TwIsTeD Reflections

There is a growing phenomenon as the sport of basketball slowly increasing in popularity. People began to view basketball not just as a sport for enjoyment, for spectators and players alike, but as a mathematical puzzle or problem. They begin to come up with statistical aspects that seem to determine the production of the game. Points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals become part of the numbers game as people try to take the complex sport and break it down to simpler, easier to understand models.

Yet, anomalies started to occur more and more often. The game of basketball refused to be understood. True enough, the stats showed a bit of the efficiency of the players, but it never showed how a player can benefit his team, basketball being a perennial team sport. The current statistical model was also inadequate to show the defensive aspect of the game; blocks and steals couldnt be a true indicator.

So the statisticians, like ESPN's John Hollander, introduced new revolutionary statistics to try to explain away the game. PER, efficient field goal percentage, +/- were new statistical aspects in the team and individual level. Opponent field goal percentage (the 3 point line, in the paint and the mid-range) and forced turnovers and overall defensive rating was introduced to bread down the defensive aspect. Pace factor was also included to level up the discrepancies of how pace influences the outcome of performances and wins/loses.

Yet, statistical anomalies appeared time and time again, defying the completeness of the models. Players like Shane Battier, as stated in this brilliantly written article by Micheal Lewis, seemed to be helping his team without posting any significant statistical impact. In his article, he writes:

"The virus that infected professional baseball in the 1990s, the use of statistics to find new and better ways to value players and strategies, has found its way into every major sport. Not just basketball and football, but also soccer and cricket and rugby and, for all I know, snooker and darts — each one now supports a subculture of smart people who view it not just as a game to be played but as a problem to be solved. Outcomes that seem, after the fact, all but inevitable — of course LeBron James hit that buzzer beater, of course the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl — are instead treated as a set of probabilities, even after the fact. The games are games of odds. Like professional card counters, the modern thinkers want to play the odds as efficiently as they can; but of course to play the odds efficiently they must first know the odds. Hence the new statistics, and the quest to acquire new data, and the intense interest in measuring the impact of every little thing a player does on his team’s chances of winning. In its spirit of inquiry, this subculture inside professional basketball is no different from the subculture inside baseball or football or darts. The difference in basketball is that it happens to be the sport that is most like life."

He continues:

There is a tension, peculiar to basketball, between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual. The game continually tempts the people who play it to do things that are not in the interest of the group. On the baseball field, it would be hard for a player to sacrifice his team’s interest for his own. Baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team one: by doing what’s best for himself, the player nearly always also does what is best for his team. “There is no way to selfishly get across home plate,” as Morey puts it. “If instead of there being a lineup, I could muscle my way to the plate and hit every single time and damage the efficiency of the team — that would be the analogy. Manny Ramirez can’t take at-bats away from David Ortiz. We had a point guard in Boston who refused to pass the ball to a certain guy.” In football the coach has so much control over who gets the ball that selfishness winds up being self-defeating. The players most famous for being selfish — the Dallas Cowboys’ wide receiver Terrell Owens, for instance — are usually not so much selfish as attention seeking. Their sins tend to occur off the field.

It is in basketball where the problems are most likely to be in the game — where the player, in his play, faces choices between maximizing his own perceived self-interest and winning. The choices are sufficiently complex that there is a fair chance he doesn’t fully grasp that he is making them.

Taking a bad shot when you don’t need to is only the most obvious example. A point guard might selfishly give up an open shot for an assist. You can see it happen every night, when he’s racing down court for an open layup, and instead of taking it, he passes it back to a trailing teammate. The teammate usually finishes with some sensational dunk, but the likelihood of scoring nevertheless declined. “The marginal assist is worth more money to the point guard than the marginal point,” Morey says. Blocked shots — they look great, but unless you secure the ball afterward, you haven’t helped your team all that much. Players love the spectacle of a ball being swatted into the fifth row, and it becomes a matter of personal indifference that the other team still gets the ball back. Dikembe Mutombo, Houston’s 42-year-old backup center, famous for blocking shots, “has always been the best in the league in the recovery of the ball after his block,” says Morey, as he begins to make a case for Mutombo’s unselfishness before he stops and laughs. “But even to Dikembe there’s a selfish component. He made his name by doing the finger wag.” The finger wag: Mutombo swats the ball, grabs it, holds it against his hip and wags his finger at the opponent. Not in my house! “And if he doesn’t catch the ball,” Morey says, “he can’t do the finger wag. And he loves the finger wag.” His team of course would be better off if Mutombo didn’t hold onto the ball long enough to do his finger wag. “We’ve had to yell at him: start the break, start the break — then do your finger wag!”

Sorry for not blogging, my schedule has not put me in that contemplative mood suitable for my blogging, and it seems that it will not let up. Damn exams are approaching close and closer. Well, with that...

Emotions are essential in dictating our actions, our decisions. In fact, for some of us, it is the primary driving force of how we act. A study was done on people who do not feel any emotion, caused by damage to the part of the brain that is responsible for it. It was shown that, in terms of decisions, they were indecisive. Worse than indecisive, in fact, since they simply cannot make decisions that go beyond logical thinking, like "do you prefer the red dress or the green one?".

Yet, despite that, our efficiency-driven culture emphasizes on the fact that we should repress emotions, to be detached from yourself, so to speak. It is true, powerful emotions normally deprives the person the ability to think rationally, rendering that person "inefficient". The best thinkers and scientists of our time were known to be abnormally detached.

How we deal with these emotions are also intricately linked to our character that defines us as unique individuals. Do we swallow our emotions? Do we use one emotion to cover another? Or maybe we just wear our emotions on our sleeves, ready to cry, laugh and jump for joy at the drop of the hat? The strange things is that we all have the same emotions, yet, because of our character, react so differently to that same feeling.

I have come to the conclusion that emotion cannot be controlled directly by our will. It is how we truly feel, even if we try to deny its existence. So, to say "don't feel sad" is kinda contradictory of what emotions are.

However, emotion is also depends on perspective, which lies the true form of control. Although we cant change the way we feel, we can change the perspective to alter the way we feel. And we do it so often in our everyday lives that we are not even aware of it. Take the concept of 'sour grapes' for example. We can truly desire for some thing, yet if it proves to be unattainable, we dismiss it as flawed or perhaps not worthy of our attention after all, thereby changing our perspective to change our emotions.

Many would say that it is not being true to yourself. That is, to me, a strange statement. What is this 'yourself'? How do you know if it is truly you. To be true to yourself means to accept whatever emotion you initially feel, good or bad, without exception. Why accept emotions like anger or sadness if it does nothing to help you?

Im not saying sadness or anger are never useful. There are times anger is needed, like standing up for urself for instance. Sometimes sadness is required, to get in touch with another fellow human being for example. Yet, there are times these emotions just leave you devastated, when the issue does not merit such an emotion. For example, a girl who cries when her dress gets torn, or a student that angry when he heard he got AAAB for his A levels (that wont be me, like ever).

The only way to NOT feel emotion is to truly detach your self away from your body. This out-of-body experience is the same as viewing the world with indifference, an emotional retreat. It is probably the ultimate change in perspective. It can be useful, in dealing with problems that affect one in a great deal. However, a word of caution, prolonged use can actually cause damage to a person's psyche. It can create an apathetic view of life, which lead many to suicide.

So how can we get rid of excessive emotions? Like i said before, we cant. But we can alter the way we feel by changing our perspective. We can think "Hey, this dess is just a piece of cloth anyway, why go overboard?" Or "Well, this result just delays me a little further in the long run, it wont prevent me from being successful if I work hard." In fact, most problems that seem to affect us so turn out to be insignificant or inconsequential in the bigger view of things. So while we must enjoy the little things in life, we must also be able to take a step back to get a different perspective, especially when we are down.

P.S. Hey deb, this post is for you. If you are reading this, hope you feel better and give a little smile.

Ideas are very strange. They are invisible, intangible, ethereal. It is useless, yet so very powerful. Ideas are what drives the human race. It is the birth of innovation and the start of apathy. Ideas are concepts used to create works of arts or wonderful inventions. It is used to solved complicated problems and serve as inspiration for an individual, a country or the human race.

Which is why I value ideas alot. Im a writer by nature, and ideas are essential for my work. It was also the basis of my very childhood. Which is why I cannot forgive any action taken to destroy a good idea. What do I mean? Ideas are useless if no action is accompanied by it. Therefore, the action has to live up to the quality of the idea or concept that was imagined or created. If a writer has a great concept or storyline, yet has poor command of english, or woeful attention to detail, the idea is irrevocably destroyed, never to be recovered again. Sure, another can take up the idea to renovate and redo, but part of the quality of the idea is lost already. People can brand it as a copy, or simply dismiss the work as the first piece was bad. The idea has lost its value and its originality that made it so very valuable in the first place.

Which is the reason why i cannot imagine how beautiful concept can be so utterly, so terribly ripped apart in the monstosity of the movie called 'Inkheart'. It was as if it was taken from a 10 year old child's writing. The acting, in my opinion, was brilliantly done, especially by Brandon Fraser, the camera-play and casting was also above average. The writing and plot, however, was so horribly screwed that I wondered how i managed to waste 10 bucks in a rare midnight movie with my girlfriend on that piece of shit.

And the concept was wonderful. In my hands, or anybody's hands for that matter, together with such a budget, i could have created a wonderful piece, or at least infinitely better than the current trash. It was simple, a gifted individual with the ability to create what he reads out loud into real life. A clever, unique, original concept. Yet, it was borne through a fool of a writer. Given a chance, I swear I will shoot the fellow who destroyed it.

The writer couldnt decide a theme for the movie. Was it a romance movie? An action movie? Or a fantasy movie? He flirted from one theme to the next, never completing any of it. As he did with the storyline which had barely any coherence to it. Characters are supremely incomplete, sprouting out abilities that leave the poor viewer completely bewildered.

How on earth did Brandon Fraser's daughter suddenly become a silvertongue (those people with the ability to bring fiction to reality)? How did that ali baba character suddenly learn to blow fire from Dustfinger? Why did brandon fraser jump, run and hide to save his wife when all he needed to do was bring some books (like maybe a war book with lots of guns?) and just bloody use his ability? How did the mother get read out of a book that wont contain her name in it at all? Why must a person be sucked in as a replacement (which i think is a pretty lame idea)? What the f#$% is story of inkheart (inkheart is the story most referred to in the movie) in the first place? Why must they go through all the stupid trouble to go find the author of Inkheart to get the manuscript of the book, and not bloody hell use it in the first place? How come Dustfinger can be so stupid? How on earth did the writer manage to suddenly declare ali baba to be in love w brandon fraser's daughter? How on earth did the bloody motherf%^king writer manage to create this piece of $#!t and who's the dumbass ignoramus that approved it?

Most ironical thing about it? It was a movie about books *starts sobbing*.

Okay... I think im done ranting. Seriously, I recommend all to go watch it to c how bad it is. Dun pay for it though, go download off the net. Its not stealing, cos it is not worth to pay a bloody cent for it.

Update: I just heard that this wasnt even an original idea but an adaptation of another film. Which makes it that much worse. You take another person's idea and you destroy it. It wasnt even your own.


P.S. On a slightly more cheerful note... This is damn funny. (Warning: more cursing that this post)