The Brian Burke trivia “stat” of the day

With a win tonight, the #Heat‘s 19-game win streak would tie for the 4th longest in NBA history & the longest EVER by a defending champ.

— Numbers Never Lie (@ESPN_Numbers) March 12, 2013

Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats has a distinct point between stats and trivia. This lead me to come up with the notion of a Brian Burke triva “stat”. Basically, when do we see things given as statistics, when they’re really just trivia? We have a winner for the day! Sure, the Heat’s performance is impressive. However, what does their streak tell us? Not much, to be honest. Things like point differential and strength of schedule can let us know how the Heat are performing. Now, sure, the Heat’s streak is impressive trivia. That said, I’m not sure I’d fly it under the banner of “Numbers Never Lie”.

-Dre

One Response to "The Brian Burke trivia “stat” of the day"

mpki says:

March 12, 2013 at 4:07 pm

What annoys me more than this is how often ESPN or something will have a note saying something silly like “this is the first time in the past 13 seasons where a player has average at least 17, 7, 4 and 2 steals.”

This Heat streak is somewhat impressive in that 19 game streaks are rare. The defending champion part is pointless but whatever, it’s still much more meaningful than the completely random numbers that are often quoted,

If any ESPN writers/commentators are reading this, in the future, please try to make your trivia seem a little less like data mining. Multiples of 5 are a good way to go for most numbers and for years you can also use multiples of 5 or refer to meaningful cutoff years (introduction of shot clock, change of illegal defense rules).

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