Originally Posted by CE80
I would probably go along with you if everyone in the pool played everyone an equal number of times. Without that, I don't have enough trust in that type of system to differentiate between teams playing and therefore being evaluated on different competition. Ultimately, it is probably the same problem that has always existed - do the metrics adequately take into account the disparity between teams that have not had comparable schedules?
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Fair enough. But by the same logic: how do you decide whether or not to foul or play straight up defense in your original example? You could use the stats to say what has worked on average over history, but don't you really want to know what works best against that exact team in that exact scenario? Since it probably doesn't happen more than, at most, 3x per season to any given team, you can't fairly compare how that exact opponent has reacted to the situation. And it probably never happened that season against a team with exactly your team's makeup (rebounding capabilities, size advantage, opponent foul-out situation, injuries to either side, referee combination and type of game being called by the refs, likelihood to win in overtime), so how would you apply the "numbers" in a single draw against a unique set of circumstances?
If everyone in the pool has to play an equal number of times for it to work, doesn't each situation have to be drawn from an situationally-equal pool to get real results? And if not, at what "n" does every team NOT need to play every other team in order for the numbers to work?
