Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Endgame: Down to the Buzzer, The Final Chapter

Update @ April 15, 11:45pm:

Jabrones: Lost ground on BLK. They are out of contention, with a likely finish of 72 points.

Thugs: Only scored 1 STL, so they will not take the point from the Bricks. Thugs have shot 8 for 20, while Phatsnapper has shot 18 of 34, for 52.9%. Likely no move in FG% (Phatsnapper recently bumped up to .468). The Thugs have 2 AST to 3 TO, while Westy has 9 AST to 4 TO. Again, likely no move in A/TO. Likely finish is at 74.5.

Sparty: Shot a combined 23 for 64, or 35.9%, while the Bricks have shot well (22 of 43, or 51.2%) . It appears that the Bricks will hold steady in FG%, while Sparty may drop a half point to 74. Once again, my rhetorical question about whether Sparty's best move was to bench his players after he managed to pick up the half point.

We won't know the final outcome, since the rate stats are somewhat unpredictable w/ the info available.
This makes me wish that they'd carry out the rate stats to a couple more decimal points, since the difference between 0.01 in, say A/TO, is a relatively large chunk, particularly since you rate 1.6251 as being the same as 1.6349, as both round to 1.63. It appears to be about 50-50 for for a tie at 74.5, and good chance for a miracle Thugs victory, 74.5 to 74.

Last day of the season, and things are still up in the air. But, what's interesting is that in the last week, the rabbit (the Euros, who were above 80 points, about a week ago) has been caught by the greyhounds. And now, it's less of a rabbit hunt, and more of a dog fight... I wonder where Michael Vick is right now...

Rk Team Tot FG% FT% 3PTM PTS ORB REB AST ST BLK A/T
1 O.N. Thugs 74.5 5.5 8 4 9 11 8 8 6 8 7
1 Sparty Rules 74.5 1.5 11 11 5 2 11 11 5 6 11
3 European Sellout 74 9 4 9 8 3 3 10 10 9 9
4 IamJabrone 72 10 3 3 11 9 10 5 11 7 3
5 chowtime 70.5 7.5 10 8 10 4 5 7 4 5 10
6 Westy's FadinBallers 69.5 7.5 7 5 7 6 9 9 9 4 6
7 Dribbling Balls 63 3 1 7 6 7 6 6 8 11 8
8 Floor burns 54 4 6 6 3 10 7 3 3 10 2
9 Milwaukee Bricks 43.5 1.5 2 10 4 5 2 4 7 3 5
10 Love Timberwolves 41 11 9 1 2 8 4 1 2 2 1
11 Phatsnapper 23.5 5.5 5 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 4

Yep. A 2-way tie for first.

Rk Team GP FG% FT% 3PTM PTS ORB REB AST ST BLK A/T
1 O.N. Thugs 820 0.468 0.799 591 13731 1452 4969 2853 810 577 1.63
1 Sparty Rules 816 0.463 0.827 972 12343 1038 5273 3203 802 542 1.98
3 European Sellout 820 0.473 0.772 858 13488 1114 4681 2995 913 589 1.70
4 IamJabrone 816 0.475 0.760 548 14137 1400 5135 2576 933 571 1.48
5 chowtime 816 0.471 0.817 803 13811 1126 4779 2719 759 538 1.78
6 Westy's FadinBallers 817 0.471 0.790 631 13065 1159 5093 2887 892 511 1.62
7 Dribbling Balls 798 0.464 0.751 787 12415 1176 4886 2707 872 626 1.68
8 Floor burns 820 0.465 0.789 754 11796 1412 4932 2254 757 603 1.44
9 Milwaukee Bricks 809 0.463 0.757 937 11839 1147 4521 2427 812 474 1.61
10 Love Timberwolves 699 0.478 0.801 384 11670 1304 4764 2095 681 432 1.39
11 Phatsnapper 646 0.468 0.785 533 10197 946 3880 2149 623 415 1.54

And looking at the stats, it appears to be a crapshoot.

There are potential 0.5 point swings in FG% for both the Thugs and Sparty. But that seems to be the extent of Sparty's movement. He'll probably finish at 74, 74.5, or 75, although if he manages to get like 12 steals out of his 4 players tonight, the league's over, in his favor, as that would win him one point from the Thugs. I'd guess that the most likely scenario is 74.5, with about a 24.5% chance of going up or going down that half point.

As for the Thugs, well, things are always a little different, and sort of special in that autistic/ semi-to-fully retarded sort of way.

The Thugs still have work to do. In addition to maintaining that 8 STL lead over Sparty, the Jabrones are 6 BLK back. Also, Westy's gunning for 0.5 point in A/T, from the Thugs. On the upside, the Thugs are only 2 STL back of the Bricks (aka Eddy's), and could still pick up a point there. If I had to guess, I think that the Thugs are more likely to take the point from the Bricks than to lose points to either Jabrones or Sparty. Also, I'd guess that picking up the 0.5 in FG% is about the same as losing the 0.5 in A/T, and I'd classify either as being unlikely (though not out of the question).

So, a reasonable, "good outcome" scenario is picking up 0.5 in FG%, and 1 in STL, and protecting the lead in BLK, and finishing with 76, and taking home the trophy. Of course the downside scenario is that multiple teams go nuts in just the wrong categories, and drop me to 73.5. But just like with Sparty, 74.5 is probably the most likely.

Does that mean that we're going to have another UPL tie? Well, I'd say that there's about a 40% chance of a tie (30% chance both teams stay, about 5% chance that both teams move up 0.5, and about a 5% chance that both teams move down 0.5). But if both teams move up, I like my chances, since that means that I took the point in STL from the Bricks.

And could there be a *Jabrone Slam (asterisk = having a 4-way tie as part of your "slam")? Not looking good, as the Jabrones would need to get at least 13 OREB and 7 BLK with 4 players, and also get help from the Bricks in FG% (ironic team name/stat category pairing) and STL. So in addition to having your bigs go nuts, you'd also be relying on the Bricks for quite a bit... probably not going to happen.

In any case, we've had quite the finish to the season. All we have left to do is the crowning of a champion.

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)

2 comments:

Westy said...

What a finish!

Was that the closest one of our leagues has ever been?

I honestly honestly thought I was gonna get that A/T bump on the last night. I had to have been very very close. If only I had played Mike Miller on Mon. night and Jarrett Jack on Wed.

Alas, we can only say the best non-injured team won. Let's just say I like my team's chances for next year.

Chairman said...

Westy - You're definitely right - lots of close categories down the stretch.

As far as non-injured, I assume you mean Stephen, though in fairness, he lost T-Mac and Manu for long stretches.

Don't get me wrong - missing 25 from KG and 32 from Big Al is huge. And where you got unlucky was that Deng was bad before he got hurt, and then he got hurt :-)

I actually missed more games from my first 2 picks.

List of O.N. Thugs' injuries:

D-Will - missed 14 games
Boozer - missed 45 games
Artest - missed 13 games
O'Neal - missed 15 games
Chandler - missed 37 games
Ellis - missed 57 games

Of course, you can argue that Artest, O'Neal, and Chandler were lousy 4th, 5th, and 7th round picks. And I knew that Ellis was going to miss at least 25 games. But really, from the top half of my draft, only Roy and Aldridge (my 3rd and 5th) stayed healthy.