Streaking

The A's actually were a pretty huge story on espn for several days. I distinctly recall reveling in the unusual media attention... I think the numbers would say that the A's streak was more improbable just because great teams have a lower probability of beating bad teams in baseball than in the NBA or NFL.

But I'd have to go with the Rockets, for the sole reason that 20 games constitutes an entire fourth of the season, whereas the A's would have to run off 40 games to get the same fraction.

Houston's streak started against G-State back on January 29th, if they make it past Boston and New Orleans this week maybe the Warriors can end it too.

I would think the baseball streak is harder. It just seems like more often than not in the NBA and in college bball there are a few teams that are just so much better than the competition. Case in point, Celtics and Bulls(jordan era) over the eastern conference, and Duke and UNC every year. When it comes to baseball though, the level of talent seems to be a lot more level between all teams. Also in baseball, you have to play the teams consecutively so if you aren't as good as your opponent it will show a lot more. You can't just escape a game with a flukey buzzer beater or missed free throw. Regardless, both streaks are still impressive and It also helps to have a favorable schedule during them, as the Rockets have mostly feasted on eastern conference teams. The A's had a break as well, I think the only decent teams they beat during the streak where the Twins and ChiSox in 2002

As far as the media coverage goes, I think the A's got pretty decent publicity at the time, I even remember that game against the royals being on ESPN on a wednesday night. The A's are rarely on nationally, much less against the Royals. What I couldn't understand is why the A's were never mentioned in comparison to the Rockies last year, at least I never heard them mentioned. Granted it was through the playoffs but the "analysts" acted like a prolong undefeated streak had never happened before in baseball.

Speaking of streaks, how bout that Tiger guy...

I too was glued to the TV when I couldn't make it out to the ballpark, BUT, as soon as the A's played a tough team on the road the streak was dead.

The Rockets have beat some VERY good teams during this streak and have risen from the 10 seed to the #1 seed in a "Historically" tough Western Conference.

22 games in the NBA is just easier than 20 games in baseball. Basketball is a sport of dominance and baseball is a sport of parity, relatively speaking anyway. I wish I wasn't lazy and had some statistics to back it up, but I bet the average NBA regular season record distribution has a far greater standard deviation than does baseball (percentage-wise).

Assuming that is true, teams on the high-end of the distribution in basketball -- elite teams -- tend to dominate the bad teams and are really only challenged by other elite teams. You have to hand it to the Rockets because they have faced at least a few of those teams during their current streak, but if they played a 3-game series against the Lakers it would be a lot tougher.

If the Rockets can keep the streak alive through Boston I will go ahead and say they are the kings of streak this decade.

for reasons listed above, mainly the parity and dumb luck of baseball.

However, I remember experiencing the A's streak in a similar psychological way:

The A's had just lost Giambi (the previous off season) and there were questions about whether they could compete and whether Tejada would be enough to carry the load. On Aug 13 2002, they were a dark horse to make the playoffs, (3rd place in the AL West by 4.5 games). By the end of the streak, they had ripped out to a 3.5 game lead in the AL West.

Similarly, the Rockets lost Yao along the way, with questions if McGrady was enough, and they were a dark horse to make the playoffs (something like 3 games out of the playoffs), and by the end of the streak, they will be leading the conference.

Of course, I'll always remember the whole 2002 season as played under the pall of the shock and insanity of the post-9/11 life in the US. The A's were such a great escape from that, although we all jumped whenever they had unannounced fireworks during the National Anthem.

When are we all taking off our clothes and running around?

The discrepancy between the probabilities of favorites beating underdogs in the MLB vs the NBA have already been noted. So based on that fact alone, the A's streak would seem to be more impressive, or "greater." Add to that the fact that the 2002 streak was immortalized in Moneyball, whereas it's rather unlikely that the 2007-2008 Rockets' season will inspire their, you know, GM to pen a memoir, and the discussion would seem to be over.

But if no baseball team can be favored to win a SINGLE game as heavily as a basketball team can, there are circumstances in basketball that would lead to the odds of a streak such as this leveling out. The foremost of these is the scheduling. In baseball, over any given time span, teams are likely to be playing almost exactly the same number of games, and on almost exactly the same specific days. So there's no real scheduling advantage there (obviously, the scheduling advantage lies elsewhere--cross-country road trips vs. extended homestands...). But in the NBA, when you draw games on back-to-back nights, you're looking at seriously reduced odds to win BOTH of those games, regardless of the opponent. If common sense isn't sufficient justification for this phenomenon, well, the statistics bear this out year after year.

Then there's the issue of effort in the NBA. This cannot be quantified, precisely because it's so damn unpredictable (frustrating if you're a fan of the league like I am), but it certainly cannot be ignored. Now, don't get me wrong, the baseball season is a grind, and given the "it's a marathon, not a sprint" mentality, that element of the game would reduce the likelihood of a streak in the MLB, as well. But in the NBA, well, frankly, many times guys aren't even thinking of ways in which to rationalize a, um, "conservation of one's energy" on any given night. I wish I could elaborate on this more, but I don't think I can--it's a pretty simple point, evident to anyone who follows the Association. Well, I will say this. Ownership/management in basketball seems much more willing to tolerate the occasional lack of effort. Pat Riley, coach of the last-place Miami Heat, recently left the team for a game so he could scout prospects for the upcoming draft, in which the Heat will almost certainly have a top three pick. If that isn't license to coast for 48 minutes, or the rest of the season really for people who have job security, I don't know what is. That's a pretty extreme scenario (very unlikely move even for a very bad team) that could even be used to justify the point that NBA streaks are easier (because bad teams will often get worse as the season wears on, leading to easy victories for their opponents who might be capable of putting together a lengthy winning streak), but my point remains that effort/consistency is a huge issue in the NBA. Providing examples really is superfluous.

And now what we're left with is the fun part--the team itself. So, even with the caveats already mentioned, we still say that under most circumstances, great NBA teams will have a better likelihood to defeat their lesser opponents than their baseball counter[arts, right? Well, there's one catch here--the Rockets didn't appear to be anything close to a great team, even before the Yao injury. Before the streak, with the results of more than half the season to draw from, they had emerged as...a thoroughly average NBA team, and perhaps worse than that within their conference. Apricot pointed out that at the beginning of the Rockets' streak, the team was residing in 10th place in the conference, which is somewhat comparable to where the A's were at the beginning of their streak in 2002. But on paper, that standing would seem to be much more appropriate for this Rockets team than for that A's team....it would have taken a pretty seriously biased Houston fan to size up that squad when they were 24-20 and declare them to be underachieving. None of the nine teams ahead of them looked to be ready to yield (and the thing is, none of them have, except Portland, who have since fallen out of the playoff picture). So the subsequent 12 (note: 12, not 22) game run was itself quite unlikely. Then Yao went down with a season-ending injury, and all of a sudden you have a team that, on paper, doesn't look all that much different from McGrady's Orlando team of a few seasons ago that was the WORST in the NBA--him and a bunch of marginal role players. Before the streak began, I knew 4 guys who were on that team, and I pay attention to the league. The team was generally considered to be constructed in classic NBA fashion--acquire two or three superstars (preferably three, but only two in this case--not to mention that Yao's status as a "superstar" is dubious), surround them with role players, and you'll compete so long as the stars stay healthy. What has happened the past 10 games, winning games amidst an injury to one of those supposed superstars, is exactly what is not supposed to happen, according to conventional team-building wisdom and, well, reality alike. But somehow they're winning, and moreover, they're winning in impressive fashion. Many of the wins, over the course of the entire streak, have been by double-digits. The average point differential is close to 12, I believe. I'm not sure if there have been any truly close calls during the streak...any OT games, any games that came down to the last couple minutes. Yet this is not a team that's getting lucky, which is really amazing given who's playing.

Hence my vote for the Rockets. Close call, but Houston it is.

A bit more on the topic of how they've been winning. Not surprisingly, if you listen to the media, you'd get the impression that McGrady has carried the team over the past 10 games. But that's not true...it's easy to say that the night after a game in which he shot 4-16 from the field and Rafer Alston, a guy better known as "Skip to My Lou" from the NYC playgrounds/And1 Streetball Tour, had a career-high 31 points (this is from memory; I think those numbers are right), but McGrady's hardly been dominant. If anything, he's still settling for too many jump shots. Yes, in a league of superstars, in the midst of a 22-game winning streak, I am criticizing this team's lone superstar. So there's a bit on an Island-of-Misfit-Toy aspect to this team--once, of course, perhaps the most Fit Toy in the history of the league was removed from the equation 10 games ago. I say that not as a reflection on Yao's play, but rather as a commentary on the fact that his birth was pretty much arranged for by the Chinese government--his parents were selected to breed a basketball player. And that they did.

...if no baseball team can be favored to win a SINGLE game as heavily as a basketball team can, there are circumstances in basketball that would lead to the odds of a streak such as this leveling out. (...) In the NBA, when you draw games on back-to-back nights, you're looking at seriously reduced odds to win BOTH of those games, regardless of the opponent.

Forgive me for what I'm sure is improper form in my quotation of my own words...I haven't written a research paper in a while, and the intent was there...yeah, I know, road to hell is paved with good intentions--anyway, I just wanted to clarify that the reduction in odds that I referred to was in contrast to two successive games played with at least one off-day in between. Obviously, the odds of winning any two games are always less than the odds of winning one.

No NBA team should be mentioned on this blog. The sport is undeserving to even be put in the same column as anything related to baseball -and certainly there is no comparison between what the A's achieved and what they are doing.....in my unbiased opinion that is....

in my absolute, ahem, unbiased opinion, of course.

forget the difficulty in beating a team from one night to the next. since baseball teams play in series', the A's had to sweep a number of sets to keep their streak going. if the Rockets had to play the Lakers twice more tonight and tomorrow?

then there are things on a diamond that are out of certain players' control, that are more difficult to overcome. in the NBA if a top player is having a bad shooting night, it can often be offset by another player or players picking up the slack. but if your pitcher just doesn't have it, and you find yourselves down 6-0 before your first at-bat, well, that's not so easy to overcome IMO.

and maybe that's the reason that there have been three 20-game winning streaks in the NBA in the last 36 years, but only one such streak in baseball in twice the amount of time.

I actually got to catch a few of the games during the streak before I had to jet to the east coast to start my freshman year of college.

I think the biggest reason I give it to the A's is the team aspect of it.

A baseball team has to use 5 different starting pitchers and several relief pitchers that cannot pitch more than 2 or 3 games in a row. The basketball team has their starters who play every day and star players that can be given the position to contribute heavily in crucial situations.

It really is the pitching aspect that makes baseball much more difficult to string together 20 wins. You have a #5 guy who is a star by no means and yet is given the reigns to the team. Having to get that much out of the #4 and #5 starters is rare even for deep staffs.

But in truth, it is really a comparison of apples and oranges. The A's had to win everyday, the Rockets have to win 3 times a week. The A's play a less physically demanding game. The rockets play the most aerobically challenging major sport (if you don't include MLS).

I think the Patriots winning 19 in a row, the A's winning 20 in a row and the Rockets current win streak are all great. I don't think we wills e any fo them replicated in the near future.

The clincher in choosing between the two? The A's set a record. The Rockets still have a while to go before they hit the record winning streak in their league.

But I would go with the A's streak just based on baseball vs. basketball. In baseball, you are bound to go against some hot pitcher or a guy who is just dealing on a particular day. In hoops, you always can put your best defender or double-team the other guy's ebst player to at least combat the stud. In baseball, some days you just hjave to tip your hat to the guy who blooped a double off a slider int he dirt or the guy who had all 5 pitches working that day.

There is a reason that a great baseball season is 100 wins which is winning about 62% of your games while a great basketball season is usually 60-65 wins which is about 73% of your games. It is harder to be that dominant in baseball, just the way the game is. Hell, in every NBA season going back to 2000, at least one team and often more was over 70% and even Dallas was over 80% last year....that would never happen in baseball.

The baseball streak is more impressive.

I can't help but be biased and pick the A's. I was in the RF bleachers for that game, and the Hatteberg HR landed about 5-10 seats to my left. Easily the best baseball moment of my life, and the closest I've come to actually catching a homerun at the park (excluding a BP shot by Durazo that was actually deflected into my chest leaving stitch markings since the guy in front of me actually ended up with it... jerk)

If you guys haven't been following the collusion and scandal that is taking place in the NBA, just know its far worse than what the MLB has to offer.

The entire city of Seattle is being black-mailed by the entirely corrupt NBA commissioner, David Stern. The NBA is a sideshow compared to the MLB.

Save our Sonics.

Same thing that everyone else said. I think the A's streak is more impressive because baseball is a sport that where teams can't maintain an .800 winning percentage for an entire season.

If you make the approximation that there is a single constant probability for victory on any given night (say this probability is equal to the 2002 A's winning percentage), then you can use the binomial distribution to calculate the probability of winning any particular number of games over any particular stretch. The probability that the 2002 A's, with a 0.636 winning percentage, would win 20 consecutive games at any point in a 162 game season is 142 * (0.636 ^ 20) = 0.0166 (or 1.66%). Actually, that's a much higher probability than I would have guessed.

For more binomial distribution hijinks, you can look here to find my explanation for why it was only mild bad luck that I got 3 correct answers on my 2008 Oscar predictions.

2008 a's 7 (spring training) game winning streak