Retro Player of the Year 1997-98 UPDATE — Michael Jordan

[AEnigma]

Baller vow: your alts get you the results you’re desperate for, but in return every project is deemed a completely meaningless waste of time from that point forward

Do you or your +1s care to highlight where an “alt” swung a result, or are you yet again just blindly lashing out at nothing because you think Jordan walked on water and the existence of those who know otherwise makes you mad.

[Amares]

(...)
Defensive Player of the Year

1 - David Robinson
2 - Alonzo Mourning
3 - David Robinson
(...)

I guess someone else was to be 1st/3rd?

[One_and_Done]

His team was ass so not a shock he didn't make it. Payton and Reggie had great teams.

More talking about his individual performance in said playoffs.

You're criticising how he played in the 98 playoffs that he didn't make?

[OhayoKD]

As someone who loves Duncan, the #1 votes he's getting for this year make no sense to me. Guy trails the Jordan/Malone/Shaq trio in box score and impact stats, his overall impact is predicated on his defense which looks worse than his own teammate and lastly, Duncan did absolutely nothing of note in the PS which should matter a lot in the POY vote. Shaq at #1 would actually make sense, Malone at #1 maybe but Duncan at #1 makes zero sense to me. Like he has no real top 3 case. Getting left off the ballot completely behind Robinson/Payton/Miller is a much much easier sell than putting him at #1.

Weren't you pushing pythagorean wins as real and real wins as fake in the 96 thread?

I can think of multiple reasons that the Spurs went from a -13.8 net rating against the Jazz in 1996 to a -0.2 net rating against the Jazz in 1998 (yes, the latter is skewed by a blowout win for the Spurs, but including the wins helps the 1996 team here)

88 demonstrated rather clearly that 1-4 2nd round losses to losing finalists are hardly prohibitive, so it's rather you curious you present a 13 point improvement relative to a performance featuring a much better iteration of David Robinson as "doing nothing". On top of driving an 11-point regular-season turnaround. And doing it with a teammate forcing him out of his natural position who also shares the same primary strength (protecting the paint). Aren't you big on scalability, a.k.a, the ability to avoid diminishing returns? It's certainly a better demonstration of that than anything there for Jordan, Bird, Shaq, or Steph.

...

Since you didn't provide any reasoning behind this decision, what's Payton's case over Jordan?

Did you mean Reggie?

[KembaWalker]

Baller vow: your alts get you the results you’re desperate for, but in return every project is deemed a completely meaningless waste of time from that point forward

Do you or your +1s care to highlight where an “alt” swung a result, or are you yet again just blindly lashing out at nothing because you think Jordan walked on water and the existence of those who know otherwise makes you mad.

Neither, I just have a pet peeve against alt accounters because I actually serve my bans and punishments whilst they dodge them

[One_and_Done]

As someone who loves Duncan, the #1 votes he's getting for this year make no sense to me. Guy trails the Jordan/Malone/Shaq trio in box score and impact stats, his overall impact is predicated on his defense which looks worse than his own teammate and lastly, Duncan did absolutely nothing of note in the PS which should matter a lot in the POY vote. Shaq at #1 would actually make sense, Malone at #1 maybe but Duncan at #1 makes zero sense to me. Like he has no real top 3 case. Getting left off the ballot completely behind Robinson/Payton/Miller is a much much easier sell than putting him at #1.

I don't care about those stats tho?

RE: 'Duncan did nothing in the playoffs'. I don't think that's true. Duncan did about as expected in the PS, it's just he had a far worse team than the Jazz. It's not like he played badly or something.

[lessthanjake]

As someone who loves Duncan, the #1 votes he's getting for this year make no sense to me. Guy trails the Jordan/Malone/Shaq trio in box score and impact stats, his overall impact is predicated on his defense which looks worse than his own teammate and lastly, Duncan did absolutely nothing of note in the PS which should matter a lot in the POY vote. Shaq at #1 would actually make sense, Malone at #1 maybe but Duncan at #1 makes zero sense to me. Like he has no real top 3 case. Getting left off the ballot completely behind Robinson/Payton/Miller is a much much easier sell than putting him at #1.

Weren't you pushing pythagorean wins as real and real wins as fake in the 96 thread?

I can think of multiple reasons that the Spurs went from a -13.8 net rating against the Jazz in 1996 to a -0.2 net rating against the Jazz in 1998 (yes, the latter is skewed by a blowout win for the Spurs, but including the wins helps the 1996 team here)

88 demonstrated rather clearly that 1-4 2nd round losses to losing finalists are hardly prohibitive, so it's rather you curious you present a 13 point improvement relative to a performance featuring a much better iteration of David Robinson as "doing nothing". On top of driving an 11-point regular-season turnaround. And doing it with a teammate forcing him out of his natural position who also shares the same primary strength (protecting the paint). Aren't you big on scalability, a.k.a, the ability to avoid diminishing returns? It's certainly a better demonstration of that than anything there for Jordan, Bird, Shaq, or Steph.

I’m a little confused about the focus on the net rating in the 1998 and 1996 series’s versus the Jazz. I get that Djoker said Duncan did nothing of note “in the PS” so that’s why you’re talking about this, but surely we can recognize that it is basically indexing on noise to compare the teams’ net rating in a single series—especially when the series with the worse net rating was actually closer by win-loss. We can look at what Duncan himself did statistically in that series and see that he was pretty quiet (not awful, but quiet)—and, while it is low-sample data, Duncan’s very bad on-off in that series (-29.03 on-off per 48 mins) certainly doesn’t provide any contrary indication that it wasn’t a quiet series (and also tells us that the Spurs dominating Duncan’s off minutes in the series is a big reason the net rating was close—an indicator of how this is indexing on noise). It’s definitely not a performance that justifies being #1 in POY voting, and indexing on different team net ratings in 5-game and 6-game spans to argue otherwise is pretty silly. And, stepping back from the “in the PS” discussion specifically, it certainly would be an extremely narrow reed to justify a POY vote with on the basis of team improvement, especially when, by essentially any other account, the 1997-98 Spurs did less well than the 1995-96 Spurs (fewer RS wins, lower RS SRS, fewer playoff wins, etc.).

More generally, I’m genuinely very confused by your post’s attempt to attribute the Spurs’ improvement from 1996-97 to 1997-98 to Duncan specifically. This appears to be a significant part of your justification in your voting post too. Duncan was, of course, part of the team’s big improvement, but the extremely obvious elephant in the room is that David Robinson was out for virtually all of 1996-97 and played in 1997-98 (not to mention that the rest of the roster wasn’t identical either). The assertion that Duncan was the “biggest catalyst for a 36-win and 11-point turnaround” and “dr[ove] an 11-point regular season turnaround” is obviously misleading. The size of the Spurs’ improvement from 1996-97 can’t really tell us much about Duncan’s impact specifically, especially when the Spurs had more wins and a better SRS in Robinson’s prior two healthy years without Duncan. Acting like this is a Duncan-specific “signal” is akin to acting like the Bulls’ -15.82 SRS decrease from 1997-98 to 1998-99 is a Jordan-specific signal.

[falcolombardi]

DPOY

1- mutombp, one of the most impactful per possesion bigs ever at near his peak. Trascendent rim protection

2- duncan: potentially controversial but i think in an ability basis he was already 90~ % of the player he would be om both ends by 99, only needed to get accostumed to nba play but dude was a superstar from day 1 and more resilient than robinson on that end. Is a tragedy he doesnt have a dpoy but so many guards do

3-garnett: probably already nearing his prime lebel of impact albeit in a bad team. Still a total menace and at his athletic/motor prime

HM hakeem feels like one of his last semi prime~ years albeit he was diminished (so were robinsom amd ewing) and would continue trending down

HM: mouening, ewing, rpbinson and hakeem

OPOY

1-shaq, on a pure per possesion/per game basis i thimk he was more impactful than this version of jordan and close to his peak

2- jordan, efficiency nipped at his value a fair bit but was still one of the league top offensive engines

3- reggie: prime season and monster scoring run, outlier spacing and efficiency for era albeit jordan complete package may remain slightly better

POY

1- jordan, more complete season overall albeit in a weaker end field

2-shaq prolly the best impact in the league among stars but dealt with injuries a fair bit

3- karl malone health keeps him close to shaq but not in the same tier of player as him anymore

4-duncan superstwr impact from day 1, will join shaq tiwr of impact next season

5- reggie all time level scorer that was underappreciated at his time amd even now

[ceoofkobefans]

POY

1. Michael Jordan

Was very torn between him and Shaq but Shaq again misses a chunk of games and MJ is healthy the whole year. MJ is no longer the GOAT level guy he once was and he isn't running away with the BITW title anymore. He's still an all time scorer and a high level playmaker but he's fallen off defensively.

2. Shaquille O'Neal

If i was doing a fully healthy ranking he would be 1 but he does have some health issues and defensive concerns in the PO, but 98 is when Shaq really starts to hit his peak especially on the offensive end. the lakers had a +8.6 rORTG in 60 games Shaq played in 1998 which is a top 3 offense of all time.

3. Karl Malone

Was real back and forth between Duncan and Malone but I'm giving Malone the edge for how well he played especially in the PO inspite of the stockton regressing and was able to keep the Jazz playing at a high level without stockton and then had a solid PO run leading the jazz to the finals where they lost to the bulls.

4. Tim Duncan

Duncan enters the league immediately playing at an mvp level and the spurs have a complete turnaround after being a bottom feeder in 97.

5. Alonzo Mourning

OPOY

1. Shaquille O'Neal
2. Michael Jordan
3. Gary Payton
HM: Grant Hill, Reggie Miller

DPOY
1. Alonzo Mourning
2. Dikembe Mutumbo
3. Jason Kidd
HM: Tim Duncan, Tyrone Hill

[AEnigma]

Votes are tallied. I recorded 16 approved votes: Djoker, AEnigma, B-Mitch 30, ceoofkobefans, ShaqAttac, narigo, ILikeShaiGuys, OhayoKD (submitting “kola’s” ballot as his official one), falcolombardi, penbeast0, capfan33, konr0167, Paulluxx, One_and_Done, homecourtloss, and trelos. DJoker, AEnigma, ceoofkobefans, B-Mitch 30, OhayoKD, falcolombardi, and trelos voted for both Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year, and ILikeShaiGuys voted for Offensive Player of the Year. Please let me know if I seem to have missed or otherwise improperly recorded a vote.

1997-98 Results

(Retro) Offensive Player of the Year — Michael Jordan (5)

Code: Select all

Player       1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1. Michael Jordan   2   6   0    28    0.700
2. Shaquille O’Neal   5   0   2    27    0.675
3. Karl Malone   1   1   1    9    0.225
4. Reggie Miller  0   1   4    7    0.175
5. Gary Payton    0   0   1    1    0.025

(Retro) Defensive Player of the Year — Dikembe (2)

Code: Select all

Player         1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1. Dikembe Mutombo  4   2   0    26    0.743
2. Tim Duncan    0   4   1    13    0.371
3. David Robinson   1   1   0    8    0.229
4. Jason Kidd    1   0   1    6    0.171
5. Alonzo Mourning    1   0   0    5    0.143
6. Kevin Garnett    0   0   3    3    0.086
7. Patrick Ewing    0   0   1    1    0.029
7. Dennis Rodman    0   0   1    1    0.029

Retro Player of the Year — Michael Jordan (6)

Code: Select all

Player      1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts  POY Shares
1. Michael Jordan  8  3  3  2  0   122   0.763
2. Shaquille O’Neal  3  5  3  2  2    88   0.550
3. Karl Malone   1  6  4  4  1   85   0.531
4. Tim Duncan  4  1  4  4  2   81   0.506
5. David Robinson   0  1  1  1  1   16   0.100
6. Reggie Miller  0  0  1  2  4   15   0.094
7. Gary Payton   0  0  0  1  2   5   0.031
8. Grant Hill  0  0  0  0  1   1    0.006
8. Jason Kidd   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.006
8. Hakeem Olajuwon  0  0  0  0  1   1   0.006
8. Alonzo Mourning   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.006

In the prior project, there were 25 votes, with no overlap. These are the aggregated results of the two projects across 41 total ballots:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

Player   1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts  POY Shares
1. Michael Jordan  29  7  3  2  0   360   0.878
2. Karl Malone   5  26  5  4  1   270   0.659
3. Shaquille O’Neal  3  6  20  7  3    196   0.478
4. Tim Duncan  4  1  4  7  11   99   0.241
5. Gary Payton   0  0  6  13  6   75   0.183
6. David Robinson   0  1  2  6  10   45   0.110
7. Reggie Miller  0  0  1  2  4   15   0.037
8. Grant Hill  0  0  0  0  2   2    0.005
9. Jason Kidd   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.002
9. Hakeem Olajuwon  0  0  0  0  1   1   0.002
9. Alonzo Mourning   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.002
9. Tim Hardaway  0  0  0  0  1   1   0.002

1999 thread will open shortly.

[Djoker]

Weren't you pushing pythagorean wins as real and real wins as fake in the 96 thread?

I don't get what you mean by this. SRS from which Pythagorean Wins are derived are a better indicator of team quality than just plain W-L record. It's not me pushing it. It's just fact. Of course a big discrepancy between the two can indicate really good/poor clutch play so that can mean something.

Honestly you're just about the only Duncan voter who gave rationale for why you have him #1 although, no offense, I find it dubious at best. I'll break down what you wrote on it.

Voting Post

1. Tim Duncan

-> Biggest catalyst for a 36-win and 11-point turnaround. Most impressive signal to me since 96 MJ or peak RS Drob.

Why was Duncan the catalyst?

1996 Spurs: +5.98 SRS (with Robinson, without Duncan)
1997 Spurs: -7.93 SRS (without Robinson, without Duncan)
1998 Spurs: +3.30 SRS (with Robinson, with Duncan)

How does anyone look at that and conclude that Duncan is the key to the improvement...

-> Replication giant, different systems, co-stars, blah blah blah.

And this matters how in a single year project?

-> Bigger prime delta in temrs of team wins or net-rating than Magic, MJ, or Hakeem. Shaq might edge him there but Shaq loses to Duncan in RAPM in a much more favorable context for that metric in general and I think Duncan played the best vs Utah of any of the big 3. Honestly even in terms of pure impact Duncan is limited by drob being his teammate.

Actually I posted seven different impact stats. Shaq leads Duncan in all seven, Jordan in six, Malone in five.

PI-RAPM

http://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt.blogspot.com/2013/12/1997-98-rapm-prior-informed-rpi.html

1. Shaq
2. Jordan
3. Malone
4. Duncan

RAPM Source #1

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14t77Wo18-Uak1R_DbnHF8j43UEP_ea5b/edit?gid=1570154637#gid=1570154637

1. Jordan
2. Shaq
3. Duncan
4. Malone

RAPM Source #2

https://basketball-analytics.gitlab.io/rapm-data/season/1997-98/regular-season/

1. Shaq
2. Duncan
3. Jordan
4. Malone

xRAPM

https://xrapm.com/table_pages/xRAPM_1998.html

1. Shaq
2. Jordan
3. Malone
4. Duncan

RPM

http://web.archive.org/web/20230320184333/http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/year/1997

1. Jordan
2. Shaq
3. Malone
4. Duncan

AuPM

https://thinkingbasketball.net/player-seasons/

1. Shaq
2. Malone
3. Jordan
4. Duncan

Scaled APM

https://thinkingbasketball.net/player-seasons/

1. Shaq
2. Jordan
3. Malone
4. Duncan

-> Averaging 5 more minutes than anyone in the rs, 3 more minutes than anyone in the playoff, and that gap just is going to grow and grow

You must mean on his own team. Yes. Duncan played more minutes than Robinson and that's a big reason why I had him ahead.

-> Turns it up for the latter half of the season kind of like Kareem in 70.

Mmm no.. not even close. Kareem proceeded to have one of the most dominant offensive postseasons by a big man whereas Duncan was just plain average.

Was thinking Shaq first initially but I've been convinced by some voters here it would be inconsistent with my previous reasoning/votes which have been very high on paint-protectors and lots of good stuff has been shown about Shaq's defensive limitations this series.

Shaq at #1 is actually a sensible choice. If you're not penalizing him for missed games (per your theory, it doesn't affect title odds) then he can be first. He actually looks like an impact monster and despite defensive deficiencies looks an easily superior player to rookie Duncan based on both box and impact metrics.

I don't care about those stats tho?

RE: 'Duncan did nothing in the playoffs'. I don't think that's true. Duncan did about as expected in the PS, it's just he had a far worse team than the Jazz. It's not like he played badly or something.

Which stats do you care about? See my breakdown of OhayoKD's post above. What is the argument for Duncan at #1? Because I seriously don't see it...

He lost 4-1 in the 2nd round of the PS to a team that didn't win the title and played pretty subpar. Averaged 21.0/8.4/1.2 on 54.8 %TS (+2.4 rTS). Considering the Spurs were -19 with him on the court and +18 without him, I doubt he was super impactful on defense either. Like to put him #1 with that PS run, his RS better be by far the best in the league. It obviously wasn't.

[OhayoKD]

The staggering is hurting the player because you're not looking at "performance" you're looking at micro snippets of "team performance". Duncan spends more time with worse players.

1. Per 48 adjustment already accounts for the minute difference.
2. Robinson's and Duncan's backups were named and you failed to show the latter being better.
3. Opponent strength was accounted for with proportion of Malone time.

Literally none of these 3 points addresses what you quoted

That extremely unusual minute disparity mantained for every prime Duncan year with Drob, and then every prime season with Manu both of whom have had various variants of this "performance" related argument pushed against one of the commonest common denominators to dominate the game. And both of these co-stars look much better using these tiny "performances" than full games of "performance" even when they're the 5th or 6th mpg player.

An argument which could be convincing if you had any supporting evidence. But, you didn't provide any.[/quote]
You ignoring **** does not mean it was not provided.

Curious interpretation. You said "there was no counter" Enigma offered your counter, but yes, I was trying to sic the authority of Aenigma on you. Last I checked, I've never advocated for treating posters differently because they're "respected".

My post talked about playoffs.
My numbers are about playoffs.
Your "counter" is regular season.

This is the regular season?

So if his on/off was great while the Jazz blew him out by 10 points you wouldn't have penalized him?

If the Spurs won in Robinson's minutes and only lost because they got blown out when he sat, why not? This is no different than not penalizing a player beyond missed time for barely missing the playoffs if they go something like 0-15 without him.[/quote]
In the former you are extrapolating based on small fractions of the game as if all the other variables on the floor were uniform. With the latter you are looking at the actual thing.

No, you're judging him on a proxy for "actual performance" while ignoring that proxy is contradicted by other proxies for

But I look forward to you looking at "actual performances" to judge Manu's playoff performance as equivalent to Duncan's in 2003, and Magic's performance in the 1991 finals as 8 times better than Micheal Jordan's.

The old pick any player with good +/- to debunk it argument. Basic mud slinging tactic from a decade ago.

It is not mud slinging. You are positing on/off as "actual performance"

I'm sorry, did the Spurs going +11 and 15-2 in 1999 not happen on the court or something?

Did Robinson going +20 not happen on the court or something? You hype the +11 figure like it had nothing to do with him.

No, I hype it as if I did not conveniently forget David Robinson was on the court for the Spurs in 1996 and 2000. Or is your claim now that David Robinson was a better player in 1998 than he was in 1996?

Maybe a little harder to spot than the Suns missing their actual best player and fellow impact darling Jason Kidd for basically the whole series? Jason Kidd and Penny played all the games vs the Lakers by the way, where they performed at a +0.9 SRS and like a flat out negative srs team relative to everyone else who played the Lakers. How exactly is the Jason-Kidd less version of that team not fodder?

The same Kidd who you just trashed is now super valuable again when it suits your argument. Convenient

Kidd quite literally just has to be a positive player to "suit my argument" though I don't recall what the **** you're referring to.

What spreadsheet are you talking about. What controls. Is this some Ben Taylor thing?

Yes. And upon checking your post history, you've even cited the spreadsheet before yourself when voting for Hakeem. Acting like you never heard of it when the numbers aren't favorable to your preferred player

I'm sorry are you referring to this?

Magic's case is not utterly unassailable. Per Ben's "prime WOWY" Hakeem edges ahead finishing 10th to Magic's 12th. In a partial APM sample from squared for 88, Magic, in what is considered a down year, falls a bit short of Jordan at his empirical apex(the gap between Magic and the highest scoring Jordan year in the set being half as large as the gap between Magic and #3 Kevin Mchale). If we wish to extend "era" past the 80's, David Robinson splits in WOWYR and perhaps has the best looking large-sampled stretch of the time period.

The thing I haven't cited at any point during this project even though it has Hakeem and Magic way higher than Jordan?

Yeah, I've stopped using that because I don't know what the inputs are and it clearly diverges greatly from straight up WOWY. Telling you went a year back to an old project as opposed to looking at what I've used this project over several threads featuring the same players it was used for in that vote.

[homecourtloss]

Baller vow: your alts get you the results you’re desperate for, but in return every project is deemed a completely meaningless waste of time from that point forward

Do you or your +1s care to highlight where an “alt” swung a result, or are you yet again just blindly lashing out at nothing because you think Jordan walked on water and the existence of those who know otherwise makes you mad.

Not sure why this poster is allowed to make these types of comments these project threads and nothing happens. Meanwhile, in other project threads, the thread gets locked because it “got heated” when it’s actually a few posters throwing hissy fits because anyone dare not see basketball through certain hagiographic lens.

[jjgp111292]

Yeah this whole, "He just had the ball last" thing is ludicrously reductive. Somebody's gotta, y'know, actually do the thing.

Do you know what "reductive" means? "Jordan did everything" is reductive. Especially when on one of the plays in question (the steal) you could argue his teammate did more. Jordan touched the ball last is a direct neutral description.

But of course that reductiveness is pretty standard. '"Won more" transforms into "goat cieling raisier" when other plays have seen bigger improvement on championship-winning teams(including a player who won many more yet you have ranked 5th).

Describing things accurately is outrageous for those invested in a myth. Present company included:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2420383&start=180

Contrary to what his proponents have claimed en masse with comical equivocations (1993 MJ ~ 1988/1983 Magic!), the reasoning and evidence and skillset weightings behind low Jordan's votes is rather consistent with what has been used for basically the entirety of the project. Yet Jordan is the one and only player so far who position has sparked mass outrage even when his best competition repeatedly draws ballots which leave them completely off (this year, included). I wonder why?

No. My description is accurate and devoid of emotive flavor. Dirty Dez's was an extreme simplification for a player whose reputation lives off extreme, and as tellingly, inconsistent, simplification. When complexity is warranted it is only selectively considered("the bulls were fatigued in 93, not 94!"). And when simplicity finds an unfavorable conclusion, complexity is hailed as the solution, even when such complexity should benefit other players more.

Reducing basketball to touching the ball last certainly helps Jordan, just like reducing soccer to touching the ball last helps Ronaldo
and reducing football to who touches the ball last helps Matthews. That doesn't mean they were actually doing things themselves or uniquely close to doing so.

I had another response sitting in the drafts that i only just now realized I never actually clicked sumbit on (thanks, 4 in the morning!) so in lieu of remember what i wrote I'm just gonna ask what did this scarecrow do to you and what made you fire all these bloviations at him instead of me?

[LA Bird]

The staggering is hurting the player because you're not looking at "performance" you're looking at micro snippets of "team performance". Duncan spends more time with worse players.

1. Per 48 adjustment already accounts for the minute difference.
2. Robinson's and Duncan's backups were named and you failed to show the latter being better.
3. Opponent strength was accounted for with proportion of Malone time.

Literally none of these 3 points addresses what you quoted

You made two claims which were directly addressed (I even bolded it for you):
- Duncan spends more time -> point 1
- With worse players -> point 2

That extremely unusual minute disparity mantained for every prime Duncan year with Drob, and then every prime season with Manu both of whom have had various variants of this "performance" related argument pushed against one of the commonest common denominators to dominate the game. And both of these co-stars look much better using these tiny "performances" than full games of "performance" even when they're the 5th or 6th mpg player.

An argument which could be convincing if you had any supporting evidence. But, you didn't provide any.

You ignoring **** does not mean it was not provided.

At no point in your post did you provide any numbers as evidence for your argument.

Curious interpretation. You said "there was no counter" Enigma offered your counter, but yes, I was trying to sic the authority of Aenigma on you. Last I checked, I've never advocated for treating posters differently because they're "respected".

My post talked about playoffs.
My numbers are about playoffs.
Your "counter" is regular season.

This is the regular season?

I am not sure what you mean. Are you pretending the project is regular season only and does not include playoffs?
Or are you denying that you tried to use regular season data as a counter to a playoffs argument?
Post 41: The Spurs went 6-3 minus Drob over actual games...As was brought up by aenigma at the top of this page.
Post 46: You said "there was no counter" Enigma offered your counter
In case it wasn't obvious, AEnigma's 6-3 is regular season data.

So if his on/off was great while the Jazz blew him out by 10 points you wouldn't have penalized him?

If the Spurs won in Robinson's minutes and only lost because they got blown out when he sat, why not? This is no different than not penalizing a player beyond missed time for barely missing the playoffs if they go something like 0-15 without him.

In the former you are extrapolating based on small fractions of the game as if all the other variables on the floor were uniform. With the latter you are looking at the actual thing.

So you're saying:
- Scoring margins in the minutes with the player is extrapolation based on a fraction of the game
- Scoring margins in the games with the player is NOT extrapolation based on a fraction of the season
The two are direct parallels yet you have different standards for them.

What spreadsheet are you talking about. What controls. Is this some Ben Taylor thing?

Yes. And upon checking your post history, you've even cited the spreadsheet before yourself when voting for Hakeem. Acting like you never heard of it when the numbers aren't favorable to your preferred player

I'm sorry are you referring to this?

Spoiler:

Magic's case is not utterly unassailable. Per Ben's "prime WOWY" Hakeem edges ahead finishing 10th to Magic's 12th. In a partial APM sample from squared for 88, Magic, in what is considered a down year, falls a bit short of Jordan at his empirical apex(the gap between Magic and the highest scoring Jordan year in the set being half as large as the gap between Magic and #3 Kevin Mchale). If we wish to extend "era" past the 80's, David Robinson splits in WOWYR and perhaps has the best looking large-sampled stretch of the time period.

The thing I haven't cited at any point during this project even though it has Hakeem and Magic way higher than Jordan?

Yeah, I've stopped using that because I don't know what the inputs are and it clearly diverges greatly from straight up WOWY. Telling you went a year back to an old project as opposed to looking at what I've used this project over several threads featuring the same players it was used for in that vote.

Nah, I am referring to your vote from the 1992 thread a few weeks ago which I found by simply searching "Ben spreadsheet"

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2419672&p=115789579

Hakeem has a longer absence (plays 56 games) in '91 where he isn't nearly as missed and Houston aren't nearly as bad (e.g. Ben's old spreadsheet had 3.7 SRS in, 1.4 SRS change for an implied 2.3 SRS without with 26 games missed - or to somewhat combine the points the joint 91-92 version has 2 SRS, 3.8 SRS change for an implied -1.8 SRS out ... here the larger sample will be taken from '91, as that's where the larger out sample was).

You directly cited the spreadsheet by name and with the relevant figures and columns. There is no denying you have seen it before.

But seeing as the voting for this round is already over, let's call it a wrap and move on. We've spent too much time here already.

[OhayoKD]

Yeah this whole, "He just had the ball last" thing is ludicrously reductive. Somebody's gotta, y'know, actually do the thing.

Do you know what "reductive" means? "Jordan did everything" is reductive. Especially when on one of the plays in question (the steal) you could argue his teammate did more. Jordan touched the ball last is a direct neutral description.

But of course that reductiveness is pretty standard. '"Won more" transforms into "goat cieling raisier" when other plays have seen bigger improvement on championship-winning teams(including a player who won many more yet you have ranked 5th).

Describing things accurately is outrageous for those invested in a myth. Present company included:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2420383&start=180

Contrary to what his proponents have claimed en masse with comical equivocations (1993 MJ ~ 1988/1983 Magic!), the reasoning and evidence and skillset weightings behind low Jordan's votes is rather consistent with what has been used for basically the entirety of the project. Yet Jordan is the one and only player so far who position has sparked mass outrage even when his best competition repeatedly draws ballots which leave them completely off (this year, included). I wonder why?

No. My description is accurate and devoid of emotive flavor. Dirty Dez's was an extreme simplification for a player whose reputation lives off extreme, and as tellingly, inconsistent, simplification. When complexity is warranted it is only selectively considered("the bulls were fatigued in 93, not 94!"). And when simplicity finds an unfavorable conclusion, complexity is hailed as the solution, even when such complexity should benefit other players more.

Reducing basketball to touching the ball last certainly helps Jordan, just like reducing soccer to touching the ball last helps Ronaldo
and reducing football to who touches the ball last helps Matthews. That doesn't mean they were actually doing things themselves or uniquely close to doing so.

I had another response sitting in the drafts that i only just now realized I never actually clicked sumbit on (thanks, 4 in the morning!) so in lieu of remember what i wrote I'm just gonna ask what did this scarecrow do to you and what made you fire all these bloviations at him instead of me?

This directly addresses you misusing the word reductive:

Do you know what "reductive" means? "Jordan did everything" is reductive. Especially when on one of the plays in question (the steal) you could argue his teammate did more. Jordan touched the ball last is a direct neutral description.

...

Reducing basketball to touching the ball last certainly helps Jordan, just like reducing soccer to touching the ball last helps Ronaldo
and reducing football to who touches the ball last helps Matthews. That doesn't mean they were actually doing things themselves or uniquely close to doing so.

[OhayoKD]

Going to leave the rest alone and move on but this seems like a simple misunderstanding to clear up so

Nah, I am referring to your vote from the 1992 thread a few weeks ago which I found by simply searching "Ben spreadsheet"

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2419672&p=115789579

Hakeem has a longer absence (plays 56 games) in '91 where he isn't nearly as missed and Houston aren't nearly as bad (e.g. Ben's old spreadsheet had 3.7 SRS in, 1.4 SRS change for an implied 2.3 SRS without with 26 games missed - or to somewhat combine the points the joint 91-92 version has 2 SRS, 3.8 SRS change for an implied -1.8 SRS out ... here the larger sample will be taken from '91, as that's where the larger out sample was).

You directly cited the spreadsheet by name and with the relevant figures and columns. There is no denying you have seen it before.

No, I quoted owly directly citing it in response to me using the 92-hakeem-less games and not the 91-hakeem-less games. I thought it was just a combined off-sample from 91 and 92:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=114701212#p114701212
The only spreadsheet I'm aware of is the prime wowy stuff (which seems wowyr-adjacent) and wowyr and my access to that is just from what's there on ben-taylor articles or what people citing them. Otherwise I'm just using statmuse, basketball reference, and backpicks entries.

In hindsight though, I should have just pulled from statmuse instead of owly since ben taylor spreadsheet sort of implies there's been some adjusting

[DCasey91]

As someone who loves Duncan, the #1 votes he's getting for this year make no sense to me. Guy trails the Jordan/Malone/Shaq trio in box score and impact stats, his overall impact is predicated on his defense which looks worse than his own teammate and lastly, Duncan did absolutely nothing of note in the PS which should matter a lot in the POY vote. Shaq at #1 would actually make sense, Malone at #1 maybe but Duncan at #1 makes zero sense to me. Like he has no real top 3 case. Getting left off the ballot completely behind Robinson/Payton/Miller is a much much easier sell than putting him at #1.

I weigh the Playoffs more heavily in the beginning and as times goes on it becomes more. People have this fascination for pure theoretical upcharge. No you cannot just load on offensive share/defensive share and expect same or better results it isn't how reality works. Equity, equity and more equity.

100% agree the latter sounds more reasonable than the absurd first proposition.