Happy Ending*

I can't believe what I just saw...

Of all the scenarios that I had in my head, a 74-74 tie w/ the Thugs and Euros was not in the picture.

First of all, I had suggested that Sparty may have been better off not playing any of his players. It turns out this was true, but not quite the way I had figured. I was right on the call that Sparty risked giving up 0.5 in FG% if he didn't shoot well, since he had just picked up the percentage point, which suggested that he was very near the round-up/round-down point. Sure enough, a bad night of shooting, combined with a relatively high number of shots (23 of 64, or 35.9%) took him down the half point. What I didn't figure on mattering was the fact that Sparty was up on Chowtime by 4 BLK, and was equal in games. I had credited Sparty w/ the point, particularly since BLK are probably the toughest stat to acquire. Whoops. Chowtime managed to pull off 10 BLK with 4 players, whereas Sparty came up empty in BLK. Swing of 1 point. Result? Sparty can't pull of his UPL win. Ouch. It seems like every year Chowtime doesn't have quite enough to make the podium, but changes the order of finish on the last day.

Next, the Thugs shot 8 for 20 on the night, or 40%. This actually dropped them from 46.8% down to 46.7%. Now, if you think about it for a second, the impact of 20 shots on a rate stat like FG% where 818 games worth of shots should be absolutely minimal. In fact, a crude estimation on how much a 8 for 20 shooting night should matter on a team that's shot 46.8% over the course of 818 games, with its starters shooting 15 shots per game:

(.468 - .400) * 20 / (818 * 15) = 0.00011

For the 1/100th of a percent to matter, it means, that the Thugs were only around 46.75% shooting, rather than closer to the round-up value of 46.85%... so that was a mis-estimate. What's sick about that is that the offender in question was Brook Lopez, who shot 2 for 9. Lopez was shooting 53.1%. The odds of someone who normally goes 5.5 out of 10.3, only going 2 for 9 are small - an in fact, this was the single worst shooting night for Brook Lopez in the last 50 games. And more importantly, a case for more information from Yahoo! (or a finer resultion on rate stats). In any case, this is very ironic, because it turns out that the Thugs were trying to protect points in BLK, but didn't need to play any players. So, had the Thugs taken the advice intended for Sparty, they would not have lost the 0.5 point in FG% and would be solo champs. Although, in fairness, the Thugs were also trying to track down a coupld STL, where they finished 4 behind the Bricks.

And most importantly, it turns out that the rabbit was not actually dead. In fact, in a very Lazarus move, the rabbit rose from the dead, and by doing nothing, actually killed off 2 of the 3 greyhounds chasing it, and held the 3rd greyhound to a standstill. Very Monty Python meets scripture, in a bizarre, mentally unstable sort of way.

In any case, a big congrats to Stephen for his first UPL victory*, and congrats to, well, myself for the almost unprecedented UPL 4-peat** (two asterisks since we actually had 2 ties in this stretch), and coming back from the dead, which is where the Thugs were at the All-Star break.

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs - 6-time** UPL Basketball Champions)