Retro Player of the Year 1951-52 — George Mikan

[LA Bird]

Player of the Year
1. George Mikan
2. Dolph Schayes
3. Paul Arizin
4. Bob Cousy
5. Bob Davies

Mikan's scoring falls off a cliff with the widening of the lane, ending his run as both the scoring and win share leader in the league. However, as the clear DPOY still, this dropoff simply moves him from GOAT era-relative peak to mere MVP. More of a trivia fact but despite the fall in scoring, Mikan actually had both his career high points in regular season (61) and playoffs (47) this year against the Royals. He did lose the 47 point playoff game though but won the next three to eliminate the Royals while averaging only 16.

Schayes at #2 probably makes me look like a major homer but the way I see it, his play over his injury period wasn't really that consequential in the grander scheme of things. I feel like he would have been viewed more positively (especially statistically) if he just missed those games completely. His scoring declined from 17.1 to only 5.5 ppg but jumped back to 20.3 ppg in the playoffs so that injury didn't hurt his postseason performance. The only difference that dropoff made was in the regular season standings but the team still finished 1st in the East. Syracuse started the season 31-14 (+6.4 MOV) but ended 9-12 (+0.3 MOV) after Schayes' injury. That +6 is very strong impact and I don't see the point of penalizing him heavily when other MVP candidates while healthy and with stronger teammates (namely Wanzer/Macauley/Phillip vs Rocha) still couldn't catch up with Schayes effectively out for a quarter of a season. In a season with stronger candidates, the injury could probably drop him a couple spots but think he is just barely above #3 here.

Arizin had some eye popping numbers but I feel like it's much of the same issue with Groza where the team's offensive success is hurt heavily by their defense. They were overall only a -1.1 SRS and while one could point to the -6.7 SRS dropoff the following season as evidence of Arizin's impact, they did rebound to -1.9 SRS the year after still without him and only improved to -0.2 SRS with him back in 1955.

Cousy for me was an upgraded Davies who fixed the issues of volume and playoffs resiliency. To Davies' credit, other than a 18 minute game where he had zero points, he scored at least 20 in all the other five playoffs games, which is more 20 point games than he had in the rest of his entire postseason career. The problem is he still got lapped by Cousy who had games of 31, 28, 34 points. Celtics' +3.6 SRS was the best of the pre-Russell era and while you could argue Macauley over Wanzer, the Royals comfortably had the better overall supporting cast.

[Doctor MJ]

POY:

1. George Mikan (Mpl)
2. Bob Davies (Roc)
3. Paul Arizin (Phi)
4. Dolph Schayes (Syr)
5. Bob Cousy (Bos)

Mikan remains an easy call as I see him as the most important piece to the now ultra-dominant Laker defense.

I thought hard about Arizin vs Davies, and I'm really glad to see such passionate arguments on Davies' behalf. Y'know what, I'll side with Davies here. It really is statistically a year that you can argue was his most impressive season, and while the team lost instead of beat the Lakers again, the Royals had the best record in the league and lost only their regular season matchup with the Lakers. After we grant the preeminence of Mikan, Davies as close to royalty as any.

From there I was considering Schayes, Cousy & Macauley, as well as the other 3 core Lakers (Pollard, Mikkelsen, Martin). Once again I have more confidence in Schayes's impact than in the impact of others.

Cousy & Macauley incidentally do do something of a "split the vote". Giving Cousy the nod between the two, but I think Cousy was very fortunate to play with Macauley this year as well.

OPOY:

1. Bob Davies (Roc)
2. Paul Arizin (Phi)
3. Bob Cousy (Bos)

Largely explained in the POY reasoning. Coulda been Arizin, and shout out Macauley.

DPOY:

1. George Mikan (Mpl)
2. Slater Martin (Mpl)
3. Red Rocha (Syr)

Yeah so the Lakers are so dominant I think it does make sense to consider a 2nd guy. I'll side with Slater.

The Nats were the next strongest defensive team, and Rocha has both the reputation and the minutes to be the plausible DPOY candidate for the team.

unofficial COY:

1. John Kundla (Mpl)
2. Joe Lapchick (NY)
3. Herm Schaefer (Ind)

With Lapchick's team again upsetting 2 teams on the way to the finals he may well be the right choice here...but I wish I better understood the details of how it went down.

With Kundla this year, the fact that the Lakers won without having an offensive cheat code is an impressive shift. If there was nothing more to the Lakers than the talent displayed up through 1950, then that may well have been their last title, yet here they are again with the chip.

Shout out to the defensive performance of the Olympians with new coach Schaefer.

[ShaqAttac]

VOTE

MIKAN

Still best D in the league, won the chip, and won playoffs games missing an all-star. His scoring not so good with the lane I guess, but he's scoring plenty and still considered the best defender by far by everyone and led the best team.

CLIFTON

So the Knicks made the final took Mikan to 7 but no one wants to vote them POY? that seems weird. Great D, lots of rebounds, put up 3rd most points and 2nd most assists on his team, took Mikan to 7.

ARIZIN
I think Doc cooked so

A quick note on OPOY:

I expect to have Arizin at #1 there, and I'm seeing folks put him, as the star of the #3 ORtg team this year, placed behind the stars of the #1 & #2 teams.

I like that people are really thinking hard about ORtg, but I'd note that the gap between these 3 team's offenses isn't actually that big, and while it's reasonable in general to wonder if the biggest scorer of the bunch is getting in the way of his team's overall performance, keep in mind that when Arizin returns to the NBA he'll end up leading a #1 ORtg higher than any of the teams from this year, and leading them to the title.

Now, it's a team game and he has help getting his team to the promised land, but to the question of:
Is Arizin holding his team offense back relative to other offensive stars? I have to say my answer is "No".

A couple other things to consider.

First,
Arizin this year led the league in:
PPG
FG%
TS Add
FTs made
FTA
Minute Played

He did not lead the league in FGA, because Mikan & Cousy were ahead of him. Mikan isn't our OPOY focus any more, but Cousy is, and we're in this precarious time where Cousy has extreme primacy and his team has a high rORtg, but knowing what we know about Cousy going forward, I think it absolutely makes sense to ask whether Cousy should have been taking more FGA than Arizin. I don't think so.

Further, while Arizin's Warriors got eliminated in the fist round, consider Arizin's numbers in that series in comparison to the star of the other team (Schayes):

Arizin 25.7 PPG on 57.0% TS with 12.7 RPG.
Schayes 20.3 PPG on 52.4% TS with 13.7 RPG.

Now at first glance you might think "Arizin a bit better as a scorer, Schayes a bit better as a rebounder, might be a wash", but remember: Schayes was a big, while Arizin wasn't. Arizin at 6'4" was 4 inches shorter than Schayes, and shorter than any other Top 10 rebounder in the league.

seems like the best o player. Ig you could say the stats are empty or whatever, but we dont have WOWY or RAPM or on/off and Paul got a bunch of high MVP finishes right after fighting a war so...

DAVIES

Led best O in the league in points an assists, numbers went up vs the best team in the league and took a game

SCHYAES
Put up big O numbers despite being a big, got a lot better in the playoffs, got a bunch of first teams after and bigs probably more important than smaller players anyway. I think Doc made a good arg that Cousy was empty numbers and i remember from top 100 his impact kind of sucked playing with the goat.

[ShaqAttac]

Tbh, i'm not voting him 1 because no one seems to think much about him or thinks Mikan isn't the best, but didnt Mikan have more help than Clifton?

How'd that series go 7? Was Clif being Bill Russell?

[eminence]

Voting Post

Player of the Year
1. George Mikan
Rule changes have hurt his offense but helped his defense. He was the best defender in the league already, and now it seems to be by about a mile. No longer in strong contention for OPOY, but still the best offensive player on the Lakers and no slouch. Team bounces back to their winning ways with Mikan's return to health.

2. Bob Cousy
Interesting race between the Bobs for this one. Wind up going very narrowly with Cousy. Do think pace/minutes/age oversell the statistical gap at times, but in my final analysis Cousy gets the Celtics reasonably close to the Royals level with notably less help overall. I don't have any major problems with Cousy's defense in later years (manages big minutes on some of the best defensive teams ever) and haven't seen anything to suggest he was a ton worse at this point. Series loss to the Knicks was so close and Cousy seemed to play so well that I find it hard to punish the 1st round loss at all.

3. Bob Davies
I get the minutes critique vs some other guys, but my opinion is 'play more for what' the Royals were the reigning champs that came home with the #1 overall seed - what exactly were they supposed to be playing more RS minutes for? A little over 1 mpg behind Arizin come playoff time (I've also always doubted the effective worth of the very very huge minutes guys, I imagine in most cases they could manage similar overall team impact dropping from 45 minutes down to 36). Anywho, Davies leads another strong team/offense, lose to the Lakers, but it was a reasonable series and Davies seemed to play well without PO troubles this go around.

4. Dolph Schayes
Without injury or if they'd gotten in done against the Knicks and he'd likely be my #2. The injury did cost them the #1 overall seed so it wasn't completely without cost even if it didn't wind up mattering. Still the #2 overall big with probably the most all-around game in the league. Dominant rebounding from a player folks might not expect it from. Do think he likely solidly outplayed Arizin in their series despite the scoring gap, Schayes was notably better at everything else.

5. Paul Arizin
His individual game was a quantum leap on the perimeter from a forward, but overall I come down a bit closer to AEnigma with him having some serious holes as a distributor/defender. Surrounding talent was pretty much down to Phillip/Senesky, but they didn't exactly blow away even the low expectations (.500, below 0 Net). Coach probably could've gone to Johnston a bit earlier, but the Mikan name mystique was hard to fight. Gave him the nod over Macauley as the Batman to Macauley's Robin. I'd probably slightly lean towards '56 as his peak for POY type purposes.

HMs-
Macauley

OPOY
1. Bob Cousy
With the lane widening I do find the two Bobs clearly the top offense drivers with their elite combo of good volume scoring and very good distribution skills. Can see any order on this ballot, but would be a bit surprised by any different votes from these top 3.

2. Bob Davies
Stayed consistent with my POY ballot, really not much of a gap here. The Bobs were really playing a quite similar role, and doing it to a similar level.

3. Paul Arizin
Hard to argue too much with this level of scoring. Only above a couple of bigs not thought of as offensively talented in my Ast/100 calculation (Graboski/Rocha/Ed Mikan).

DPOY
1. George Mikan
Easy choice, don't see any other cases here. I do think the rules changes boosted his already strong defense to a level beyond the rest of the league.

2. Red Rocha
Nats were a strong team, Rocha the big minutes guy after some good defensive play in the past. Reasonably close tier from #2 here to like #5 or 6.

3. Joe Graboski
Give the Groza replacement some love. Schaefer likely played a big part in it as well, but it's impressive to me that the Olympians didn't fall off with the amount of perceived talent lost.

[AEnigma]

While I am waiting for Ardee and Zeppelin to post their ballots…

DPOY:

1. George Mikan (Mpl)
2. Slater Martin (Mpl)
3. Red Rocha (Syr)

Yeah so the Lakers are so dominant I think it does make sense to consider a 2nd guy. I'll side with Slater.

The Nats were the next strongest defensive team, and Rocha has both the reputation and the minutes to be the plausible DPOY candidate for the team.

Pollard & Martin at the two guys who are going to be the absolute rocks of the Lakers from here on out minutes-wise, above Mikan or anyone else. Martin is known primarily for his all-time great shutdown defense as a guard. Pollard is known for being arguably the best all-around basketball talent since Hank Luisetti...but of course, what does "all-around" mean when we know Mikan was the MVP of the club? What we really know is that Pollard was an exceptional all-around athlete who the Lakers swore by as part of their great defense.

Looking at the [1951] Royals series, we can say that they - and presumably Martin primarily - held Davies to his worst performance by a good margin - worse than the Pistons who last year seemed like they had an answer for Davies.

The guy who broke through for me and eventually made my ballot last time was Sweetwater Clifton, who I see as the star defender on a team that eventually ends up with a great defense.

Doc, could you expound on this? Last time you took Martin over Pollard because of how well he did against Davies. But this time around, Davies has a great series… and you are not only still siding with Martin, you are actually elevating him from the prior ballot.

I am also curious why you are holding off on Sweetwater. Maybe this gets back into what we discussed about seasonally variable team skews, but if you are going to vote for him next season because of a sudden spike in the team’s defensive rating (with Boryla not missing as much time, Braun largely taking Zaslofsky’s minutes, and Gallatin rebounding — heh — back after a down season in 1952), why not vote for him this season when he is essentially the same player by the box score? Agree 1953 is the superior year — more minutes and a better postseason in addition to the overall team improvement — but is the gap really that significant? The Knicks went 1-3 without Clifton this year and allowed 9 more points per game than they did with Clifton; while that can speak to Clifton providing less total value to his team for the season, it is not as if we are here questioning what he was contributing to their defence.

[Doctor MJ]

While I am waiting for Ardee and Zeppelin to post their ballots…

DPOY:

1. George Mikan (Mpl)
2. Slater Martin (Mpl)
3. Red Rocha (Syr)

Yeah so the Lakers are so dominant I think it does make sense to consider a 2nd guy. I'll side with Slater.

The Nats were the next strongest defensive team, and Rocha has both the reputation and the minutes to be the plausible DPOY candidate for the team.

Pollard & Martin at the two guys who are going to be the absolute rocks of the Lakers from here on out minutes-wise, above Mikan or anyone else. Martin is known primarily for his all-time great shutdown defense as a guard. Pollard is known for being arguably the best all-around basketball talent since Hank Luisetti...but of course, what does "all-around" mean when we know Mikan was the MVP of the club? What we really know is that Pollard was an exceptional all-around athlete who the Lakers swore by as part of their great defense.

Looking at the [1951] Royals series, we can say that they - and presumably Martin primarily - held Davies to his worst performance by a good margin - worse than the Pistons who last year seemed like they had an answer for Davies.

The guy who broke through for me and eventually made my ballot last time was Sweetwater Clifton, who I see as the star defender on a team that eventually ends up with a great defense.

Doc, could you expound on this? Last time you took Martin over Pollard because of how well he did against Davies. But this time around, Davies has a great series… and you are not only still siding with Martin, you are actually elevating him from the prior ballot.

I am also curious why you are holding off on Sweetwater. Maybe this gets back into what we discussed about seasonally variable team skews, but if you are going to vote for him next season because of a sudden spike in the team’s defensive rating (with Boryla not missing as much time, Braun largely taking Zaslofsky’s minutes, and Gallatin rebounding — heh — back after a down season in 1952), why not vote for him this season when he is essentially the same player by the box score? Agree 1953 is the superior year — more minutes and a better postseason in addition to the overall team improvement — but is the gap really that significant? The Knicks went 1-3 without Clifton this year and allowed 9 more points per game than they did with Clifton; while that can speak to Clifton providing less total value to his team for the season, it is not as if we are here questioning what he was contributing to their defence.

Reasonable questions. The simple answer is that due to how much uncertainty I have in things in the deep past, I tend to look at the most successful defensive teams for DPOY candidates, and the Knicks just don't show me clear signs of this until '52-53.

So then let me say: It's entirely possible that Clifton was a Top 3 most valuable defender from the moment he joined the Knicks, and I'm not really looking to die on the hill that he wasn't.

Now, aside from the fact that the Knicks rDRtg takes the major leap in '52-53, that season is also the year where Clifton peaks in minutes, and he leads the team in minutes in both RS & PS, whereas in '51-52 he was 2nd in RS & 4th in PS. This then to say that I think it's pretty clear why Clifton would be a significantly stronger DPOY candidate next year compared to this one...but that doesn't mean he doesn't deserve a ballot spot this year.

Re: Why elevate Martin? Well, the starting point for me is that '51-52 is when the Laker defense utterly laps the field so it makes sense to consider Lakers in general more strongly than in prior years for DPOY.

In terms of Martin being singled out for a specific lock-down performance last time and not this time, well, given Martin's general reputation and the Laker defense's success, to me looking for evidence of lock-down was more about establishing that Martin had arrived.

As I say all of this, I don't think it's beyond debate that Martin deserves to be singled out ahead of the other non-Mikan Lakers. I think it's clear that Martin has a reputation as a defensive guard that's second to none in his era, but this doesn't mean he's more valuable than Pollard or Mikkelsen who in my reading don't have quite the same type of paramount defensive reputation within their positions.

Of the two, the debate with Pollard is the one I'm least confident on. Mikkelsen in the next couple of years will play considerably less minutes than Pollard & Martin despite being considerably younger than either, and between that and the fact that Mikkelsen does well, Mikan does better, make me see Mikkelsen as generally the 4th most important piece on the team despite generally being seen as at least #3 just on the offensive side of the ball. (Though I think we eventually learn enough about Martin to know he wasn't someone who incapable on the offensive side of the court, the Lakers just didn't look to make use of him there.

[ZeppelinPage]

I'll try to post mine in the next couple hours.

[ZeppelinPage]

Player of the Year:
1. George Mikan
2. Paul Arizin
3. Bob Cousy
4. Jim Pollard
5. Dolph Schayes

Offensive Player of the Year:
1. Paul Arizin
2. Bob Cousy
3. Ed Macauley

Defensive Player of the Year:
1. George Mikan
2. Jim Pollard
3. Nat Clifton

Mikan is the clear POY and DPOY for me. Arizin's ability to score and rebound slightly edges out Cousy, as by all accounts Cousy was not quite a complete player yet. I considered Davies and Wanzer for OPOY, I don't see either of them really carrying their offense, but rather the both of them sharing to create a #1 offense. Macauley was brilliant efficiency-wise and played great next to Cousy in the regular season and playoffs. Pollard gets nominations from me for his brilliant all-around season and strong playoffs. Clifton was an important piece to the team defensively, and I'd have him over Gallatin and Mikkelsen for defense (although maybe not overall value).

[AEnigma]

Votes are tallied. I recorded 11 voters: Djoker, Trex, AEnigma, Eminence, ShaqAttac, Dutchball97, Dr. Positivity, Doctor MJ, LA Bird, ZeppelinPage, and trelos. LA Bird, ShaqAttac, and Trex abstained from both OPoY and DPoY. Please let me know if I seem to have missed or otherwise improperly recorded a vote.

1951-52 Results

(Retro) Offensive Player of the Year — Paul Arizin & Bob Cousy

Code: Select all

Player         1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1a. Paul Arizin    4   1   3    26     0.650
1b. Bob Cousy    3   3   2    26     0.650
3. Bob Davies   1    4     1     18    0.450
4. Ed Macauley   0    0    2      2     0.050


(Retro) Defensive Player of the Year — George Mikan (3) (Unanimous)

Code: Select all

Player          1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1. George Mikan   8    0     0     40     1.000
2. Vern Mikkelsen     0    2    2     8    0.200
3. Nat Clifton   0    2    1     7     0.175
3. Red Rocha    0    2    1     7     0.175
5. Jim Pollard   0    1     1      4     0.100
5. Slater Martin    0    1    1      4     0.100
7. Joe Graboski    0    0    2      2     0.050

Retro Player of the Year — George Mikan (3) (Unanimous)

Code: Select all

Player       1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts  POY Shares
1. George Mikan  11  0  0  0  0   110    1.000
2. Paul Arizin   0  6  3  1  1   61    0.555
3. Bob Cousy   0  2  4  3  1   44    0.400
4. Bob Davies   0  1  3  3  3   34    0.309
5. Dolph Schayes   0  1  1  2  4   22    0.200
6. Nat Clifton   0  1  0  0  0   7    0.064
7. Ed Macauley   0  0  0  1  2   5    0.045
8. Jim Pollard   0  0  0  1  0   3    0.027

1953 thread will open shortly.

[trex_8063]

Boy, it really makes you appreciate just how dominant Mikan was in this era: three consecutive years where he is the unanimous pick for both DPOY and POY, plus winning OPOY one year (and coming in 4th in another).

If we'd done '48 and '49, he'd almost assuredly have taken POY and DPOY those years, too [likely unanimously]. I expect him to take both in '53, as well, and at least DPOY in '54 (certainly no worse than 2nd in POY). He was a world-beater.