Retro Player of the Year Project

[Doctor MJ]

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

I think this is what sticks in the craw of so many of Reggie's "critics." I think you could argue that as unbelievably effective as Reggie was in that role, and undeniably impactful, that his inability to impact the game with the ball in his hands is somewhat of a damning flaw for a perimeter player. I dunno if I totally buy it, I haven't spent a ton of time thinking it through to be honest, but I lean towards it, just because historically IMO you see titles one by highly efficient big men or ball-dominant wings as far as I can tell. Now you can argue that Mitch Richmond isn't going to be your guy anyway, so what does that matter...? But still, he seems to approach in style/skillset more (to me at least) my ideal 2 guard than Reggie does, and that does weigh heavily for me.

OTOH, there is something to be said for what Reggie could do for your offense we he didn't have the ball...one of the all-time great floor spacers.

It's a good point, and I don't "let him off the hook" here entirely either. Miller got no POY shares from me - I can only hold him up so high.

OTOH, when knocking him for not impacting the game more, his "clutch" should be a big part of the discussion. Many, many times when the team needed him to step up his scoring role, he did. If a guy is capable of taking over the game when that's needed, how much does it really make sense to knock him for operating in the flow of the offense when things are going fine?

[lorak]

A LOT better as a shooter

Reggie .395 3P%, .888 FT%
Mitch .388 3P%, .850 FT%

[lorak]

[

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

Yes, and it means you are great role player, but not legit first option. Reggie was more like Rip Hamilton than like all around SG/SF.
Steve Kerr for example also have great ORtg. That's the nature of that statistic - you are very good offensive role player in well balanced team, so your ORtg will be high. But perimeter player without ball halding impact never would be something more than role player. Sometimes great role player like Bowen (defense) or Miller (shooting), but that's all. Overall his impact on the game would be less than all star level swingmen.

[Doctor MJ]

[

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

Yes, and it means you are great role player, but not legit first option. Reggie was more like Rip Hamilton than like all around SG/SF.
I agree with mopper's post.

Hamilton at his best was a 55% TS guy, and he's spend most of his career at around 52% TS, while Miller at his peak was way north of 60% TS - and his peak scoring seasons are at lower volume than Miller's, and he doesn't have the history of setting the playoffs on fire like Reggie. I'll point to Win Shares again: Miller 8 seasons over 11, while Hamilton only had 2 seasons above 8.

The two guys play similar roles, but Miller does it way, way, WAY better. Hamilton literally gives you replacement-level efficiency, where it's questionable whether his team would even miss him. Miller gives you "I must have made a mistake with the calculations" efficiency.

[Doctor MJ]

Steve Kerr for example also have great ORtg. That's the nature of that statistic - you are very good offensive role player in well balanced team, so your ORtg will be high. But perimeter player without ball halding impact never would be something more than role player. Sometimes great role player like Bowen (defense) or Miller (shooting), but that's all. Overall his impact on the game would be less than all star level swingmen.

Peak usage levels:

Steve Kerr: 15.2
Reggie Miller: 25.8
Mitch Richmond: 29.4
Kobe Bryant 38.7

Of course you have to weight both volume & efficiency when talking about a player's impact, but when you do about 90% of another guy's volume and do it with much greater efficiency, it's not hard to surpass his net impact.

The Kobes of the world are out of Reggie's reach, the Mitches are not.

[drza]

Now, we're in 1965, and many people are arguing "Wilt took the Celtics to the limit" and therefore he's retaining a lot standing in voting. And we don't even have much evidence. In 2008 -- a year rife with full game film and an RPOY thread with painstakingly detailed posts that extend beyond stats -- there's a guy who averaged 30-8-7, posted huge value metrics, and we *know* was a massive reason his mediocre team pushed the 66-win champion Celtics to the brink in the playoffs...and most people were downgrading him because of that.

That's all misleading. Wilt posted great numbers against the Celtics, much better than what LeBron did when he faced the Celtics in 2008. The 2008 Celtics were taken to 7 games by the Hawks as well, and in their other two series they went to 6 games. The only other opponent that the Celtics faced in 65 was the Lakers and they took care of them in 5 games. I don't see anyone boosting Wilt that much either. He's likely going to end up 4th or 5th in the voting, so that says a lot about how little we're valuing his statistics and advanced metrics like WS, PER, etc.

LeBron's 30-8-7 also didn't hold up in the post-season (unless we want to count the Wizards series -- one of the worst defensive teams in the league), and part of the problem that I have with his numbers is that they didn't seem to make the Cavs that much better on offense. The team was still ranked 20th in the league, so those are empty stats if I've ever seen them. In the case of Kobe (3rd) and CP3 (5th), both of their teams were among the top 5. Yes, they had more help, but I'm not sure what the point is in bragging about a players offense if his team sucks offensively.

LeBron didn't enjoy nearly the same amount of team success -- despite playing in a pretty weak conference -- as KG, Kobe, and Paul, nor did he receive as much recognition from the media/peers in terms of awards. He was, at least that year, the poorest defender of the bunch and the only arguments to be made over any of those 3 guys involve advanced metrics that not everyone buys into (WS, PER).

No. I really think you missed my entire point.

In one case, we really "KNOW" about LeBron's impact. We don't have to guess that much. There are massively detailed posts in the 2008 thread about non-statistical impact on the game. We know his team's ORtg was 97.7 with him off the court (which, by itself, would be 3 points worse than the last place offense). His team was 45-30 with him, 0-7 without him. Between injuries and trade, they had one other player start more than 51 games (Ilgauskas). We know they had 21 different starting lineups.

In the other case, we don't know much, but Wilt's team went 10-28 in San Francisco, then 18-17 in Philadelphia, with very little difference with our without him. There are reports of heart attack/stomach problems. Wilt seriously contemplated retirement, and the general perception was he had a down year and had less impact than normal (a single MVP vote).

All of that is independent of statistics.

THEN, the playoffs come. Wilt plays a terrible Cincinnati defense. LeBron plays a terrible Washington defense. Then they both play historically good defenses.

Now, both series go 7 games against said defenses and eventual NBA champs. Only, again, we "KNOW" LeBron's role in how much Cleveland challenged Boston. (His playoff on/off is a net of +28.4! His team was lost when he left the game.) It's outlined in detail in the thread. He was so far and way the best player on the court over the last 5 games (Cavs winning 3) with this project's very own RPOY winner and another top 10 NBA player in the series. His defense -- yes his defense -- was clearly a big factor, clearly underrated to me (and clearly better than those you compared him to that year). This was outlined, again, in the thread.

Wilt's stats look better in the playoffs. But we don't have any details beyond stats save for a few game summaries that simply mention wether someone played well or not. We know, statistically, that Wilt's teammates played well and younger players stepped up. We know that the Celtics were totally injured (which no one seems to mention). Literally, the entire team was hobbled and Satch, their second best defender, was a question mark coming in. The 2008 analogue would be Ray Allen's off-court issues/Doc Rivers lineup juggling.

None of that even mentions something we certainly know about both scenarios -- LeBron was surrounded by a terrible offensive team, and Boston focused just about everything they had on him. Wilt had a good basketball team around him.

So, again, to be clear, I don't understand the assumption that "Wilt made his team a title contender" based on one 7 game series where we don't know too much, but LeBron was downgraded for his series against Boston, in which he was huge over the last 5 games and his team came *significantly closer* than any other to beating the champs.

[PS a statistical note: The average pace of LeBron's last 5 games against Boston was ~82. Wilt's average pace against Boston in 1965 was, from some Doc MJ-math, probably about 115. That means James scored about twice as often per possession as Wilt, and scored 34% of team's points. The team's ORtg was 111.5 in those 5 games...]

For what it's worth, I agree with your logic about LeBron. Without going back to look, I'm almost positive I had LeBron at #2 in 2008 for some of the very reasons that you point out. Though the actual vote was now several months ago, I can remember enough to suggest that my arguments for Wilt at #2 in '65 had definite echoes of my arguments for LeBron at #2 in '08.

[JordansBulls]

I'm wondering is Oscar going to finish higher than 3rd any year?

[penbeast0]

A LOT better as a shooter

Reggie .395 3P%, .888 FT%
Mitch .388 3P%, .850 FT%

Looking at them both through 14 seasons (Richmond's last) you get
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y2=2002

Reggie 19.5/3.2/3.0 .476/.400/.884 with 1.2 more 3PA/game for a TS% of .616
Mitch 21.0/3.5/3.9 .455/.388/.850 for a TS% of .547
Reggie's averages are .021/.012/.034 for a pretty significant efficiency difference of .069

Additionally, Reggie leads in Win Shares by 141.9 to 79.3 (or .067/48) (including a 26 to 20 defensive advantage) and in the playoffs it gets even more extreme:

Playoff Reggie 23.0/3/2.5 @ ts% of .606 and Playoff Win Shares of 15.4
Playoff Mitch 19.5/5.3/2.0 @ ts% of .558 and Playoff Win Shares of only 1.2!

I'd call that a significant shooting (and career value) differential not even including the extra 4 years of Reggie Miller

[lorak]

TS% is about efficiency, not about shooting ability. If you want judge shooting by TS% you have to say that for example ARtis Gilmore was a LOT LOT better shooter than Ray Allen.... So you really want to say that?

The only statistics from box score which tell us something about shooting are FT% and 3P% and when looking at these there's no way to say that Reggie was a LOT better shooter.

[penbeast0]

That's why I included the breakdowns of how he made those shots. He was .021 higher from 2 and .012 higher from three WHILE SHOOTING APPRECIABLY MORE OUTSIDE SHOTS (1.2 more threes; plus if there are 82games.com charts from those years you will see that Reggie tended to shoot more long twos as well). He also shot .034 more from the FT line (on the same number of FT attempts despite shooting about 3 less shots a game which shows that he was shooting a lot of contested shots rather than just open jumpers).

The TS% just aggregates those numbers to show the overall impact. Reggie shot better, with better range, for better results. Pretty clearly.

[lorak]

plus if there are 82games.com charts from those years you will see that Reggie tended to shoot more long twos as well).

That’s just your assumption.

He also shot .034 more from the FT line (on the same number of FT attempts despite shooting about 3 less shots a game which shows that he was shooting a lot of contested shots rather than just open jumpers).

Another assumption.
From what I saw it was this way: Reggie shot a LOT wide open jumpers because whole team worked for his position. On the other hand Richmond played on weaker teams, where he had to work with the ball and his shot was more often contested than Miller’s. And Reggie shot a lot of FTs despite his style of play (away from the basket, many non contested jumpers) because he was very good at drawing fouls – he often “sacrificed” open jumper because he want to draw a foul.

The TS% just aggregates those numbers to show the overall impact. .

Overall impact, but not in shooting department! Or you really want to say that Gilmore was a LOT better shooter than Ray Allen because Gilmore have better TS%...?
So still stands:
Reggie .395 3P%, .888 FT%
Mitch .388 3P%, .850 FT%
So Reggie was better shooter, but that isn’t some huge difference, he wasn’t a LOT better shooter, especially when we realize that Pacers had much better offenses, where whole team worked for positions for Reggie, while Richmond played on bad teams, where he had to work a lot more for his positions and so it was easier to defend against him than against Reggie. BTW, that’s one of the reasons why Reggie’s ORtg (or TS%) is so high – whole team was very well build on offense, to maximalize Miller’s talents.

[penbeast0]

It is my assumption from about 10+ years of watching them both play.

[mopper8]

Eh, I'm with DavidStern, I feel Richmond did a lot more work with the ball to create his shots which is inevitably going to reduce your fg% some, especially on 2's.

Reggie was a better shooter no doubt but I don't think its a huge gap

[bastillon]

check out Russell's defensive dominance outside of the NBA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball ... r_Olympics

average team scored about 70 pts/game. USA avg opp ppg - 45.6.

Phillipines scored 94 and 77 in first 2 games but 53 against USA;
Japan 61 and 70... 40 against USA;
Thailand 55 and 50... 29 against USA;
Soviet Union 82 vs the rest... 110 vs USA... in two games (55 average)

and if you think it's because of the competition, compare those results to 60 olympics in Rome. USA sent a team with Oscar, West, Bellamy and Lucas and still weren't as dominant defensively as 56 team. matter of fact, they never APPROACHED that level - their opponents scored 59.5 PPG (again, compared to 45.6 vs Russell's team).

there were 2 future NBA players on 56 team - Russ and KC.

similar story happened in NCAA. Russell simply fit wherever he went. the argument against Russell that he was only succesful because Celtics were perfect team for his capabilities is one of the most ridiculous of all that's been said in this project. Russell would take any team to contention with his defense. his style of play fits everywhere.

oh, btw as far as realGM's revisionist history:

In the 1960 Olympics, Jerry West teamed with Oscar Robertson to form what may be the greatest guard tandem to ever play on a basketball team – amateur or pro. Through the 1970s, most basketball experts would say Robertson was the greatest guard to ever play basketball, but a few opted for West, and many basketball experts in the 1970s and 80s, if pressed to name their All-time, All-everything team, would start these same two guards.

Until the advent of Michael Jordan, many people feel Oscar Robertson, "The Big O," was the greatest guard to ever play basketball. A few went even further and called him the greatest basketball player period.

simply Oscar was widely regarded as the better player yet somehow he's doing much better in this project. people who watched them play liked Oscar more... and it's West who's being credited with much better intangibles, really ?

[ThaRegul8r]

check out Russell's defensive dominance outside of the NBA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball ... r_Olympics

average team scored about 70 pts/game. USA avg opp ppg - 45.6.

Phillipines scored 94 and 77 in first 2 games but 53 against USA;
Japan 61 and 70... 40 against USA;
Thailand 55 and 50... 29 against USA;
Soviet Union 82 vs the rest... 110 vs USA... in two games (55 average)

and if you think it's because of the competition, compare those results to 60 olympics in Rome. USA sent a team with Oscar, West, Bellamy and Lucas and still weren't as dominant defensively as 56 team. matter of fact, they never APPROACHED that level - their opponents scored 59.5 PPG (again, compared to 45.6 vs Russell's team).

there were 2 future NBA players on 56 team - Russ and KC.

similar story happened in NCAA. Russell simply fit wherever he went. the argument against Russell that he was only succesful because Celtics were perfect team for his capabilities is one of the most ridiculous of all that's been said in this project. Russell would take any team to contention with his defense. his style of play fits everywhere.

It's ridiculous how some people act like Russell was just "lucky," when it was the same story everywhere he went. Evidently he must have made some kind of Faustian bargain then.

[penbeast0]

Why did Oscar do better in contemporary MVP/All-NBA voting and Jerry West is doing better in this project? Simple explanation

Regular Season Career numbers:

Oscar 26/8/10 on .485 from the field in 1040 games
Jerry 27/6/7 on .474 from the field in 932 games

Both great, Oscar has a clear edge
Career Playoff Numbers

Oscar 23/7/9 on .460 in 86 games
Jerry 29/6/6 on .469 in 153 games

Again, both great but West has a strong edge
This project adds the playoffs to the regular season voting

[bastillon]

half of Oscar's PS games came with the Bucks as #2 option. his Cincinatti numbers not only match West's but depending on how you value rebounds even surpass him.

besides, I wasn't refering to MVP/all-NBA votings. simply people in the 70s thought that Oscar was the greatest guard to ever play after watching them both at the time.

[penbeast0]

The other thing you want to factor in is that we aren't done yet. Oscar was great from day one whereas Jerry wasn't nearly as dominant early in their careers and was second banana in LA for the first 5 years or so -- and, though people thought Oscar was the greatest guard ever, they also all thought Jerry West was close behind him as the second greatest. It isn't just revisionist history, it's the way the project is set up.

[andykeikei]

And Oscar's prime coincided the primes of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Meanwhile West still had a few years prime after Bill Russell retired, so he understandably would have a better share.

[Doctor MJ]

besides, I wasn't refering to MVP/all-NBA votings. simply people in the 70s thought that Oscar was the greatest guard to ever play after watching them both at the time.

Again I think your conclusions are just off. Just because people in general thought Oscar was greater, doesn't mean they thought Oscar was better every year, and if you asked them they'd probably given West the nod over the last half of their careers.

With this project, Oscar's still probably going to end up with more POY shares than West, despite the fact he only had a slight lead in MVP shares (< 0.4). By my count there are only 2 seasons where we've seen one of these guys get more POY shares but less MVP shares than the other: '65 for West, and '71 for Oscar. In both seasons, the guy getting the POY nod did more in the playoffs. Again, really not dramatic stuff here. No need for conspiracy theories.