 6 teams to have 5 losses in a row at the same time, but I see that I have phrased this poorly in my original post and it is obviously not as interesting to people as it was to me.

To your second point, how in the world is insulting someone's math skills and not saying anything else not a jerk move?  I offered the poster 15 tommy points if they could actually prove their point. Telling someone it must be hard for them to be nice after they insult you is actually turning the other cheek rather than responding with an insult.

My debbie downer comment was completely in jest, not directed at anyone individualy, and I have a hard time believing anyone felt insulted by it. If they are/were I apologize for that. You are kind of missing the larger point in that when there is a discussion going on and someone just offers a drive by insult without any other commentary it contributes little to the board and makes it more unpleasant. I know at least some other posters have similar thoughts as me because people have said the same thing in the past. Why you would defend a random fly by insult is beyond me.

[D.o.s.]

I thought I was responding/next in line to this:

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that 39 straight across 6 teams is not particularly unusual.  Only looking at the end of the season standings, you can find 37 straight across 6 teams just two years ago.  45 straight across 6 teams 3 years ago, though that's mostly Charlotte's 23-gamer.  It's interesting to note but in a 30 team league things like that will happen with decent regularity.

Agreed - don't conflate the probabiltiy of a particular set of 6 teams being such a streak with the probability that there is a set of 6 teams on such a streak. There are nearly 600,000 possible subsets of 6 out of 36, so these two numbers are very different.

Goes way over my head. Hence: Math is hard.

[Csfan1984]

Rondo is 1 for 9 from the FT line in January. I thought that's where this was going.

Lol, I thought is was going to be # of championship teams with top 10 picks on its roster. (I think it's all of them)

Or number of championship teams with a Big drafted 7 or higher. It's an impressive # as well if I recall right.