Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson

[homecourtloss]

He also did not look better than Magic and had some rough results in the Pistons series.

A small bit of new information in which Jordan looked great but “did not look better than Magic” is pretty obviously not the reason for a really dramatic shift in voting.

We also have PIPM and historical RAPTOR, and indeed the entire industry of making box composites has developed to the point where most people recognise the variability of box results depending on the formulas you use. And that is readily apparent by the stark contrast in the treatment of PER or win shares between projects.

Yes, we do have PIPM. But I believe the only person who talked about PIPM in this thread was someone who voted for Jordan, in part because Jordan’s PIPM was better than Magic’s. So that’s clearly not the reason either.

Way too many words are being used by both of you over something pretty obvious lol.

The 2010 voting bloc clearly took bbr and all-in-ones alot more seriously than the 2024 voting bloc and fwiw at least some shift seems to be there from shared voters where there was overlap (The 60s/70s having the most). Bill Russell and Nate Thurmond picking up votes and voter-share from voters who participated in both is primarily driven by that I think. We've even had voters who are still pretty keen on the box-score starting the 2024 project shift guys like thurmond up a little bit in the middle of the thread.

For better or worse "box-scores and all-in ones are glorified eye-tests" has caught on at least a bit. The degree to which 2010 voters would shift in 2024 would largely be determined by how persuasive they find that precept. Magic isn't likely to win but I also don't think Jordan gets a unanimous ballot.

Also the philosophy with injuries shifted I think. For 2010 the idea was just to assume MJ wouldn't have been hurt if he made the finals and penalise magic for missing games. Here people don't seem to care about the finals injury.

Finally, I'd say if you really want to gauge persuasiveness, looking at the peaks project might be a better approach because there's more overlap there for these set of threads as it was done a few years ago rather than more than a decade back.

Basically. The relative newness of these all-in-one stats at a time when many had accepted “analytics” for baseball tended to have people believe in the absoluteness in PER or BPM/VORP as evidenced by many of the discussions. Magic, for one, has been undervalued by these older all-in-ones.

[homecourtloss]

Or maybe we should just not baselessly pretend the average 2010 voter had watched more of these games, and that watching something twenty (now over thirty) years prior somehow would excise the need to periodically reexamine our nostalgic impressions.

Seems like the standby fallback after every discussion, i.e., they didn’t watch Him so they should be forgiven for their trespasses.

[Doctor MJ]

Yes, project updates occur to expand on approaches which may have become outdated. Everyone is free to read the 2010 threads and decide which seems to offer more convincing argumentation. People who feel Magic has a better candidacy relative to Jordan when he loses 1-4 in the second to the Suns rather than sweep the Suns and make the Finals probably would prefer the 2010 thread. Evidently the persuasiveness of that approach has severely faded.

There’s definitely different approaches at play, but I don’t know that any relevant approach here has become “outdated” in any meaningful sense. I think that might come into play if we were talking about some relatively early play-by-play-era years where we now have impact data that may not have fully existed back in 2010, such that prior discussion about impact might be outdated. But the available information here is essentially the same as it was in 2010 (with some minor additions that I’m quite certain didn’t cause the sea change of voting—i.e. things like Jordan’s playoff on-off, etc.), and I don’t think people’s earlier approach with largely the same information environment can really be called “outdated.” Unless we just mean “outdated” in the sense that it’s just not the approach currently used by the completely different set of people who are now on this board. The approaches used by the voters in 2010 obviously must be “outdated” in the sense that they’re clearly not the approach used by most voters on this board now. But I think “outdated” implies it is flawed, and I don’t think that’s right.

Anyways, I’m basically just doing meta-commentary of a project I’m not part of, which is probably a waste of everyone’s time to spill much ink over. Just thought it was an interesting observation that there could be such a dramatic shift—going from a player being the unanimous #1 to that player not even being all that close to getting the top spot. When combined with the fact that there was zero voter overlap between the two, I think it goes to show the huge shift in the makeup of the board’s population.

So I'll chime in here and say a few things, though first I just want to emphasize that I personally don't want to get into conversations about holistic better/worse questions between the projects.

So then:


- A different voting pool certainly brings some differences to what was brought before.
- New data about the past has emerged since 2010, and so that is certainly leading to further differences.
- But then the availability of video now that didn't exist then is probably the biggest difference for those who have dove into it.
- And always, cultural waters carry current, and thus can't be expected to stay still.

Here's also a point I'm not sure if people are consciously keeping in mind:

We went in reverse order last time. So sometimes the stuff that it just seems like we didn't ever think about we actually written about more deeply in future years...but this may also result in an anchoring effect propagating primes backward in our minds. This was always something I saw as a weakness of that approach, and it's why despite the fact I stand by my judgment that it was necessary for that time, I advocated for forward chronology if it were ever to be done again.

(I should note that propagating primes forward is also a thing to try to avoid, but I think the pros outweigh the cons so long as the voting panel sticks with it.)

Final note:

I'm weighing the idea of re-joining the project. I never intended to leave it - just got busy - but part of me likes the idea of remaining meta at this point.

I will open up about this: I have personal rankings already for all these years already, so in theory I could just list those and give a little commentary. Thing is, the rankings always come down to a choice in a particular moment, when particular phenomena are front of mind, and with time, that moment fades and I don't necessarily remember why I decided what I did. So what I always want to do is go full-on with my process, augmented by the thoughts of others. But more than just committing time, it requires attention, and there are times where I just don't have it in me to summon that attention from elsewhere.

Anyway, cheers y'all! I'm glad people want to do this, and I hope that the project to come can really build considerably further than we could at the time.

Doc

[Top10alltime]

Guys I tracked MJ defense in 1989 cavs game 5 using Ohayokd stats.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bEM1GJzx6CV8ZXo_vZbFnoDMIM_w-7oJ3R8LSGu_AE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Stats:
9 PP
7 IPP

12 PPD
1 EPPD
8 IPPD


Thoughts?

[tsherkin]

Guys I tracked MJ defense in 1989 cavs game 5 using Ohayokd stats.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bEM1GJzx6CV8ZXo_vZbFnoDMIM_w-7oJ3R8LSGu_AE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Stats:
9 PP
7 IPP

12 PPD
1 EPPD
8 IPPD


Thoughts?

First thought is that this probably deserves its own thread instead of being buried in a dead voting thread for the project. Live a little!

[Top10alltime]

Guys I tracked MJ defense in 1989 cavs game 5 using Ohayokd stats.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bEM1GJzx6CV8ZXo_vZbFnoDMIM_w-7oJ3R8LSGu_AE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Stats:
9 PP
7 IPP

12 PPD
1 EPPD
8 IPPD


Thoughts?

First thought is that this probably deserves its own thread instead of being buried in a dead voting thread for the project. Live a little!

Maybe.

[OhayoKD]

Guys I tracked MJ defense in 1989 cavs game 5 using Ohayokd stats.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bEM1GJzx6CV8ZXo_vZbFnoDMIM_w-7oJ3R8LSGu_AE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Stats:
9 PP
7 IPP

12 PPD
1 EPPD
8 IPPD


Thoughts?

It's nice to see someone doing this with a full game though for comparative purposes this makes things a bit tricky without a player-possession count.

We can estimate though.

According to Basketball Reference there was a pace of 88.4 where Jordan played 44 out of a possible 48 minutes. 44/48 x 88 is 80.6. Let's be kind and round it down to 80.

This would mean per-possession Top10alltime gave Jordan 0.12 PPs, 0.00 EPPs, and 0.09 IPPs along with .12 PPDs, 0.013 EPPDs, and 0.1 IPPs.

Far away the lowest usage and least effective game tracked with this system(excluding IAs) going by the numbers, but might be worth doing this myself after I finish 1991 game 5 to see if different eyes reach different conclusions.

[tsherkin]

but might be worth doing this myself after I finish 1991 game 5 to see if different eyes reach different conclusions.

Would be interesting to see for the sake of contrast and/or confirmation.

[Top10alltime]

Guys I tracked MJ defense in 1989 cavs game 5 using Ohayokd stats.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bEM1GJzx6CV8ZXo_vZbFnoDMIM_w-7oJ3R8LSGu_AE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Stats:
9 PP
7 IPP

12 PPD
1 EPPD
8 IPPD


Thoughts?

It's nice to see someone doing this with a full game though for comparative purposes this makes things a bit tricky without a player-possession count.

We can estimate though.

According to Basketball Reference there was a pace of 88.4 where Jordan played 44 out of a possible 48 minutes. 44/48 x 88 is 80.6. Let's be kind and round it down to 80.

This would mean per-possession Top10alltime gave Jordan 0.12 PPs, 0.00 EPPs, and 0.09 IPPs along with .12 PPDs, 0.013 EPPDs, and 0.1 IPPs.

Far away the lowest usage and least effective game tracked with this system(excluding IAs) going by the numbers, but might be worth doing this myself after I finish 1991 game 5 to see if different eyes reach different conclusions.

I was kind of generous to MJ this game, left his man open but they missed shots. Also a forced drive is really ok but again, I was generous.
Also I have glasses, so maybe there is different results coming from you.