The 1986 Rockets might be underrated

[lessthanjake]

Rip was the lead scorer and first option for the Pistons every single regular season and postseason from 2003-08. Which is something that anyone who followed those teams would know.

Lol, Rip Hamilton was absolutely not the best player on that team. There’s just no question. I don’t even know how you could be doubling down on this. But just for some background for you: Hamilton never made a single all-NBA team ever. He never got a single MVP vote ever. Chauncey Billups made multiple all-NBA teams in his career, and finished as high as 5th in MVP voting in his time with the Pistons. Ben Wallace also got all-NBA and MVP vote recognition. Hamilton was (correctly) considered the 4th best player on that team (behind Rasheed Wallace as well). Defining Hamilton as the star and the rest of the guys as the help is really just nonsense that no one would’ve ever said at the time. It’d be similarly pretty ridiculous to calling Byron Scott the best player on the 1988 Lakers and the rest of the team being his help.

… So to be clear, you think a concrete performance against a specific team is best framed not against the average team performance against that specific team, but against the league average performance against the average of all teams? Expected performance in the conference finals against maybe the best defence in the league is less relevant than expected performance against some abstracted average defence very much not in the conference finals?

What I’m talking about is how hard a particular shooting performance from a supporting cast makes it to win the series. I think that’s better represented by league-relative rTS%, rather than opponent-relative rTS%. The fact that your opponent has a better defense doesn’t make a bad shooting display against them any easier to overcome. I’d say it’s harder to overcome a league-relative -7.5 rTS% than a league-relative -6.5 rTS%, regardless of how good the two defenses are. And my point was that the shooting display from the 1990 Bulls supporting cast was so bad that it was virtually impossible to overcome it (let alone overcome it against a team as good as the 1990 Pistons).

But yes, if you’re wanting to just purely measure how bad the supporting cast’s shooting display was rather than how hard that bad shooting was to overcome, then I’d say opponent-relative rTS% is probably a better measure of that. And that might allow us to find a couple more series in history where a winning team’s supporting cast shot worse. But let’s just step back for a moment and remember what we’re actually discussing here. We’re not discussing whether the 1990 Bulls had the worst supporting cast ever or something. The claim was that the 1990 Bulls supporting cast was as good or better in the playoffs than the 1986 Rockets supporting cast was. Whether we can find 1 or 3 examples of a team overcoming a shooting display as bad as the 1990 Bulls’ supporting cast, it seems fairly obvious that the Bulls supporting cast’s shooting was so bad in the series they lost that the idea that the “help” was just as good as the 1986 Rockets’ help is a very very dubious claim. And that’s further backed up by the Bulls being like -28 per 100 possessions with Jordan off the court in those playoffs! The argument being made was simply based on a pretty obviously faulty assumption.

How well-adjusted.

Again, please stop making personally rude posts. I don’t understand your need to keep doing so.

Such an interesting marker for what constitutes “personally rude”. Par for the course I suppose.

I’m pretty confused. You’re citing instances where you’d been making persistent personal attacks and I was expressing my strong displeasure at you for that. How do you think that’s proof of anything other than that you’re a repeat offender? You’re mad that I called you a toxic poster who was behaving in a deeply unpleasant manner, after you’d been being exactly that by any definition? And you think that that’s the same as you constantly making a barrage of unprompted personal attacks all the time? Or perhaps you even think it justifies your behavior? Pretty wild stuff, to be honest. But I’m not going to keep discussing this because I don’t actually want discussion to veer into personal territory. I’ll just keep asking you to stop if/when you do so (which hopefully will be never again).

[AEnigma]

Rip was the lead scorer and first option for the Pistons every single regular season and postseason from 2003-08. Which is something that anyone who followed those teams would know.

Lol, Rip Hamilton was absolutely not the best player on that team. There’s just no question. I don’t even know how you could be doubling down on this. But just for some background for you: Hamilton never made a single all-NBA team ever. He never got a single MVP vote ever. Chauncey Billups made multiple all-NBA teams in his career, and finished as high as 5th in MVP voting in his time with the Pistons. Ben Wallace also got all-NBA and MVP vote recognition. Hamilton was (correctly) considered the 4th best player on that team (behind Rasheed Wallace as well). Defining Hamilton as the star and the rest of the guys as the help is really just nonsense that no one would’ve ever said at the time. It’d be similarly pretty ridiculous to calling Byron Scott the best player on the 1988 Lakers and the rest of the team being his help.

Reading is hard, huh?

Byron Scott was the lead scorer and highest volume scorer on the 1988 Lakers, although there I would not say he received the most defensive attention so would be less inclined to call him the first option (especially as it did not carry over into the playoffs or into any other seasons).

Terms and words have meanings.

… So to be clear, you think a concrete performance against a specific team is best framed not against the average team performance against that specific team, but against the league average performance against the average of all teams? Expected performance in the conference finals against maybe the best defence in the league is less relevant than expected performance against some abstracted average defence very much not in the conference finals?

What I’m talking about is how hard a particular shooting performance from a supporting cast makes it to win the series. I think that’s better represented by league-relative rTS%, rather than opponent-relative rTS%. The fact that your opponent has a better defense doesn’t make a bad shooting display against them any easier to overcome. I’d say it’s harder to overcome a league-relative -7.5 rTS% than a league-relative -6.5 rTS%, regardless of how good the two defenses are.

But that is baseless and nonsensical. If you are playing a -7.5 rTS defence, and playing exactly to those expectations, you are not performing worse than a team that encounters a +5 rTS defences and performs at -6.5 league relative expectations. It is tougher to score against a good defence than against a bad defence (or a hypothetical average defence). How is this a discussion?

Oh, I know why: in this particular instance, it makes it easier to argue for Jordan.

And my point was that the shooting display from the 1990 Bulls supporting cast was so bad that it was virtually impossible to overcome it (let alone overcome it against a team as good as the 1990 Pistons).

That is more of a hypothetical. I think the 2008 Lakers could have survived their supporting cast on average shooting worse against the Spurs in the conference finals — but it depends somewhat on the distribution (pile all the changes on the two close games, maybe not; pile most of the changes into the blowout win, sure, easy).

But yes, if you’re wanting to just purely measure how bad the supporting cast’s shooting display was rather than how hard that bad shooting was to overcome, then I’d say opponent-relative rTS% is probably a better measure of that.

It is both. You play the opponent, not some league relative abstraction. If an opponent has an elite defence, you go in expecting that it will be tougher to score, just like if you face an elite offence, you expect you will give up more points. You do not go in expecting some perfectly even team on both sides.

This approach does not even make Jordan look good. Wow, Jordan went from scoring on 60.6% efficiency in the regular season to scoring on 56.6% efficiency against the Pistons. How embarrassing for him. He sure was lucky his team held the Pistons to a -3.4 rOtrg, otherwise it never would have been close with him dipping that badly.

And that might allow us to find a couple more series in history where a winning team’s supporting cast shot worse. But let’s just step back for a moment and remember what we’re actually discussing here. We’re not discussing whether the 1990 Bulls had the worst supporting cast ever or something. The claim was that the 1990 Bulls supporting cast was as good or better in the playoffs than the 1986 Rockets supporting cast was. Whether we can find 1 or 3 examples of a team overcoming a shooting display as bad as the 1990 Bulls’ supporting cast, it seems fairly obvious that the Bulls supporting cast’s shooting was so bad in the series they lost that the idea that the “help” was just as good as the 1986 Rockets’ help is a very very dubious claim. And that’s further backed up by the Bulls being like -28 per 100 possessions with Jordan off the court in those playoffs! The argument being made was simply based on a pretty obviously faulty assumption.

You are bringing data that does not exist for the other part and does not even necessarily reflect on what happened in specific series or games. For all you know, the Bulls outscored the Pistons with Jordan off the court in the games they lost. For all you know, the Rockets were -40 without Hakeem. Do I think that is what the data would show? No, not really, but I do not know, and I am also not too sympathetic to your sudden concern with bench performances when so much of your time previously has been spent berating players for what happens when they are on the bench.

Yeah, the Bulls shot poorly. They also defended well. I can probably find series losses where a team held its opponent ortg five points below the opponent’s regular season average, but they are not common. I could probably still find series losses where a team held its opponent nine or ten points below their average across the rest of the postseason, but that would be even less common. And ooh I can also say teams that do not have the best player on court do not count. Even less common. Shame that Jordan did not simply score at his regular season efficiency and pull off the win anyway; the defensive support was there and set up for it!

Again, please stop making personally rude posts. I don’t understand your need to keep doing so.

Such an interesting marker for what constitutes “personally rude”. Par for the course I suppose.

I’m pretty confused. You’re citing instances where you’d been making persistent personal attacks and I was expressing my strong displeasure at you for that. How do you think that’s proof of anything other than that you’re a repeat offender? You’re mad that I called you a toxic poster who was behaving in a deeply unpleasant manner, after you’d been being exactly that by any definition? And you think that that’s the same as you constantly making a barrage of unprompted personal attacks all the time? Or perhaps you even think it justifies your behavior? Pretty wild stuff, to be honest.

Interesting to see how this lack of care for words and their meaning extends past basketball, although the accompanying projection and lack of self-awareness has come to be expected.

[lessthanjake]

Reading is hard, huh?

…

Interesting to see how this lack of care for words and their meaning extends past basketball, although the accompanying projection and lack of self-awareness has come to be expected.

Please stop. I genuinely don’t understand why you’re unable/unwilling to stop making personal attacks. I’m not going to engage substantively with someone who’s behaving this way. It’s just constant and keeps going even after I repeatedly ask for it to stop.

[AEnigma]

I wish I could say I genuinely do not understand why someone could quote a comment about first options and lead scorers, excise the portion of the comment discussing how that is a meaningfully distinct role for players that has nothing to do with overall player value, and then pretend the quoted comment said “best player” instead.

Unfortunately, I very much understand the type of person who would do that, just as I understand how comments on the lack of reading and semantic care needed for that interaction would be framed as “personal insults” distinct from the oh so very objective and accurate expressions of displeasure present in the repeated use of “toxic” and “terrible person”. What a shame.

[lessthanjake]

I wish I could say I genuinely do not understand why someone could quote a comment about first options and lead scorers, excise the portion of the comment discussing how that is a meaningfully distinct role for players that has nothing to do with overall player value, and then pretend the quoted comment said “best player” instead.

Unfortunately, I very much understand the type of person who would do that, just as I understand how comments on the lack of reading and semantic care needed for that interaction would be framed as “personal insults” distinct from the oh so very objective and accurate expressions of displeasure present in the repeated use of “toxic” and “terrible person”. What a shame.

STOP.