Retro Player of the Year 1987-88 UPDATE — Magic Johnson

[One_and_Done]

You are using an excuse for jordan's worse performance that largely only is present because of his own individual defiencies relative to Magic

Magic plays completely differently to Jordan. Jordan creates in the half court much more. Double teaming him is a more viable strategy if he has nobody around him to pass to. There are different things Magic needs to succeed.

Dead wrong lol. Magic frequently takes out 3-4 defenders in the half-court. Jordan is only doing that if he's near the basket (and sees/gets the pass off which he often fails to do).

I think you're confusing 'Jordan creates more of his plays in the half court' with 'Magic is bad at half court creation'. They are both good at half court creation, but Magic also creates alot on the fast break too. Jordan on the other hand overwhelming creates in the half court.

[OhayoKD]

Magic plays completely differently to Jordan. Jordan creates in the half court much more. Double teaming him is a more viable strategy if he has nobody around him to pass to. There are different things Magic needs to succeed.

Dead wrong lol. Magic frequently takes out 3-4 defenders in the half-court. Jordan is only doing that if he's near the basket (and sees/gets the pass off which he often fails to do).

I think you're confusing 'Jordan creates more of his plays in the half court' with 'Magic is bad at half court creation'. They are both good at half court creation, but Magic also creates alot on the fast break too. Jordan on the other hand overwhelming creates in the half court.

No. Jordan is much more reliant on transition for drawing extra defenders/creation. Making simple reads vs a single defender for an assist a bunch =/ creating more in the half-court

Magic is much better at half-court creation and transition creation. If you give him a window he will find it and if you don't he'll create one. Teams are only tripling jordan if he is near the basket, and him getting near the basket happens at a much higher frequency in transition than in the half-court.

[One_and_Done]

Dead wrong lol. Magic frequently takes out 3-4 defenders in the half-court. Jordan is only doing that if he's near the basket (and sees/gets the pass off which he often fails to do).

I think you're confusing 'Jordan creates more of his plays in the half court' with 'Magic is bad at half court creation'. They are both good at half court creation, but Magic also creates alot on the fast break too. Jordan on the other hand overwhelming creates in the half court.

No. Jordan is much more reliant on transition for drawing extra defenders/creation. Making simple reads vs a single defender for an assist a bunch =/ creating more in the half-court

Magic is much better at half-court creation and transition creation. If you give him a window he will find it and if you don't he'll create one. Teams are only tripling jordan if he is near the basket, and him getting near the basket happens at a much higher frequency in transition than in the half-court.

I look forward to you producing a stat that shows that Jordan got the majority of his shots in transition and not the half court.

[OhayoKD]

I think you're confusing 'Jordan creates more of his plays in the half court' with 'Magic is bad at half court creation'. They are both good at half court creation, but Magic also creates alot on the fast break too. Jordan on the other hand overwhelming creates in the half court.

No. Jordan is much more reliant on transition for drawing extra defenders/creation. Making simple reads vs a single defender for an assist a bunch =/ creating more in the half-court

Magic is much better at half-court creation and transition creation. If you give him a window he will find it and if you don't he'll create one. Teams are only tripling jordan if he is near the basket, and him getting near the basket happens at a much higher frequency in transition than in the half-court.

I look forward to you producing a stat that shows that Jordan got the majority of his shots in transition and not the half court.

how did creation turn into shots.

I'm doing tracking for Jordan right now as is(though it's point-jordan so may not apply universally)

[One_and_Done]

No. Jordan is much more reliant on transition for drawing extra defenders/creation. Making simple reads vs a single defender for an assist a bunch =/ creating more in the half-court

Magic is much better at half-court creation and transition creation. If you give him a window he will find it and if you don't he'll create one. Teams are only tripling jordan if he is near the basket, and him getting near the basket happens at a much higher frequency in transition than in the half-court.

I look forward to you producing a stat that shows that Jordan got the majority of his shots in transition and not the half court.

how did creation turn into shots.

I'm doing tracking for Jordan right now as is(though it's point-jordan so may not apply universally)

So the proof that my observations over the years are wrong will be your own personal observations over an indeterminate sample. Compelling.

[OhayoKD]

I look forward to you producing a stat that shows that Jordan got the majority of his shots in transition and not the half court.

how did creation turn into shots.

I'm doing tracking for Jordan right now as is(though it's point-jordan so may not apply universally)

So the proof that my observations over the years are wrong will be your own personal observations over an indeterminate sample. Compelling.

No, it would be observable things directly countable on tape posted with time-stamps one can peer-review.

To my knowledge, neither you or anyone for that matter has provided tracking showing that a higher portion of magic's creation comes in transition relative to Jordan.

I'll count the edtos and the dtos and then note whether they happened in half-court or transition for Jordan. then we can do the same thing with magic. Or since you're the one who started with a claim on this, you can do it (but something tells me you won't)

[tsherkin]

how did creation turn into shots.

I'm doing tracking for Jordan right now as is(though it's point-jordan so may not apply universally)

So the proof that my observations over the years are wrong will be your own personal observations over an indeterminate sample. Compelling.

No, it would be observable things directly countable on tape posted with time-stamps one can peer-review.

To my knowledge, neither you or anyone for that matter has provided tracking showing that a higher portion of magic's creation comes in transition relative to Jordan.

I'll count the edtos and the dtos and then note whether they happened in half-court or transition for Jordan. then we can do the same thing with magic. Or since you're the one who started with a claim on this, you can do it (but something tells me you won't)

Should note, on that front, that Magic averaged 11.5 apg in 1990 as the 20th team (of 27) in pace (96.3). Then the year after in 91, at 94.1 poss/g (25th of 27), he posted 12.5, which was the 4th-highest average of his career.

Magic had no trouble creating as the game slowed down. He was a nasty post passer, he passed well out of drives, he did all kinds of stuff.

[One_and_Done]

Everyone knows Magic was great at creating in the half court as well, but I'm going to need to see some astonishingly compelling evidence to buy the idea that MJ got most of his shots in transition.

[tsherkin]

Everyone knows Magic was great at creating in the half court as well, but I'm going to need to see some astonishingly compelling evidence to buy the idea that MJ got most of his shots in transition.

I'd be really surprised if any such evidence existed. The Bulls were pretty consistently one of the slower teams in the league and Jordan created a lot in a variety of ways in the halfcourt.

[OhayoKD]

Everyone knows Magic was great at creating in the half court as well, but I'm going to need to see some astonishingly compelling evidence to buy the idea that MJ got most of his shots in transition.

I'd be really surprised if any such evidence existed. The Bulls were pretty consistently one of the slower teams in the league and Jordan created a lot in a variety of ways in the halfcourt.

Okay so I don't know why one of you is talking about shots and the other one is saying "most". My claim was the following: A higher portion of Jordan's creation came in transition than Magic's, specifically during the period covered by this and upcoming POYs where the Lakers have shifted to a post-centric offense. I think that's kind of obviously true during the triangle years (Jordan was not getting doubled off-ball) and also true pre-triangle excepting his point-guard stretch where he was asked to emulate helios.

That said...

It has dawned on me that since I am specifically tracking the playoff game he runs point the most for the specific purpose of seeing how much he is creating as a psuedo-helio...this tracking is probably not going to be useful for testing this claim. I can go through the 91 stuff and count how much happened half-court and in transition(from recollection almost all the EDTOs happened there) though that has limited relevance to 1988 Chicago.

[tsherkin]

Okay so I don't know why one of you is talking about shots and the other one is saying "most".

I entered mid-way, so I was fishing for clarity on who was saying what, to be honest.

My claim was the following: A higher portion of Jordan's creation came in transition than Magic's, specifically during the period covered by this and upcoming POYs where the Lakers have shifted to a post-centric offense. I think that's kind of obviously true during the triangle years (Jordan was not getting doubled off-ball) and also true pre-triangle excepting his point-guard stretch where he was asked to emulate helios.

That makes sense to me. The Lakers loved to run half-court stuff. They got plenty in transition, but they were very good in the halfcourt as well, and a lot of that was Magic.

[Narigo]

3. Magic Johnson- Maybe I'm looking too hard at box score stats. But to me it seems like he had a down year compared to 1987 and the seasons surrounding it like 1989 and 1990. I'm pretty sure his offensive impact is great and he did win the title.

Statistically his impact was higher than the guy you are claiming was "best player in the league by a wide margin"
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=115553794#p115553794

Him not being 1 is already dubious. Him not being top 2 seems indefensible.

Most metrics have Jordan as number 1 including non box score metric like RAPM although not complete

[OhayoKD]

3. Magic Johnson- Maybe I'm looking too hard at box score stats. But to me it seems like he had a down year compared to 1987 and the seasons surrounding it like 1989 and 1990. I'm pretty sure his offensive impact is great and he did win the title.

Statistically his impact was higher than the guy you are claiming was "best player in the league by a wide margin"
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=115553794#p115553794

Him not being 1 is already dubious. Him not being top 2 seems indefensible.

Most metrics have Jordan as number 1

That's just human bias though. Nothing but collective will is stopping people from coming up with 100 advanced stats that favor Magic.

What matters is which approach can explan reality("winning") and we have reason to believe the magic approaches would actually work better given that Magic's teams generally improved more, patcilatlu in 88 where they go from -3 to +7. That's a signal Jordan cannot get even if you use the performance of worse 86 and 84 teams.

including non box score metric like RAPM although not complete

RAPM is not just non-complete, it's currently biased towards MJ:

And yeah, the fact that it seems like this data is very Jordan centric in terms of game sampling means that there's more confidence in letting Jordan stray from the mean

It also is workin on/off on teams that were platooning(subsituting starters together on/off a bunch) alot. That's probably why much larger samples like 86 and 84 present the non-MJ Bulls much more favorably then if you just looked at the on/off in surrounding years. You are ultimately just working of a few minutes a game per game here. Fair enough to note if Jordan keeps his advantage as his marks eventually come down (applying similar sampling and process for Lebron saw his averages spike multiple points from where the rapm is with everyone else sampled fully), but not a slam dunk and shouldn't be treated as one

And regardless, both have Magic ahead of Bird, including for this season.

[OhayoKD]

.

Apologies for not quoting your previous post because it's very cumbersome with all the stuff embedded from our back and forth but believe me when I say I read all of it. I will respond here.

Re: Tracking Data

Thank you for making a very detailed post explaining what was tracked by you and other posters. I am a big proponent of tracking and having more data than just the basic box score. The more the merrier because it helps us understand players' games in a way that we can't from the basic box score. We are definitely on the same page here.

Cool.

Re: WOWY/Who was more valuable?

Magic has above a 1 point advantage in MOV differential for 8-year WOWY samples but Jordan has a 2-point advantage in terms of on court MOV. That is no small potatoes. Many people will value a 16 PW lift over a 18 PW lift if the former lifts the team to greater heights.

Regarding 1988 specifically, we don't have any WOWY data for MJ for this specific season since he played all 82 games. But if you give Magic an edge in rate impact (based on Lakers' on court performance) then he still loses the edge for the totality of the season because of 10 missed games. You can't give him Magic credit for 72 games and then ignore the fact that he missed 10 games. Not when you're comparing him to a guy who played all 82 games. Being available does factor into votes like this and most of us have penalized players in this project for missing RS games. It's also worth noting that Jordan played more minutes per game (40.4 mpg vs. 36.6 mpg) so his total value surely eclipses' Magic's.

From a CORP perspective those missed games are close to meaningless. At least per Ben's srs-championship studies. Some people will choose to value all missed games equally and that's fine I guess. But unless a player has a history of missing games in the postseason I don't care too much about that.

You also can't say that WOWY favors Magic specifically for 1988 either because we don't have WOWY for 1988 Jordan. Lack of data doesn't give you a green light to rank someone with data over someone with no data.

Well for the most part, like you, I'm using 86 and 84 and adding that to the Bulls performance with him doesn't get you close to the +10. Small sample concerns are fair I guess but that's just how it goes sometimes. My filter has been 10 games/szn or > but that's pretty arbitrary and I've had to tweak it for earlier threads where you'd just get a few games for big stretches of a player's career.

Minutes is also fair enough.

I think you are an idealist and can't accept that we simply don't have the data to reach definitive conclusions in many cases. We don't have large samples of WOWY data for every season, we don't have almost any tracking data, we don't have an effective way (even with tracking) to measure defensive impact and grading defense remains very subjective.

Yeah, definitive conclusions are not really viable here, but I do believe we can reach "x is likelier than y conclusions" when discussing impact, and I don't like when y is argued as likelier than x on the basis it is conceivable as opposed to positive evidence. I guess what we disagree is to what degree and in which situations conventional box-scores and their interpretations qualify.