RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #46 (Deadline 5:00AM PST on 11/22/23)

[homecourtloss]

Are you able to post the data sets? This is interesting.

No, this was done cooperatively with an NBA team, so I'd rather not share the full dataset.

I assumed it was something of that nature. Thank you for sharing, though.

[Doctor MJ]

I have access to a very interesting BPM-informed RAPM data set that runs in six 4-year stints starting in the 1997 season and ending with the 2020 season. The results of the data are very, very solid with that quantity of RAPM.

Paul Pierce looks very good. He runs in the range of +5 for the first three of those 4-year stints, then plus 3.25 in the 4th.

Russell Westbrook never gets above Paul Pierce's peak. One stint at plus five and one stint at +4 is all he has. I believe the data and would not vote for Westbrook for quite a while longer. (It pains me to say this as an OKC/Westbrook fan.).

For reference, there are a lot of modern era players with better numbers then Westbrook. Even Ben Wallace and Blake Griffin do. Westbrook peaked at the same height as Jason Kidd by these numbers but had a much shorter career.

Dwight Howard had a significantly hire peak, at almost Plus 8 for his best stent. Then he had two other stints at plus 3.5 or so. Nothing else positive.

Through 2020, Draymond Green had a stint at plus 7.5 and a stint at plus 4.5. Which was actually the second stint in the sample.

Joel Embiid only had one stint in the sample and it was at + 7.5 through 2020. I would expect his most recent two seasons to be at least that high and probably higher.

Of these modern players I would say it is between Paul Pierce and Dwight Howard for who should go in next, with Joel Embiid knocking at the door.

As much as I like Draymond Green (defensively), his impact numbers don't look that great in this metric. And the box score prior isn't what's driving that.

I always like hearing about the data even if we can't see the whole package.

One thing: Your turn of phrase makes me think this is 6 independent 4-year studies rather than a comparison of all possible consecutive 4 year peaks. Hence is someone has a 4-year-peak that doesn't align with the arbitrary cutoffs, they'll be downgraded relative to someone else with better timing.

Is this true?
If true, how much of a concern do you see it as?

[HeartBreakKid]

Vote is for Dwight Howard - Defensively dominant for 3-4 years in a row. He was quite good his first couple years in Houston as well. Short prime, but I feel that his scoring around the rim put some serious double, even triple team pressure that made him a more reliable scorer than Westbrook, Green, and in my opinion, even Drexler.

My alternate vote is for Joel Embiid - I just saw Samurai nominate him and I'm trying to think "why not"? Hasn't had a great post season yet that I can recall, but seems in rank with the guys here, if not better because he seems a step above most of them in the RS. I might take him over Howard, I do feel he is the "better player" but I could be overlooking the rather big defensive gap in Howard's favor.



Kevin McHale - He's pretty close to Embiid/Howard for me. I had him ranked above them in the last list, just feel that with the season or 2 when he had a team to himself he didn't really prove that he would be a more dominant "#1 guy" than them. Not that I care about who is better at being the guy, but part of me giving McHale a boost is also taking into account that his numbers are repressed due to his role.


Green is interesting - when I compare him to Kevin I can see an argument, but when I compare him to Howard it feels like I am reaching and playing off of narratives.

Westbrook - Similar harshness I had with Drexler except I think Westbrook actually is an underrated engine. He can control the tempo and did become a legitimately great playmaker. But he a lousy scorer who is overrated because of his high ppg, an overrated rebounder (still great but not "10 rebounds" great), and offered very little utility offball. Westbrook also was a poor defender most relevant season (don't give me that neutral jibber jabber). I honestly don't get how he can be seen as a better player than Howard come playoff time. I also get dinging Howard and Embiid for their longevity but Westbrook was cooked by the time he was like 29, so he did last longer than them at this point but not by a lot.

Paul Pierce - Hm...if I cared about longevity I'd consider him but peak/prime don't think he is on the level of Howard/Embiid and to an extent McHale/Westbrook. Not sure how he compares to Green.

[LA Bird]

Vote: Russell Westbrook

• The sheer absurdity of a 32 ppg triple double season with +15 on/off gets overlooked because of the slander from Houston fans during Harden's MVP campaign that year (analytics = TS% = impact apparently) and subsequent falloff in recent years.
• Despite not winning a title, 2012-16 Thunder were an all time level team when healthy and they were actually better in Westbrook without Durant minutes than Durant without Westbrook minutes every year (RS+PO). The sample size was tiny in some seasons but there is good evidence Westbrook can play a key role on very high level teams.
• Many of the guys with (arguably) better peaks than Westbrook have basically non-existent longevity (see Walton, Embiid, Penny).
• Re: Other candidates. Embiid and McHale are not really in the conversation at this point for me. I see the argument for Draymond but not fully buying in yet. Howard and Pierce have their pros and cons though interestingly, both have some of the biggest dropoffs when it comes to playoffs on/off or RAPM (not sure why this is only talked about as negative for Howard).

Will hopefully have more time for longer writeups next round...

[DSMok1]

I have access to a very interesting BPM-informed RAPM data set that runs in six 4-year stints starting in the 1997 season and ending with the 2020 season. The results of the data are very, very solid with that quantity of RAPM.

Paul Pierce looks very good. He runs in the range of +5 for the first three of those 4-year stints, then plus 3.25 in the 4th.

Russell Westbrook never gets above Paul Pierce's peak. One stint at plus five and one stint at +4 is all he has. I believe the data and would not vote for Westbrook for quite a while longer. (It pains me to say this as an OKC/Westbrook fan.).

For reference, there are a lot of modern era players with better numbers then Westbrook. Even Ben Wallace and Blake Griffin do. Westbrook peaked at the same height as Jason Kidd by these numbers but had a much shorter career.

Dwight Howard had a significantly hire peak, at almost Plus 8 for his best stent. Then he had two other stints at plus 3.5 or so. Nothing else positive.

Through 2020, Draymond Green had a stint at plus 7.5 and a stint at plus 4.5. Which was actually the second stint in the sample.

Joel Embiid only had one stint in the sample and it was at + 7.5 through 2020. I would expect his most recent two seasons to be at least that high and probably higher.

Of these modern players I would say it is between Paul Pierce and Dwight Howard for who should go in next, with Joel Embiid knocking at the door.

As much as I like Draymond Green (defensively), his impact numbers don't look that great in this metric. And the box score prior isn't what's driving that.

I always like hearing about the data even if we can't see the whole package.

One thing: Your turn of phrase makes me think this is 6 independent 4-year studies rather than a comparison of all possible consecutive 4 year peaks. Hence is someone has a 4-year-peak that doesn't align with the arbitrary cutoffs, they'll be downgraded relative to someone else with better timing.

Is this true?
If true, how much of a concern do you see it as?

This is definitely true. These are 6 consecutive, non-overlapping 4-year periods for which the average per-possession rating is calculated. If a player only played in 1 year, that's what will be captured. If a player played far more in one year than the others, that year will be more heavily weighted in the resulting value.

One noteworthy item--the RAPM I use has a very solid prior based on MPG and team strength. Adding BPM to the prior actually doesn't change much--the R^2 of the basic RAPM onto the BPM-informed RAPM is 0.967. If we use the right prior for RAPM and a long enough sample size, adding box score stats doesn't actually change the final result much. Certain players where the RAPM is struggling with collinearity will change, but if the RAPM sample is robust the box score data matters little.

[Clyde Frazier]

Fell asleep early last night so throwing a vote together quickly…

Vote 1 - Russell Westborok

Absolutely deserved MVP in 2017. Detractors love to lump it in with the 2 triple double seasons that followed, but it was clearly a level above. Took him some time to figure out his post prime role but it seems like he’s got it now. I can respect that.

Vote 2 - Kevin McHale

Ultimately taking him over Dwight with his contributions to multiple title teams. Devastating offensive player and still fit in with the rest of the Celtics game plan. If Dwight’s prime was slightly longer I might go the other way.

[trex_8063]

OK, pinch-hitting for Doc.
I have the count as:

Westbrook - 3 (Samurai, iggy, LABird)
McHale - 2 (AEnigma, penbeast)
Howard - 2 (trelos, HBK)
Pierce - 1 (trex)
Draymond - 1 (Doc)

No majority. Eliminating Pierce and Draymond results in the following transfers:

Westbrook - 1 (trex)
McHale - 1 (Doc)

New count: Westbrook 4, McHale 3, Howard 2. Still no majority. Eliminating Howard results in.....

Westbrook - 1 (trelos)
McHale - 0

Westbrook - 5
McHale - 3

EDIT: Just caught Clyde's vote after posting this (also for Westbrook), making the count 6-3 in his favour.

Russell Westbrook is inducted at #46



EDIT: My bad---->No nominee will be added, as per having one extra this round.

[Doctor MJ]

Thanks trex!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Doctor MJ]

I have access to a very interesting BPM-informed RAPM data set that runs in six 4-year stints starting in the 1997 season and ending with the 2020 season. The results of the data are very, very solid with that quantity of RAPM.

Paul Pierce looks very good. He runs in the range of +5 for the first three of those 4-year stints, then plus 3.25 in the 4th.

Russell Westbrook never gets above Paul Pierce's peak. One stint at plus five and one stint at +4 is all he has. I believe the data and would not vote for Westbrook for quite a while longer. (It pains me to say this as an OKC/Westbrook fan.).

For reference, there are a lot of modern era players with better numbers then Westbrook. Even Ben Wallace and Blake Griffin do. Westbrook peaked at the same height as Jason Kidd by these numbers but had a much shorter career.

Dwight Howard had a significantly hire peak, at almost Plus 8 for his best stent. Then he had two other stints at plus 3.5 or so. Nothing else positive.

Through 2020, Draymond Green had a stint at plus 7.5 and a stint at plus 4.5. Which was actually the second stint in the sample.

Joel Embiid only had one stint in the sample and it was at + 7.5 through 2020. I would expect his most recent two seasons to be at least that high and probably higher.

Of these modern players I would say it is between Paul Pierce and Dwight Howard for who should go in next, with Joel Embiid knocking at the door.

As much as I like Draymond Green (defensively), his impact numbers don't look that great in this metric. And the box score prior isn't what's driving that.

I always like hearing about the data even if we can't see the whole package.

One thing: Your turn of phrase makes me think this is 6 independent 4-year studies rather than a comparison of all possible consecutive 4 year peaks. Hence is someone has a 4-year-peak that doesn't align with the arbitrary cutoffs, they'll be downgraded relative to someone else with better timing.

Is this true?
If true, how much of a concern do you see it as?

This is definitely true. These are 6 consecutive, non-overlapping 4-year periods for which the average per-possession rating is calculated. If a player only played in 1 year, that's what will be captured. If a player played far more in one year than the others, that year will be more heavily weighted in the resulting value.

One noteworthy item--the RAPM I use has a very solid prior based on MPG and team strength. Adding BPM to the prior actually doesn't change much--the R^2 of the basic RAPM onto the BPM-informed RAPM is 0.967. If we use the right prior for RAPM and a long enough sample size, adding box score stats doesn't actually change the final result much. Certain players where the RAPM is struggling with collinearity will change, but if the RAPM sample is robust the box score data matters little.

Thank you D!

Interesting about the core solidity of the minutes-based prior more so than more fancy stuff.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Owly]

Fell asleep early last night so throwing a vote together quickly…

Vote 1 - Russell Westborok

Absolutely deserved MVP in 2017. Detractors love to lump it in with the 2 triple double seasons that followed, but it was clearly a level above. Took him some time to figure out his post prime role but it seems like he’s got it now. I can respect that.

Vote 2 - Kevin McHale

Ultimately taking him over Dwight with his contributions to multiple title teams. Devastating offensive player and still fit in with the rest of the Celtics game plan. If Dwight’s prime was slightly longer I might go the other way.

Depends on what you mean but if the focus is titles - so playoffs in title years? -
81: Boston play 816 minutes, Bird plays 750 (i.e. this is a team willing to play the core big minutes). McHale plays 296 minutes (17.4mpg), circa 36.27% of those available. Box improves on RS and very solid for a rookie.
84: Box is down on RS. Depends on measure of choice but generally quite pedestrian. Up to 30.5mpg.
86: 39.7mpg. Box aggregates strong.

I'm not saying he wasn't useful in the first two but in terms of title equity from playoffs I think the last run is quite different from the former two. Now that wouldn't necessarily be my method of evaluating players, but in terms of the titles ...

[Clyde Frazier]

Fell asleep early last night so throwing a vote together quickly…

Vote 1 - Russell Westborok

Absolutely deserved MVP in 2017. Detractors love to lump it in with the 2 triple double seasons that followed, but it was clearly a level above. Took him some time to figure out his post prime role but it seems like he’s got it now. I can respect that.

Vote 2 - Kevin McHale

Ultimately taking him over Dwight with his contributions to multiple title teams. Devastating offensive player and still fit in with the rest of the Celtics game plan. If Dwight’s prime was slightly longer I might go the other way.

Depends on what you mean but if the focus is titles - so playoffs in title years? -
81: Boston play 816 minutes, Bird plays 750 (i.e. this is a team willing to play the core big minutes). McHale plays 296 minutes (17.4mpg), circa 36.27% of those available. Box improves on RS and very solid for a rookie.
84: Box is down on RS. Depends on measure of choice but generally quite pedestrian. Up to 30.5mpg.
86: 39.7mpg. Box aggregates strong.

I'm not saying he wasn't useful in the first two but in terms of title equity from playoffs I think the last run is quite different from the former two. Now that wouldn't necessarily be my method of evaluating players, but in terms of the titles ...

I didn't nominate any of the options in this thread so it was tough making a decision. I was also short on time trying to get a vote in, so I was generalizing in comparing McHale and Dwight. Point taken on the overall value of his contributions there. I specified titles, but I could've said contributions to their several deep playoff runs in addition.