Explanation Infill

So . . . four games into the NBA finals and so far I have been able to resist writing a post about them.  Well, until now.  This one isn't about being clutch (or not), or the role of randomness in outcomes (Canucks' two wins, anyone?), but instead is about explanation infill.  Which is a term I'm pretty sure I just made up, even if I didn't make up the concept itself (I just Googled "explanation infill" and only got five hits, each with some sort of diacritical mark between the two words, so I'll claim that I coined the term).   Let's infill some explanations, shall we?

Explanation infill is the phenomenon commonly used by commentators and analysts (but certainly not exclusive to them) to rationalize a perceived cause of an outcome by using the outcome itself.  For example, let's say I buy a lottery ticket every day, and I usually buy a Coke with it (oh, the life!).  One day I buy a Sprite instead of a Coke, and my lottery ticket wins.  Logic would dictate that this is just coincidence, but explanation infill says: the outcome is different, therefore something different must have caused the outcome, ergo buying Sprite leads to lottery win.  Sounds silly, right?  Well, let's use a sports example of the same thing.

In game two of the NBA finals the profoundly evil Miami Heat were leading by 15 points with seven minutes left in the game.  Most people, including myself, believed that this meant they would win the game (rule of thumb in basketball: if the lead is greater than the number of minutes left in the game, the leading team has a very, very high chance of eventually winning).  Thanks to the life-changing technology that is Twitter (follow me @uncertainprof, I'm very entertaining), we can get real-time comments from real-life sports commentators, and thus track correct and incorrect predictions.  In this case I'll quote Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy, whose work I really enjoy reading even if he has frequent lapses into fatalistic thinking (and his new website, grantland.com, launched today, featuring other writers like Chuck Klosterman as well).

Anyway, at the point that Miami went up by 15 points, Simmons tweeted:

Dallas is getting punked out. Wade just stood in front of the Mavs bench with his hand up for 3 extra seconds. Total eff you move.

In other words, Dallas is not going to win this game, and even though Miami is asserting their dominance in a humiliating way, Dallas will do nothing about it.  If there is doubt that this is the intention the tweet, here is the follow up tweet:

It's pretty crazy that the only 2011 playoff team who wasn't afraid of Miami was Philadelphia. It's true.

So now Dallas is not only getting punked out, but the Mavs are also afraid of the Heat.  But then, Dallas begins to come back, cutting the lead drastically.  So Simmons tweets:

Here come the Mavs!!!! I take it all back! BTW how is Wade not getting the ball right now? What am I missing?

So at least he admits he tweeted in haste (seems to happen a lot these days - and by the way, a Weiner post is coming later this week; if you haven't been following the news, my announcement that "a weiner post is coming" may seem inappropriate or frightening, but pick up a newspaper and it will all make sense).  But what really caught my attention was his tweet right after the Mavs won the game in the final seconds.

Wade's Eff You 3 in front of Dallas' bench put Miami up 88-73 (7:14 left). Dallas went on a 20-2 run right after. Think he woke 'em up?

So now that the outcome is different, the very thing that was burying Dallas now inspired them.  And if Nowitzki had missed that last shot and Miami had won?  Then Wade's "Eff-You" 3 would have inspired nothing.  Look, either the eff-you move inspired Dallas or it didn't, regardless of the outcome.  You can't look at the result of a 50-50 shot with 3.5 seconds left on the clock and account for the previous seven minutes of effort based on its outcome.  Ladies and gentlemen, we have explanation infill.

Now excuse me while I put my socks on inside out, because one time I did that by accident and then my blog post got lots of hits.  Makes sense, right?