No team "just knows how to win."

I'm not entirely clear on whether Pickle's position is that sportscasters are lazy (as noted being the "bigger problem") OR that teams cannot possess certain intangibles that make them perform better (as the smack itself suggests). As it stands, the burden lays with the smacker, in this case Pickle, to demonstrate his position adequately, so my vote must go to TheColonel.

There is an emotional/psychological aspect to the game that many teams understand better than others. Its an intangible that doesn't show up on stat sheets. Certain players or teams know when to expend energy or thrust their dagger at just the right time for maximum effect. The Gators do it with backbreaking, timely three-pointers. Mike Conley measures the game carefully and asserts himself when he needs to to win the game, although he didn't do it nearly enough last night.

This intangible quality is hard to describe with other adjectives, although I'm sure it can be done. It's just easier to generically say, "These guys know how to win." Lazy, but understood. I'm going with TheColonel.

I also vote for vote transparency on this site!

All right, allow me to interject a clarifying comment and a response to the Colonel. My argument is that teams do not "know how to win" -- that that is a fiction (and only as a secondary effect, that sportscasters who resort to it are being lazy).

I'm not saying that there is no such thing as a clutch performance -- that a less talented, more poorly-coached team can't occasionally play over its head and win. Of course that happens. Everything can come together and a team an play at an unexpectedly high level for a period of time. And let's face it, teams also get lucky.

But if team is really possessed of a clutch intangible ability to win -- something that supersedes talent, luck, or coaching -- it should lsat for more than a game or two. Missing from the Colonel's analysis is any reference to the '86 Villanova squad (lost in the round of 32), the '87 Mets (2nd in their division), or the '84 Wolfpack (4-10 in the ACC, good for 7th place and a first-round exit from the NIT). Did these teams "forget how to win?" Or could it be that some other factors led to their year of success?

So Pickle, it sounds like you are agreeing with me that there are clutch teams that have an intangible ability to win the big game against equally talented and coached opponents. But you are saying that this phenomenon is somehow different from "knowing how to win" because the these teams cannot sustain it indefinitely.

Lets look at Florida winning the national championship these last two years. They certainly weren't favored last year, and you can argue that Ohio St, Kansas, and UNC all had equal talent and coaching this year. And I don't hear anyone calling them lucky. These Florida guys showed a sense of the moment, and were always able to make the key play (often a clutch 3) at the right moment to knock the wind out of their opponents. I think these group of guys would win it again next year if all the juniors stayed in school.

You can also see it with the New England Patriots over the last 7-8 years.

I won't say anything about the 87 Mets, but I can tell you the NC State in '84 and Villanova in '86 were bad because they graduated all their top players from their championship teams. Obviously its the "players on teams" that know how to win, not the franchise or school itself.

Really, Colonel? They graduated all their good players, and then they didn't win any more? Could it be that their victories weren't due to "knowing how to win," but rather that they had a bunch of good players...and then didn't any more?

Thanks for bringing up the Patriots -- they are a perfect example of my point. They have an excellent personnel staff and one of the greatest coaches in the game, who get the most out of one superstar and a fairly mediocre collection of other players. And people who don't recognize that just shrug it off as "knowing how to win." Funny how the dozen players they cast off every year (David Patten, anyone?) "forget how to win" as soon as there's someone else coaching them.

As for Florida, I'm going to stick with the hypothesis that they are a talented, well-coached team that has played together for a number of years. You can say they have some mystical, intangible ability to win; I'll just say they're as talented and cohesive as any other team out there.

I just swtiched my vote to Pickle. He's getting more convincing.

This one is Pickle hands down. Villanova knew how to win? That's crazy. They had an incredibly lucky streak of good shooting -- 79 percent for the game and 90 percent in the second half. That's not clutch, that's luck. Play that game 100 times and Villanova wins once. But my criticism of the Colonel goes well beyond that one example, however illustrative it is. The Colonel is doing something pretty common for human beings - reading meaning back into events after they've happened. A team wins, so they seem clutch. We want to believe that, so we do. As for the "Bill James/Michael Lewis sabermetrics" crack, the fact that the Colonel doesn't attempt a counter-argument other than ridicule speaks for itself.