I’ve been thinking about starting a thread to discuss that Jacob Savage essay because of its vitality and the impact it’s having (or not) on our politics, but I haven’t because I suspect it will just be progressives who haven’t read it reciting the catechisms which is exactly what MAGA is doing with it.
But, having read it, it’s not about how the mediocre Mike’s didn’t get a fair shake, which is what progressives and MAGA are flogging to make their usual points.
It’s about a very specific window in time and how that impacted a very specific demographic cohort in a very real way.
Yep, agreed. That said, I get it now. I wasn’t kidding that he honestly reminds me of Julius Irving- a prototypical ABA SF. He’s a rangy, ferocious attacker and on-ball defender* who performs best in motion, who doesn’t shoot particularly well but winds up with relatively high career FG% because of what he can do attacking the basket.
Two observations:
1) Asking Flagg to shoot threes is a waste of his talent and a wasted shot. Maybe he can develop but why bother when he can do his best work elsewhere?
2) We need to enjoy him while he lasts and they need to build around him soon. His style of play is going to limit his shelf life a bit and he’s likely going to peak early.
* Flagg gets credit but Dr J was underrated defensively despite making a couple of all NBA defense lists and blocking 2 shots a game
They aren’t inherently bad, in fact, they are great in some specific ways (better fuel efficiency, smoother acceleration, reduced wear and tear on engine and so on. They work really well in tandem with hybrid cars and are great for small cars that primarily do daily commutes.
They are also a lot cheaper to put in new cars because they are relatively simple compared to a traditional automatic and turn something very expensive and hard to replace into something hypothetically cheap and easy to replace.
On the other hand- they aren’t very robust and do not hold up well in situations that produce high levels of mechanical stress - ie towing and aggressive driving.
Because they reduce production costs, and it’s tempting for manufacturers to use them inappropriately or put them in places where they aren’t easy to replace.
If I was buying a Corolla or equivalent I wouldn’t think twice about a CVT. But I wouldn’t want one in a truck, and putting CVTs in a hard to reach location and/or selling a bunch of cars with cvts to people with bad credit seems like a bad strategy.
The sad thing is that they aren’t *terrible* cars, notorious CVT issues notwithstanding. Going all-in on subprime and focusing on short-term profitability made them toxic to higher value customers.