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I've been following a three-part article by Robert McChesney over at NBADraft.net and it is extremely interesting; read the first part here, the others being listed in the Articles section of the page (button at the top)... or just change the 5 in that URL to a 6 and then a 7.

Essentially, it breaks down like this:

Using a fairly simple but reasonable set of four criteria, he figures out the best 80 players since 1956. He explains the number and the date in his article, so I won't.

Basically, he uses top-15 MVP finishes (ranked in tiers), All-NBA teams, All-Defensive teams, and DPOYs. Each piece has a point value (3 for All-NBA first team, 15 for an MVP, 2 for a DPOY, etc) and he tallies up these totals and shows them to you in each of the four categories (MVP points, All-NBA points and defensive points, which includes DPOYs). He also shows you average points by year, which is interesting.

He takes injuries and such into consideration as well, as he explains, and also years after 36 as well (so Jordan isn't penalized for his time on the Wizards, etc); the details are in the first part of the article and are interesting and fairly insightful. In any event, he ranks the stars into three categories: gold, silver and bronze.

For example, Bill Walton qualifies for the Gold level but doesn't have the requisite seven seasons, so he's listed at the end of the list even though he averaged 26.5 points per year in his two qualifying years (higher than Jordan, who is at the top of the list).

McChesney puts in the requisite disclaimer that this isn't the be-all and end-all ranking system, since that's not really what it was designed to do entirely. He notes that the four categories he used aren't perfect (and therefore taint the integrity of the exact order of the list), especially since MVP voting is dependent on sports writers, who aren't generally super-reliable and consistent. He notes that, for example, he doesn't consider Jerry West better than Magic just because he has a higher score and so on. But beyond that, it is a very interesting list.

Gold players are guys getting 13.5+ points per year, on average, which generally means All-NBA First Team, top-10 in MVP voting for most of his prime, generally one of the 5 best players in the league through much of their prime (and there are generally only 3 or 4 of these players each year, according to McChesney).

He makes a sidenote that guys averaging 20+ points per year (Bird, Russell, , Duncan, Kareem and Jordan, in ascending order) could be a sort of platinum level, since they're basically one of the two or three best players in the league their entire career and almost always contending for a title, too.

He makes some note of Julius Erving being a special case because he's not including ABA years in this consideration, though Erving headlines the Silver group (average of 7+ points). Bronze is 3.7+.

So once he's established the top 80, things get interesting.

Next up is his attempt to figure out the best and second-best player on each title team in the given period, as well as the best player on the team that lost in the Finals and the best players on the two other squads that lost in the conference finals. So for example, his ranking this year shows Garnett tops on Boston, Pierce second, Bryant tops on L.A., with Billups and Duncan best of the rest in the CFs. He has some objective criteria helping him to figure out these rankings and such and again, not perfect, but the real importance here is to figure the best 2 on the winner, the best on the loser and the 2 other best players in the CFs and that seems to have worked.

Now, the first major observations:

Of the 52 titles in the given period, 40 of them have had a Gold medal player as the best player. 17 have had a Gold player as the 2nd man, 28 of the losing teams have had a Gold player as the best and 36 of them appear in the best-of list for the CFs (out of 104 players there).

Only 8 title teams feature a Silver player as the best guy, 12 are the second-man (6 from Scottie, 4 from Havlicek), 16 feature as best on the runner up and 24/104 are found in the CFs list.

4 title squads featured a Bronze player as the leading man (DJ, Elvin Hayes and two from Isiah Thomas), 8 featured a Bronze second man, 5 runner-ups featured a Bronze as the best guy and there were 10 of them in the CFs.

So, in all, EVERY title in the last 52 years featured at least one of these guys as the best player on the title team, 37/52 title teams featured one of them as the second-best player, 49/52 teams that lost in the Finals featured one of these guys and 70/104 teams that reached the Conference Finals had one of them as well.

Notice that means that no team that didn't have one of these guys as their best player won a title, only 15 teams didn't have one of these guys as their second-best player and only 3 teams that made it to the Finals and lost didn't have one of these guys as their best player. 34 teams made the ECFs without one of these guys as their best player (e.g. about half as many).

So that's pretty significant. Obviously, the talent is the thing. The 40/52 is most telling; if you don't have a guy who's pretty much perennial All-NBA First Team and top-10 in the MVP voting, you have to be a really significant outlier squad to win a title.

McChesney goes on to explore in some depth the implications these findings have and I won't reproduce those here in great detail because the article is worth a read (that part is in Part II).

You'll also notice that most of the exceptions are in the 70s, generally a down-time for the league. Read what he says about the 70s a little more carefully and you'll get a better idea of what "down time" really means comparatively:

On 40 of these 52 teams, the best player was one of the 21 gold medal superstars, the elite of the elite of the elite. In basketball, more than any other team sport, getting a player for the ages is essential for championships. Mere all-stars, even several of them, ain’t gonna get the job done. And 8 of the 11 champions that did not have a gold medal superstar leading it, had at least two players from this list on the team, in their primes, at least one of whom was silver-medal. (The exceptions? Rick Barry’s 75 Warriors, Elvin Hayes’s 78 Bullets, and Dennis Johnson’s 79 Sonics. These champions defeated teams in the finals that were similarly under armed; these were “down” years for the league. The late 70s was almost like a Bermuda Triangle for the NBA. Accordingly these are regarded as among the weaker champions in NBA history.)

He also notes that 21 guys (20, if you discount Bill Walton) led 64 of the 108 teams that have PLAYED in the Finals since 1956.

He even has a piece on "ensemble teams:"

Second, there have been three NBA championship teams since 1956-57 that broke the mold of being driven by a powerful gold or silver medal superstar. I call these ensemble teams and they are the teams where there was not a huge difference between the best player and the third or fourth or maybe even the fifth best player on the team. These teams – the afore-mentioned 79 Sonics, 89 and 90 Pistons, and 04 Pistons – were solid teams led by bronze (or in the case of the 04 Pistons, silver) medal superstars. At their best, the Pistons teams, these were very good teams, and deserving champions. Most fans are hoping and praying that their team can emulate these great ensemble teams because it is far easier to collect a bunch of all-stars than it is to have a couple of superstars. But these ensemble champions are exceptions to the rule, and all but the 79 Sonics had at least two bronze medal superstars on them.

Most of the great ensemble teams in NBA history – the late 60s Atlanta Hawks, the early-mid 70s Chicago Bulls, the 80s Milwaukee Bucks, the 90s Indiana Pacers, the 00s Sacramento Kings, are stalwarts in the regular season, packed with all-stars, often winning 50 plus games, even 60, but invariably flounder when the Hall of Famers take over in May and June. They are fool’s gold if the goal is to win a championship.

The only flaw I see here is that the Kings had at least one year where they theoretically should have won the title but for ref interference and BS... though one might make that square with this analysis on the basis of respect afforded to megastars like Shaq.

Part III is more of a discussion of the players in the league now and GMs who understand how this works and what to do. It is an interesting read but it's more of an extension of the work rather than the meat of the theory itself, so I won't address it right away.

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So, what do people think? Do you agree with this assessment? Are there mitigating criteria that he's missing or does this body of work (which is fairly extensive and very compelling) really help to outline what a team's realistic chances for winning an NBA title look like?

How does this mesh with Lebron's takeover mentality leading to the eventual collapse of the ensemble-style Pistons and the prospects of teams led by guys like Paul and Howard versus the Jazz? What will Kobe do without that second medal-quality player? It seems he can get there but he can't win without that second guy.

Interesting stuff.

I always always ascribe to the superstar theory, which is why whenever people talk about which teams young core, or what young duo I want, I simply want whoever has the best player, I'll fill in the pieces around them later, but give me the most dominant star.

Like people scoffed at me when I said things like I wouldn't trade Greg Oden for the entire GSW squad. I simply want the potential highest upside guy, that's how you win championships, especially in an age where everyone seems to get the max, or near max money, I'd rather have one of the guys that is actually worth it.

Basing a superstar rating on something so subjective as MVPs and All-NBA teams doesn't make much sense.

Iverson ahead of Stockton? That in itself is absurd. Awards are insanely dependent of the current talent pool in the NBA and that differs for era to era.

The superstar theory works but the criteria he is using doesn't.

obinna wrote:Basing a superstar rating on something so subjective as MVPs and All-NBA teams doesn't make much sense.

Iverson ahead of Stockton? That in itself is absurd. Awards are insanely dependent of the current talent pool in the NBA and that differs for era to era.

The superstar theory works but the criteria he is using doesn't.

Exactly. The list is not so much the actual list of the greatest players but rather what the media, current and old, wants us to think of as the greatest players.

The superstar theory is very obvious. It's basically saying "you need the most talented players to win championships, as opposed to less talented players". Pretty damn obvious.

I guess what McChesney means to say is that a few superstars and a proper supporting cast is greater than several lower-tier All-Stars on one team. Though not enough stress is put on the importance of good supporting casts. Garnett didn't win a thing until he got to the Celtics, neither could Paul Pierce, and so on.

obinna wrote:Basing a superstar rating on something so subjective as MVPs and All-NBA teams doesn't make much sense.

Iverson ahead of Stockton? That in itself is absurd. Awards are insanely dependent of the current talent pool in the NBA and that differs for era to era.

The superstar theory works but the criteria he is using doesn't.

McChesney addresses that issue in the article. He doesn't think specific players are better than others because they are ranked higher. This list isn't supposed to provide a ranking for players, but rather it just shows who is an upper tier, or Gold Medal Superstar, and who isn't. Like tsherkin said, Jerry West isn't a better player than Kobe Bryant because he's higher on the list.

I think the ratings are fair. Honestly, if a player is a superstar, he undoubtedly will get MVP voting, All-NBA team selections, and other accolades at some point in his career, regardless of media subjectivity.

I just think that the whole idea is so obvious. Obviously you want the best players in the league to be on your team.

While I always appreciate when someone puts the amount of time and work into a project, as McChesney did in this scenario, I can't say I completely agree with his methods.

As you already pointed out, basing (for the majority) a rating system on things so subjective as awards from the same sports-writers who credited Camby with a DPOTY (and many like that travesty) gives the system an inherent flaw.

However, no system is perfect and this certainly makes a valiant attempt. Just seeing that these players are at least in some kind of decent order is credit to a well-thought-out idea.

realball wrote:The superstar theory is very obvious. It's basically saying "you need the most talented players to win championships, as opposed to less talented players". Pretty damn obvious.

I guess what McChesney means to say is that a few superstars and a proper supporting cast is greater than several lower-tier All-Stars on one team. Though not enough stress is put on the importance of good supporting casts. Garnett didn't win a thing until he got to the Celtics, neither could Paul Pierce, and so on.

obinna wrote:Basing a superstar rating on something so subjective as MVPs and All-NBA teams doesn't make much sense.

Iverson ahead of Stockton? That in itself is absurd. Awards are insanely dependent of the current talent pool in the NBA and that differs for era to era.

The superstar theory works but the criteria he is using doesn't.

McChesney addresses that issue in the article. He doesn't think specific players are better than others because they are ranked higher. This list isn't supposed to provide a ranking for players, but rather it just shows who is an upper tier, or Gold Medal Superstar, and who isn't. Like tsherkin said, Jerry West isn't a better player than Kobe Bryant because he's higher on the list.

I think the ratings are fair. Honestly, if a player is a superstar, he undoubtedly will get MVP voting, All-NBA team selections, and other accolades at some point in his career, regardless of media subjectivity.

I just think that the whole idea is so obvious. Obviously you want the best players in the league to be on your team.

Ben Wallace is a superstar? Since when?

NO-KG-AI wrote:I always always ascribe to the superstar theory, which is why whenever people talk about which teams young core, or what young duo I want, I simply want whoever has the best player, I'll fill in the pieces around them later, but give me the most dominant star.

Like people scoffed at me when I said things like I wouldn't trade Greg Oden for the entire GSW squad. I simply want the potential highest upside guy, that's how you win championships, especially in an age where everyone seems to get the max, or near max money, I'd rather have one of the guys that is actually worth it.

I completely agree. Give me the best player. Or if you can give me an established, borderline all-star versus a guy with superstar potential, give me the latter, unless my team already has a true superstar.

The problem with using awards is that they are dependent on era and doesn't account for disparities in the positional depth between different eras.

Also, using per-season stats punishes longevity to some extent, when longevity should be the hallmark of a greater player.

obinna wrote:Basing a superstar rating on something so subjective as MVPs and All-NBA teams doesn't make much sense.

Do bear in mind that he's not individually ranking the players, he's just trying to establish a rough list of the 80 best players in the given time frame and a rough tier system for where they belong.

He notes the weaknesses in his theory and points out the subjectivity involved with the media as one of those imperfections.

However, given all that (and his due diligence in recording the flaws in his method), the list that is presented is pretty good. It includes pretty much everyone that should be mentioned, leaving only quibbles about their position.

The point of this whole exercise is to try and get a feel for who was roughly considered among the best players in the league during his prime; a metric that encompasses All-NBA teams, All-Defensive teams, DPOYs and ranking in the MVP voting is generally a good way to broadly recognize a tier of players.

It rewards two-way players (yay!), it rewards players who didn't win the MVP but got votes for it in the top-15 (also good) and it rewards the DPOY award. You'll notice that Camby is absent from this list. You'll notice that Dennis Rodman (two-time DPOY, 7-time All-Defensive 1st team, 1-time All-Defensive Second team, 2-time All-NBA 3rd team) is in the Bronze category of superstars at rank 62.

Camby's got a DPOY, 2 All-Defensive 2nd teams, 2 All-Defensive First Teams and one year when he ranked 14th in MVP voting. That's 15 points over 4 qualifying seasons, or 3.75 points per season.

That'd roughly qualify for the bare bottom of the Bronze star level but he doesn't have enough seasons (7) to qualify for the list. He hasn't been that good for long enough to qualify, so the DPOY really doesn't affect this that much.

Even if he WERE to be added to the list, he'd be roughly third last on the list anyhow, which means the DPOY STILL wouldn't have affected the list overmuch.

That means that your comment on this doesn't really hold significant meaning. It is worth mentioning, but his system takes it into account.

Remember, compare Camby's one DPOY or Iverson's MVP against Stockton:

Stockton has a lot of All-NBA and All-Defensive points:

He's 40th on the list (two spots below Iverson, and again, specific positioning doesn't matter, mostly only the tier, and you'll notice their both Silver-tiered, which fits).

Stockton averaged 8.2 points per season (14), compared to Iverson's 8.3 in 12. The difference there is negligible, so your argument there is again largely without significance because the list isn't saying that Iverson was significantly better (nor was it meant to really differentiate between specific players, it's designed to roughly group tiers of players).

Stockton has 11 more All-NBA points, indicating more perennial favor from voters than Iverson. And, as one might expect...

Stockton: 2 All-NBA 1st teams, 6 All-NBA 2nd teams, 3 All-NBA 3rd teams = 11 All-NBA selections
Iverson: 3 All-NBA 1st teams, 3 All-NBA 2nd teams, 1 All-NBA 3rd team = 7 All-NBA selections

Comparable representation on the 1st team, half as many seasons on the 2nd team and a third as many on the third team. Stockton was recognized in general about 50% more (in 2 more qualifying years, of course).

So, despite that and the defensive teams, Iverson's MVP gives him a whole 0.1 more points per season in 2 fewer seasons. Does this REALLY make a large difference? The two are closely ranked and stuck in the same tier. This makes sense, both objectively and subjectively. The specific rankings were, again, never the issue at hand, only their grouping, and that seems to have succeeded.

Notice two that Iverson here still has only 5 more MVP points than Stockton; yeah, he'd have 10 fewer if he hadn't won the award. Or maybe not that many, since he'd still have ranked in the top-5 that year... which makes sense, given that he lead his team to the Finals. It was his single best season from a team-success POV and he was rewarded accordingly because he had a great individual year (he won a scoring title), the Sixers won 56 games (and a division title, as well as being first in the East and second in the league in total wins, behind only the 58 the Spurs won)...

So you're talking minimal differences on the basis of the fact that Iverson actually WON the award. He was most certainly a top MVP candidate that year; it was consensus at the time and even historical retrospective doesn't much change that. He may not have deserved to actually WIN the award, but even a 2nd-place finish wouldn't have been out of line and the marginal difference in points that would have afforded would not have significantly altered the ranking landscape to favor Stockton.

This just reinforces the basic and oft-repeated principle here: this is not about individual rankings, but about placement in a rough group.

As far as Ben Wallace is concerned, take the player and his ranking into account:

Ben Wallace is 42nd overall, in the silver tier. He's got 21 All-NBA points, 15 MVP points, 25 defensive points and 8 qualifying years, giving him 7.6 points per season on average.

I think he was actually a mistake, since I only see 6 qualifying seasons for him. He's got 6 All-Defensive teams (5 1st, 1 2nd), 5 All-NBA teams (3 2nd, 2 3rd) and 4 DPOYs ('02, '03, '05, '06). He placed in the MVP vote three times at 10th, 8th and 7th.

That should give him 15 MVP points (check), 25 defensive points (check) and 21 All-NBA points (check).

So he rates out as a silver-tier player and that makes sense... how many years did the Pistons make the ECFs with him? Four. How many times did they make the Finals? Two, consecutively, including a victory over the Lakers.

Ben Wallace was critical to their ability to actually MAKE the Finals, let alone win a title. He deserves his rank there, though I think Robert mucked up because Wallace doesn't have a sufficient number of seasons to be included in the list. He belongs in principle, much as does Bill Walton belong in the Gold tier, but shouldn't be there because he didn't have the longevity.

No one's perfect.

Meantime, the basic nature of this study stands; remember, it is only the top tier of players that are really superstars. Some of them are stars with big fan bases or guys without earlier achievements being recorded (Dr. J comes to mind), players with noteworthy individual achievements (like Gervin or T-Mac) or players who've lead their team to the Finals (Dirk, Kidd), and so on. But even guys like Pippen and Ewing, Havlicek, Frazier, Barry, Reed, etc, they don't belong on that upper tier.

Scan the first 21 players; who there isn't a legit top-tier superstar?

The first name you'll come across and think about is probably Dolph Schayes if you don't know about that era of basketball, but he had the chops: 12-time All-Star, 6 top-10 MVP finishes (5, 5, 2, 6, 8, 7), 6 All-NBA 2nd team selections, 6 All-NBA 1st Team selections (15 seasons in the league, the last three of which basically don't count because he was old and injured), 3 FInals appearances (including a win) and a couple of run-ins with the Celtics in the Conference Finals...

Dolph Schayes obviously belongs.

Beyond that, you've got (in ascending order):

Walton, Garnett, Lebron, Dream, Admiral, Big O, Mailman, Baylor, Kobe, Magic, Pettit, Cousy, Shaq, the Logo, Wilt, Bird, Russell, Duncan, Kareem and MJ.

With the exceptions of Lebron, Karl Malone and Elgin Baylor, all of those guys have titles. With the exceptions of Lebron, Baylor and West, they all have MVPs (Baylor and West of course playing in the WIlt/Russell era, and into Kareem's dominant period, too).

The only semi-legit arguments pertain to Lebron (being too young and not having enough seasons, another oversight, I think) and Cousy (whom few people respect for various reasons).

I think he included Lebron just to show that it's mostly unfathomable that a 23 year-old is averaging 13.8 points per season over his first half-decade in this rating system, enough to put him into the upper tier. Same deal with Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade (who appear in the silver tier), as well as Amare, Dwight, JO, Arenas and Billups (in the Bronze tier).

They have active careers, so they're IN the prime that we're discussing and kind of count, I guess. He doesn't really touch on this in that first article. It becomes more apparent in the third article, where he talks about who has a legit chance at a title going forward and he obviously names Cleveland, Orlando, New Orleans, Phoenix and Washington among the teams to consider... if only by the presence of these players making them teams with a shot, not a guarantee.

He touches on the question of how far might rise the under-30 players on that list (the 6 of them) can rise.

He notes the following:

Forty-seven players since 1956 have made first-team all-NBA by the age of 25, and fully 44 of them are on this list of the 80 greatest players.

(The three players who went all-NBA first team by 25 who do not make the best 80 NBA players list are Wes Unseld, Earl Monroe and Latrell Sprewell.)

All of the gold medal superstars made first-team all-NBA by 25, and one-half of the silver medal superstars, though some of them struggled to make first-team all-NBA in their late 20s.

That's a pretty significant correlation.

He transitions into a discussion of GM'g tactics and how 55% of the superstars were top-3 picks. He riddles the rest of the article with thoughts like:

Six times gold medal superstars have been traded in their primes, and in all six cases the gold medal superstars led their new teams to a title. Conversely, the team trading the gold medal superstar never won a title as a result of the trade.

Here, he's discussing how to acquire the necessary talent and he eventually comes to along to the notion that it is unlikely prime superstars are going to be available, so you're mostly reduced to free agency and the draft unless you can find a superstar looking to force a trade.

Anyway, this is a fairly compelling study. You have to know what it is not, so foolish arguments like "Player X is ahead of Player Y, this is ridiculous!" don't come up but beyond that, it is an interesting historical perspective on how winning works in the NBA and what GMs should be doing in order to try and legitimately contend for a title.

abcdef wrote:The problem with using awards is that they are dependent on era and doesn't account for disparities in the positional depth between different eras.

He did some retroactive application to certain players who would clearly have deserved awards in the pre-awards era in the cases of DPOYs and the All-Defensive teams.

And while it's true that positional depth is there... does it really matter? If a player isn't standing out against the talent of his time, then he's not really a superstar.

There are no centers worth mentioning who really deserved consideration ahead of Kareem and Bill Walton in the 70s, for example. What, Lanier, Reed and Unseld? Definitely not. In the 90s, you had Dream, Ewing, D-Rob and Shaq competing for various spots but for Shaq, that evened out in the long run and for the other guys, it was mostly a battle between Dream and D-Rob, with Ewing mostly placing behind. Does he really deserve to be ranked ahead of Moses Malone or Dream during the 80s, for example?

In most of the cases involved in positional depth situations, the players didn't do enough to really set themselves apart. Or they were injured or there was some other mitigating circumstance leading them to not get the consideration needed to place on these teams.

Also, using per-season stats punishes longevity to some extent, when longevity should be the hallmark of a greater player.

Not necessarily; longevity doesn't also mean retention of peak play and we're having a discussion about who's valuable enough to lead a team to a title. Stockton averaging 11 and 8 at 40 is meaningless because he wasn't capable of contending for a title then (Hell, he'd shown significant deterioration as a player by the time the Jazz made the Finals, even from '97 to '98).

That's precisely what McChesney was getting at when he said this isn't an individual ranking system: it's about groups, and what they did in their primes. What they did AFTER their primes isn't relevant. Jordan's play in his late 30s with the Wizards doesn't matter. Stockton's in his late 30s with the Jazz doesn't matter. All that matters is what happened during their best seasons, in their primes, when they could legitimately contend for a championship.

tsherkin wrote:
He did some retroactive application to certain players who would clearly have deserved awards in the pre-awards era in the cases of DPOYs and the All-Defensive teams.

And while it's true that positional depth is there... does it really matter? If a player isn't standing out against the talent of his time, then he's not really a superstar.

There are no centers worth mentioning who really deserved consideration ahead of Kareem and Bill Walton in the 70s, for example. What, Lanier, Reed and Unseld? Definitely not. In the 90s, you had Dream, Ewing, D-Rob and Shaq competing for various spots but for Shaq, that evened out in the long run and for the other guys, it was mostly a battle between Dream and D-Rob, with Ewing mostly placing behind. Does he really deserve to be ranked ahead of Moses Malone or Dream during the 80s, for example?

In most of the cases involved in positional depth situations, the players didn't do enough to really set themselves apart. Or they were injured or there was some other mitigating circumstance leading them to not get the consideration needed to place on these teams.

Not necessarily; longevity doesn't also mean retention of peak play and we're having a discussion about who's valuable enough to lead a team to a title. Stockton averaging 11 and 8 at 40 is meaningless because he wasn't capable of contending for a title then (Hell, he'd shown significant deterioration as a player by the time the Jazz made the Finals, even from '97 to '98).

That's precisely what McChesney was getting at when he said this isn't an individual ranking system: it's about groups, and what they did in their primes. What they did AFTER their primes isn't relevant. Jordan's play in his late 30s with the Wizards doesn't matter. Stockton's in his late 30s with the Jazz doesn't matter. All that matters is what happened during their best seasons, in their primes, when they could legitimately contend for a championship.

OK I missed the part where he excluded seasons after age 36.

I don't think he is doing enough to account for positional depth though. For example, Shaq won the majority of his awards in the late 1990's - early 2000's, when his competition was pathetic. Before that he was considered in a group with Hakeem/Robinson/Ewing and generally thought to be just a bit below Hakeem. Hakeem had to contend with this competition for his entire career, and he spent a while on a non-contending Houston Rockets team, so his awards here suffer, while Shaq's look good. Also, Tim Duncan is VERY high on the list, but say if he came into the league just 4-5 years earlier, then he would have been edged out by Chuck and Karl Malone for the awards, and his awards points would suffer. In addition arguably the two best centers in NBA history, Wilt and Russell, competed against each other for the majority of their careers, and Wilt detracted from Russell's all-NBA points while Russell detracted from Wilt's MVP points. Essentially the two are detracting from each other's numbers merely by being great in the same era.

The All-NBA teams/MVP are a decent reflection of the best players in the NBA during a particular season, but it is very hard to make a judgment between eras.

One obvious thing must be mentioned: Awards tend to go to players on the best teams.

How does that have relevancy? Well, according to how McChesney ranks the superstars, he uses awards as a big factor. That is one reason why someone like Jerry West out ranks Kobe Bryant when Bryant loses the MVP award to Steve Nash despite arguably having had a better season (I hesitated to use Kobe as an example because I don't want that old debate to overrun the thread).

So in essence, the teams with more gold superstars tend to be the best teams that season, but in some respect it's the great team that helps make the golden superstar just as much as the superstar makes the team great. As a result, McChesney's analysis in a way partly shows us how the better teams in a given season are the ones that win championships... well duh!

Personally, I think the superstar theory is a good one, and GMs should model their championship aspirations around it (unless you're the Pistons). However his method for ranking superstars poses a problem since an NBA award can be partly attributed to a teams success as well as the individuals success.

abcdef wrote:OK I missed the part where he excluded seasons after age 36.

I don't think he is doing enough to account for positional depth though. For example, Shaq won the majority of his awards in the late 1990's - early 2000's, when his competition was pathetic. Before that he was considered in a group with Hakeem/Robinson/Ewing and generally thought to be just a bit below Hakeem. Hakeem had to contend with this competition for his entire career, and he spent a while on a non-contending Houston Rockets team, so his awards here suffer, while Shaq's look good.

Yeah but he was also a young gun and those guys were almost exclusively 3- to 8-year vets by the time he hit the league. Dream had 8 seasons under his belt, Ewing 7, Robinson had 3... Those years all make a big difference.

Shaq led a team to the Final and lost to Hakeem, just like Ewing and D-Rob, he outscored both of them, was more efficient and dangerous offensively than either... Hakeem was never the same kind of offensive force but he, like D-Rob were much better help defenders, so that made up for some of it. Then you'll notice that Penny pitted out after Shaq's fourth season, so he went to a team of underachievers on a badly-coached Lakers squad. A lot of Hakeem's accolades are based on team success, those two titles and how badly he embarassed Ewing and Robinson (Shaq being the only one who didn't look terrible against Hakeem, notably).

I mean, it's not like Shaq looked any worse in that era than he has done now, nor that he hasn't had competition. Flip it around, Hakeem's greatest achievements (his titles) came while MJ was vacationing, so should we excuse those from consideration? Shaq was still Shaq, but he was younger and on worse teams. You don't think that if Shaq, Kobe and Phil teamed up in the 90s that Shaq's legacy would have been a little different?

I think the argument against Shaq regarding the temporal displacement of his awards without consideration to his team situation is ludicrous.

Also, Tim Duncan is VERY high on the list, but say if he came into the league just 4-5 years earlier, then he would have been edged out by Chuck and Karl Malone for the awards, and his awards points would suffer.

Probably not, if he'd played on the Spurs with D-Rob... It's a debatable point, he might have added extra points for DPOYs not going to a guy like Artest or Ben Wallace. He might have scored more under a different coach, who knows? That's a weak argument. Too, Barkley faded pretty hard in the 90s compared to the top. He made 2 2nd teams and a 3rd team after the 92-93 season and then didn't place again as he fell off due to injury, age and team situation. He was 6th in MVP voting in 94-95 but then 12th, 16th, and didn't rank again.

I suppose 4 or 5 years would put Duncan's rookie season at 92-93, right at Barkley's peak, but frankly, given that Duncan was a comparable rebounder, a MASSIVELY superior defender and a sound 21-26 ppg scorer earlier in his career, I don't see that things would have changed that much.

In addition arguably the two best centers in NBA history, Wilt and Russell, competed against each other for the majority of their careers, and Wilt detracted from Russell's all-NBA points while Russell detracted from Wilt's MVP points. Essentially the two are detracting from each other's numbers merely by being great in the same era.

Wilt still won 4 MVP awards, I don't see this as a big issue. That's like saying Jordan subtracted from the MVP points of anyone in the late 80s and 90s, or Kareem did the same in the 70s.

As far as the All-NBA teams, that's mostly meaningless too; Wilt was better than Russell individually and deserved to be ranked higher. It's the way it was.

This is an argument akin to "Michael Jordan subtracted from Reggie Miller's All-NBA points," although obviously somewhat closer. Or how about, "David Robinson subtracted from Patrick Ewing's All-NBA points."

Crap happens, sometimes you're just not the best player in your generation; again, this isn't about individual rankings; Bill Russell still made it into the Gold tier, which is all that matters at the end of the day, the rough grouping with which a player is associated.

The fact that most of the comments about this theory are still pertaining to individual comparisons suggests that people still do not get that it doesn't matter if a player is 1 or 2 or 10 spots below where he should be as long as he's roughly within the group that makes sense for his legacy.

I found another article on this topic, this one by Dennis Gallagher over at 82games.com.


It's a bit older, but it's still an interesting read that supplements this whole argument.

I still think the best way to evaluate a player is by observing them play in large samples.

Right, but again you miss the point; this isn't about evaluating individual players, it's about getting a rough idea of what company in which he belongs and the given criteria suffice for that.

People are getting too hung up on the details of the ranking and missing the point.

This concept has been beaten to death on the Bulls board. I generally agree with the principle that you need a great player to win and if you don't have one, you need to have a spectacular group of good players and some luck.

Where I tend to get into arguments with other Bulls posters is over the definition. Many guys want to trade for a star. IMO, the term "star" is vastly watered down. The true championship caliber stars are rare and unattainable. This list backs that up for the most part.

I think a corollary to this theory should be that blowing your wad to get a second or third tier star is a recipe for disaster. See Vince Carter, Gilbert Areanas, etc. They are just good enough to make your team competitive, but will never lead a team to a title and take up too much cap room. The team ends up getting locked into being mediocre to above average. Essentially, not all max contract players are created equal.

I think it's funny how close D-Rob and Hakeem ended up being on this list, considering most people pretend that Hakeem was some entirely different level as a player now(which is more disrespect to D-Rob than praise for Hakeem).

It's not a perfect list by any means, but it kind of shows who was the top guy for a sustained period of time during his own era.

Though some things are a bit skewed, like I bet Shaq and Duncan would both look a lot different on this list had they been battling each other for All first teams as centers.

I like it though, Jordan, Kareem, Duncan, Russell and Bird.... you can make an argument that they were the most dominant player in the league during their respective periods.

NO-KG-AI wrote:I think it's funny how close D-Rob and Hakeem ended up being on this list, considering most people pretend that Hakeem was some entirely different level as a player now(which is more disrespect to D-Rob than praise for Hakeem).

It's not a perfect list by any means, but it kind of shows who was the top guy for a sustained period of time during his own era.

Though some things are a bit skewed, like I bet Shaq and Duncan would both look a lot different on this list had they been battling each other for All first teams as centers.

I like it though, Jordan, Kareem, Duncan, Russell and Bird.... you can make an argument that they were the most dominant player in the league during their respective periods.

David Robinson was very close to Hakeem. If fact, I think Robinson was a better offensive player than Hakeem. But I would still take Hakeem because his defense was videogameish and his offense was still elite.