DraymondGold wrote:Voting Post
Vote: Magic Johnson
Alternate: Steph Curry
Nomination: Jerry West
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Magic was the leader of one of the greatest dynasties of all time. He had help, and certainly Kareem deserves much of the credit in the early 80s, but Magic had a year to year consistency that is very commendable. His / his team’s dips in 81, 86 playoffs, and 89 playoffs from injury seem like a lesser dip than Shaq’s inconsistency (e.g. 2001 regular season, and 2002 onward), Curry’s injuries, Bird’s injuries, or perhaps even Garnett’s dips in 2005–07.
Put another way, I’d describe Magic has having quite a long peak, and a very consistent prime. So when the impact metrics and team results portray this peak and prime so well (which they do), Magic starts to rise the ranks.
Impact Metrics: His career raw WOWY score is below everyone (Curry, Garnett, Shaq, Bird, in that order). And his multi-year WOWY sample are also lower than Curry or Bird particularly. But! I tend to weigh adjusted WOWY stats like WOWYR more (it has a larger sample than raw WOWY and adjusts for teammates… why wouldn’t I like it more?). And Adjusted WOWY puts Magic above Bird or Shaq for his career value, just below Garnett (no Curry numbers).
His available RAPM numbers are also quite compelling. Magic was +8.92 in 1985 (1st in league in 41 games!), +6.62 in 1988 (2nd in league behind Jordan in 54 games!), +4.0 in 1991 (9th in league in 51 games where the Lakers underperform, ~4.55 or 5th in the league if we curve up based on the expected full-season team performance).
Box metrics are also positive on him. In my most trusted box metrics, he looks better than Garnett, Shaq, Bird(?), and Curry in Backpicks VORP. He looks better than everyone save Garnett in Career RAPTOR. Only career PIPM is lower on him, putting him at the bottom of this group. If we add on playoff minutes into Backpicks VORP or weigh peak more heavily in career RAPTOR, his box stat advantage still remains
Team Results: Magic certainly has the team results to be up here. Arguably not as good as peak Curry, and Shaq/Bird both have single years that top anything Magic ever did, but prime Magic’s teams were more consistent than any of those players. His down years weren’t as bad. And his good years, particularly those late 80s runs when less of the credit can go to Kareem (though more goes to his other teammates), really emphasize Magic’s ability to lead championship level teams.
Compared to other players: I’m not as convinced of his peak as some of the other players here. I have Curry, Shaq, and Bird over Magic for peaks (in that order). But I’m not sure Shaq has the longevity to quite get over Magic, particularly if I’m downgrading Shaq’s peak from Tier 1 (with Jordan and LeBron) to Tier 2 (with some of the other Top 10 players). Bird’s injuries are what do him in — the injuries in 1985 and 1988 playoffs dent what could have been some of Bird’s best seasons. I certainly have Bird as the better player early on in the 80s, but I also certainly have him as worse at the end of the 80s and early 90s, when Bird’s injuries began to accumulate while Magic’s IQ and shooting touch continued to flourish. Curry doesn’t quite yet have the longevity. If he continues to age gracefully and remain healthy for the playoffs (further cementing that his wrongfully perceived playoff decline are simply a function of injuries), it’s quite possible he could end up overtaking Magic. But I’m not quite ready yet, particularly if I curve for longevity relative to era. The average player played 4.66 years in the 1980s compared to 6.66 years in the 2010s (43% more), and while I suspect the difference for stars is lesser, it’s still an era advantage that Curry had. I suppose Curry also played in a more competitive era with all the international talent and rule optimization, as did Shaq/KG to a lesser extent. But I’m still not quite yet ready to put Curry over Magic for career (peak is a different story).
My biggest concern with Magic are threefold.
-First, longevity (but I’ve discussed above and will do more below).
-Second, defense. I have his prime defense as the weakest of any Top 15 player, and here’s where I think popular opinion overrates him. He has size, but he doesn’t provide any rim protection, and he lacks any horizontal mobility to defend guards either. He does provide defensive rebounding at the guard position, and occasionally gets good steals (although he misses on plenty too). But for someone with such revolutionary basketball IQ on the offensive end, his defensive IQ (or perhaps his defensive effort and habits) are really lagging behind other all-time smart players like Bird or KG.
-Third, and this is a smaller point, but I don’t love his lack of an off-ball game offensively. Having scalable stars does trend with producing better teams (e.g. scalability trends positively with Sansterre’s overall SRS). I wouldn’t characterize him as having negative portability: he has strong shooting, GOAT-level passing, he isn’t unreasonably selfish, and he has great offensive IQ. But he is a bit ball-dominant (and so doesn’t fit as well with other papers or ball-dominant players) and isn’t much of an off-ball scoring threat aside from his floor spacing. It’s nothing major, it doesn’t limit his team performance *that* much, I’m merely pointing out this as an area where Magic isn’t as good as Bird or Curry.
An Aside on Magic’s Longevity:
When Magic was forced into retirement in 1991, he was Top 10 in league RAPM at the age of 31. He had just led his team to the finals. Then he retired. He was just 32. Without him, his team dropped from 6.73 SRS to -0.95, a raw WOWY score of +7.68. After missing 4 straight seasons, he returned for part of the 1996 season. Out of shape and out of practice, he still managed to have a +1.14 RAPM (only 96th in a 24 game sample, but still better than small samples of Berkeley, Malone, Miller) with a raw WOWY of +2.23.
As Doctor MJ pointed out, we’ve seen offensive with a strong handle, all-time passing, and great basketball IQ age quite well. Nash is the most clearest example (actually peaking after turning 30), but LeBron is another great one. Oscar performed great at the age of 32 (which was much later in people’s careers back in the day) on the 1971 Bucks, and 34–35 year old Chris Paul was a strong contributor on the 2020 Thunder and 2021 Suns, before injuries and age started catching up with both of them.
Given how well Magic was playing when he retired, given his strong performance when he came back at 36 years old (and a positive performance with the Dream Team), and given his archetype doesn’t tend to age that poorly, it’s hard to imagine healthy Magic having poor longevity. Instead, we lost 4 seasons of healthy Magic. This is a pretty unique circumstance to force a player into retirement. It required a combination of having an epidemic develop at the time Magic was aging (which wouldn’t have happened if Magic was born earlier) and not having the tools or cultural awareness to deal with a player catching the epidemic disease (which wouldn’t have happened if Magic was born later). You may not want to award Magic for years that he didn’t play. But qualitatively, I’m more forgiving of a lack of longevity for a situation like this vs a player who loses their athleticism and fails to remain valuable. Put another way, this lack of longevity doesn’t really limit Magic’s *goodness*, even if it doesn’t help his career value in the 80s. And this could boost Magic’s career longevity if you consider the time machine argument to basically any other era. I don’t weigh the time machine argument that heavily, but it’s a nice tiebreaker-style point in his favor, which certainly doesn’t hurt.
Reasoning for Steph has been explained pretty thoroughly over past few threads. Since it looks like Magic will get nominated in, I might save the more detailed consolidated Curry reasoning for next time.
For Jerry West, I see him peaking clearly higher than Oscar (see peaks project, offensive team success in playoffs). I'm more willing to forgive a lack of longevity in the 60s (see, e.g., how average career in 00s were over 50% longer than the average career in the the 60s). Not sure how to balance that out with a less competitive era (e.g. was it easier for a few outliers to stand out by more over a smaller league with fewer international stars, etc.?). But skills wise, I see no issue with West playing in a later era. He's just fantastic to watch on film, and the WOWY/WOWYR impact metrics are all super high on him.
Appendix A: Career Stats:
DraymondGold wrote:A few Career Totals so people have them in one place
Obviously these miss many of the subtleties of ranking different players (how to we weight longevity vs peak? How did their situation affect their performance? How do we see them fitting on a championship team? Do we consider curving for the strength of their era or consider any time machine arguments?), but career stats can do a better job at summing the total contributions of a player (measured in a certain way) than just qualitatively describing the players alone.
To me, the ideal analysis incorporates many sides -- impact stats, qualitative descriptions, historical context, film analysis, team performance, etc. Many of these I can't provide for you, but I can gather a lot of impact stats in one place for ease of access and to help guide future discussion. I've included some leftover players in brackets from when I first gathered these stats to provide some comparative context...
Impact Metrics : These are based off actual impact, and so are less likely to underrate stuff like defense or off-ball creation or BBIQ. But they can be a bit noisier, more uncertain, and context-dependent, especially the WOWY based stuff.
Career PIPM (in units of "wins added", box estimate is used for the pre-97 seasons):
[no Wilt available]
[Duncan: 284 wins added]
Garnett: 261.4
Shaq: + 232 (with box estimates for early years)
Curry: ~202 (if we consider 2021-2023 to be 3 average prime years. ~181 if we add 3 average career years. +142 pre 2021).
Magic: + 188 (box estimate)
Career RAPM: tbd, haven't calculated, would also depend on RAPM source.
Approximate Career raw WOWY (prime WOWY per game x total games):
-Curry: +10.2 per game * 882 games= +8996.4 in his career (40% ahead of Hakeem)
-Garnett: +5.7 per game * 1462 games = +8333.4 in his career (29% ahead of Hakeem)
[-West: +7.8 per game * 932 games = +7269.6 in his career (13% ahead of Hakeem)]
-Shaq: +5.5 per game * 1207 games = +6638.5 in his career (3% ahead of Hakeem)
-Hakeem: +5.2 per game * 1238 games= +6437.6. in his career
[-Bird: +5.3 per game * 897 games = 4754.1 in his career]
-Magic: +4.7 per game * 906 games = 4258.2 in his career
-Wilt: +1.2 per game * 1045 games = 1254 in his career *[note Wilt's prime WOWY is dominated by 1965, when he was apparently playing injured!]
Approximate Career Adjusted WOWY (average between prime WOWYR/alt-WOWYR/GPM per game * total games):
[no Curry available]
-Garnett: +6.3 per game * 1462 games = +9210.6 in his career (35% ahead of Hakeem)
-Magic: +9.0 per game * 906 games = +8154 in his career (19% ahead of Hakeem
-Shaq: +6.4 per game * 1207 games = +7724.8 in his career (13% ahead of Hakeem)
[-Hakeem: +5.5 per game * 1238 games= +6809. in his caree]r
[-West: +7.3 per game * 932 games = +6803.6 in his career (equal to Hakeem)]
-Wilt: +5.2 per game * 1045 games = 5434 in his career *[note Wilt's prime WOWY is dominated by 1965, when he was apparently playing injured! This likely biases WOWYR too.]
[-Bird: +5.3 per game * 897 games = 4754.1 in his career *[note Bird has highest adjusted WOWYR uncertainty, likely due to WOWYR over-crediting small-sample Reggie Lewis for the Celtics success in 88-91. Bird is +7.9 WOWYR from 80-83, which is on pace for +7086.3 for his career, above Hakeem). ]
Now for the box stats. These are less noisy, more stable, but can miss some of the subtler ways of impacting the game (rim deterrence, off-ball creation, BBIQ, etc.).
Backpicks VORP (Thinking Basektball's Box Plus Minus per 100 possessions over total career possessions. This is generally considered more accurate than Basketball Reference BPM or WS, and it goes back to the 50s. However, it's missing seasons below a certain minute/game/etc. threshold):
Wilt: 6472.7
[Russell: 5250.6 ]
Magic: 4425.5
Garnett: 3984.2 (missing 2014–2016)
[Hakeem: 3731.8 (missing 2000–2002)]
Shaq: 3720.5 (missing part of 2008, 2010, 2011)
Curry: 3210.5 (missing 2012, 2020)
Career RAPTOR (WAR, in units of wins added. This is the historical box component, which goes back until the 70s).
[No Wilt available]
[Duncan: 230.0]
Garnett: 216.9
Magic: 216.5
Curry: ~191.7 (if 2023 was like 2022. 176.8 pre-2023!).
[Hakeem: 190.8]
Shaq: 178.3
Basketball Reference VORP (Basketball Reference's Box Plus Minus over total career, in units of wins added I believe):
[Wilt/West/Ocar unavailable]
-Garnett: 96.86 (31% ahead of Hakeem)
-Magic: 79.97 (1% ahead of Hakeem)
[-Bird: 77.24 (equal to Hakeem)]
-Shaq: 75.51 (equal to Hakeem)
-Hakeem: 74.22 (equal to Hakeem)
-Curry: 65.61
Total Career Win Shares:
-Wilt: 247.26 (52% ahead of Hakeem)
-Garnett: 191.42 (18% ahead of Hakeem)
-Shaq: 181.71 (12% ahead of Hakeem)
[-Hakeem: 162.77]
[-West: 162.58 (equal to Hakeem)]
-Magic: 155.79
[-Bird: 145.83]
-Curry: 128.00
General Trends:
-Garnett's combination of great impact and longevity basically always has him near the top.
-Wilt is the top of every box stat we have, but is lower in WOWY based stuff (perhaps because he was injured during his largest off sample in 1965).
-Curry's the top of the WOWY stuff by a large margin, and sneaks ahead of Magic in PIPM, and also looks near the top of available players in RAPM samples. Box stats are much lower on him, likely missing the subtler off-ball stuff he does on offense.
-Magic's ahead of Shaq in more of our box stats (Backpicks VORP, Raptor, Basketball Reference VORP); Shaq closes the gap in impact metrics like PIPM, raw WOWY, although Magic is ahead in adjusted WOWY)
Brief aside on playoffs: ceoofkobefans suggested I bring in postseason into these career stats. I fear that may be a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison for players that made it to the postseason a bunch and had four-series postseasons in a larger league (e.g. Magic, Curry) compared to players that weren't on postseason teams or had two-series postseasons in a smaller league (e.g. Garnett, Wilt). Definitely still worth looking at postseason numbers... e.g. how much do players improve or fall by? If they improve by 10%, are the close enough in the regular season stats to bump their ranking up?... but from a "career volume" perspective, I might have postseason volume as a separate category.
Also adding on
Appendix B: Team Results:
[/quote]DraymondGold wrote:~An Analysis of Team Results~
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Part 1: Overall Team Performance
We have two major stats to evaluate in-era dominance by a team in the regular season and playoffs combined: overall SRS (by Sansterre) and ELO (by fivethirtyeight). Stating the obvious, these are team metrics, not player metrics. Teammates matter. But team playoff (over-)performance is one of the primary arguments for Hakeem, and team performance does still give us a handle on how good these players are at ceiling raising, so let's dive in...
Overall SRS team performance:Spoiler:
So Hakeem’s teams are 2/3 of the very worst by overall SRS: Wilt has 3 teams better, Bird has 6, Magic has 6–8 (depending if you credit Kareem in 80/82), Shaq has 3, Garnett has 1, Curry has 5 so far. By standard deviations, Hakeem’s 95 Rockets improve to 4th to last (sneaking above Magic’s 91 Lakers and Wilt’s 73 Lakers, falling behind Shaq/Wade’s 06 Heat).
What about these teams' rankings in ELO? Team Rankings by ELO:Spoiler:
By ELO, Wilt has 3 teams better, Bird has 6, Magic has 7-9 (depending if you credit Kareem in 80/82), Shaq has 6, Garnett has 4, Curry has 6 so far. So this measure is even more favorable for the other players.
What if we look at playoffs-only SRS? Well the 95 Rockets certainly improve: from 93rd in overall SRS to 55th in playoff SRS pre-2021 (note: the 95 Rockets are currently 100th in overall SRS through 2023). But Wilt still has 2 teams better in playoff SRS only, Bird has 2, Magic has 4, Shaq has 1, Curry has 5.
