ty 4191 wrote:DraymondGold wrote: Hi ty -- thanks for doing this work! Oscar would be great so we can get a bit of a comparison with West going!
If you're less interested in Oscar, the other names that come to mind are are Wade or Durant to compare with Kobe or Robinson to compare with the other centers.
It feels a bit too early in their career to do Jokic or Giannis (?) since they're still near their peak, but obviously they'd be super interesting to look at whenever you feel we have a big enough sample for them.
Hi All,
Added Oscar Robertson.
It seems that due to substandard teams from 1961-1970, his teams didn't go deep enough, long enough, to play against truly ATG + Elite teams as much, proportionally, to a lot of these ATG players.
Thoughts?
Hi ty, thanks for the quick response! Hope it's okay that mine was not so quick.
I've converted everything into per 36 minutes to try to equalize the minute differential. (the averaging is weighted by how often the players faced each type of opponent)
West against Elite and All-time-great teams: 25.1 Pts/36, 4.3 Rbs/36, 4.5 Ast/36, +1.3% rTS [40.0 mins/game; faced these opponents 35.9% of games]
Oscar against Elite and All-time-great teams: 22.0 Pts/36, 6.8 Rbs/36, 6.4 Ast/36, +3.8% rTS [43.4 mins/game; faced these opponents 35.9% of games]
West against good/average/bad teams: 25.3 Pts/36, 5.0 Rbs/36, 5.7 Ast/36, +6.5% rTS [39.8 mins/game; faced these opponents 64.1% of games]
Oscar against good/average/bad teams: 18.1 Pts/36, 5.2 Rbs/36, 7.7Ast/36, +6.3% rTS [43.2 mins/game; faced these opponents 69.8% of games]
Scoring: West clearly scored at more volume, but the difference is greater against worse competition. Their efficiency is about equal against worse competition and even against elite competition, but West's worse efficiency against All-time-great competition is worse than Oscar's. That's surprising given West's reputation! I wonder if we looked at those specific all-time-great series if we would find any interesting context.
Rebounds: Oscar got more rebounds against better competition, but their rebounding equalized against worse competition.
Assists: Oscar consistently got ~2 more assists than West. Both decreased their assists by ~1 Ast/36 against better competition. Perhaps this is a sign that better competition focused on halting Oscar's playmaking, and so he increased his scoring volume instead?
Time: Oscar played 3.5 more minutes per game, while West played against all-time great competition slightly more often. West's higher all-time-great opponents are presumably Russell's Celtics and Kareem's Bucks, both defensive dynasties -- I'd bet that would account for his decreased shooting efficiency. I wonder, if we did True Shooting relative to opponent defense, rather than True shooting relative to league average, perhaps West's efficiency against these all-time-great defenses might start to look a bit better!
All-in-all, I came away fairly impressed with Oscar. His scoring volume is a bit disappointing against worse opponents, but his rebound, playmaking, and efficiency all look pretty good against better teams, and his high minutes are nice.
West's efficiency against all time great opponents is a bit disappointing -- but again, I wonder if we did true shooting relative to opponent defenses, whether his efficiency might improve (since most of Boston's all-time-great-ness comes from defense). West still has the scoring volume advantage, and his rebounding/assists don't look bad by any means (his rebounding is better against worse teams; his playmaking is better against better teams). West of course also has the defensive advantage, and faced better teams more often.
Like I said, Oscar looks pretty good. There's still absolutely an argument to be made for West (especially with defense), but his offensive resilience advantage is not quite as clear cut as I'd expected, at least without contextualizing his efficiency based on specific opponents.
