Wednesday, May 24, 2017

LeBron James' Dominance In Playoff Win Shares

If you review the list below, you can see exactly how dominant LeBron James has become as an all-time playoff performer.  Currently, there is no one who has achieved 90% of his playoff WS.  (Jordan 89.47%).


Guys who have achieved 80% of his WS -- Jordan, Duncan, Kareem


70% -- add Magic and Wilt.


60% -- down to Jerry West


50% -- down to #16.








1.
LeBron James 44.44
2.Michael Jordan* 39.76
3.Tim Duncan 37.84
4.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar* 35.56
5.Magic Johnson* 32.63
6.Wilt Chamberlain* 31.46
7.Shaquille O'Neal* 31.08
8.Kobe Bryant 28.26
9.Bill Russell* 27.76
10.Julius Erving* 26.89
11.Jerry West* 26.75
12.Larry Bird* 24.83
13.Scottie Pippen* 23.58
14.Dirk Nowitzki 23.13
15.Karl Malone* 22.99
16.Hakeem Olajuwon* 22.60
17.Dwyane Wade 21.54
18.John Stockton* 21.35
19.Kevin McHale* 20.67
20.Manu Ginobili 20.60

Friday, May 19, 2017

My Notes on the 2017 All-NBA Team

Voting summary (5 points for a first-team vote, 3 for 2nd-team, 1 for 3rd, 100 voters):


First Team All-NBA 2017


1. Harden received 100 first place votes, 0 second, 0 third, unanimous selection for The Beard.  Justifiable and well deserved,

2.  LeBron James 99-1-0 -- his 11th first team all-NBA selection, tying Kobe and Karl Malone for the most ever and surpassing numerous guys (including Michael Jordan) who had 10 first-team all-NBA selections.  His 13 first or 2nd team honors is also tied for the most all-time.

He probably deserves the one "didn't vote for him" finger poke in the eye b/c he took many games off and the Cavs were only 2nd best record in the East.  The first-team vote went to either Durant (who had 3) or Draymond Green (who had 2 at forward and 2 at center).

3.  Russell Westbrook -- 99-1-0 -- the other vote went to Curry -- I also cannot get too upset about that given Russ's ridiculous Usage Rate (an all-time high) and huge number of turnovers (#2 all-time to.....Harden!).  if you'd like your players to be less ball hoggy and let their teammates play, you may want to vote for Curry instead.

4.  Kawhi Leonard -- 96-3-1 -- Three votes went in some combination to Durant and Draymond.  Someone felt there were FOUR forwards who had a better year.

The feeling of Kawhi haters is he is a "system" player and the Spurs went 8-1 w/o him, so how good is he, really?   My general reply?  Some people are dicks.

5.  Anthony Davis -- 45-34-16.  Davis was left off 5 ballots completely and he only beat Rudy Gobert by 4 points (343-339).

Second Team All-NBA

6.  Rudy Gobert -- 43-38-10 -- the difference here was that, while Davis was left off 5 ballots, Gobert was left off 9 ballots.  5 more third-team votes would have given him the #1 spot.  Gobert is the #1 rim protector in the NBA, but basically a one-end player.  Interesting that the voters would rank him so highly and Karl-Anthony Towns (a mostly one-end player the other way) so lowly.  Given Gordon Hayward's pitiful showing, voters appeared to give Gobert virtually 100% credit for Utah's surge this year.

7.  Steph Curry -- 1-93-6 -- the only Second-team player to be on all 100 ballots.

8.  Antetokounmpo -- 0-81-15  -- this is far too high for the Greek Freak.  Media loves him more than the current state of his game justifies.  Left off only 4 ballots (Anthony Davis was left off 5)!

9.  Kevin Durant -- 3-66-26 -- was having a first-team all-NBA season before he missed 19 games.  Would have been interesting to see if he would have displaced Kawhi or LeBron,

10.  Isaiah Thomas -- 0-71-23 -- had a great year; but let's be honest, he is probably the worst player on the list of 15 and has the least trade value.  Still a proper choice - you vote on what the guy produces, not on his intrinsic value.

Third Team All-NBA

11.  Draymond Green -- 4-21-51  -- Draymond received two first-team votes for forward and two for center.  He should not get votes for center or at least after he doesn't win as a center his voters out to have to vote for a real center.  Does LeBron get votes for center?  He plays a fair amount of center when the Cavs go small.

12.  John Wall -- 0-19-68 -- got the most 3rd team votes of anyone.  Apparently NBA writers walk around doing word association of "John Wall?"  "Third team."

13.  Jimmy Butler -- 0-19-45 -- had a great year, well deserved.  Probably deserved even more votes.

14.  DeMar DeRozan -- 0-4-50 -- just squeaked by Chris Paul; Chris Paul probably deserved the honor more.

15.  DeAndre Jordan -- 3-17-18 -- it is amazing that you could make 3rd team all-NBA when 62% of the eligible voters did not believe you deserved to be 3rd team or better.

What this shows us is that there are a lot of centers in the league who received a lot of votes and the splintered voting allowed DeAndre to sneak in.  Consider this, however, why does DeAndre, the defensive anchor for a LAC team, record virtually the same as Utah, get 54 points worth of votes while Rudy Gobert gets 339 points worth of votes.  The two guys are virtually indistinguishable, and Jordan may actually be better.   He falls nearly 300 points short of Gobert?

Other Receiving Votes

KAT 50 points, 2 first-team votes
CP3 - 49 points
Marc Gasol - 48 points, 2 first-team votes
Boogie Cousins - 42 points, 2 first team votes
Paul George 40
Gordan Hayward 27
Hassan Whiteside - 18
Kyrie - 14
Klay - 14
Jokic - 12 points, one first-team vote
Lillard 12
Millsap 3
Aldridge 1
Blake Griffin 1
Al Horford 1

The worst set of votes are the two guys who voted for Griffin (61 games, 7.7 WS, getting worse as a player); and Horford (68 games, 6.3 WS, was actually a regular season disappointment). 

Hayward and George are not eligible for the "super max" contracts they could have received from Utah and Indiana respectively had they made a team.  Is Paul George a better player than Butler or DeRozan?  Sure.  But he didn't get the votes. 

The center voting was unbelievably weird.  9 first-team votes went to guys who were not 1st, 2nd or 3rd team all-NBA as centers:

-- Draymond 2
-- KAT 2
-- Gasol 2
-- Boogie 2
-- Jokic 1

Draymond's votes, as I stated earlier, should have been thrown back into the voting pot and re-cast.  He is not a center. 

KAT probably got screwed a little, since his team's sub-.500 mark and terrible defense (KAT's DRtg on basketball-reference.com is a dismal 110) led voters to discount his unbelievable season (12 WS, 25-12, 100+ threes).  But KAT is young and if this motivates him to work more on defense, I will be ecstatic.

Gasol is working off reputation now - he is a declining player.

Boogie seems to make his teams actually WORSE.  This hurts your chances to win post-season awards.  After Davis, he is probably the second most talented center in the league.  But geez, if you actually take a team and make it WORSE.....

Jokic's voter, I cannot really get mad at him or her.  I think a good argument could be made that Jokic has the greatest upside of anyone but Davis/Boogie/KAT and Embiid.  He is freaking enormous and highly skilled.  Now, does that justify a first-team all-NBA vote?  No.  But I see how someone might think it does.

Friday, May 05, 2017

How Do You Evaluate the All-Time "Best" Basketball Players?

In March and April of 2015 I listed my top 36 NBA players of all-time.


I was chatting with a friend the other day and he said, "You've ranked LeBron #4 overall, but you say he has an argument for #1.  Why don't you move him up?"


I will need to look at updating the list in April 2018, but my friend's comment really brings up the question of how, exactly, do you "rank" players?  How do you rank them across generations?  Are newer players always going to be listed higher due to nutrition, training, conditioning, etc.?  What rank do you assign to someone with a great but short career (example, George Mikan)?  Do you rank them based upon how great they were at their absolute peak (example, Tracy McGrady had a top 15 all-time season -- does he get ranked based on his peak ability, when he shined the most?)


In a prior item, I identified 10 common traits of an all-time great NBA player
http://hoopramblings.blogspot.com/2015/03/best-12-next-12-trash-12-part-iii.html

1) Was regarded at his time as truly great; evidence of this would be all-NBA selections and top 5 MVP voting;

2) Was regarded as the best player in the game at least once, and, hopefully, on multiple occasions, as would be generally reflected by MVP awards;

3) Was dominant in some aspect of the game - teams needed to adjust their games to stop him and generally did not succeed;

4)  Was physically superior to other players;

5) Was well ahead of his time as a player/there simply were not players that did what he did at the time he did them (and possibly there still aren't today);

6)  Played a sufficient amount of time that his body of work can be considered not just a blip;

7) Was consistently excellent for a long time (this can be determined most easily by advance stats);

8) His playoff performance did not generally decline substantially from his regular season work (same);

9)  Led his team far into the playoffs on multiple occasions;

10) Won multiple titles.

But how, then, do you weight these factors?  Karl Malone was 1-4, 6, 7, 9.  Huge gap for 8 and 10.  So would a player like, for example, Chauncey Billups or Jason Kidd be a "better" player than Karl Malone? 

Similarly, if a player is recognized as many time all-NBA and an MVP candidate (cough, Dwight Howard) and he becomes a somewhat lesser player due to back issues....where does he fall?  There is no question that for a 6 year period, Dwight Howard was unbelievable.  George Mikan, likewise, was great for 5 years.  If we ignore Mikan's multiple titles, should he get REWARDED for playing so few years while Howard gets punished because people have to watch him struggle for 10 years until the gas finally runs out of the car?

I mean, had Johan Santana blown out his arm on his last pitch as a Twin, he is probably a first-ballot Hall of Famer.  By continuing to pitch with the Mets, he is regarded almost certainly as a non-HOF player!

So, what "method" do I use?  What weighting do I give these 10 factors?  Is Robert Horry (7 titles) a better player than Karl Malone (0 titles)?  Of course not.  How close, however, would Horry have to be to Karl Malone as a player to get the nod?  When would the 7 titles be enough?

Here are my thoughts:

A) The primary means of evaluating a player should be his ability to excel in regular season play.  After all, without good regular season play there can be no playoff play. It is also a far larger sample size.  Playing well over 82 games is far harder than playing well over 10-12-20 games.

B)  Next on the list has to be the perception of the player from those who watched him play.  I never saw Bob Pettit or Elgin Baylor play.  I do know, however, that they were deemed to be 10X first-team all-NBA.  George Mikan was named the best player in the world 1900-50.  You cannot ignore that fact.

C) Then I turn to advanced stats, which are an attempt to measure certain levels of play by assigning a number to them.  The greatest players generally have two things in common - a) they have huge single-season number; b) they have great longevity at a high level of performance.

D) It is at this point that you start looking at post-season play.  This is where guys like Chris Paul and Kevin Garnett and Karl Malone and John Stockton start to falter.  You will note, however, that all of those players are in my top 26 all-time, so I do not consider consistent playoff greatness to be a disqualifying factor.  It is, however, a factor and one that can impact how the player is viewed when lines need to be drawn on "is Tim Duncan a better player than Karl Malone?"  Since the goal of playing basketball is to win the title, you need to give Duncan the extra "plus" over Malone.

E) It is at this point that you need to be able to rely somewhat on personal observation (if possible) and sort of a 'feel" for who was better.  (That is why we have all of these lists).  I fear that many lists use this factor E almost exclusively as their criteria.  I mean, ESPN has guys like Iverson and Isiah Thomas and Bill Walton and Kevin McHale very high on their all-time lists.  There is really no objective basis for these rankings - they are almost purely subjective or based upon something that once happened in one game (Isiah scored a million points with a broken ankle; Iverson stepped over Ty Lue; McHale was impossible to stop in the post (he played with Larry Bird yet averaged over 25 ppg once and over 20 only 5X))  Walton's ranking appears almost cult-like.  Yes, he could perform all aspects of the game when healthy.  He was healthy for 1 1/2 years and mostly healthy for 1 Sixth Man of the Year award.  He has 39 career WS.  His career WS performance is similar to Tom Boerwinkle's).

So, I guess my criticism of most ranking systems is that they start with E, then go to D, then maybe include a sprinkling of A.   I'd say you set your base by looking at A, B, C and then use D and E only in cases of extremely tough calls. 

The bias in my method, I will concede is AGAINST the belief that a guy is great simply because he gets a lot of shots and makes some.  And it is biased against guys who have enjoyed great post-season success (Horry, Chauncey, are disqualified from a top 36 consideration before ever reaching category D).

But I think that is the way it ought to be done.

As far as the issue of longevity - I do award "points" for consistently great regular season stats and for all-NBA awards and MVP Award Shares.  All of these are a function of longevity.  Certainly a guy who was great for 15 years has to get a plus over a guy who was great for 6 years.  After you reach 9-10 years of good play, however, there are diminishing returns for playing longer.  But still some credit. 

And on the issue of whether a guy who gets, say, 35 WS one year (has never occurred) and then sucks for 7 years should be ranked highly, I'd say generally no.  The exception would be if the guy was seriously injured.