In defence of Duncan (UNEDITED)

 

On the 19^th of February, 2021, the struggling Toronto Raptors barely overcame the even more struggling Minnesota Timberwolves in an 86-81 road win (seriously, the Raptors shot less than 35% from the field). Rookie Anthony Edwards had a rough game, judging by the box score, shooting 3-14 overall and missing all 7 of his three point attempts, while splitting a pair of free throws. He also grabbed 3 rebounds, dished 4 assists, stole the ball twice and blocked 1 shot, while turning it over once. He committed one turnover, and the Timberwolves were outscored by 13 points during his 34 minutes. After the game, seemed to be most focussed on his subpar shooting performance. I didn’t watch the game, but the box score stats make for a disappointing night for a struggling young player, still early in a tough season for everyone.

 

HE ALSO KILLED A MAN LIVE ON AN INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST.

 

Apparently acknowledging that a career highlight happened in an otherwise dismal performance is indicative of an improper approach to the glorious sport of basketball, or something. Edwards himself isn’t dwelling on the dunk. It’s a good moment, and it’ll be worth remembering especially if his career blossoms going forward, but it’s overall a less important thing to take away from his night than his continued struggles. Yet when Nate Duncan alluded to this, it became a Big Thing, a phrase which here means a minor point of discussion on several unimportant public forums which serve as gathering points for those interested in discussing the NBA.

 

The tweet has sparked a mini flare-up, with direct replies to Duncan’s twitter account along with periphery discussion on online basketball communities such as r/NBA. Waking up the morning after the game, discussion of the tweet and the reaction to it was the topic du jour on four or more of the channels in the private Discord group for listeners of his podcast, Dunc’d On Prime. It’s not like Duncan’s tweet wasn’t mean-spirited, and there are also criticisms that can be made, such as him being to eager to point out the flaws of a young prospect that he was low on in draft previews. But there’s a particular form of criticism that popped up when I briefly dipped into the social media hellholes that discussed the tweet which I am all to keen to strawman and eviscerate.

 

A few of the responses and comments that I saw were from people who saw this as a chance to vent frustration about Duncan’s career as an NBA analyst and suggest that his approach to the game is inherently detrimental to their sacred discourse. Nate Duncan is just the fancy numbers man, who downplays cool dunks to bring up heretical perspectives like shooting splits… for a player who, at the time, had half as many points as shots. All these (few) people yapping about him on Twitter and Reddit for being about the numbers aren’t really talking about the tweet, they’re talking about his general approach to basketball which is informed by analytics. He gets the usual meme about how he’s just a spreadsheet and calculators automaton who doesn’t watch the games, even though this tweet is just using box score numbers to underline what he saw in the game he was watching. As usual, the irony is that the numbers guys are the guys that actually watch basketball (an aside here: Part of the reason that analysts use advanced metrics is because of how hard it is to watch basketball – scouting departments can’t even watch every minute of film, and I doubt that you could accurately report on the totality of any given game just by watching it once through at 1X speed. There’s a hell of a lot of games to watch – the Pistons apparently once tried to do it with a scouting department – and even if you just wanted to focus in on scouting one young prospect, last year’s Rookie of the Year played over 2000 minutes, the equivalent of around 41 games. No NBA analyst is conducting exhaustive film studies).

 

To reduce analysts like Duncan and his podcast partner Danny Leroux to “hehe numbers man” is asinine. In contrast to the whole “it’s just a maths lesson”, “they recite numbers for half an hour” diatribe, the reason that I really liked their podcast Dunc'd On to begin with is that it was the only NBA podcast I found where I could reasonably trust that they not only watched plenty of basketball but actually watched most of the league (even if they have the usual problems overcoming priors and not being able to watch every minute yada yada). Not only that, but they have pods dedicated to games (known as gamers, in which they basically give a rundown of and their takeaways from a particular game based more on film than stats) and if there was a real classic they might do a whole play by play breakdown of the last few minutes. Beyond that, they began experimenting with providing an alternative commentary feed for live games via streaming platforms such as YouTube, and since the NBA restart after the COVID-19 shutdown have been featured on the official NBA narrowcast service as an alternative commentary option. As an added bonus, they are mostly tolerable as commentators (I mostly despise sports commentary with the exception of the legendary Robbie Koenig, and I almost always watch sports on mute).

 

Beyond this, their podcast is basically the perfect supplement to the NBA. Assuming you enjoy their analysis (and I get why people wouldn’t, although I personally think they’re a lot more interesting than most of their online critics make them out to be, especially relative to other NBA-centric shows). They offer a complete look at the NBA with coverage of both major and minor news items from around the league, cutting out the drama/soap opera side of sports coverage in favour of more time on analysis and deeper dives on specific games, players and team-building. It’s coverage that is comprehensive to the point that it renders both traditional sports sites and social media as largely detrimental to keeping up with the league in comparison.

 

So it really sucks when I see how often two analysts, and most often (the admittedly more abrasive) Duncan, that have offered an awesome service for those interested who want supplementary NBA media are reduced to "haha he read numbers". It’s vapid, lazy criticism that positions the critic as an upholder of some ridiculous traditional view of sports, which is apparently superior or more enjoyable despite meaning they watch far fewer games and understand them a hell of a lot less.