Haven't voted in a long time but figured I would support Tmac if he has a chance. unbelievably unfortunate career in terms of playoff success. He wasn't always amazing at the moment he could have won a series, but his overall playoff numbers are fantastic and would have won plenty of series on better teams.
trex_8063 detailed the 2003 magic already. probably the worst supporting cast to make the playoffs since the league expanded to 29 teams (the east was terrible, they were the 8th seed, and Tmac was crazy good, one of the few people with a 30+ PER season at that point in history). jeryl sasser was always the one that stood out to me. someone playing 1000 minutes for a team before never playing again without an injury seems pretty crazy.
his playmaking makes up for not having supreme efficiency compared to some other scorers.
that's what stood out to me when we (rockets) traded for him. not his scoring, but how good he was at passing. i remember during the 22 game winning streak, after yao got hurt and we won the last 10 without him, tmac was just a maestro. he had already lost a lot of explosiveness and wasn't efficient, but he just got everyone the shots that they needed and kept the streak rolling.
from 2001-2005 in the playoffs, he averaged 31.6/6.8/6.1 with 26.8 PER and 9.4 BPM, never averaging less than 30 for 4 straight playoffs, in the depths of the deadball era. his best was against the mavs in 2005. averaged 30.7/7.4/6.7 and was the main defender on dirk in a series where dirk shot 35%!! this isn't a 3 game series where dirk just happened to shoot 4/21 in one game. this is a 7 game series. completely dominant. and still lost in 7. he just couldn't catch a break.
Haven't voted in a long time but figured I would support Tmac if he has a chance. unbelievably unfortunate career in terms of playoff success. He wasn't always amazing at the moment he could have won a series, but his overall playoff numbers are fantastic and would have won plenty of series on better teams.
trex_8063 detailed the 2003 magic already. probably the worst supporting cast to make the playoffs since the league expanded to 29 teams (the east was terrible, they were the 8th seed, and Tmac was crazy good, one of the few people with a 30+ PER season at that point in history). jeryl sasser was always the one that stood out to me. someone playing 1000 minutes for a team before never playing again without an injury seems pretty crazy.
his playmaking makes up for not having supreme efficiency compared to some other scorers.
that's what stood out to me when we (rockets) traded for him. not his scoring, but how good he was at passing. i remember during the 22 game winning streak, after yao got hurt and we won the last 10 without him, tmac was just a maestro. he had already lost a lot of explosiveness and wasn't efficient, but he just got everyone the shots that they needed and kept the streak rolling.
from 2001-2005 in the playoffs, he averaged 31.6/6.8/6.1 with 26.8 PER and 9.4 BPM, never averaging less than 30 for 4 straight playoffs, in the depths of the deadball era. his best was against the mavs in 2005. averaged 30.7/7.4/6.7 and was the main defender on dirk in a series where dirk shot 35%!! this isn't a 3 game series where dirk just happened to shoot 4/21 in one game. this is a 7 game series. completely dominant. and still lost in 7. he just couldn't catch a break.
Hi f4p, we're in a runoff now between Ben Wallace & Cliff Hagan. Please do cast a run-off vote for one of them!
penbeast0 wrote:Not a Hagan supporter but those that are primarily point to his playoffs, rather than his regular season. All your indicators seem to be about RS impact.
Do we have reason to believe that the paradigm wrt his impact [for some reason] completely flips in the playoffs? i.e. he's so consistently NOT impacting the team outcome all that much during the rs, but then in playoffs---Shazzam!---it's a completely different story?
And if so, what is that reason?
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
As noted above and previously, I'm skeptical of [flat against, really] Hagan's placement this high. It stems from a number of reasons: midling longevity, concerns about era it came in, and [as per above] in noting he's got the LEAST impressive impact profile [even in aforementioned weaker era] of pretty much anyone that we've looked at in the last 4-5 threads.
This feels a pinch early [to me] for Ben Wallace, too, but he's MUCH closer to it than Hagan, imo.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Haven't voted in a long time but figured I would support Tmac if he has a chance. unbelievably unfortunate career in terms of playoff success. He wasn't always amazing at the moment he could have won a series, but his overall playoff numbers are fantastic and would have won plenty of series on better teams.
trex_8063 detailed the 2003 magic already.
Wouldn't have got TMac to the runoff anyway, but you were a pinch late getting this in (deadlines are deadlines).
It's into a runoff of Ben Wallace vs Cliff Hagan now.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
trex_8063 wrote:Would any of Hagan's supporters care to reply to the relative lack of positive impact indicators which I brought forth previously (in comparison to Billups [have augmented]):
Spoiler:
So maybe he's got some indication of massive impact (which exceeds what you view to be lacking in Billups' case).
Well let's look at some with/without; I'll colour-code red when the team had a higher win% without him, green when better with him.....
'57: 30-37 with, 4-1 without '58: 39-31 with, 2-0 without '59: did not miss games (49-23 record) '60: did not miss games (46-29 record) '61: 50-27 with, 1-1 without '62: 27-50 with, 2-1 without '63: 47-32 with, 1-0 without '64: 44-33 with, 2-1 without '65: 43-34 with, 2-1 without '66: 33-41 with, 3-3 without '68 [ABA]: 32-24 with, 14-8 without '69: 16-19 with, 25-18 without '70: 2-1 with, 43-38 without
That's a lot of red. Overall, his NBA teams were 408-337 [.548] with him, 17-8 [.680] without him. His ABA teams were 50-44 [.532] with him, 81-64 [.559] without him.
NBA and ABA combined, his teams were 458-381 [.546] with him, 99-72 [.579] without him: looking at it cumulatively in this fashion, they averaged a +.033 win% edge without him (translates to a little over 2 additional wins in 82-game season). Looking at it in terms of season-by-season pro-rated wins [with and without], and then taking the average, the gap gets marginally larger (with his team still averaging better records without him).
EDIT: Could also add in a peek at what happened in the year before he arrived and the year after he left, but neither of those things reflect positively either.
Looking at Ben Taylor's WOWYR, his prime WOWYR is a fairly underwhelming +1.4 (+1.3 for career). And fwiw, comparing him to the other candidates [present and recent] here by prime/career WOWYR:
For several threads now, Hagan has consistently been the guy sitting dead-last in terms of what impact indicators we actually have for him (and this in the weakest era among all candidates as well, fwiw).
jsia....
Not a case for him here particularly but thoughts, especially wrt to W-L WoWY.
W-L is a somewhat noisy measure of team goodness. Binary W-L loses a lot of nuance. Here it is taken for small samples across uneven opposition (including home, road). Aggregating across years will depend on where the smaller (typically "out") sample happened but it won't likely be even with the in. Short term absences would tend to be ones where no replacement in acquired but rather the team makes do with what they have. Present roster construction will matter here. Specialists may be harder to replace. "Middle" positions, especially SF, could be easier to plug a gap for having two adjacent positions as well as deeper depth chart options, where replacing at C and PG may offer less optionality (assuming a preference for reasonably conventional positional lineups).
All of which is to say there's significant noise in there.
I guess to Hagan in particular: - His case probably rests somewhat on the playoffs - now a bad RS impact signal doesn't help but if playoff box is better maybe one assumes playoff impact is too, depending on personal process. - Rookie year was played significantly out of position at guard. - Above points regarding small samples, and possible one regarding position apply. Hagan also not really (otoh) a specialist so perhaps easier to cobble together replacements and continue with existing system than some players may be. - Very limited out sample within his "strong prime" (subjective but I'd say 58-61 though that is itself a short spell so one could argue this as a weakness).
As far as consistency ... I'd say tighter impact data suggests B Jones had a better NBA/76ers career than Erving so without diving to deep to individual voters it's not like impact stuff has been taken as gospel.
Not saying it's not a negative. Just offering some pro-Hagan perspectives, mitigations or cases for internal consistency.
trex_8063 wrote:Would any of Hagan's supporters care to reply to the relative lack of positive impact indicators which I brought forth previously (in comparison to Billups [have augmented]):
Spoiler:
So maybe he's got some indication of massive impact (which exceeds what you view to be lacking in Billups' case).
Well let's look at some with/without; I'll colour-code red when the team had a higher win% without him, green when better with him.....
'57: 30-37 with, 4-1 without '58: 39-31 with, 2-0 without '59: did not miss games (49-23 record) '60: did not miss games (46-29 record) '61: 50-27 with, 1-1 without '62: 27-50 with, 2-1 without '63: 47-32 with, 1-0 without '64: 44-33 with, 2-1 without '65: 43-34 with, 2-1 without '66: 33-41 with, 3-3 without '68 [ABA]: 32-24 with, 14-8 without '69: 16-19 with, 25-18 without '70: 2-1 with, 43-38 without
That's a lot of red. Overall, his NBA teams were 408-337 [.548] with him, 17-8 [.680] without him. His ABA teams were 50-44 [.532] with him, 81-64 [.559] without him.
NBA and ABA combined, his teams were 458-381 [.546] with him, 99-72 [.579] without him: looking at it cumulatively in this fashion, they averaged a +.033 win% edge without him (translates to a little over 2 additional wins in 82-game season). Looking at it in terms of season-by-season pro-rated wins [with and without], and then taking the average, the gap gets marginally larger (with his team still averaging better records without him).
EDIT: Could also add in a peek at what happened in the year before he arrived and the year after he left, but neither of those things reflect positively either.
Looking at Ben Taylor's WOWYR, his prime WOWYR is a fairly underwhelming +1.4 (+1.3 for career). And fwiw, comparing him to the other candidates [present and recent] here by prime/career WOWYR:
For several threads now, Hagan has consistently been the guy sitting dead-last in terms of what impact indicators we actually have for him (and this in the weakest era among all candidates as well, fwiw).
jsia....
So, I have to acknowledge that I don't remember seeing this data before and that's unfortunate because it seems a pretty strong counter-argument against Hagan, who I've been voting for.
I'm not going to change my vote during the runoff, but will consider voting for others ahead of Hagan if he doesn't get inducted this thread.
Definitely curious if others have a counter to the counter.
For myself, yes, his ability to rise up in the playoffs matters a great deal, but these WOWY numbers are worse than I had realized, to the point that they open up conversation about whether there was something detrimental to the team about Hagan's style of play.
I disagree about how strong it is. In most cases, the without sample is very, very small. Of the 171 total "without games" in his career, 146 of them came during his comeback after one year of retirement, when he was in his late 30s. For all the other seasons, the without sample is just a few games per season, and I'm just not sure how much we should take from that(just as I don't take much from the 2-1 with him in 69-70). Moreover, the two seasons that don't have any without sample - 59/60 - appear to comprise a significant chunk of his peak.
What I see is that for the first ten seasons of his career, prior to his first retirement, he played most games in most seasons, and the team had a winning record in seven of those ten seasons.
It's just misleading when the lion's share of those WOWY numbers are from when he was old. AND, as mentioned, his case is largely built on playoff numbers.
Also, if we're talking about WOWY in this particular runoff, I would just again point out that when Big Ben left the Pistons, they won 53 and 59 games the following two years, going to the ECF both times, with old/post-injury Webber and McDyess in his place, and that it was only after Billups was traded that they collapsed.
I'm thoroughly unimpressed with Hagan's resume. He has 17 impressive playoff games from 1957 to 1958. Other than that he was mediocre in an incredibly weak era. Wallace had a long career as one of the best defenders in the league including a peak season where he was arguably the most valuable player on a champion that stomped the Shaq/Kobe Lakers.
trex_8063 wrote:Would any of Hagan's supporters care to reply to the relative lack of positive impact indicators which I brought forth previously (in comparison to Billups [have augmented]):
Spoiler:
So maybe he's got some indication of massive impact (which exceeds what you view to be lacking in Billups' case).
Well let's look at some with/without; I'll colour-code red when the team had a higher win% without him, green when better with him.....
'57: 30-37 with, 4-1 without '58: 39-31 with, 2-0 without '59: did not miss games (49-23 record) '60: did not miss games (46-29 record) '61: 50-27 with, 1-1 without '62: 27-50 with, 2-1 without '63: 47-32 with, 1-0 without '64: 44-33 with, 2-1 without '65: 43-34 with, 2-1 without '66: 33-41 with, 3-3 without '68 [ABA]: 32-24 with, 14-8 without '69: 16-19 with, 25-18 without '70: 2-1 with, 43-38 without
That's a lot of red. Overall, his NBA teams were 408-337 [.548] with him, 17-8 [.680] without him. His ABA teams were 50-44 [.532] with him, 81-64 [.559] without him.
NBA and ABA combined, his teams were 458-381 [.546] with him, 99-72 [.579] without him: looking at it cumulatively in this fashion, they averaged a +.033 win% edge without him (translates to a little over 2 additional wins in 82-game season). Looking at it in terms of season-by-season pro-rated wins [with and without], and then taking the average, the gap gets marginally larger (with his team still averaging better records without him).
EDIT: Could also add in a peek at what happened in the year before he arrived and the year after he left, but neither of those things reflect positively either.
Looking at Ben Taylor's WOWYR, his prime WOWYR is a fairly underwhelming +1.4 (+1.3 for career). And fwiw, comparing him to the other candidates [present and recent] here by prime/career WOWYR:
For several threads now, Hagan has consistently been the guy sitting dead-last in terms of what impact indicators we actually have for him (and this in the weakest era among all candidates as well, fwiw).
jsia....
Not a case for him here particularly but thoughts, especially wrt to W-L WoWY.
W-L is a somewhat noisy measure of team goodness. Binary W-L loses a lot of nuance. Here it is taken for small samples across uneven opposition (including home, road). Aggregating across years will depend on where the smaller (typically "out") sample happened but it won't likely be even with the in. Short term absences would tend to be ones where no replacement in acquired but rather the team makes do with what they have. Present roster construction will matter here. Specialists may be harder to replace. "Middle" positions, especially SF, could be easier to plug a gap for having two adjacent positions as well as deeper depth chart options, where replacing at C and PG may offer less optionality (assuming a preference for reasonably conventional positional lineups).
All of which is to say there's significant noise in there.
I guess to Hagan in particular: - His case probably rests somewhat on the playoffs - now a bad RS impact signal doesn't help but if playoff box is better maybe one assumes playoff impact is too, depending on personal process. - Rookie year was played significantly out of position at guard. - Above points regarding small samples, and possible one regarding position apply. Hagan also not really (otoh) a specialist so perhaps easier to cobble together replacements and continue with existing system than some players may be. - Very limited out sample within his "strong prime" (subjective but I'd say 58-61 though that is itself a short spell so one could argue this as a weakness).
As far as consistency ... I'd say tighter impact data suggests B Jones had a better NBA/76ers career than Erving so without diving to deep to individual voters it's not like impact stuff has been taken as gospel.
Not saying it's not a negative. Just offering some pro-Hagan perspectives, mitigations or cases for internal consistency.
OK.
I’ve looked further at specific games missed, year-by-year, to calculate SRS based on opponent faced and location of games (HCA counted as worth 3 pts). Below are the games he missed (location, opponent, result).....
‘57: at home vs 34-38 (-0.89 SRS) Lakers (win by 22 pts) At home vs 31-41 (-2.08 SRS) Royals (win by 13 pts) Neutral location vs 34-38 (-2.17 SRS) Pistons (win by 11 pts) On road vs 34-38 (-0.89 SRS) Lakers (win by 3 pts) Neutral location [though far closer to opponent’s home city (NY, NY)] vs 37-35 (+1.54 SRS) Warriors (lose by 1 pt) SRS Without Hagan: +8.10; SRS With Hagan: -0.89
‘58: at home vs 33-39 (-2.32 SRS) Pistons (win by 2 pts) At home vs 33-39 (-1.47 SRS) Royals (win by 18 pts) SRS Without Hagan: +5.11; SRS With Hagan: +0.70
‘61: on road vs 38-41 (+1.93 SRS) Nationals (lose by 28 pts) On road vs 21-58 (-5.43 SRS) Knicks (win by 3 pts) SRS Without Hagan: -11.25; SRS With Hagan: +3.36
‘62: on road vs 49-31 (+2.63 SRS) Warriors (win by 5 pts) At home vs 18-62 (-7.54 SRS) Packers (win by 9 pts) on road vs 49-31 (+2.63 SRS) Warriors (lose by 18 pts) SRS Without Hagan: -1.09; SRS With Hagan: -3.03
‘63: Neutral location vs 21-59 (-6.20 SRS) Knicks (won by 15 pts) SRS Without Hagan: +8.8; SRS With Hagan: +1.29
‘64: Neutral location [closer to opponent (NY,NY) vs 34-46 (-3.75 SRS) Warriors (won by 10 pts) On road vs 59-21 (+6.93 SRS) Celtics (lost by 9 pts) On road vs 48-32 (+4.41 SRS) Warriors (won by 9 pts) SRS Without Hagan: +7.86; SRS With Hagan: +1.14
‘65: on road vs 40-40 (-0.13 SRS) 76’ers (lost by 4 pts) On road vs 31-49 (-3.26 SRS) Knicks (won by 1 pt) At home vs 40-40 (-0.13 SRS) 76’ers (won by 14 pts) SRS Without Hagan: +3.49; SRS With Hagan: +2.65
‘66: On road vs 45-35 (+1.03 SRS) Royals (lost by 4 pts) At home vs 45-35 (+1.03 SRS) Royals (won by 2 pts) Neutral location (though far closer to opponent [Pittsburgh]) vs 55-25 (+4.16 SRS) 76’ers (lost by 12 pts) Neutral location [though in Rhode Island] vs 54-26 (+4.34 SRS) Celtics (won by 20 pts) On road vs 55-25 (+4.16 SRS) 76’ers (lost by 8 pts) On road vs 22-58 (-6.07 SRS) Pistons (won by 4 pts) SRS Without Hagan: +2.78; SRS With Hagan: -0.77
That's his ENTIRE NBA career. Year after year, every year except ONE [where the without sample is two games] they had a better SRS in the games he missed (sometimes substantially so). Haven't done the math, weighted for games in each year, but it looks like an average of somewhere around +4 better in the games he missed. And that's despite them ALL being short absences (no time to find suitable replacement, as you noted: should if anything make it worse in the without). And that's also counting all the "neutral locations" as neutral, even though [in some instances] it was basically an hour drive away from the opponent's home town.
Somewhat more granular, still reflects very poorly on Hagan.
I haven't [at least yet] looked at the ABA sample, because even the first year (perhaps only truly relevant one) is 28 missed games I'll have to find and calculate for.
Though that sample (which I suspect also reflects poorly) won't matter to OldSchoolNoBull anyway, as he's just declared it mostly irrelevant (because *post-prime). *fwiw, This flies a little bit in the face of things Doctor MJ has said (about how he was still so effective even in his mid-30s after making an ABA comeback).
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Haven't voted in a long time but figured I would support Tmac if he has a chance. unbelievably unfortunate career in terms of playoff success. He wasn't always amazing at the moment he could have won a series, but his overall playoff numbers are fantastic and would have won plenty of series on better teams.
trex_8063 detailed the 2003 magic already.
Wouldn't have got TMac to the runoff anyway, but you were a pinch late getting this in (deadlines are deadlines).
It's into a runoff of Ben Wallace vs Cliff Hagan now.
Yeah I saw that he posted while I was typing, but wouldn't have mattered.
For the runoff, despite Hagan's amazing back to back playoffs and being one of the bigger playoff risers ever, for 2 guys with similar numbers of deep, impactful playoff runs, I think I have to go with era as the tiebreaker for Big Ben.
I don't care AT ALL about how a team plays when a guy misses 2-3 games in a season. However Hagan star longevity is a little light compared to 50s and 60s peers here in my opinion. For example I know he's not the most popular around here but one thing Cousy has going for him is he was a top PG for quite a long time. I think Sam Jones > Hagan has a pretty good case too considering he matches him in clutch factor and peaked in harder competition era. I also think Hagan making top 70 and Sharman not making the list which he usually doesn't wouldn't be right when the latter was best SG in the NBA for like 9-10 years and was an elite player virtually all of Hagan's prime except one year.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote: I disagree about how strong it is. In most cases, the without sample is very, very small. Of the 171 total "without games" in his career, 146 of them came during his comeback after one year of retirement, when he was in his late 30s. For all the other seasons, the without sample is just a few games per season, and I'm just not sure how much we should take from that(just as I don't take much from the 2-1 with him in 69-70). Moreover, the two seasons that don't have any without sample - 59/60 - appear to comprise a significant chunk of his peak. .
Dr Positivity wrote:I don't care AT ALL about how a team plays when a guy misses 2-3 games in a season. However Hagan star longevity is a little light compared to 50s and 60s peers here in my opinion. For example I know he's not the most popular around here but one thing Cousy has going for him is he was a top PG for quite a long time. I think Sam Jones > Hagan has a pretty good case too considering he matches him in clutch factor and peaked in harder competition era. I also think Hagan making top 70 and Sharman not making the list which he usually doesn't wouldn't be right when the latter was best SG in the NBA for like 9-10 years and was an elite player virtually all of Hagan's prime except one year.
fwiw, I completely agree with everything you [Dr Positivity] have said here except the implication of the first [bolded] sentence.
I mean, I might generally agree that we can ignore a 2-3 game sample which yields an unexpected or counterintuitive result [or at least take with a LARGE grain of salt], IF it's somewhat of an aberration within the broader trends or cumulative career/prime missed games. i.e. if looking at ALL the missed games (the cumulation of ~1-10 per season) we find that generally his team performs better when the player in question is active, then we can probably overlook the one or two seasons that go against the grain as being flukes. Even if the cumulative trend is more or less mixed/neutral, we might be able to shrug off some of the negative findings.
But that's not the case for Hagan. In Hagan's case it really does seem to be a [negative] trend, and any positive results are the aberration: every single year of his professional career except ONE the team averages out better in the games he missed (ABA included, though not counting his final season where he played in only 3 games (at 9.0 mpg) [which would otherwise make two seasons (out of 13) where the team did better with him]).
Maybe it is a pure fluky coincidence that year-after-year, for basically his whole career, we see the same thing happen in the games he misses. Maybe. But there's enough of a trend here that simply banking on that assumption seems highly dubious.
As far as sample size...... Not even counting the ABA, the cumulative missed NBA games combines to make a larger sample than the couple years of fantastic playoff stats that he's getting so much mileage from. There's one season in my sample above where the total missed games were 6 [and the team did better in those six]........that's the SAME as the number of playoff games played in one of his two seemingly awesome [by the boxscore] playoff runs (and the other one is only 11 games).
If we're saying samples of 6 games and multiple 3-game samples are not relevant at all, how can we in the same breath say that samples of 6 and 11 are?
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Not voting, but largely with Trex on this one. Hagan had a good looking run from '58-'62 (and not sure how really impressed one can be with '62), but I don't see it as particularly elite relative to the competition and after that he was pretty much just a guy - low end starter, nothing special.
trex_8063 wrote:[ I mean, I might generally agree that we can ignore a 2-3 game sample which yields an unexpected or counterintuitive result [or at least take with a LARGE grain of salt], IF it's somewhat of an aberration within the broader trends or cumulative career/prime missed games. i.e. if looking at ALL the missed games (the cumulation of ~1-10 per season) we find that generally his team performs better when the player in question is active, then we can probably overlook the one or two seasons that go against the grain as being flukes. Even if the cumulative trend is more or less mixed/neutral, we might be able to shrug off some of the negative findings.
But that's not the case for Hagan. In Hagan's case it really does seem to be a [negative] trend, and any positive results are the aberration: every single year of his professional career except ONE the team averages out better in the games he missed (ABA included, though not counting his final season where he played in only 3 games (at 9.0 mpg) [which would otherwise make two seasons (out of 13) where the team did better with him]).
Maybe it is a pure fluky coincidence that year-after-year, for basically his whole career, we see the same thing happen in the games he misses. Maybe. But there's enough of a trend here that simply banking on that assumption seems highly dubious.
As far as sample size...... Not even counting the ABA, the cumulative missed NBA games combines to make a larger sample than the couple years of fantastic playoff stats that he's getting so much mileage from. There's one season in my sample above where the total missed games were 6 [and the team did better in those six]........that's the SAME as the number of playoff games played in one of his two seemingly awesome [by the boxscore] playoff runs (and the other one is only 11 games).
If we're saying samples of 6 games and multiple 3-game samples are not relevant at all, how can we in the same breath say that samples of 6 and 11 are?
First off yes the whole thing is a small enough sample that it could be a "coincidence". Secondly in 57 he averages 5ppg in the regular season so that can be tossed for me. From 63-65 his team averages 45-33 Ws with him and goes 5-2 without him... is that supposed to be that meaningful a difference to care about, especially considering he is not prime Dantley on these teams, he is a <30 minute player who's around 13-18ppg for the 3 years. And in 66 he has declined enough that he is now sub .100 WS/48. And then in the ABA, w/e, especially considering the first year the difference is meh more than bad.
This is all entertaining the idea of using missed games to judge players which personally I seem to be the most out on of anyone on PC board these days. To use an example the Grizzlies played amazing without Morant a few seasons ago and then this season went in the complete toilet, and if there's anything to take from that it's probably as much about Tyus vs Smart rather than Morant. The Raptors for whatever reason, cannot handle Poeltl's injury right now, some of that is that he's a good player, but some of it is that they have no other bigs to the point of having to start either Thad Young who was recently DNPd or just getting his feet wet Jontay Porter. In small sample teams also might not know how to play a team without a star, they might be built differently emotionally where one team plays harder than another when a star is out, etc. And then there is the idea that regular season is not the perfect way to judge a player as sometimes their skillset is more valuable in playoffs, eg. I don't hold it against Kawhi's value to 2019 Raptors that his team was fine without him in regular season games. If I had to pick a way for play during injured games to matter most to me, it's when a player misses an entire season, it's a big sample, the team and his opponents can strategize in the offseason how to play without him, etc. And even then there is some flaws.
trex_8063 wrote:[ I mean, I might generally agree that we can ignore a 2-3 game sample which yields an unexpected or counterintuitive result [or at least take with a LARGE grain of salt], IF it's somewhat of an aberration within the broader trends or cumulative career/prime missed games. i.e. if looking at ALL the missed games (the cumulation of ~1-10 per season) we find that generally his team performs better when the player in question is active, then we can probably overlook the one or two seasons that go against the grain as being flukes. Even if the cumulative trend is more or less mixed/neutral, we might be able to shrug off some of the negative findings.
But that's not the case for Hagan. In Hagan's case it really does seem to be a [negative] trend, and any positive results are the aberration: every single year of his professional career except ONE the team averages out better in the games he missed (ABA included, though not counting his final season where he played in only 3 games (at 9.0 mpg) [which would otherwise make two seasons (out of 13) where the team did better with him]).
Maybe it is a pure fluky coincidence that year-after-year, for basically his whole career, we see the same thing happen in the games he misses. Maybe. But there's enough of a trend here that simply banking on that assumption seems highly dubious.
As far as sample size...... Not even counting the ABA, the cumulative missed NBA games combines to make a larger sample than the couple years of fantastic playoff stats that he's getting so much mileage from. There's one season in my sample above where the total missed games were 6 [and the team did better in those six]........that's the SAME as the number of playoff games played in one of his two seemingly awesome [by the boxscore] playoff runs (and the other one is only 11 games).
If we're saying samples of 6 games and multiple 3-game samples are not relevant at all, how can we in the same breath say that samples of 6 and 11 are?
First off yes the whole thing is a small enough sample that it could be a "coincidence". Secondly in 57 he averages 5ppg in the regular season so that can be tossed for me. From 63-65 his team averages 45-33 Ws with him and goes 5-2 without him... is that supposed to be that meaningful a difference to care about, especially considering he is not prime Dantley on these teams, he is a <30 minute player who's around 13-18ppg for the 3 years. And in 66 he has declined enough that he is now sub .100 WS/48. And then in the ABA, w/e, especially considering the first year the difference is meh more than bad.
This is all entertaining the idea of using missed games to judge players which personally I seem to be the most out on of anyone on PC board these days. To use an example the Grizzlies played amazing without Morant a few seasons ago and then this season went in the complete toilet, and if there's anything to take from that it's probably as much about Tyus vs Smart rather than Morant. The Raptors for whatever reason, cannot handle Poeltl's injury right now, some of that is that he's a good player, but some of it is that they have no other bigs to the point of having to start either Thad Young who was recently DNPd or just getting his feet wet Jontay Porter. In small sample teams also might not know how to play a team without a star, they might be built differently emotionally where one team plays harder than another when a star is out, etc. And then there is the idea that regular season is not the perfect way to judge a player as sometimes their skillset is more valuable in playoffs, eg. I don't hold it against Kawhi's value to 2019 Raptors that his team was fine without him in regular season games. If I had to pick a way for play during injured games to matter most to me, it's when a player misses an entire season, it's a big sample, the team and his opponents can strategize in the offseason how to play without him, etc. And even then there is some flaws.
I acknowledge it could be pure coincidence. Though if you feel it's totally fine to hang your hat on the assumption that it's all flukey coincidence........well, agree to disagree. And I feel that's certainly a degree of latitude which would NOT be afforded most players by most posters here.
Specifically regarding differences seen in '63 and after (as well as his rookie year).... If we're saying '57 is irrelevant, and '63 and after are minimally relevant [or not relevant at all], then he's not a worthy candidate here for an entirely different reason (being a flash in the pan).
The difference in '63-'65 that you singled out actually is kinda large: difference between .577 win% and .714 (about 11 wins added on 82-game season), and a +4.31 SRS diff [on average, weighted for games]. And fwiw, perhaps it's fine to still say "nah, these samples are too small." However, I think my point stands that one cannot claim 3-game and 6-game samples (the former in their multiples) are irrelevant if one is simulaneously placing a large emphasis on two other samples which are precisely 6 and 11 games.
fwiw, some of what you say in the final paragraph seems to work against Hagan, as it's in so many words speaking to the difficulties of adapting [to player loss] in the short-term: if anything these should HURT the team in the "without" samples.
And wrt the last statement: in '68 he's putting up a 21.5 PER and .196 WS/48 in 31 mpg (this is VERY comparable to his NBA prime). If I did the full SRS investigation and found it is once again a sizable difference (here in a 28-game "without" sample contained within a single season)......would that be relevant?
As to statements (don't think you specifically said this, btw) to the effect of "I see good team records with Hagan playing relevant minutes and having high usage, so....." Fair enough, though if going by that type of analysis, I think [as you yourself stated] guys like Sam Jones and Bill Sharman should [fairly clearly] get the nod before Cliff Hagan. One way or another he seems [imo] a poor fit for this stage of the list. It requires too much shifting of goal-posts (either in terms of how he's evaluated vs other potential candidates; or within the confines of evaluating him only [e.g. 6 games is too small to be relevant when it reflects negatively on him, but plenty when it reflects positively]).
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
