Re: RealGM Top 100 List #39

[Clyde Frazier]

Isiah Thomas (8) - ronnymac2, Basketballefan, Quotatious, Warspite, Clyde Frazier, drza, lukekarts, Notanoob


Paul Pierce (8) - trex_8063, SactoKingsFan, Owly, Moonbeam

I count 8-5 isiah over pierce as of now:

Isiah Thomas (8) - ronnymac2, Basketballefan, Quotatious, Warspite, Clyde Frazier, drza, lukekarts, Notanoob

Paul Pierce (5) - trex_8063, SactoKingsFan, Owly, Moonbeam (93), john248 (96)

And you haven't officially voted yet, correct?

[drza]

Spoiler:

Vote: Isiah Thomas

I've been voting him for awhile now, so there's been a lot of repeat in my reasoning. Cliff notes: he was a gifted playmaker/scorer; I believe that his addition to the Pistons/tenure on the Pistons was clearly the biggest factor in their improvement from a bottom-tier offense (DFL in 1980, 81) to a top-tier offense (top 7 - 10 over Zeke's entire prime, peaking at #1); he was a great postseason performer; he was the team leader; by my eye-test he was about the 3rd best player in the NBA over a five year-or so span of 83 - 87, then showed himself able to fit into/lead an excellent ensemble cast from about 88 - 90.

Just for kicks, I pulled up a comp of Chris Paul's current 9-year career vs Isiah's first 9 seasons:

Reg season avgs.
Paul: 617 games, 36.4 mpg, 18.6 points (57.5% TS), 9.9 apg, 4.4 rpg, 2.4 TO
Zeke: 716 games, 36.7 mpg, 20.0 points (52.2% TS), 9.8 apg, 3.7 rpg, 3.9 TO

Reg season per 100:
Paul: 617 games, 36.4 mpg, 27.2 points (20.2 FGA + 7.8 FTA =23.6 shots), 14.5 ast, 3.5 TO
Zeke: 716 games, 36.7 mpg, 25.9 points (21.6 FGA + 7.3 FTA = 24.8 shots), 12.6 ast, 5.0 TO

Playoffs per 100
Paul: 53 games, 38.8 mpg, 28.5 pts (21.5 FGA + 7.5 FTA = 24.8 shots), 13.4 ast, 4.1 TO
Zeke: 93 games, 38.5 mpg, 28.8 pts (23.6 FGA + 8.5 FTA = 27.3 shots), 12.0 ast, 4.5 TO

OK, so clearly Paul is more efficient as both a scorer and a distributor. There's no way around that. However, when you look at win shares saying that Paul is almost twice as valuable in the regular season as Zeke based purely on those efficiency differences (or the huge PER difference), when by both style and volume they are so similar and we're talking about Zeke using about 4 more possessions to achieve it I just think the efficiency difference is WAY overvalued in our 1-number box score stats.

Then, you also have to look at that Zeke was a lot more durable than Paul...almost 100 more regular season games (and 40 more playoff games) over the same time span.

And that once the playoffs came around, the efficiency gap shrunk a bit...Paul still more efficient, but to a much closer degree...and considering Zeke's playoff pedigree is an important part of his legacy, I think this is significant.

Anyway, Paul has long been voted in and I'm not really making a case for Zeke over Paul in this thread. The point is, stylistically I could see Paul as essentially the evolutionary Zeke. He's a bit more efficient, but less durable. And in the postseason, I don't see much gap between them. Plus, I've long been on record with my belief that the way we use efficiency in evaluations is overdone.

I guess this became a bit of a ramble (keep having to stop and come back to it as work interferes). Lost my train of thought a bit. Bottom line: I think Zeke is more than deserving here, and despite Owly's inevitable rebuttal post that I probably won't have time to address, I'm hoping that this is finally his spot.

Don't have time to do this properly but ...

- 3.7 lost possessions (per 100 or a little more than a full game these days or for the Bad Boys, slightly than less than one in the mid 80s) is no small thing in and of itself.

- The cost here though is greater given that those possessions are likely to lose a live ball and possibly concede easy points at the other end (particularly turnovers, albeit perhaps somewhat mitigated by the potential for offensive rebounds on the misses).

- It's not just those extra possessions. On top of that Paul is giving you extra points (1.3) and assists (1.9).

Add it all up together and it's not surprising the metrics think it's a large difference. It's a large difference. Also Paul rebounds better, spaces the floor more credibly and is a better defender.

I'm not going to try and anchor Isiah's ranking to Tim Hardaway's but RS wise it's a better (or not so bad) comparison. I am tempted to say (as ever) that it shouldn't be too far off Gus Williams' though.

*Actually, that's where we disagree. In the scheme of things, I think those 3 - 4 possessions is a (relatively) small thing when evaluating players, especially compared to the amount of weight that it's given in our analysis.

*Actually, the cost is lower (not greater) because a good chunk of the extra possessions that Zeke was using was shots, which had some chance of being recovered by his team and thus isn't as penalizing as a turnover. And in the playoffs their turnover rates are almost the same, minimizing that difference even further.

*The extra 1.3 points and 1.9 assists are factored into the possessions. The way you wrote it here, you're double counting. Because if you look at shots taken (factoring in FTs as .44 of a shot attempt), assists and TOs then per 100 possessions Zeke was only using 0.7 more possessions per game than Paul, which resulted in 1.3 fewer points and 1.9 fewer assists. So either Zeke was using an extra few possessions than Paul to get the same volume, or he was using essentially the same number of possessions but producing 1.3 fewer points and 1.9 fewer assists.

*Either way, as I mentioned in the first bullet point, the difference is NOT that big. Especially not a 115.2 to 67.6 difference, which is what win shares would have us believe. So no, I disagree with those metrics pretty strenuously. I'm an extremely analystical/statistically based person, but I think that this is another example of how we've gotten way too efficiency based in our analysis, making relatively small differences on a practical level into massive differences in evaluation.

[JordansBulls]

Vote: Isiah Thomas

Led the Pistons to back to back titles in an era that was tough as nails. Had to deal with peak Bird and Magic in the process. Also won finals mvp, lost only 1 series in his career with HCA. Took a franchise from the bottom to the top as well in the process.

[therealbig3]

Just dropping in for a quick comment.

Not sure I understand this comment about Pierce being less durable than Isiah Thomas. Pierce has ONE season in his entire career in which he missed significant time (07)...Isiah missed significant time in 91 as well.

The fact is, both of them were extremely durable players throughout their careers. Pierce played at a high level for longer though, so any discussion with regards to longevity/durability (they're almost kind of the same thing) should be in Pierce's favor, if anything.

Counting games played here is pretty misleading, because Pierce has been part of two NBA lockouts which have significantly reduced the amount of games played in those seasons...are you sure you're not overlooking that when you make the comparison? He played 48 games in 99, and 61 games in 12...which means he only missed a total of 7 games combined in those two seasons.

[Owly]

A huge edge in terms of playmaking? He's a point guard! He also has a huge lead in turning the ball over and not getting rebounds. I wouldn't ordinarily mention at least the latter because it is to be expected, if that's where we're going ...

Yeah he's a point guard, but that don't mean you can discredit his playmaking, Thomas' 8-12 assists are more valuable than Wilkins' 6-7 boards.

The defensive gap is small too.

Was it? Idk Wilkins was a pretty garbage defender, Thomas certainly geld his own.

So in terms of longevity of quality seasons, Nique's longevity edge is substantial.

I wouldn't call it substantial, Thomas had 11 quality/all star caliber seasons, while Wilkins had about 13.

And for what it's worth his stats peak is clearly ahead too.

I thing this is just wrong.

Wilkins peak 31 6 3 53 ts% or if you want to use 86' there isn't much difference.
Thomas 21 5 14 53 ts%
Thomas is generating a good bit more offense when you consider assists.

As to your playoff point, that should matter a good deal here, i personally put a lot of value into what players do in the playoffs.

If you're going to go point for point, it helps not to snip out all the supporting evidence.

I don't understand the claim to have "discredited" Isiah's playmaking edge it was just odd to list that in a comparison between players at entirely different positions, without noting Dominique's substantial advantages elsewhere.

As for the rest it's just opinion, some of it "plain wrong". Wilkins' D as "garbage" for instance. The Barry Handbooks range from a little below average to slightly above it, and they always note that the cause is inability to consistently maintain intensity on D due to large offensive burden (and they consistently note in intangiables his general effort level so their is no suggestion of him dogging it). As before the suggestion in the championship years is of Isiah as a little above average and that's arguably after some winner's bias halo effect.

8-12 assists is more valuable than 6-7 boards. But that isn't Isiah's advantage (if we use career numbers, which disadvantage Wilkins as he played longer and into a slower era dragging down his appex numbers). Isiah averages 9.2 assists to Nique's 2.5 (6.7 gap), whilst Nique grabs 6.8 boards to Isiah's 3.5 (3.3 gap). Throw in Isiah's extra 1.2 turnovers, and less efficient shooting and I'd suggest the gap is negligible. And so it comes back to Wilkins scoring way more. Which is why metrics so decisively favour him (all the moreso after you take out Niques' extra non-prime years).

I don't know why you're using raw numbers (non pace adjusted, and even then only a small chunk of the boxscore) for a comparison of peak stats. All advanced boxscore metrics show a clear lead for Nique (PER: 24.6 to 22.2; WS/48: .197 to .173; and even those where specific numbers aren't available Nique's clear career advantage makes his peak being worse implausible e.g. with regard to WARP http://www.basketballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=838 )

As far as definition of quality seasons, I gave a clear bar as to what a quality season was. Claiming 11 such seasons for Isiah is giving him seasons the metrics aren't sure are whether he's above league average.

Finally regarding what weight playoffs "should" carry, I'm not sure that's your decision. You can argue your case of course but people will differ in criteria. I know I'm at the low weighting end of the spectrum. I wouldn't start to attempt to have people substantially change their criteria (to mine) mid-project. Any such discussion in any case belongs in the meta thread.

He was arguably the best player on 3 championship teams (1 college).

Rules: Vote for 1 player. You may change your vote as consensus emerges but if so, go back and EDIT YOUR ORIGINAL POST. Votes without analysis will not be counted. If, after 2 days, there is not a majority consensus, the top; 2 nominees will have a 1 day runoff election to determine the spot on our list. NBA/ABA only, no college, international play, ABL, or pre-NBA play considered.

He did have a pretty tough run to the NBA titles (beating Jordan and Bird, Magic, Kareem & Drexler).

Beating Kareem? You're invoking Kareem's name when in the one year Detroit went over LA, Kareem was as mobile as a mummy and had an enormous fork in his back. Magic injured. Bird injured (and if for whatever reason you're not buying that you need to give huge credit to the guy/guys holding him down primarily Rodman, not Isiah). So you're left with Isiah plus Dumars, plus Laimbeer, plus Rodman, plus Johnson, Salley, Edwards, Johnson and Mahorn coached by Chuck Daly went through MJ plus old Cartwright, young Grant, young Pippen, Hodges, Paxson, Corzine, Charles Davis and Brad Sellers. For '90 replace the last three in minutes with Nealy, King and Armstrong coached by Doug Collins / first year HC Jackson. These are two 2 sub 3 SRS teams.

From a raw statistical point of view he wasn't that efficient and he had a lot of turnovers. But he scored a lot of points and dished out a lot of assists, played 35,000 minutes for his career, and had some big performances in title runs that justify his position on the list.

His raw numbers look good in a high pace era. Things that factor in the inefficiencies don't like him nearly so much.

It's hard for me to vote for him because I really don't like him, but when he peaked as second best point guard and probably 3rd or 4th best player in the league in the mid-80s, he's more deserving of this spot than Pierce.

Third or fourth best player? When best MVP finish was 5th once in '84. Ditto RealGM PotY. And in both cases, whilst there's enough players bunched together you might argue he's plausibly 4th, in both cases you could equally argue 7th or 8th. And that's one year (with Bird early peak, Magic barely prime, KAJ and Moses having down years and MJ not arrived yet). After that his best MVP finish is 8th and best RPotY is 7th. And the metrics don't like him as high as that either. Third (especially) or fourth is pushing it and I'd suggest it's based on unwarranted revisionism of 80's Isiah after the titles.

[drza]

Just dropping in for a quick comment.

Not sure I understand this comment about Pierce being less durable than Isiah Thomas. Pierce has ONE season in his entire career in which he missed significant time (07)...Isiah missed significant time in 91 as well.

The fact is, both of them were extremely durable players throughout their careers. Pierce played at a high level for longer though, so any discussion with regards to longevity/durability (they're almost kind of the same thing) should be in Pierce's favor, if anything.

Counting games played here is pretty misleading, because Pierce has been part of two NBA lockouts which have significantly reduced the amount of games played in those seasons...are you sure you're not overlooking that when you make the comparison? He played 48 games in 99, and 61 games in 12...which means he only missed a total of 7 games combined in those two seasons.

I'm not sure if this was directed to me or not. If not, please ignore. But in my comment the "Paul" was "Chris Paul", as I was comparing Isiah and Chris Paul and Isiah had a marked durability advantage over him in those first 9 years. Chris wasn't around in '99, and even factoring in the 66-game season in '12 he was still over 80 regular season games short of Isiah over the same time period

[penbeast0]

Looks like a clear win for Isiah . . . calling it here.

[Owly]

Spoiler:

Vote: Isiah Thomas

I've been voting him for awhile now, so there's been a lot of repeat in my reasoning. Cliff notes: he was a gifted playmaker/scorer; I believe that his addition to the Pistons/tenure on the Pistons was clearly the biggest factor in their improvement from a bottom-tier offense (DFL in 1980, 81) to a top-tier offense (top 7 - 10 over Zeke's entire prime, peaking at #1); he was a great postseason performer; he was the team leader; by my eye-test he was about the 3rd best player in the NBA over a five year-or so span of 83 - 87, then showed himself able to fit into/lead an excellent ensemble cast from about 88 - 90.

Just for kicks, I pulled up a comp of Chris Paul's current 9-year career vs Isiah's first 9 seasons:

Reg season avgs.
Paul: 617 games, 36.4 mpg, 18.6 points (57.5% TS), 9.9 apg, 4.4 rpg, 2.4 TO
Zeke: 716 games, 36.7 mpg, 20.0 points (52.2% TS), 9.8 apg, 3.7 rpg, 3.9 TO

Reg season per 100:
Paul: 617 games, 36.4 mpg, 27.2 points (20.2 FGA + 7.8 FTA =23.6 shots), 14.5 ast, 3.5 TO
Zeke: 716 games, 36.7 mpg, 25.9 points (21.6 FGA + 7.3 FTA = 24.8 shots), 12.6 ast, 5.0 TO

Playoffs per 100
Paul: 53 games, 38.8 mpg, 28.5 pts (21.5 FGA + 7.5 FTA = 24.8 shots), 13.4 ast, 4.1 TO
Zeke: 93 games, 38.5 mpg, 28.8 pts (23.6 FGA + 8.5 FTA = 27.3 shots), 12.0 ast, 4.5 TO

OK, so clearly Paul is more efficient as both a scorer and a distributor. There's no way around that. However, when you look at win shares saying that Paul is almost twice as valuable in the regular season as Zeke based purely on those efficiency differences (or the huge PER difference), when by both style and volume they are so similar and we're talking about Zeke using about 4 more possessions to achieve it I just think the efficiency difference is WAY overvalued in our 1-number box score stats.

Then, you also have to look at that Zeke was a lot more durable than Paul...almost 100 more regular season games (and 40 more playoff games) over the same time span.

And that once the playoffs came around, the efficiency gap shrunk a bit...Paul still more efficient, but to a much closer degree...and considering Zeke's playoff pedigree is an important part of his legacy, I think this is significant.

Anyway, Paul has long been voted in and I'm not really making a case for Zeke over Paul in this thread. The point is, stylistically I could see Paul as essentially the evolutionary Zeke. He's a bit more efficient, but less durable. And in the postseason, I don't see much gap between them. Plus, I've long been on record with my belief that the way we use efficiency in evaluations is overdone.

I guess this became a bit of a ramble (keep having to stop and come back to it as work interferes). Lost my train of thought a bit. Bottom line: I think Zeke is more than deserving here, and despite Owly's inevitable rebuttal post that I probably won't have time to address, I'm hoping that this is finally his spot.

Don't have time to do this properly but ...

- 3.7 lost possessions (per 100 or a little more than a full game these days or for the Bad Boys, slightly than less than one in the mid 80s) is no small thing in and of itself.

- The cost here though is greater given that those possessions are likely to lose a live ball and possibly concede easy points at the other end (particularly turnovers, albeit perhaps somewhat mitigated by the potential for offensive rebounds on the misses).

- It's not just those extra possessions. On top of that Paul is giving you extra points (1.3) and assists (1.9).

Add it all up together and it's not surprising the metrics think it's a large difference. It's a large difference. Also Paul rebounds better, spaces the floor more credibly and is a better defender.

I'm not going to try and anchor Isiah's ranking to Tim Hardaway's but RS wise it's a better (or not so bad) comparison. I am tempted to say (as ever) that it shouldn't be too far off Gus Williams' though.

*Actually, that's where we disagree. In the scheme of things, I think those 3 - 4 possessions is a (relatively) small thing when evaluating players, especially compared to the amount of weight that it's given in our analysis.

*Actually, the cost is lower (not greater) because a good chunk of the extra possessions that Zeke was using was shots, which had some chance of being recovered by his team and thus isn't as penalizing as a turnover. And in the playoffs their turnover rates are almost the same, minimizing that difference even further.

*The extra 1.3 points and 1.9 assists are factored into the possessions. The way you wrote it here, you're double counting. Because if you look at shots taken (factoring in FTs as .44 of a shot attempt), assists and TOs then per 100 possessions Zeke was only using 0.7 more possessions per game than Paul, which resulted in 1.3 fewer points and 1.9 fewer assists. So either Zeke was using an extra few possessions than Paul to get the same volume, or he was using essentially the same number of possessions but producing 1.3 fewer points and 1.9 fewer assists.

*Either way, as I mentioned in the first bullet point, the difference is NOT that big. Especially not a 115.2 to 67.6 difference, which is what win shares would have us believe. So no, I disagree with those metrics pretty strenuously. I'm an extremely analystical/statistically based person, but I think that this is another example of how we've gotten way too efficiency based in our analysis, making relatively small differences on a practical level into massive differences in evaluation.

Don't want to do this now and I may be misreading the numbers, and Isiah seem like he's going in anyway, so I don't have to be this guy anymore and just get to needle Isiah advocates by voting Gus Williams every single time .

Okay so it's gone from four possessions to "three or four" in your own words. But what's a possession worth points wise? Roughly a point, anything close to that? And this is three to four in roughly one game (a little more than by modern pace).

If I had a three point advantage at each position over a game at every position, I'd be beating teams by 15 points a game. That's more than the best team's ever's average points differential (or SRS).

Only very approximate numbers but if I'm in the vague ballpark these possessions look like a huge deal.

To repeat I may be confused in my interpretations, or there may be a issue in whether/ how we were interpreting possessions for individuals and at team level. I mentioned the possibility for offensive boards (not sure if I buy this but some argue a shot is a full concession of the ball, that the offensive rebound, having to be grabbed, is wholly to the credit of the individual e.g. http://wagesofwins.com/2012/12/12/how-a ... -turnover/ ), I don’t know but as I said there’s a substantial cost to losing the ball live on a turnover in terms of easy fast break points. I don’t know the exact cost of these which is why I tend to trust the metric creators to make sensible estimates. It won’t be perfect, maybe there’s something better but it’s what I’m most comfortable with for now. As far as the double counting, let me see if I can straighten up where the confusion is. So we’re counting the assister as a consumer of whole possession, is this it (Isiah’s 1.2 extra shots + 1.5 extra turnovers – 1.9 assists = would leave Isiah using .8 more possessions per 100, roughly the .7 you spoke of)? (If so) Okay but then you’d have to credit Paul (or Paul’s team impact) fully with the extra 1.9 times value of basket (usually 2pts, sometimes three). So assuming just two point baskets (and no additional "and ones") 1.9x2= 3.8 points. Add that onto our 1.3 extra points is 5.1 points to which we can add, single counting, .8 of possession. Maybe my understanding is wrong but if not that seems like a lot. Again if you had that advantage at over a game (obviously by modern pace 100 possessions is a little more than a game) at each position, cumulatively you’d be looking at the difference between the best and worst teams ever in the NBA.

[therealbig3]

Just dropping in for a quick comment.

Not sure I understand this comment about Pierce being less durable than Isiah Thomas. Pierce has ONE season in his entire career in which he missed significant time (07)...Isiah missed significant time in 91 as well.

The fact is, both of them were extremely durable players throughout their careers. Pierce played at a high level for longer though, so any discussion with regards to longevity/durability (they're almost kind of the same thing) should be in Pierce's favor, if anything.

Counting games played here is pretty misleading, because Pierce has been part of two NBA lockouts which have significantly reduced the amount of games played in those seasons...are you sure you're not overlooking that when you make the comparison? He played 48 games in 99, and 61 games in 12...which means he only missed a total of 7 games combined in those two seasons.

I'm not sure if this was directed to me or not. If not, please ignore. But in my comment the "Paul" was "Chris Paul", as I was comparing Isiah and Chris Paul and Isiah had a marked durability advantage over him in those first 9 years. Chris wasn't around in '99, and even factoring in the 66-game season in '12 he was still over 80 regular season games short of Isiah over the same time period

My apologies, I thought you were talking about Pierce. Ignore my post.