Victory is a lossy compressor

The NBA's conference finals wrapped up this past week, and as a Heat fan and a Seattle émigré I was pleased with both results. Happy that the Cavs lost, because I still resent them for being the destination to which LeBron fled in 2014; happy that the Thunder lost, because fuck Howard Schultz. 1For the uninitiated: Schultz, as owner, presided over the sale of the Seattle SuperSonics in 2006, which led directly to their relocation to Oklahoma City. The Thunder are, in a very real sense, the Sonics. I am not over it. Both losses were noteworthy. The Cavs were, after game three, safely assumed to be dead in the water — no NBA team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in the playoffs. Their head coach, JB Bickerstaff, infamously (yes, it can already be classified as infamous) claimed that from an analytics standpoint they were really up — that the underlying numbers had the series at a 2-2 coin flip they happened to be losing. The Thunder, last season's champions, were being discussed…