Compilation of Michael Jordan’s on-off data with the Bulls

[AEnigma]

The numbers were explicitly said to assume equal lineup results. Yes, logically that would not actually be the case.

[eminence]

The math is fine.

1007 * ~.88 = ~883

The assumption is of course that, an assumption. Maybe the Lakers got beat soundly in non-Wilt minutes and he's well over 1000, maybe their bench was killing it in a small sample and he didn't, can't know for sure.

I find it likely some players on those Bucks/Lakers squads hit +900 numbers, but unlikely anyone outside of that did it.

[Owly]

Also, I said +900 or whatever, lol. That's an extreme extreme number. Guys we have on record who hit +900 on the season: '96 MJ, '15-'17 Curry, and '16 Green. Poor '96 Pippen one point short.

And given overall team quality/number of games in a season, it's entirely possible those are the only players to ever do it.

Teams with a points dif of better than 800 through 2019 were.

1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers* 1007
1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks* 1005
1995-96 Chicago Bulls* 1004
2016-17 Golden State Warriors* 954
1971-72 Milwaukee Bucks* 915
1996-97 Chicago Bulls* 886
2015-16 Golden State Warriors* 882
2015-16 San Antonio Spurs* 872
1991-92 Chicago Bulls* 856
2007-08 Boston Celtics* 841
2014-15 Golden State Warriors* 828

If (hypothetically) those teams maintained a constant points margin regardless of lineup (or did so with regard to the following players) the minute leaders and their "expected" pro-rata plus-minus would be

Wilt Chamberlain 883.0341254
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 835.0442366
Michael Jordan 786.2037506
Klay Thompson 638.8134479
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 828.7272497
Michael Jordan 697.3938165
Draymond Green 622.9014085
Kawhi Leonard 526.60746
Scottie Pippen 682.9006556
Paul Pierce 611.7524677
Stephen Curry 548.2929549

Your Wilt numbers are off. There is no way that Wilt was only +883 on a +1007 team. Wilt played all 82 games and was at 42.3 MPG. He only 482 minutes that season. He played 88% of the Lakers minutes. He is definitely over 900. He is possibly over +1000 assuming the Lakers were negative in the minutes he missed.

It's the same with the 1971 Bucks. Kareem played all 82 games at 40 MPG and Oscar played 81 at 39 MPG. They both likely beat the +900 since the Bucks were over +1000. The 1972 Bucks might be the same since Kareem played 81 games at 44 MPG.

I think you've misunderstood.

All these numbers are baked in to the calculations.

If (hypothetically) those teams maintained a constant points margin regardless of lineup (or did so with regard to the following players) the minute leaders and their "expected" pro-rata plus-minus would be

This isn't a suggestion of what I may *think* a player got but what would be got if the team enhanced their net points margin at the same rate with the player off as they did with them on. This is explicitly stated. Thus it is only arithmetic:

Lakers play 19755 RS player minutes. Divide by 5 to get 3951 team minutes played.
Wilt plays 3469.

Lakers score 9920, concede 8913 for a net +1007.

1007 divided by 3951 = 0.254872184 (this is how much they outscore opponents in an average minute) multiply that by Wilt's minutes on and we get 884.1516072 ... which is slightly different to what I got before (maybe some rounding difference?) but essentially the same.

Am I saying these great teams did outscore at a constant pace ... no. I didn't say that then or now. What's the value then? Well it gives us a simple baseline based on the known relevant factors, minutes played and team points differential.

To be honest I'd claim neither expertise nor inclination in something closer to actually guessing +/-. It's a guess at what is itself a part of a pretty noisy measure and - without information on rotations - I think amounts to a guess at how unknown -possibly bench(?)- rotations fared against other unknown -possibly bench(?)- rotations.

[Djoker]

...

Did you get a chance to look at my post?

...

Alright so I've been able to do some serious data clean-up. In this post I will summarize the updated data and point out a few small inconsistencies I see in the OP.

Regular Season

I looked at the Raw Plus Minus spreadsheet that I think Eminence also posted in this thread and realized that there is MJ regular season data for 1994-95 on there for the 17 games he played: +91 ON 668 ON Mins +26 OFF 153 OFF Mins. 1994-95 regular season can be added to the OP.

I noticed that the OP has different ON and OFF values for the 1987-88 season. Like mine, I think his data only includes the 42 full games and excludes the one game fragment on 01-09-88 so not sure why it's different?

I also have a different OFF for the 1992-93 season. For the 63 sampled games, the margin is +414 so since the ON is +489 the OFF value should be -75. Please confirm.



The total regular season data we have have for Jordan comprises 60% of his total career and 54% of his Bulls career.

Playoffs

First off I noticed a typo in the OP. The 1985 playoffs should have an OFF value of -32 and not -22.

I logged the Knicks and Pistons series for 1989 because the Thinking Basketball (TB) numbers didn't match the total score margins.

Knicks: +45 ON -20 OFF (was +65 ON -30 OFF)
Pistons: -16 ON -9 OFF (was -19 OFF +12 OFF)

1989 Total: +51 ON -47 OFF (was +63 ON -41 OFF)

I also logged the Sixers series for 1990 because the TB numbers again didn't match the total score margins.

Sixers: +45 ON -7 OFF (was +45 ON -9 OFF)

1990 Total: +100 ON -45 OFF (was +100 ON -47 OFF)

In the 1995 playoffs, I found an arithmetic error in Game 1 of the Hornets series that I logged. Instead of +11 ON -3 OFF it's actually +6 ON +2 OFF.

1995 Total: -14 ON +24 OFF (was -9 ON +19 OFF)

Here is the updated playoff picture.



I noticed some minor inconsistencies in both ON and OFF minutes but they aren't significant at all.

[lessthanjake]

...

Did you get a chance to look at my post?

...

Alright so I've been able to do some serious data clean-up. In this post I will summarize the updated data and point out a few small inconsistencies I see in the OP.

Regular Season

I looked at the Raw Plus Minus spreadsheet that I think Eminence also posted in this thread and realized that there is MJ regular season data for 1994-95 on there for the 17 games he played: +91 ON 668 ON Mins +26 OFF 153 OFF Mins. 1994-95 regular season can be added to the OP.

I noticed that the OP has different ON and OFF values for the 1987-88 season. Like mine, I think his data only includes the 42 full games and excludes the one game fragment on 01-09-88 so not sure why it's different?

I also have a different OFF for the 1992-93 season. For the 63 sampled games, the margin is +414 so since the ON is +489 the OFF value should be -75. Please confirm.



The total regular season data we have have for Jordan comprises 60% of his total career and 54% of his Bulls career.

Playoffs

First off I noticed a typo in the OP. The 1985 playoffs should have an OFF value of -32 and not -22.

I logged the Knicks and Pistons series for 1989 because the Thinking Basketball (TB) numbers didn't match the total score margins.

Knicks: +45 ON -20 OFF (was +65 ON -30 OFF)
Pistons: -16 ON -9 OFF (was -19 OFF +12 OFF)

1989 Total: +51 ON -47 OFF (was +63 ON -41 OFF)

I also logged the Sixers series for 1990 because the TB numbers again didn't match the total score margins.

Sixers: +45 ON -7 OFF (was +45 ON -9 OFF)

1990 Total: +100 ON -45 OFF (was +100 ON -47 OFF)

In the 1995 playoffs, I found an arithmetic error in Game 1 of the Hornets series that I logged. Instead of +11 ON -3 OFF it's actually +6 ON +2 OFF.

1995 Total: -14 ON +24 OFF (was -9 ON +19 OFF)

Here is the updated playoff picture.



I noticed some minor inconsistencies in both ON and OFF minutes but they aren't significant at all.

I’ve seen it but have been too busy to go back and double check the numbers you mentioned there. Unfortunately, I’ve not been as systematic in organizing the data somewhere as I ideally should’ve been (i.e. I don’t just have this stuff in a spreadsheet somewhere), so double-checking is generally going to involve fully recounting/recalculating. Will aim to do it eventually and update the OP! In the meantime, I’m perfectly happy with people operating under the assumption that your adjustments are correct.

[Djoker]

...

Did you get a chance to look at my post?

Alright so I've been able to do some serious data clean-up. In this post I will summarize the updated data and point out a few small inconsistencies I see in the OP.

Regular Season

I looked at the Raw Plus Minus spreadsheet that I think Eminence also posted in this thread and realized that there is MJ regular season data for 1994-95 on there for the 17 games he played: +91 ON 668 ON Mins +26 OFF 153 OFF Mins. 1994-95 regular season can be added to the OP.

I noticed that the OP has different ON and OFF values for the 1987-88 season. Like mine, I think his data only includes the 42 full games and excludes the one game fragment on 01-09-88 so not sure why it's different?

I also have a different OFF for the 1992-93 season. For the 63 sampled games, the margin is +414 so since the ON is +489 the OFF value should be -75. Please confirm.



The total regular season data we have have for Jordan comprises 60% of his total career and 54% of his Bulls career.

Playoffs

First off I noticed a typo in the OP. The 1985 playoffs should have an OFF value of -32 and not -22.

I logged the Knicks and Pistons series for 1989 because the Thinking Basketball (TB) numbers didn't match the total score margins.

Knicks: +45 ON -20 OFF (was +65 ON -30 OFF)
Pistons: -16 ON -9 OFF (was -19 OFF +12 OFF)

1989 Total: +51 ON -47 OFF (was +63 ON -41 OFF)

I also logged the Sixers series for 1990 because the TB numbers again didn't match the total score margins.

Sixers: +45 ON -7 OFF (was +45 ON -9 OFF)

1990 Total: +100 ON -45 OFF (was +100 ON -47 OFF)

In the 1995 playoffs, I found an arithmetic error in Game 1 of the Hornets series that I logged. Instead of +11 ON -3 OFF it's actually +6 ON +2 OFF.

1995 Total: -14 ON +24 OFF (was -9 ON +19 OFF)

Here is the updated playoff picture.



I noticed some minor inconsistencies in both ON and OFF minutes but they aren't significant at all.

I’ve seen it but have been too busy to go back and double check the numbers you mentioned there. Unfortunately, I’ve not been as systematic in organizing the data somewhere as I ideally should’ve been (i.e. I don’t just have this stuff in a spreadsheet somewhere), so double-checking is generally going to involve fully recounting/recalculating. Will aim to do it eventually and update the OP! In the meantime, I’m perfectly happy with people operating under the assumption that your adjustments are correct.

I got you and being busy is perfectly understandable. You deserve the credit for starting this initiative and putting a large amount of data into a single thread.

[VanWest82]

Unbelievable effort, guys!!

Here's a different (and very crude) way of sanity checking dipper13's plus/minus as for some reason that appears to be a point of contention. Using the average 92 Q1-Q4 MOV data I presented earlier itt, we see...

Q1: +3.182927
Q2: +1.121951
Q3: +4.085366
Q4: +1.975610

Jordan usually played almost all of the 1st and 3rd quarters and would come back in around the 7 min mark in 2nd and 4th give or take a min here or there. This was corroborated in another year (91? 96?) with a substitution pattern graphic shared by squared.

Let's assume for simplicity that Jordan played all of Q1 and Q3 which would give him an average of +3.634146 per quarter. Let's also assume that his plus/minus impact was for the most part uniform across all four quarters. This would lead to +2.119919 ON vs. -0.878050 OFF in Q2 and +2.119919 ON vs. -0.144309 OFF in Q4.

Adding the OFF samples together and prorating to get a full quarter gives us -1.226829. Then we multiply per quarter averages x4 to get +14.536585 ON vs. -4.907317 OFF and +19.443902 NET per-48.

This method is obviously extremely rough with a number of assumptions that are likely to be at least partially incorrect, but it's not supposed to be materially accurate. It's just supposed to provide supporting evidence in terms of directionality of Dipper's plus/minus sample. I would note as well that Bulls finished the year +10.4 MOV whereas in Dipper's sample they were only +7.8 MOV in 55 games (edit: just noticed Djoker's chart says 53 games so maybe the 2 games MJ didn't play in aren't included in which case it's +8.1 MOV over 53 games). So the likelihood is that both the ON and OFF full season samples would trend from Dipper's sample in the direction of my very rough estimate using quarters / substitution patterns. I would also note that my very rough results seem to track quite well with what we know from squared's 91 and 93 data. It doesn't seem to matter which way we do this, the results point to MJ being a net on-off monster in that pre-first retirement period.

[Djoker]

Unbelievable effort, guys!!

Here's a different (and very crude) way of sanity checking dipper13's plus/minus as for some reason that appears to be a point of contention. Using the average 92 Q1-Q4 MOV data I presented earlier itt, we see...

Q1: +3.182927
Q2: +1.121951
Q3: +4.085366
Q4: +1.975610

Jordan usually played almost all of the 1st and 3rd quarters and would come back in around the 7 min mark in 2nd and 4th give or take a min here or there. This was corroborated in another year (91? 96?) with a substitution pattern graphic shared by squared.

Let's assume for simplicity that Jordan played all of Q1 and Q3 which would give him an average of +3.634146 per quarter. Let's also assume that his plus/minus impact was for the most part uniform across all four quarters. This would lead to +2.119919 ON vs. -0.878050 OFF in Q2 and +2.119919 ON vs. -0.144309 OFF in Q4.

Adding the OFF samples together and prorating to get a full quarter gives us -1.226829. Then we multiply per quarter averages x4 to get +14.536585 ON vs. -4.907317 OFF and +19.443902 NET per-48.

This method is obviously extremely rough with a number of assumptions that are likely to be at least partially incorrect, but it's not supposed to be materially accurate. It's just supposed to provide supporting evidence in terms of directionality of Dipper's plus/minus sample. I would note as well that Bulls finished the year +10.4 MOV whereas in Dipper's sample they were only +7.8 MOV in 55 games (edit: just noticed Djoker's chart says 53 games so maybe the 2 games MJ didn't play in aren't included in which case it's +8.1 MOV over 53 games). So the likelihood is that both the ON and OFF full season samples would trend from Dipper's sample in the direction of my very rough estimate using quarters / substitution patterns. I would also note that my very rough results seem to track quite well with what we know from squared's 91 and 93 data. It doesn't seem to matter which way we do this, the results point to MJ being a net on-off monster in that pre-first retirement period.

The 2 games he missed are not included. So 53/80 games he played in are sampled.

The issue people had with Dipper13 wasn't questioning his raw plus minus but his Off/Def/Net Rating which are per 100 possessions. The way he counted possessions is the issue but when we use raw plus minus and multiply by 48/minutes we are avoiding dealing with pace estimates altogether.

[Gregoire]

Yeah, not sure about those 92 marks:

Taking it at face value anyway...

Make that 2006-2021 Lebron and the playoff stuff is comparable with a 1994 Bull-sized elephant missing and the regular-season stuff being comparable without 94 or the bulk of 95.

That is also despite Lebron playing a much larger minute sample and staggering significantly more with co-stars.

IOW, nice try

Yep, lebron extended prime is larger sample than all of jordan bulls career which is why i never understand why these comparisions are always framed as either career vs career (where it inevitably rewards shorter careers) or very specific short stretches instead of larger prime samples or non consecutive best years (which inevitably hurts players who got down/injured years in the middle of their primes)

Is arbitrary and does affect the sample size and reliability of the data for both prime and peak comparisions

Since we have raw ON/OFF and minutes, feel free to do your own comparisons but non-consecutive best years is an approach that makes no sense. You're literally removing the worse data points when the whole purpose of using larger samples (i.e. consecutive stretches) is for the data to stabilize.

Yes, and MJ beat LeBron in every lenght of peak, prime and career - its actually not close here without cherry-picking.

[AEnigma]

Literally not true lol (unless you want to argue the best versions of Jordan are the first round exits, in which case, have at it), but you never cared about reality.

[Gregoire]

Its true, any metrics here have any consecutive MJ peak and prime better (without usual cherry-picking by...).
Nice, that LeBron's fan is in frustration - its very good proof!
Oh, I suppose I know one man who cared even less...

[AEnigma]

I think you coming in here and willfully lying is good proof, yes.

[Gregoire]

I suppose you sit here every day and willfully lying is better proof, yes

[AEnigma]

Uh oh, a “no u” reply, how will I manage.

If you want people to blindly agree with an easily checked lie, you will have better luck on the GB.

[Gregoire]

Oh, your "yes" reply is even more difficult to manage... Man...

If you want people around you to blindly agree to worshipping LeBron with your lying, you dont need to interact with "fools" not from the sect.

[AEnigma]

Only one person here worships a basketball player.

[eminence]

Ya know, I'm not fully up on what these numbers would look like /48 for other notables (Shaq/Duncan/KG/LeBron/Steph maybe?).

Anybody have any of those sitting around?

[Gregoire]

Yes, exactly the one who can find in 2 minutes the post that hurt and frustrated him so much

[AEnigma]

I definitely hurt my sides every time I read it.

[Dirk]

Locking this topic until a PC board moderator steps in.

That exchange where you talk to each other without quoting each other is quite silly. You can make an effort to be better... since you should be aware other adults will have to spend their time reading that and dealing with it applying their "forum justice."

(Just a temporary lock, the topic has great discussion and will be unlocked by a PC mod)