Earlier in the week I emailed a “Heat” beat writer:
“A few years ago I began noting and updating to current the Heat's won/lost record from the beginning of the 2014/15 season to present. In those nine full seasons the Heat has won a decimal average percentage .543 of its games. Over an 82-game season a record of 45-37. So far this year we are .547, which projects to 45 wins. I find that telling.
“An average is a good metric, I like it, it's easy, but like any one stat it is a semiotic and not the thing itself. We have been to two Finals and three ECF's in this same time. One would never predict that from this regular season average. Looking at the season's records I also saw wide variation, from 37 wins to 53 at the extremes. I then became curious of a measure of variation. The one that came to mind was the standard deviation. After verifying that nine years was an adequate sample size I then calculated the SD. It was five for the nine full seasons. I am not a mathematician and I have not done similar calculations on other teams, so my sense may be incorrect, but my sense is that a SD of five for as volatile a data set as a sports team's performance over nine full seasons is low. Unless I misunderstand it, the Heat's SD of five means that Heat fans can expect 45 wins +/-5, so 40-50 wins, every year.
“We are tethered to 45 wins and it's a pretty short tether.”
The writer knew the post-LBJ reg. season ave. and didn’t read beyond my first paragraph. His immediate response in full:
“Correct. But two Finals appearances”
I didn't write back. He knows it. The historical record hangs over the franchise like a guillotine that unaccountably has refused to drop. He knows that, it makes him uncomfortable, defensive, so I didn't write back. I didn't write back that "I acknowledged the unpredicted, unpredictable, miraculous recent post-season runs the last few years, you fucking ADD moronic pencil." I didn't write back that "Oh, I didn't realize that taking the silver medal and not coming close to the gold (losing our Finals appearances four games to two and four games to one) was 601 Biscayne's new aspirational ceiling." I didn't write back that "The only time we have won a championship was on the three occasions that we had superior talent and I challenge you to say that if we have enough talent now and if we just try, try again with the same talent that we had against the "Lakers" and "Nuggets" that we will eventually win a title; that that is the definition of insanity not of winning." I didn't write back.
