Fans Pick Spurs as Best Team
Ask any of my friends and they'll tell you, I'm a big believer in the wisdom of crowds.
Yahoo has a new application called NBA Team Ranker -- go ahead, try it for yourself -- which allows users to decide, given two teams to choose from, which team is better. A perfect test of the wisdom of the Yahoo NBA crowd, right?
When I checked last Monday, the crowd chose the San Antonio Spurs as the best team in the NBA, followed by the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks and the Boston Celtics. Eight days later, that hasn't changed, but it appears that the Spurs and Suns swapped positions at some point, however briefly.
In theory, the Spurs, Suns and Mavericks should be tops in the Western Conference this year, while the Celtics, Pistons and Bulls should be tops in the East. But in practice, not all crowds are wise. What separates a wise crowd from an irrational one? The wise crowd has: 1) diversity of opinion, 2) independence, 3) decentralization, and 4) aggregation.
I'd say criteria #1 and #4 are covered. Everyone has the chance to form a unique (diverse) opinion for themselves, and the Team Ranker is an excellent aggregator. I'm not sure about criteria #3 (decentralization), though, and #2 -- no way. There isn't much independent thought among NBA fans right now -- otherwise, explain why the Celtics are rated better than the Pistons and Bulls. All the buzz about Boston is just hype at this point, driven by the league and the mainstream media. I'll admit it, though -- I haven't been this interested in the Boston Celtics since their big three were Larry, Dennis and Kevin.
Some Yahoo commenters have argued "people aren't voting according to talent, they are voting for their favorites." Maybe. But if that were the case, wouldn't the Lakers be higher than 15th?
The bottom line is: none of this matters. As a Spurs fan, I could care less what other fans think. And just for the record, I could care less whether the team finishes first or third in the Western Conference, whether they win 57 or 63 games, as long as they are playing and winning next June. If other fans now understand what we at SpursDynasty have long known to be true, then that's alright by me.
Yahoo has a new application called NBA Team Ranker -- go ahead, try it for yourself -- which allows users to decide, given two teams to choose from, which team is better. A perfect test of the wisdom of the Yahoo NBA crowd, right?
When I checked last Monday, the crowd chose the San Antonio Spurs as the best team in the NBA, followed by the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks and the Boston Celtics. Eight days later, that hasn't changed, but it appears that the Spurs and Suns swapped positions at some point, however briefly.
In theory, the Spurs, Suns and Mavericks should be tops in the Western Conference this year, while the Celtics, Pistons and Bulls should be tops in the East. But in practice, not all crowds are wise. What separates a wise crowd from an irrational one? The wise crowd has: 1) diversity of opinion, 2) independence, 3) decentralization, and 4) aggregation.
I'd say criteria #1 and #4 are covered. Everyone has the chance to form a unique (diverse) opinion for themselves, and the Team Ranker is an excellent aggregator. I'm not sure about criteria #3 (decentralization), though, and #2 -- no way. There isn't much independent thought among NBA fans right now -- otherwise, explain why the Celtics are rated better than the Pistons and Bulls. All the buzz about Boston is just hype at this point, driven by the league and the mainstream media. I'll admit it, though -- I haven't been this interested in the Boston Celtics since their big three were Larry, Dennis and Kevin.
Some Yahoo commenters have argued "people aren't voting according to talent, they are voting for their favorites." Maybe. But if that were the case, wouldn't the Lakers be higher than 15th?
The bottom line is: none of this matters. As a Spurs fan, I could care less what other fans think. And just for the record, I could care less whether the team finishes first or third in the Western Conference, whether they win 57 or 63 games, as long as they are playing and winning next June. If other fans now understand what we at SpursDynasty have long known to be true, then that's alright by me.
posted by D Strickland at 11:00 PM
10 Comments:
Gives me some satisfaction to know that fans here are starting to make sense.
The worldwide basketball fans have appreciated the spurs for a while now...probably for obvious reasons like the international players
can't wait for the season to start
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
SpursDynasty readers,
I've deleted the last comment. Let me explain why. It was SPAM for a new Spurs podcast and normally that wouldn't be a problem. We welcome other Spurs sites to post to SpursDynasty.com.
Then I listened to the podcast and its godawful.
From what I can tell the host doesn't know shit about the Spurs. Its produced by an outfit out of Chicago called the "Texas Sportscast Network." Are you kidding me?! Reminds me of the old Pace commercials. Chicago? Get a rope!
But maybe I'm being too harsh. I'll check out the next episode and see if it gets any better.
Is anyone out there doing a Spurs podcast who is a Spurs fan? If so, let me know.
thanks for the comment and the link on your music blog...i tried to leave a comment at Festival Freak, but it doesn't allow anonymous or "other" comments on there.
but yeah...this blog is in my googlereader so I'll be back. I'm not quite sure how I found this blog though...the only spurs blog i regularly read before this was Pounding The Rock.
If I have one complaint, it would be this comment page set-up. I've never seen a blogger blog that had a separate comment page like this. It's kind of intimidating to leave a comment (I don't know why).
i've listened to about half of the podcast and it was actually okay.
The only fault I can find about it is that it's probably just simply mediocre. But nothing offensive really.
Now, why they're doing a spurs podcast when they're based in chicago is a little strange. But not really, if they're huge spurs fans. I dunno...they sound legit to me so far.
Anon,
Maybe I made a hasty judgment. I'll go back and listen again and try to be more objective. It is, after all, their first podcast.
I don't have a problem with them being based in Chicago. I'd just like to know the host's connection to San Antonio and/or the Spurs.
Did he ever mention his name?
Are there any other Spurs podcasts that people have found worth listening to?
Ok, the host did mention his name: Scott Spinelli.
And after a second listen, its not all that bad.
I think my initial reaction was based on the tone, at times patronizing -- "the Tim Duncan era .. started in 1997, that's when they drafted the young man from Wake Forest."
And at other times self-deprecating -- "No offense, but I don't know who any of these guys are ... Ay-en Mai-en-mee? That's what I'm going to go with as of right now. I have put in a call to the San Antonio Spurs to find out how to pronounce this kid's name."
I found Scott's frequent use of "young man" and "kid" to be annoying. Scott, you're 20 years old. When you've got, uh, I don't know, 20 years on the athletes, I suppose you can start calling them "young" and "kids." At least wait until you're old enough to legally buy alcohol.
Anyway, you can listen for yourself. I recommend waiting until the next episode to see whether Scott improves or not.
Dear ,
I'm an inter with startup widget 1000 and I created a news widget for San Antonio Spurs News.
It's updated every hours with NBA headlines from several different sports websites like ESPN, FOX Yahoo,etc. (Take a look:http://www.widget1000.com/)
Can we add San Antonio Spurs Team blog to the widget,too? That means that every time you post to your blog the headline of the post will show up on the widget and link directly to your post.
Anyone who puts this widget on their start page or on their website will see your
San Antonio Spurs posts too. It's a powerful and free way to publicize your site.
Finally, would you add the San Antonio Spurs News Widget to your site so that others can see it?
Everyone who grabs the widget will automatically link to you so it's great for your search engine rankings. Plus, it shows a lot of stories about NBA and since it's updated every hour it is fresh and will make your site even more appealing than it already is.
What do you think?
Go San Antonio Spurs
Aurelie
aurelie@widget1000.com
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Dingo,
I know this is an old post, but I found it while doing some vanity searches for my blog Project Spurs. Just so you know, I've been hosting and producing a Spurs podcast for the last 5 years called the Spurscast, you can do a search on iTunes or just go to projectspurs.com to check it out. You may not have heard of it, mainly because i really don't believe in going on other sites and spamming, especially if you're not adding to the conversation, but since you asked. I'm a San Antonio native like my co-host and we've been Spurs fans for as long as we can remember going back to the Hemisfair days. Whether or not you like the Spurscast (not SASpurscast, which is one of several other spurs podcasts that came after ours, used our name somewhere in their name and then stopped podcasting) is completely up to you. We offer sometimes opposing viewpoints as I'm more of the optimist and my co-host has a no-holds barred approach. Our podcast is pretty long, but it's weeky and we try to deliver the latest Sours news, dissect games and have a few other fun segments. It's ou labor of love so if you have a chance, check it out and let me know what you think either way. I don't mind criticism as long as it's somewhat constructive and I can learn or improve from it. If you ever want to come on for an interview, let me know michael at projectspurs dot com.
-Michael
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