Owly wrote:Last go round here
Fair. We don't appear to be making headway, but that's okay. I value your contest of my thoughts. It's made me do some review and reconsideration. I maintain my point, but I have enjoyed our conversation.
1) As ever open to seeing data
I don't know that I have the energy to grind through a decade of his career and investigate that at the moment, but if I do, I will post it to show whatever result that produces, for sure.
2) Okay well the quote was "good defenses/physical frontcourts". And I kind of assume the idea is defenses good at defending centers for which teams with good centers is for me an adequate proxy that I actually have seen some form of data. As above, open to seeing new/your sources.
I suppose that's interpretation. Primarily, he seemed to struggle with size and strength more than anything else. But again, if I can move through the games, we'll see what I come up with.
Fwiw, eyeballing him versus the Rileyball and Ewing/Oakley/Mason era Knicks (including '96 for that frontcourt, and one of the games is under JVG) the most notriously physical team and physical frontline .... looking at the average of game BPMs there's little evidence of an overall struggle at 9.533333333 (9.1 was his RS average for the spell).
So we're speaking of 92-95, which represents 7 games. That's a far smaller sample than the playoffs, which you were attacking for sample size earlier, just FWIW. But okay, it's a good sample because they're a specifically aggressive, physical team with a physical individual defender in Ewing to go after him.
That said, he shot very well in 5 of those games, posted one mediocre game and one crap game. A very small sample, but against the idea I have been discussing.
I'd need to find video of this, though, in the absence of shot logs. Because we'd need to see how much he was doing in transition and from offensive rebounds, whilst attacking mismatches and all the things which normally worked for him. Isolation scoring is a fairly specific thing, and Robinson was EXTREMELY good at non-isolation scoring, and at attacking smaller players. And if he got a seal, he was very good at exploiting it. What he struggled with was longer isolation sets and what happened if he wasn't able to get all the way to the rim for the foul/bucket.
3) Yes, I’m (trying to) grant you/ acknowledge Olajuwon’s shorter midrange and inelasticity (though I think also some luck – before doing any adjustments to account for which years he plays the largest samples in Olajuwon’s career TS% is up in the playoffs – [if this holds with closer inspection] unless you’re not trying [to some degree] in the RS, I believe that’s luck).
I don't think it's hugely luck. He was taking shots that the defense typically tried to have players take. Getting guys into twisting fadeaways and all that stuff is much better than simple moves for dunks and the like, after all.
Next. I threw down his playoff and regular-season TS% just now. In 14 postseasons from 85-99 (I didn't bother to include 02 with Toronto, though that would help his case), he increased his TS% in the playoffs 6 times and had a drop-off of less than 1% on 3 other occasions. It's worth mentioning he shot a career-worst 47.8% FT in his first postseason as a rookie on 9.2 FTA/g, which definitely hurt, and then never again shot worse than 63.8%, trending upward for most of his career. He shot 74% or better in 6 postseasons and 70%+ 10 times. For a dude as raw as he was hitting the league, that is impressive.
For comparison, Robinson from 1990-1996 and 1998 (his pre-Duncan stuff and his first year with Duncan, which was his last 20+ ppg regular season).
In that span, Robinson dropped by more than 1% every season except for 91, and in fact dropped by 2% or more in all of those apart from 1990. 93-98, he was at -4, -4.1, -13.1, -2 and -8.5. He maintained his scoring average in 1990, increased by +0.2 in 1991, and then from 93-98, dropped off every year. -0.3, -9.8 (that was his scoring title season), -2.3, -1.4, -2.2. Not humongous drop-offs outside of 1994, to be fair, but coupled to his efficiency drop-offs, which were consequential, it's a different profile entirely than Olajuwon. Now, it's also worth noting that Robinson had a higher starting point: he was CONSIDERABLY more efficient than Hakeem in the RS most of the time.
For reference, in those 14 postseasons, Olajuwon increased his scoring average 9 times and dropped off 5 times, 3 of which came after 1995, and one of which was a -0.4 ppg drop in 1993.
Just some thoughts to chew on. None of that is necessarily related to defense/matchup type, I was too lazy to look that deeply at the moment, but it does help flesh out the difference in their postseason performance.
Anyway, thanks for the conversation. It's been fun, and has given me some things to think about.
