RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Wilt Chamberlain)

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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#221 » by Doctor MJ » Sat Jul 22, 2023 8:58 pm

One_and_Done wrote:And this sort of thing is why I don't like overeliance on advanced stats. Any stat that thinks Robinson was as good or better than Duncan in 99 is clearly flawed. Duncan was universally seen as the best player on that team (and frankly was the best player in the whole league).


Okay, so let's tease this a part a bit.

First: Stats don't think. They tell us (some of) what happened. This might seem like a trite clarification to make, but this sort personification takes us to an analytical dead end. If people are using a stat to lead to a faulty conclusion, there's always a facet of the use that can be discussion in terms of logic and assumption. So what's the logic? Where does it go haywire?

Second: When we say "Duncan was universally seen as the best...", once again, it's humans doint the seeing with their own logic building up from data. So how did they judge this to be the case? More specifically, how did the least capable of seeing who was the best end up agreeing with the most? The most naive people, what were they using to make this assessment they weren't all that qualified to make.

Here I lean on my own experience. Back in '98-99 I was someone who had been following the sport for about 15 years. I knew a lot...but my process for learning what I knew was what nowadays gets called "casual". My opinions at the time represented the naive. So what made me think what I did beyond hearing other people say so?

Duncan scored more.
Duncan played more.
Simple as that.

Of course the thing is about playing more is that while it certainly gave him more time to add to his impact - which is significant to the question without question - Robinson wasn't playing less because he wasn't good enough at basketball to justify playing more. So while the minutes may end up deciding the comparison, it's important to take care not to project further meaning on to the difference than that.

What about scoring more? Well, first I think we need to keep in mind that Robinson becoming the 2nd scoring option isn't something that would have happened in Duncan's rookie year if Robinson had had an ego about it. Fine to say you believe Duncan was the superior scorer, but remember that if the team were playing with Robinson as the first option and Duncan as the second, there's no reason to think the offense would be that much worse because Robinson himself was an excellent scorer. In terms of a specific Duncan vs Robinson comparison then, I think one should be careful assuming that Duncan deserves credit beyond the gap between the Duncan-first model and the Robinson-first model.

And then there's the matter that the Spurs were a team winning with a dominant defense not a dominant offense, and when we look at stats in a per minute basis, Robinson has the edge by all classic defensive box score statistics - blocks, steals & defensive rebounds - in both the regular season & post-season.

Add all that together with Robinson being a known DPOY level defender and outstanding defensive impact metrics which a major lead particularly in the playoffs - In playoffs the Spurs were 16.3 points better by DRtg with Robinson playing, and 8.0 better with Duncan on the bench - and I think you've at the very least got a strong argument for Robinson being the more valuable per minute player.

If you can acknowledge this but still give Duncan the unequivocal nod because of his minutes, that makes sense to me.
If you think it's just crazy to even consider the possibility because naive knuckleheads like my young self thought Duncan was the clear MVP, I'd encourage you to have less faith in us.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#222 » by lessthanjake » Sat Jul 22, 2023 9:25 pm

OhayoKD wrote:
Magic vs Steph

I'll start this off with some excerpts from the skillset analysis me and blackmill did(and I presented chunks of for the Kareem thread). Some of you may have see this before, but for posterity...

In this framework, Magic grades a tier higher than Steph based on two alleged advantages;
-> The ability to leverage/organize his teammates as a floor-general
-> The efficiency of his creation


This is just a theoretical framework and nothing more. And I don’t think it really is borne out by data. The efficiency of Steph’s creation is actually an outlier. For example, I provided info in prior threads that showed that Steph is an outlier in terms of increasing the “shot quality” of teammates when he’s on the court. And that’s even as compared to top-tier playmakers that this framework puts ahead of Steph, such as Nash and LeBron. And this mostly seems to be caused by Steph being a very large outlier in increasing the percent of his teammates’ shot attempts that are at the rim—something that he is again a massive outlier in even as compared to guys like Nash and LeBron.

Which of course makes sense if you think about it, because Steph’s unique method of creation is uniquely well-suited to creating shots at the rim. Great playmakers generally create by drawing defenders towards them and getting the ball to the person who is now in open space. You draw defenders towards you by getting into dangerous positions, and for virtually everyone in history, those dangerous positions are those closer to the basket. So the defenders are drawn towards the basket, and the space created tends to be away from the basket. Steph is the opposite. With Steph, the dangerous positions that draw defenders towards him are really far away from the basket, and so the space created tends to be close to the basket. That helps his brand of creation to be particularly efficient—with his presence having an outlier effect on his teammates’ shot quality.

Granted, we don’t have data on this for Magic Johnson, who obviously was an incredible playmaker and probably an outlier in this regard himself. But Steph’s playmaking is definitely at outlier-level, not at some second tier.


Incidentally they don't seem to have the same level of offensive lift in the absence of a specific structure where those decisions are delegated to someone else:


Curry wasn't close to leading all-time offenses(and had worse metrics than both westbrook and durant) with Draymond on the bench.


That’s just objectively inaccurate. The 2016-2017 Warriors literally had a better RS+playoffs offensive rating with Steph on and Draymond off (123.34) than they did with Steph and Draymond both on (122.25). And it was an all-time offense either way. Same with the 2017-2018 Warriors, who also had a better offensive rating with Steph on and Draymond off (123.62) than they did with Steph and Draymond both on (120.52). Again, these are historically great numbers. This is just an argument invented out of thin air.

Players similar to Magic tend to lead better offenses than players similar steph. Magic has proven himself without his best co-star, and players like Magic have shown proof of concept outside of optimal-situations while Steph and players like Steph seem to struggle generating great results until they find the right situation.


“Players like Steph”??? There is no historical analogue to Steph. That’s the point! His shooting ability is such a historical outlier that the effect he has on the game is something new.

Finally, I'd like to bring up a point about Steph...and the potential ceiling of his brand of offense:


What you’re quoting there is a self-proclaimed non-point (“I’ll be the first to admit that a fifteen-team sample size (ultimately dependent on a two-series playoff sample) is *not* a reasonable basis for a conclusion.”), from someone who is providing some color regarding ranking one of Steph’s teams the greatest team in the history of basketball.


Somehow, someway, even with Kevin Durant, the Warriors still were not the best offense ever, even in the playoffs.


Um, in the 2016-2017 playoffs, the Warriors with Steph and Durant on the floor had a 127.67 offensive rating, and it was 129.04 if you filter out low leverage situations. When you add Draymond to it, you get to a 130.73 offensive rating in non-garbage time. I think you’ll find that no one matches that. That’s like a +20 rORTG!

So yeah, I don’t think this is a correct statement at all. The 2016-2017 Warriors with Steph and Durant were absolutely an enormous historical outlier in offense. The team only didn’t have the best offense ever in the playoffs because they had an absolutely dismal 98.11 offensive rating in minutes Steph wasn’t on the floor. Which is probably in significant part because they were so dominant in Steph’s minutes that there was little urgency in the rest of the minutes.

Meanwhile, as for the regular season, I’ve previously charted out the regular season on-court ORTG+ of the best players of the play-by-play era: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2302989. In general, Nash and Steph are clear outliers, with multiple 110+ seasons. And the 2017-2018 Warriors with Steph on the floor had the 2nd highest ORTG+ I found, only very slightly behind the 2004-2005 Suns with Nash on the floor (113.4 vs. 113.0). No one else had a season even remotely close to that. So yeah, this idea that Steph didn’t lead GOAT-tier offense is incorrect.

So let's break this down a bit:

(1) lift a team to best ever status? No Magic did not do that. And neither did Steph. That was Durant. And of course they didn't really play "best ever" basketball the next two years despite having not one, not two, but three superstars complimented by strong role players like Klay and Iggy. Fit was excellent, talent was wild, yet somehow, derived of just iggy, that Warriors team was played to a dead-heat by the Rockets when we account for garbage time(thanks fp4!) per m.o.v and was losing 3-2 before Houston lost their 2nd best player.


The fact that Durant was the last piece added to the team does not make him the most important piece. It’s very very clear from the data who was the main driver of those teams’ greatness. And it was definitely Steph. The data on this is obvious and I really don’t even think you disagree. Just as one example I’ve mentioned before: Those Warriors had a better net rating with Steph on and Durant, Draymond, and Klay off than it did with Durant, Draymond, and Klay on and Steph off. Those Warriors were 24-23 with Steph not playing, 28-10 with Durant not playing, and 24-10 without Draymond playing. The fact is that those Warriors absolutely were best-ever level teams, and Steph absolutely was easily the most important player on the team. Neither of those two things are really debatable at all.

The idea that those Warriors were not the best team ever because not even in their best season they struggled with a road series against a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team is pretty wild. Only 14 teams in the history of the NBA have matched both the wins and SRS of that Rockets team. And the 2018 Rockets had also easily destroyed their first two playoff opponents. That is the type of team that would usually win the title, and that even the best team ever still would be expected to struggle with, especially in a road series. Luckily for Golden State, they had impact king Steph Curry, who had the highest +/- of anyone in the series (+56, which in 268 minutes comes out to +10.02 per 48 minutes).

In 2019 they had iggy and found themselves in a dead-heat with a significantly weaker version of that same team from Houston through 4-games and most of game 5. They go off without Durant to win game 5 and 6 but even with KD they looked very mortal. And it does raise some questions about this great "ceiling-raising" as it was Steph's poor play as KD went off that was sinking them through the first 4 games. Just like it was Steph's poor play that helped put them down to a less talented side in 2018.


It is somehow bad for Steph that his team was tied 2-2 in a series (where one loss was in OT) and then the second best player on the team went down and Steph stepped up and won them the series in 6? If that’s the criticism of Steph, then let’s definitely vote him in immediately!

And I’m curious how “it was Steph’s poor play . . . that was sinking them through the first 4 games” when Steph actually had an overall positive +/- over the two games they lost (which Durant did not, by the way). As to your reference again to the 2018 series, I’d reiterate that Steph had the highest +/- of anyone in the entire series.

And I’d repeat again that the critiques here are literally that the Warriors couldn’t have been that great because they (1) struggled to win a road series against a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team, and (2) beat a team in 6 games when their second best player went down during the series. These are just facially unpersuasive points.

(2) If the 2022 Warriors were subpar, the 1988 Lakers were arguably more so. Both had injury-ridden off samples(this was a bigger factor with the Warriors), but the 88 Lakers in 10 games without Magic were roughly -4 while the Warriors over 18 games were roughly -2. Moreover in the playoffs while Draymond elevated and as defense led the Warriors to another championship. Perhaps more notably, when Kareem departed, Magic would reach 2 of the next 3 finals with injury nixing both his campaigns at the final hurdle. Meanwhile Steph, a year removed and a few depth pieces short, barely made the postseason and then lost decisively to a Lakers side whose 2nd best player(probably best in the regular season), now on as much milage as cp3 and steph combined, was playing on a torn tendon. And it's not really clear Steph was better.


Are you really judging the 1987-1988 Lakers—a team that had almost even preseason title odds because they were running it back after having one of the greatest teams in NBA history—as being not very good based on a small 10-game off sample where the team still went 5-5 without Magic? You’re obviously not old enough to have watched basketball at the time and must be drawing conclusions based on random numbers you searched up on statsmuse. Magic’s missed games were all after 60+ games into the season, in a year where the Lakers had gone out to a way better record than anyone in the NBA. Indeed, when Magic first went out, the Lakers were 1st in the NBA, with an 8.5 game lead in the West and a 7.5 game lead overall in the NBA, with just 22 games left. They had such a secure hold on the NBA’s best record that the games the rest of the season didn’t matter much (they went 7-4 with Magic and 5-5 without Magic the rest of the season, after starting the year 49-11, and still had a 5-game lead for 1st place in the NBA by the end). And yet you’re wanting to say they were not very good because of results in some of those really-low-stakes games? The idea that the 1988 Lakers were only as good or even less good a team than the 2022 Warriors is honestly farcical. Magic Johnson was great, but he never led a team to a title that was remotely like the 2022 Warriors.

(3) Incredible Impact? Sure. But many of his contemporaries have strong cases in the period that was supposed to be his. Harden, Giannis, and Jokic have cases depending on your lense(Jokic in paticular). And of course there is the matter of 30+ Lebron, where there is plenty to suggest he was more valuable over than Steph during that 68-win, +10 srs 5-year period where he was paired with one or two complimentary(at least in theory) superstars. He has no real claim to the crown for data-ball, and even his alleged prime was arguably outshined by multiple contemporaries.


Steph’s “claim to the crown for data-ball” is that he has gotten the better of everyone in essentially every impact metric more times than they’ve gotten the better of him in the last decade. It’s pretty straightforward and manifestly obvious. This is someone who is in 1st place on NBAshotcharts in six straight 5-year RAPM intervals. Overall, I’ve provided an overwhelming mountain of evidence on this, and it’s just baffling that you’re still just arguing this with essentially no basis. Your only argument is basically that he’s not always 1st in every measure all the time—which is just measuring him against an unrealistic bar that is essentially impossible to meet when talking about data that is often quite noisy. Steph Curry is the impact-metric king of the last decade. It’s really just not a debatable premise.

Hakeem jumps ahead on the basis of circumstance and nigh-unmatched playoff elevation(a factor that also helps Micheal to a degree). But can Steph say the same? Given what transpired during that 5-year "68-win +10srs stretch", I would have to say no.


“Given what transpired during that 5-year ‘68-win +10srs stretch’”? During that stretch, Steph finished 2nd, 9th, 2nd, 2nd, and 2nd in playoff AuPM/g. There was not a single person who finished above him in 3 of those 5 years. And, along the way, he won 3 titles while going to the finals every year. Playoff impact is very obviously not a concern with Steph.

I am not going to argue that his marks him as some sort of equal to Bill(though that seems to have become a popular tactic), but those Celtics aside, his Lakers have a case against anyone. Outside of a single year, Steph's Warriors really do not. And I do not think that is because Curry was at some contextual disadvantage.


Steph’s Warriors don’t “have a case against anyone . . . Outside of a single year”??? This just…completely strains credulity. The Warriors won more games in a 3-season span than any team in history. They are the only team to have 10+ SRS three years in a row. They won 3 titles in 5 years, and went to the finals the other two years. Even outside of 2016-2017, they won titles with playoff net ratings of +10.3 and +8.2. For reference, the only other teams to have matched that +10.3 playoff net rating are: the 2001 Lakers, the 1996 Bulls, the 1991 Bulls, the 1987 Lakers, the 1986 Celtics, and the 1971 Bucks. Steph’s Warriors had 3 of Sansterre’s top 9 teams of all time (as well as #26 and #91). For reference, there’s only 2 Magic Lakers teams in the top 60, and the highest one was #10. Jordan’s Bulls are the only team with multiple top 10 entries, and Steph’s Warriors are the only team with three top 10 entries. I could go on and on. This is just an absurd statement.

Well, setting aside you didn't seem to think it was note-worthy then Pippen's Bulls "did so well" with their own "interpersonal-strife"...

No. I don't think being 3-2 down in what, excepting for garbage time, was a dead-heat to the Houston Rockets, a significantly less talented team led by two "floor-raisers" counts as "doing so well". Nor when you find yourself in an another dead-heat with an even weaker version of that side with Kevin Durant on the floor.


I’m not holding up “interpersonal strife” as a huge deal. It’s you that are trying to hold it up as a negative against Steph, and I simply pointed out the obvious fact the team still doing really well while there’s interpersonal strife is not a bad thing. I’ve never made some affirmative argument about this—in part because we have no idea what interpersonal strife teams do or don’t have behind closed doors, so it’s just an impossible thing to control for.

As for the 2018 Rockets, if your argument is that Steph is not a ceiling raiser because his team struggled to win a road series against a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team, then I think it’s safe to say you really don’t have much of an argument at all.

And, yes. Steph has indeed, by your first standard, "vultured" very good teammates:

If we go by your second (incorrect)process with APM, draymond has found themselves "cannabalized"

How curious...


Lol, this is obviously reaching. Jordan Poole is not the type of player we’re talking about when we are talking about great players being maximized in order to ceiling raise. He is not a “very good” player. He’s only had one decent season (in which he did have a +4 effect on net rating with Steph on), and even in that season he became unplayable deep in the playoffs. Even Wiggins is really just a solid starter-level player. Overall, those just aren’t players that have high impact that could be cannibalized. They’re basically just pretty neutral starter-level players (which we can see in their career on-off ratings, for instance), for whom this sort of analysis will therefore mostly be dominated by statistical randomness tilted towards a negative effect with Steph because of it being harder to increase a high net rating. Players like Wiggins and Poole just aren’t the type of players that would move the needle on a high net rating. Which is why that 2022 title was a floor raising title not a ceiling raising one.

And, of course, I should also note that it is widely understood that Wiggins has easily shown his best play of his career with Steph, particularly in the playoffs. So that was a really odd example for you to use.

Westbrook, Harden, CP3, Kawhi, 18 and 19 Durant. Not great players. Low IQ. got it. JR Smith is throwing soup.


What is this random list of players supposed to be? Is it supposed to be a list of players that supposedly wouldn’t fit in the Warriors system? Only one of these players has played on the Warriors (Durant), and Durant literally won two titles in the Warriors system and played very well doing it. Meanwhile, Kawhi literally won Finals MVP playing in a motion system. I’m genuinely confused what you’re trying to say. And JR Smith is not a great player, so I don’t see your point. No one is sitting around talking about how much a good fit with JR Smith would raise a team’s ceiling.

But he does need the ball. He needs opportunities to handle and to playmaker but also not too many of them. And he needs extra-passes and well-set screens, and teamamtes who know where to move and when to run to use his gravity properly. He also needs strong versatile defenders who Steph can funnel attackers to when he's hunted on matchups. He also needs scorers who utilize his "gravity" without also spending alot of possessions per touch with the ball. It's not as simple as Steph walks on -> ts goes up. And most teams do not have the personell Steph would need to run that, even assuming the coach he was paired with knew how to do it. And then you need willingness. Otherwise even theoretical fits like Durant are suddenly "holding Steph back".

It is controversial to everyone who gets how that system works. It is logically obvious to those who don't. Don't explain things you don't understand.


These are pretty much just all things that get easily coached to an NBA player with a remotely competent basketball IQ. It’s not something that has been hard for players to pick up on the Warriors, which isn’t a surprise since they’re professional basketball players. Needing guys to mentally understand basic basketball concepts is really not the high bar you think it is.

And every defense in the entire NBA wants good defenders that people can funnel attackers to, because the rules make one-on-one perimeter defense almost impossible. This is not an issue of fit with Steph.

Speaking of, no. When low-minute role-players score super-high in an artificial approximation while actually not having a big effect on the team. High 1-year APM is not an indication of excellent support, it is an indication that an outlier is being curved down and seeing value misattributed to their teammates. And that outlier, in 2003, was Tim Duncan.


This is just you denying data that disproves your argument. And Manu didn’t just have “high 1-year APM.” It was high 1-year APM, followed by high APM like every single year after that—many times higher than Duncan’s (his league ranking in JE’s RAPM after 2002-2003 in chronological order was: 17th, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 3rd, 12th, 12th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 6th, 9th, and 26th). Which obviously helps validate that the 2003 impact numbers were real. Manu Ginobili is obviously not Anderson Varejao.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#223 » by rk2023 » Sat Jul 22, 2023 11:11 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:The tallies:

Induction Vote:

Wilt - 12 (AEnigma, Samurai, ZPage, beast, trex, cupcake, rk, DGold, ty, Ohayo, Narigo, Moonbeam)
Shaq - 6 (OaD, trelos, iggy, Dr P, Dooley, ceoofk)
KG - 3 (eminence, speel, ShaqA)
Magic - 2 (f4p, Doc)
Curry - 1 (ltj)

No majority. Going to 2nd vote:

Wilt - (ShaqA)
Shaq - (ltj, f4p, eminence)
Curry - (Doc)
No 2nd - (speel)

Wilt wins with plurality 13-9 over Shaq.

Wilt Chamberlain is Inducted at spot 7.

Image

Nomination Vote:

Bird - 9 (ltj, OaD, cupcake, DGold, f4p, ty, speel, Dr P, Doc)
Kobe - 7 (AEnigma, trex, trelos, rk, Ohayo, ShaqA, ceoofk)
Mikan - 3 (beast, eminence, Moonbeam)
West - 1 (ZPage)
Robinson - 1 (iggy)
Oscar - 1 (Narigo)

Larry Bird is our next Nominee.

Image


Neat car selection. Can never go wrong wearing a helmet :lol: :lol:
Mogspan wrote:I think they see the super rare combo of high IQ with freakish athleticism and overrate the former a bit, kind of like a hot girl who is rather articulate being thought of as “super smart.” I don’t know kind of a weird analogy, but you catch my drift.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#224 » by One_and_Done » Sat Jul 22, 2023 11:59 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
One_and_Done wrote:And this sort of thing is why I don't like overeliance on advanced stats. Any stat that thinks Robinson was as good or better than Duncan in 99 is clearly flawed. Duncan was universally seen as the best player on that team (and frankly was the best player in the whole league).


Okay, so let's tease this a part a bit.

First: Stats don't think. They tell us (some of) what happened. This might seem like a trite clarification to make, but this sort personification takes us to an analytical dead end. If people are using a stat to lead to a faulty conclusion, there's always a facet of the use that can be discussion in terms of logic and assumption. So what's the logic? Where does it go haywire?

Second: When we say "Duncan was universally seen as the best...", once again, it's humans doint the seeing with their own logic building up from data. So how did they judge this to be the case? More specifically, how did the least capable of seeing who was the best end up agreeing with the most? The most naive people, what were they using to make this assessment they weren't all that qualified to make.

Here I lean on my own experience. Back in '98-99 I was someone who had been following the sport for about 15 years. I knew a lot...but my process for learning what I knew was what nowadays gets called "casual". My opinions at the time represented the naive. So what made me think what I did beyond hearing other people say so?

Duncan scored more.
Duncan played more.
Simple as that.

Of course the thing is about playing more is that while it certainly gave him more time to add to his impact - which is significant to the question without question - Robinson wasn't playing less because he wasn't good enough at basketball to justify playing more. So while the minutes may end up deciding the comparison, it's important to take care not to project further meaning on to the difference than that.

What about scoring more? Well, first I think we need to keep in mind that Robinson becoming the 2nd scoring option isn't something that would have happened in Duncan's rookie year if Robinson had had an ego about it. Fine to say you believe Duncan was the superior scorer, but remember that if the team were playing with Robinson as the first option and Duncan as the second, there's no reason to think the offense would be that much worse because Robinson himself was an excellent scorer. In terms of a specific Duncan vs Robinson comparison then, I think one should be careful assuming that Duncan deserves credit beyond the gap between the Duncan-first model and the Robinson-first model.

And then there's the matter that the Spurs were a team winning with a dominant defense not a dominant offense, and when we look at stats in a per minute basis, Robinson has the edge by all classic defensive box score statistics - blocks, steals & defensive rebounds - in both the regular season & post-season.

Add all that together with Robinson being a known DPOY level defender and outstanding defensive impact metrics which a major lead particularly in the playoffs - In playoffs the Spurs were 16.3 points better by DRtg with Robinson playing, and 8.0 better with Duncan on the bench - and I think you've at the very least got a strong argument for Robinson being the more valuable per minute player.

If you can acknowledge this but still give Duncan the unequivocal nod because of his minutes, that makes sense to me.
If you think it's just crazy to even consider the possibility because naive knuckleheads like my young self thought Duncan was the clear MVP, I'd encourage you to have less faith in us.

I could give the usual explanations about how the advanced stats can be noisy, or misleading, because of the circumstances, or the replacement quality, or because of the line-ups or whatever. I'm not going to do that though, because ultimately I wouldn't care and I want to be honest about that.

I'm glad we have advanced stats, and they are useful (or at least the plus minus related ones are; stuff like PER is meaningless). They tell us something the numbers are seeing dispassionately, and are free of bias. But they're an indicator, they're not causative. This is something various authors of literature play on alot with absurdist plots that see outcomes happening due to what is actually a random collection of events, which people wrongly assume to be the result of rational causes. Read the end of War and Peace and there's a long segment about the topic of 'great men'. I don't necessarily agree with Tolstoy on that btw, but what I would say is we need to be careful attributing causes to things. Sometimes stuff just happens randomly, and the numbers can't distinguish. So if I see the numbers suggesting something that everything else is suggesting is false? Screw those numbers.

With most science or math you can take the results and apply them in different situations. Because the context can't be replicated here, we can't take a guy with plus whatever and move him to a new situation and expect the same result, and we have no way of proving why. The science of an atomic bomb doesn't have that problem. It works regardless of context.

I'm looking at how D.Rob declined as a player, and the Spurs didn't miss a beat (and in fact got better). I'm looking at how the Spurs were 15-3 in 2003 without D.Rob. I'm looking at how Duncan fared against Shaq without D.Rob there for most of the 2002 series. I'm looking at the 2 years after D.Rob (before the rule changes) where the Spurs D was even better than it had been in the last few years with D.Rob. I'm also watching the games (even though we should be careful of the eye test), and I'm seeing Duncan be massively more impactful. I'm listening to respected commentators like JVG call Duncan clearly the best player in the world in 1999. I'm putting all these together, and then I'm not caring if D.Rob has some advanced stat edge that could be completely random noise. Maybe Shaq wasn't trying as hard against D.Rob because he was using that time to take a breather and get some rest on the court. Maybe when D.Rob was on Kobe took that chance to foolishly pass less to Shaq because he got overexcited. Who knows. All I know is Duncan was clearly the more impactful and better player in 1999, whether it's per minute or for the whole year.

Adjusted plus minus are just a data point. They're one more thing to look at and consider, and they're one extra bit of evidence that might mean something. But when all the other evidence is telling me something different? Ignore it I will.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#225 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Jul 23, 2023 12:08 am

One_and_Done wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
One_and_Done wrote:And this sort of thing is why I don't like overeliance on advanced stats. Any stat that thinks Robinson was as good or better than Duncan in 99 is clearly flawed. Duncan was universally seen as the best player on that team (and frankly was the best player in the whole league).


Okay, so let's tease this a part a bit.

First: Stats don't think. They tell us (some of) what happened. This might seem like a trite clarification to make, but this sort personification takes us to an analytical dead end. If people are using a stat to lead to a faulty conclusion, there's always a facet of the use that can be discussion in terms of logic and assumption. So what's the logic? Where does it go haywire?

Second: When we say "Duncan was universally seen as the best...", once again, it's humans doint the seeing with their own logic building up from data. So how did they judge this to be the case? More specifically, how did the least capable of seeing who was the best end up agreeing with the most? The most naive people, what were they using to make this assessment they weren't all that qualified to make.

Here I lean on my own experience. Back in '98-99 I was someone who had been following the sport for about 15 years. I knew a lot...but my process for learning what I knew was what nowadays gets called "casual". My opinions at the time represented the naive. So what made me think what I did beyond hearing other people say so?

Duncan scored more.
Duncan played more.
Simple as that.

Of course the thing is about playing more is that while it certainly gave him more time to add to his impact - which is significant to the question without question - Robinson wasn't playing less because he wasn't good enough at basketball to justify playing more. So while the minutes may end up deciding the comparison, it's important to take care not to project further meaning on to the difference than that.

What about scoring more? Well, first I think we need to keep in mind that Robinson becoming the 2nd scoring option isn't something that would have happened in Duncan's rookie year if Robinson had had an ego about it. Fine to say you believe Duncan was the superior scorer, but remember that if the team were playing with Robinson as the first option and Duncan as the second, there's no reason to think the offense would be that much worse because Robinson himself was an excellent scorer. In terms of a specific Duncan vs Robinson comparison then, I think one should be careful assuming that Duncan deserves credit beyond the gap between the Duncan-first model and the Robinson-first model.

And then there's the matter that the Spurs were a team winning with a dominant defense not a dominant offense, and when we look at stats in a per minute basis, Robinson has the edge by all classic defensive box score statistics - blocks, steals & defensive rebounds - in both the regular season & post-season.

Add all that together with Robinson being a known DPOY level defender and outstanding defensive impact metrics which a major lead particularly in the playoffs - In playoffs the Spurs were 16.3 points better by DRtg with Robinson playing, and 8.0 better with Duncan on the bench - and I think you've at the very least got a strong argument for Robinson being the more valuable per minute player.

If you can acknowledge this but still give Duncan the unequivocal nod because of his minutes, that makes sense to me.
If you think it's just crazy to even consider the possibility because naive knuckleheads like my young self thought Duncan was the clear MVP, I'd encourage you to have less faith in us.

I could give the usual explanations about how the advanced stats can be noisy, or misleading, because of the circumstances, or the replacement quality, or because of the line-ups or whatever. I'm not going to do that though, because ultimately I wouldn't care and I want to be honest about that.

I'm glad we have advanced stats, and they are useful (or at least the plus minus related ones are; stuff like PER is meaningless). They tell us something the numbers are seeing dispassionately, and are free of bias. But they're an indicator, they're not causative. This is something various authors of literature play on alot with absurdist plots that see outcomes happening due to what is actually a random collection of events, which people wrongly assume to be the result of rational causes. Read the end of War and Peace and there's a long segment about the topic of 'great men'. I don't necessarily agree with Tolstoy on that btw, but what I would say is we need to be careful attributing causes to things. Sometimes stuff just happens randomly, and the numbers can't distinguish. So if I see the numbers suggesting something that everything else is suggesting is false? Screw those numbers.

With most science or math you can take the results and apply them in different situations. Because the context can't be replicated here, we can't take a guy with plus whatever and move him to a new situation and expect the same result, and we have no way of proving why. The science of an atomic bomb doesn't have that problem. It works regardless of context.

I'm looking at how D.Rob declined as a player, and the Spurs didn't miss a beat (and in fact got better). I'm looking at how the Spurs were 15-3 in 2003 without D.Rob. I'm looking at how Duncan fared against Shaq without D.Rob there for most of the 2002 series. I'm looking at the 2 years after D.Rob (before the rule changes) where the Spurs D was even better than it had been in the last few years with D.Rob. I'm also watching the games (even though we should be careful of the eye test), and I'm seeing Duncan be massively more impactful. I'm listening to respected commentators like JVG call Duncan clearly the best player in the world in 1999. I'm putting all these together, and then I'm not caring if D.Rob has some advanced stat edge that could be completely random noise. Maybe Shaq wasn't trying as hard against D.Rob because he was using that time to take a breather and get some rest on the court. Maybe when D.Rob was on Kobe took that chance to foolishly pass less to Shaq because he got overexcited. Who knows. All I know is Duncan was clearly the more impactful and better player in 1999, whether it's per minute or for the whole year.

Adjusted plus minus are just a data point. They're one more thing to look at and consider, and they're one extra bit of evidence that might mean something. But when all the other evidence is telling me something different? Ignore it I will.


Some good points here, but let's chew on a notion of experimentation, while recognizing that many scientists don't have the luxury of actually running new experiments (geologists, evolutionary biologists, etc).

Imagine if the Spurs' seasons ran backwards.

Before Duncan arrives ('16-17), the Spurs are a 60 win team. His final season ('97-98) the team is a 56 win team with a +3.30 SRS, and after a year where the team misses both Duncan & Robinson, Robinson comes back ('95-96) and leads the team to a 59 win season with a +5.98 SRS.

Do you think you'd see the two the same way?

Whether or not you would, I think many would see things differently.

"The team was better in their first healthy season after Duncan. No they didn't win the title, but hell, they lost the title most years with Duncan at his best too. And maybe Robinson would have won titles if not for Olajuwon, who Robert Horry insists was clearly superior to Duncan."
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Wilt Chamberlain) 

Post#226 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Jul 23, 2023 12:34 am

A note on Shaq in comparison to Magic with both playing a bunch of great teams, and Shaq playing longer:

First I think everyone needs to consider for themselves the negative effects of Shaq's tendency to blow things up as soon as he got jealous of his co-star...which happened everywhere he went during his prime. I've long said the choice between drafting Shaq & Duncan is no choice at all. One guy gives you a chance to build a sustainably great culture, one guy just can't help but become dissatisfied even when his team is winning titles.

Beyond that, while +/- data initially painted Shaq in a very positive light for me, it became a little bit less impressive.

First, there's the matter that Penny Hardaway actually looks more impactful than Shaq once Penny comes into his own in Orlando. In both '94-95 and '95-96, Penny has a higher raw +/- than Shaq.

Second, there's the matter that when Shaq hits certain matchups, it's like kryptonite. The best OnCourt +/- per 100 rate of his career comes in '97-98 where the only reason his team doesn't have HCA throughout the playoffs is because of the time Shaq missed (22 games, more than 1/4th of the season). Without realizing this, one might think a 61 win Laker team losing to a 62 win Jazz team in a sweep is embarrassing but really in essence just what we'd expect...but really the Lakers were the superior regular season team when they had Shaq, and so this is effectively Shaq's team getting upset in a sweep.

Here's how the Jazz ORtg looked in their 4 series that year:

Rockets 103.7
Spurs 101.5
Lakers 116.1
Bulls 96.1

See the problem? The Jazz have long been criticized as having an amazing regular season offense that ran into trouble when they played serious playoff defenses. In '97-98, they got held WAY under their 112.7 best-in-league regular season ORtg by all of their opponents except Shaq's Lakers, where they did better than they did in their best-in-league levels.

This despite the fact that the Lakers had an above average NBA defense, and were even better in the time they had him out there. It was an epic drop off in effectiveness the Lakers had in the face of the Sloan offense, and it was Shaq's mobility vulnerability was certainly part of the equation.

This was part of a broader trend where Shaq's teams tended to lose in sweeps. I wouldn't say it was always about his defensive vulnerabilities, but I also think that it's hard not to think Shaq being such an extreme body had something to do with it. If you could handle Shaq...you handled him and tended to win fairly easily.

All of this then contributed to Shaq doing surprisingly poorly in my last run year-by-year run through.

The only times where I rated Shaq as having a Top 5 season were:

'94-95
'97-98
'99-00
'00-01
'01-02

I think it's worth others exploring the same thing. My guess is that most would end up being more charitable to Shaq than I was, but remember when comparing him to a guy like Magic who was having Top 5 seasons as a matter of course all through his career when healthy and did so with a massively positive effect on his teammates rather than an eventually-negative effect on them.

It also means, I actually think Shaq vs Kobe is actually a pretty good debate (Kobe clocks in with 7 Top 5 seasons for me).
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Wilt Chamberlain) 

Post#227 » by One_and_Done » Sun Jul 23, 2023 12:50 am

The Spurs were a contender in 2017 because of Kawhi and all the extra talent they added. It's not a good analogy because the 01-03 Spurs support casts were all pretty bad, and were just as good or better when Robinson was either playing a reduced role or completely absent. Then the Spurs talent does go up in 04 onwards, but the talent infusion is offensive; yet the Spurs D gets better. None of it reflects well on D.Rob.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Wilt Chamberlain) 

Post#228 » by tsherkin » Sun Jul 23, 2023 2:06 am

One_and_Done wrote:The Spurs were a contender in 2017 because of Kawhi and all the extra talent they added. It's not a good analogy because the 01-03 Spurs support casts were all pretty bad, and were just as good or better when Robinson was either playing a reduced role or completely absent. Then the Spurs talent does go up in 04 onwards, but the talent infusion is offensive; yet the Spurs D gets better. None of it reflects well on D.Rob.


Bowen's presence from 02 forward made a fairly significant difference. They added Rasho in 2004, and also Robert Horry. Bigger role for Manu as well, almost 10 more minutes per game (his second season in the NBA). First, and only, season with Hedo. There's some fairly major changes in 2004 worth considering.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Wilt Chamberlain) 

Post#229 » by SHAQ32 » Sun Jul 23, 2023 2:28 am

Hakeem over Wilt. Shame on you.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Wilt Chamberlain) 

Post#230 » by One_and_Done » Sun Jul 23, 2023 3:05 am

tsherkin wrote:
One_and_Done wrote:The Spurs were a contender in 2017 because of Kawhi and all the extra talent they added. It's not a good analogy because the 01-03 Spurs support casts were all pretty bad, and were just as good or better when Robinson was either playing a reduced role or completely absent. Then the Spurs talent does go up in 04 onwards, but the talent infusion is offensive; yet the Spurs D gets better. None of it reflects well on D.Rob.


Bowen's presence from 02 forward made a fairly significant difference. They added Rasho in 2004, and also Robert Horry. Bigger role for Manu as well, almost 10 more minutes per game (his second season in the NBA). First, and only, season with Hedo. There's some fairly major changes in 2004 worth considering.

Bowen played 59 games in 02, his absence having no noticeable effect. If you're trying to say Rasho had a similar effect to late stage D.Rob I think that's a point for my side.

I already said the Spurs support cast got better in 04 onwards. They didn't add more defensive talent though, and yet their Drtg went up in 04 and 05. The Spurs went 15-3 without D Rob in 03.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Wilt Chamberlain) 

Post#231 » by tsherkin » Sun Jul 23, 2023 3:21 am

One_and_Done wrote:Bowen played 59 games in 02, his absence having no noticeable effect. If you're trying to say Rasho had a similar effect to late stage D.Rob I think that's a point for my side.

I already said the Spurs support cast got better in 04 onwards. They didn't add more defensive talent though, and yet their Drtg went up in 04 and 05. The Spurs went 15-3 without D Rob in 03.


I think that the aggregate impact of Rasho, Bowen and a nearly 50% increase in Manu's minutes helped offset the impact of 26 mpg over 64 games from David Robinson in his final season at 37 years of age, absolutely. I agree that in 03, Robinson was only so useful. He was only so available, and he played only so much of the game, and he was in his late 30s. I think he had a positive impact on defense. It's pretty hard to sell the idea that replacing him with a collection of other players who were very good on defense and more available in games and minutes wouldn't make a large difference in upgrading team defensive impact, though.

That said, Duncan was at the apex of his impact at that point, still logging pretty solid starter's minutes and that was the best year the Spurs have as far as relative DRTG and everything. The idea that they didn't add defensive talent is somewhat inaccurate, though.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#232 » by Owly » Sun Jul 23, 2023 9:41 am

Some reasonable stuff in here but ...
One_and_Done wrote:I'm looking at how D.Rob declined as a player, and the Spurs didn't miss a beat (and in fact got better)

As discussed where Robinson declined is matter of interpretation, methodology. Hard to interpret this as it is.

One_and_Done wrote:II'm looking at how the Spurs were 15-3 in 2003 without D.Rob.

Clunky binary (W-L) "off" sample with no comparison to the on, from four years after the year discussed.

I'm looking at how Duncan fared against Shaq without D.Rob there for most of the 2002 series.

Tiny, again only off sample, method unclear.
I'm looking at the 2 years after D.Rob (before the rule changes)

Only one of the years after D-Rob is before the rule changes.

where the Spurs D was even better than it had been in the last few years with D.Rob.

1-end comparison versus of "last few years" of Robinson with roster turnover and development.

It all just seems rather ad hoc, and whilst most (all?) here are/were fans first and systematic, consistent yet comprehensive analysis might be a pipe dream the above seems more (granting it's your description going otoh rather than the actual process) like grabbing for stuff that takes one side (your own critiques regarding impact stuff and much more could be applied here) rather than a balanced, replicable process.

But when all the other evidence is telling me something different? Ignore it I will.

Disregarding the balance of evidence in this instance ... that you seem unwilling to move at all, but rather ignore it ...

All I know is Duncan was clearly the more impactful and better player in 1999, whether it's per minute or for the whole year.
...


and fwiw if I'm parsing this right (i.e. implied but absent "the team" between "and" and "were")
01-03 Spurs support casts were all pretty bad, and were just as good or better when Robinson was either playing a reduced role or completely absent

Robinson on-off
01-03 RS: +7.2
01-03 playoffs (tilts towards 03 as the largest sample): +8.8

This discussionisn't going anywhere though, so I'm out.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#233 » by OhayoKD » Sun Jul 23, 2023 11:10 am

Owly wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:Well all stats have flaws but those flaws are not necessarily the same which is why stacking a bunch of similar metrics and counting them up doesn't tell us that much. There is an endless amount of theoretical metrics that could be constructed with differing priors and thus differing results. All that said...

In 1999 Duncan did average 8 more minutes in the regular-season and 8 more minutes in the playoffs. In 1998 Duncan averaged 6 more minutes in the regular season and 5 more minutes in the playoffs(posting a much higher on/off in the rs despite metrics favoting drob). And then there's the matter of pre-injury Drob's best teams not being nearly as good the 1999 Spurs. So all considered, I'm pretty strongly in the duncan side of the camp.

That said, if Drob was better, this gets us back to...

Given that the Spurs went from contention to all-time dominance with a weaker version of d-rob...

Not sure what's happening here.

Re minutes: This has already been covered, acknowledged (repeatedly so).

Acknowledged, but not really considered. Discussion of Drob as his team's best player arguably should have ended there. Playing way less minutes(8!) indicates a situationally valuable role-player, snd impact has Duncan elevating a team with a dramatically less prodictive Drob(playing less minutes) from 94 chicago-level contention to one of the most dominant championship seasons(capped off by a 15-2 playoff run.)

best player Drob couldn't get anywhere near that with those super meaningful on/off splits. Also interesting how by on/off Duncan was actually better in 1998 than 1999. Was DROB better post-injury? Was he less valuable to his teams playing way less minutes?

And yeah 1-year rapm puts drob ahead. 98-2002 and 97-2001(cheema) has Duncan ahead (4.8 vs 4.2) of Drob's best 5-year stretch(97-2002) per possesion while playing way more possessions.

Here's Drob's on/off during that period:
Image

Duncan's:
Image
Drob's on/off doesn't really get worse and Duncan's doesn't really get better yet with an extended sample lineup-adjustment favors Duncan. Why?
Image

The minute disparity in 2000 was 6 minutes. It was 9 in 2001. And it was 8 in 1999. Drob got to play alot less minutes with Duncan than vice versa. And so with 1-year apm or on/off, Drob gets a big boost from playing nearly all his minutes with the better player on what was a very top-heavy roster. Pair that with the Spurs lacking competent backups(Wilton Spencer, whatever remained of WIll Purdue) and you have one guy playing a bunch of minutes with way worse teammates while the other guy plays with the better ones.

This is not Steph and Draymond(Dray actually played more minutes at various points)

This is not Pippen and Jordan(1 mpg rs gap and 2 minuite ps gap in 1990, around a 1 minute gap in both rs and pos until 96 postseason where pippen plays half-a minute extra)

This is a superstar and a role-player, and the minutes reflect that.
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Re: RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #7 (Deadline 11:59 PM EST on 7/21/23) 

Post#234 » by Owly » Sun Jul 23, 2023 7:11 pm

OhayoKD wrote:
Owly wrote:Not sure what's happening here.

Re minutes: This has already been covered, acknowledged (repeatedly so).

Acknowledged, but not really considered.

Me wrote:and maybe one could consider that as part of better player as well as more valuable player ...

Just because somebody disagrees with you it doesn't mean they haven't considered things.

Discussion of Drob as his team's best player arguably should have ended there.

Best player can be ended just on acknowledgement of a 31.7 to 39.3 RS, 35.3 to 43.1 minutes gap? With the prior knowledge of the lower minutes guy vastly better raw +/- totals in the playoffs?

Playing way less minutes(8!) indicates a situationally valuable role-player

You keep repeating minutes. 1) Robinson has looked like in impact monster in near enough every measure and situation. And lower minutes wouldn't necessarily mean situationally valuable. Play MJ 30mpg and he isn't just situationally valuable. So given value in other contexts, his box production and probably his skillset too I don't think this is some great evidence that Robinson is "situationally valuable".

, snd impact has Duncan elevating a team with a dramatically less prodictive Drob(playing less minutes) from 94 chicago-level contention to one of the most dominant championship seasons(capped off by a 15-2 playoff run.)

What is "impact" that has this. Because as covered RAPM, box-composites have DR clearly ahead on rate in the RS. And then the cognative dissonance to use 15-2 (binary W-L) when in just raw +/- totals Robinson monsters Duncan, but heck even just binary plus/minus as W-L Duncan has three games where they lose in the minutes he's on plus a third seemingly in foul trouble at +1 in just under 20 minutes, but they win the other 28 by +21. How does one get to that?

best player Drob couldn't get anywhere near that

I would argue he literally does so in the year in question.

with those super meaningful on/off splits.

It's a team sport, and trying hard not to sound sarcastic here (I say that because [this would seem obvious but also does seem to require pointing out and as it is in response use of italics to indicate insincerity). Not sure which on-off you're talking here, assume given context it's 94-96. I'd argue three straight years in the vicinity of +20 is meaningful.

Also interesting how by on/off Duncan was actually better in 1998 than 1999.

Obviously it's noisy.
But also progression isn't linear.
Box-wise he's not wildly different.
Fwiw I think the lockout stopped players accessing team facilities.
I don't see the relevance or anything wild about this.

Was DROB better post-injury? Was he less valuable to his teams playing way less minutes?

"Way" is a touch strong for my taste. Value is different from better. Certainly the significant minutes fall hurts his value. Was he better ... probably not for me but as I say it depends what measures one trusts.

And yeah 1-year rapm puts drob ahead. 98-2002 and 97-2001(cheema) has Duncan ahead (4.8 vs 4.2) of Drob's best 5-year stretch(97-2002) per possesion while playing way more possessions.

Here's Drob's on/off during that period:
Image

Duncan's:
Image
Drob's on/off doesn't really get worse and Duncan's doesn't really get better yet with an extended sample lineup-adjustment favors Duncan. Why?
Image

Can't speak to the source as I'm not familiar. Happy to discuss that. "Wilton Spencer" doesn't exist ... is this a weird out of nowhere jab at a (recently, prematurely) deceased pro player for no reason? And I think at a guy playing 150 minutes in one year (not the one in question). Rose is the 3rd big that year, Walker 4th. I hope this was an error, rather than ... you know. Then again using "Wilton Spencer" ...

But assuming your source is trustworthy ... and I do like multi-year stuff generally (though the topic is single year here) ... assuming that it's the best and starting or even finishing point for our evaluation ... what's the conclusion? ... Duncan is a bit better, rate-wise, in a span mostly after Robinson's 99 season (by what I assume is an RS measure, whilst in the season in question, Robinson is much better by impact in the playoffs)? And your own explanation of why focuses on figures from '01 and '02? And, fwiw, Googlesites RAPM from those years don't favor Robinson (both years available for NPI, '02 only for PI). But AScreaming... gives Robinson a clear advantage in both variants in '99 (6.13 [1st] to 3.00 [19th] NPI; 7.00 [3rd] to 5.20 [10th] PI). And no one was claiming Robinson was better in his final years (heck I'm pretty sure the claims were pretty muted even for '99).

You may have more to say but I'm out here ... I don't think this is going to be productive and some tonal stuff is jarring.

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