RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #6 (Hakeem Olajuwon)

[One_and_Done]

Unless you were Shaq's personal trainer you were not in a position to know his health from game to game. The Lakers were always putting it out that he was banged up, and of course he was because he always was.

Even taking the completely cherry picked explanation that he 'only got better by game 5' (a claim I think there is no proof for) it doesn't really hold up.

Shaq was getting 27 ppg & 14.5rpg on 489 FG% in the first 4 games. Sure, he scored better (and rebounded worse) in the final 3 games; but even the version you claim was still hurt was pumping out stats far superior to what he managed against the Spurs. Game 5 in the Kings series was 2 weeks after the Spurs series. Arthritic toes and stitched fingers don't heal in 2 weeks. Your stitches will be removed by then, but if it was serious enough to need stitches the underlying injury would be there in most cases (especially if you're playing full contact during this period).

I'm not hating on Shaq, heck I'm voting for him this round; but he can get in on his merits, we don't need to come up with excuses to cover over his minor flaws.

[eminence]

Now of course, Mikan compounds the confusion by not only playing in a weak era but also only giving us 6 seasons to work with. But they would appear to be the most impactful stretch of 6 seasons ever.

Where does this mean Mikan should go? I don't really have an idea. But I'm starting to think a Top 10 placement isn't as crazy as I thought it was a few weeks ago.

I believe we're meant to consider Mikan's '47 and '48 NBL seasons for the project as well.

But a good summary and similar to how I've felt on Mikan recently. There are players we see in both the Mikan era and in the Russell/Wilt era. It doesn't feel like Russell/Wilt are that much better than those guys (Schayes, Cousy, Sharman, Arizin as All-star examples) that Mikan shouldn't be seen as a top tier guy at his best.

[Bklynborn682]

We can also use the RS data (1999-03):

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
RS vs Spurs (15 games): 39.4 mpg, 25.9 ppg, 11.3 rpg, 2.2 apg and 3.1 tov on 54.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 56.5 FT%
Total vs Spurs (34 games): 39.1 mpg, 25.0 ppg, 12.4 rpg, 2.4 apg and 3.1 tov on 52.6 FG%, 54.59 TS% and 56.4 FT%

I think Shaq's production is still rather impressive when you take into account how tough of the opponent Spurs were for him, but it is very clear that he was bothered by the Spurs.

I have never argued that he wasn’t bothered by the spurs. you have 2 arguable top 5 defenders of all time within arms reach of Shaq at all times on Defense.
My point initially was that just posting numbers/videos in 2002 as a way to show how well Duncan defended Shaq is flawed due to the injuries he sustained in that series alone. Watch game 1 and 2 see how many bunnies Shaq misses with mark Bryant defending him. That is not a sign of Bryant’s defensive excellence (obviously hyperbole)

We can use samples from other series. It's not my video, but here is the one from 2001 WCF:

Watch on YouTube

Of course Duncan didn't defend Shaq nearly as much overall in this series, but we can see how effective he was in isolation against Shaq in games one1 and 2 in perticular (when he spent the most time on him).

Duncan didn't guard Shaq much in 2004, but I will be rewatching 2003 series this month, so I hope to provide more data on that subject.

I have every playoff game Duncan and Shaq have played against each other sans suns vs spurs. So I will do pbp as well.
In regards to YouTuber nobody touches Jordan I’ve seen couple of his videos before and they’ve always left me feeling clickbaited as I’ve seen the game in it’s entirety as opposed to the way he chops it up.

[70sFan]

I have never argued that he wasn’t bothered by the spurs. you have 2 arguable top 5 defenders of all time within arms reach of Shaq at all times on Defense.
My point initially was that just posting numbers/videos in 2002 as a way to show how well Duncan defended Shaq is flawed due to the injuries he sustained in that series alone. Watch game 1 and 2 see how many bunnies Shaq misses with mark Bryant defending him. That is not a sign of Bryant’s defensive excellence (obviously hyperbole)

We can use samples from other series. It's not my video, but here is the one from 2001 WCF:

Watch on YouTube

Of course Duncan didn't defend Shaq nearly as much overall in this series, but we can see how effective he was in isolation against Shaq in games one1 and 2 in perticular (when he spent the most time on him).

Duncan didn't guard Shaq much in 2004, but I will be rewatching 2003 series this month, so I hope to provide more data on that subject.

I have every playoff game Duncan and Shaq have played against each other sans suns vs spurs. So I will do pbp as well.
In regards to YouTuber nobody touches Jordan I’ve seen couple of his videos before and they’ve always left me feeling clickbaited as I’ve seen the game in it’s entirety as opposed to the way he chops it up.

Yeah, I know the youtuber isn't the best source. I will share the results when I finish and it would be nice to compare them with your data.

Anyway, thanks for the civil discussion

[One_and_Done]

The next nominee for me after Curry is Bird. He needs some consideration soon. Despite his lack of impressive longevity, his floor and ceiling raising is just too impressive, along with his ability to complement other players. The dude walked onto a 29 win team with a -4.78 SRS and immediately turned them into a 61 win and 7.37 SRS contender. That's just so hard to do. Yeh yeh, there were some other minor variations in players but none of it was much of a needle mover for mine. It was prinarily Bird's impact. He made the guys on his team better.

[f4p]

ooh, 100th. guess beating the best combined opponents in nba history ain't what it used to be. didn't old San also have the 2018 Rockets, who took his 5th all time team to 7 games, in like 95th place? guess he forgot to take out the "if team = Rockets, underscore indiscriminately" line in his code (spreadsheets can't be perfect, him defending it was a problem).

Re: Beating the best combined opponents: well it’s not just who you beat, it’s how much you beat them by. Team A beats a +5 opposing team by +1, Team B beats a +3 Team by +7. Team B is clearly the better team, if that’s all the information we’re given. The Rockets beat the best average opponents, but lots of teams beat their opponents by more. That means they were less dominant in era.

If you want to measure underdog stories, that’s one thing… but if you want to measure how *good* a team was and thus how *good* Hakeem was, well then that’s what SRS does. And it turns out Hakeem’s Rockets were less good than the teams of basically all the championship teams of the other all-time players we’re talking about. Some of this undoubtedly is supporting cast, but again this makes it harder to argue for Hakeem using team stats alone.

Small incoming, apologies ahead of time.
Re: 2018 Rockets, you seem quite upset by this (or at least quite sarcastic about this). No stat is perfect, no list based on a single stat is perfect. (Again, that’s why I prefaced this post with the qualifier you for some reason objected to).

But Sansterre’s Top 100 is *clearly* the best single statistic to rate a team’s in-era dominance on the market. Find a single better list — and remember if you turn to FiveThirtyEight, you’ll be turning to a list that’s even less friendly to the Hakeem Rockets. Or try to build one yourself, and find the right balance between 1) Regular Season vs Postseason weightings across vastly different eras that treat the postseason in vastly different ways , 2) playoff improvers and regular season coasters, 3) higher standard deviations in a smaller league vs higher values in a bigger league, 4) winning a series with a losing margin of victory vs losing a series with a winning margin of victory… with additional factors to consider such as 5) health, 6) correcting for outlier blowouts, 7) performance against better opponents vs performance against weaker opponents, etc. Sansterre found a balance between 1–4, and discussed plans to add 6–7 in Version 2.0.

No, it’s not perfect, yes it has outliers that go against our intuition, but name a single statistic that doesn’t… I’ll wait. So a single outlier value is odd to levy against this list, both because that doesn’t make this list any worse than any other list (again, every stat has an imperfect ranking), but *also because Sansterre openly acknowledges the list’s limitations*. In fact if you actually read the 2018 Rockets article, Sansterre proposes improvements to the stat that might produce a more accurate ranking for the 2018 Rockets (but might come at the cost of less accurate rankings for other teams). So until we get Version 2.0 of the list which finds a better balance between all these factors, or until someone else comes in with some other better team ranker, I’m going to stick with the best available stat on the market…. While also incorporating the other stats that are available.

yes, it was a very nice spreadsheet. very well planned. seemingly the best job anyone could do. his write ups are very good and thorough. a labor of love that everyone should look at, as i have as well. as i said, no formula can survive all situations, and a team in a conference with another great team being a team that also gets injured is a problem for his formula. but san could certainly have helped himself if he wanted to vis a vis the 2018 rockets. instead he wrote this:

I’d love to write about how the after-the-fact narrative is wrong, that Houston *could* have won that series, that Harden isn’t a choker, that Paul going down for Games 6 and 7 was incredibly bad luck and that going 7 of 44 on three pointers is historically unlucky. And, frankly, every one of those points is valid. Here’s the problem - the Warriors seriously outclassed the Rockets in that series.

BS

Here’s how it went:
With Paul healthy:

Golden State wins by 13
Houston wins by 22
Golden State wins by 41 (!!!!)
Houston wins by 3
Houston wins by 4


by 41 you say!

With Paul out:

Golden State wins by 29
Golden State wins by 9

So even with Paul healthy, the Warriors were outscoring the Rockets by 5 points a game. And with Paul out, the Warriors’ edge became even more pronounced. Yes, the Rockets were up 3-2 and were incredibly unlucky after. But they were incredibly lucky to have been up 3-2.

ahh yes. in game 2, with 5 minutes to go, all of the starters come out with the rockets up...28 points. in game 3, with 5 minutes to go, all of the starters come out with the warriors up...29. what a difference. i'm surprised adam silver didn't throw in the towel and end the series right there. turns out the scrub swung game 2 by 6 points and game 3 by 12 points in the final 5 minutes. i guess San likes to figure his great teams based on those classic ryan anderson/jordan poole matchups in 29 point games. in the actual parts of the first 5 games where the stars played, the warriors outscored the rockets over 5 games by a total of? 7 points. 1.4 ppg. as coin-flippy as it gets.


When all was said and done the Warriors outscored the Rockets by 9 points a game. Leave Paul healthy, maybe it’s closer to 5. Maybe the Rockets do eek out a win in the series somehow, that sort of thing happens, but it goes down as the fluky victory of a weaker team.

The Warriors were flat-out better. By a lot. And there’s not a ton of shame in that.

except they weren't.

The Warriors with Durant were some of the best teams ever. In that series the Rockets’s outstanding offense was held to an offensive rating six points below league average. The series was way less close than it looked.

the warriors were one of the best teams ever, the rockets almost beat them, playing them completely even and winning 3 out of 5 games when chris paul was healthy. conclusion, the rockets weren't very good. you see why this is a problem?

So where does that leave us? Houston in 2018 was really good. They deserve credit historically for that. Could they have beaten the 2017 Cavs? It’s very possible - much as it pains me to bet on a non-dominant team against LeBron, 2018 Cleveland was his worst 2nd edition iteration. Is the '18 Rockets' place in history compromised by their misfortune in existing in a year with one of the best teams ever? Maybe. They certainly looked good in the first two rounds. But top teams simply don’t lose by that much.

top teams don't lose by that much. except the 2018 warriors lost game 2 just as badly. guess we might need to knock them down from #5 then? keep in mind, the rockets are a -0.3 SRS team for losing to the warriors in the WCF per San's numbers. so it turns out the rockets might not have even really been a 0.500 team.

Even to historically dominant super-teams. They were probably better than this ranking. But probably not by as much as they’d like.

well let's peruse the rest of the list and see if we can see any teams the 2018 rockets might be able to shine the shoes of, if they are lucky.

#88 - the 1976 warriors. you remember that juggernaut. lower regular season SRS than the rockets, one series win before losing as a huge favorite in the conference finals. what a team!

#85 - the 1989 phoenix suns. don't let the heat get to you with this team. lower regular season SRS and swept in the conference finals by a team that didn't win the championship.

#65 - the 2009 denver nuggets. uhh, yeah. 3.12 SRS and lost in the conference finals.

...Skip to almost 50 spots ahead of the Rockets...

#47 - the 2020 boston celtics. i mean, really? beating the raptors was a +15 SRS result? guess the 2018 rockets can't compete with such dominance.

#35 - the 1996 utah jazz. they almost beat the conference champion. a year after losing to the terrible 1995 rockets.

#32 - the 2010 orlando magic. and San defends it because they blew out the hawks.


so yeah, it's going to be at least a little tough to think hakeem's 1994 and 1995 rockets weren't good, or at least that their strength implies hakeem wasn't that good, based on something that says they didn't compare favorably to the 2020 boston celtics.

[Samurai]

Might have something to do with not wanting to rack up 5-6 offensive fouls before even reaching the 4th quarter. The game was officiated very differently then.
To put it plainly: Shaq wouldn’t have played with that bullish force/power in Wilt’s era either; because the officiating of the time simply didn’t permit it.

Could you imagine Shaq trying to play his bully ball style with someone like Earl Strom on the court?? Earl would have sent Shaq to the showers so fast Shaq would still be trying to figure out what the heck happened.

At any rate, I try to avoid knocking a player for the rules that were in place when they played. The players don't write the rules so it doesn't make sense to penalize them for it.

I know earl strom as a referee. but was he known for calling cheap offensive fouls or something?

Earl was well known for ensuring that his way was the only way. He was more than happy to toss you from a game since that put the spotlight on him; to my knowledge he is still the only ref to eject a coach (Red Auerbach) in the All Star game as well as ejecting a team mascot, Benny the (Chicago) Bull. If you disagreed with him, he'd answer with his fists. In the 65 Finals, he got into a fist-fight with a fan and had to ref Game 7 with a cast on his broken hand. In a 1970 ABA game, he fought a fan on the court. And former referee Dick Bavetta made the serious mistake of overturning one of Strom's calls in a Sixers/Nets game and poor Dick was seen by witnesses running from the official's locker room with a ripped shirt, black eye and bloody nose.

Remember in the 60's the rules were that if a defender had position, he was entitled to that spot as much as an offensive player. You could not just run over a defender who had established position; that is called an offensive foul. Earl would call the game the way he felt it should be and no one was going to change his mind. Ah, the good old days....

[zimpy27]

Just here to drop in some thoughts on Wilt from Kareem.... An absolute ether that impacted the way I see Wilt.


Open letter from Kareem's 1990 memoirs.

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-03-18/magazine/tm-602_1_final-season/5

Wilt and I go way back. When I was in high school, there were only two men I could be like, Wilt or Bill Russell. I kept a scrapbook of photos of both of them in action. Wilt lived in New York then, and I sought out his company. I'd run down the block just to say hello. But as I grew older, I strongly disagreed with some of the positions he took, like supporting Richard Nixon for President and denigrating black women in his autobiography. But I've never really disliked Wilt, and I've always respected him professionally for what he achieved. He was one of the best centers to have ever played the game. I've decided to take this opportunity to respond to all the aspersions he's cast on me over the years:


An Open Letter to Wilt Chumperlame

It's been several years now, Wilt, that you have been criticizing my career with your friends in the press. Since this pattern does not seem to have any end in sight, I feel that I might as well have my say about the situation.

It would seem that someone who achieved as much as you did would be satisfied with his career. After all, some of the things you did in your time were quite admirable and have given us an enduring set of records for the books. So why all the jealousy and envy?

In trying to figure this out, I started to look for what you would be jealous of, and that's when the picture started to become clear. Many remember how frustrated you were when your team couldn't win the NCAA tournament. Your talent and abilities were so great that everyone assumed the NCAA was all yours. But after a terrific triple-overtime game, Kansas lost. You complained about the officiating, your teammates and other things, and then quit, leaving college early to tour with the Globetrotters. That seemed to set a pattern for you. After any tough test in which you didn't do well, you blamed those around you and quit.

In professional basketball, Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics gave you a yearly lesson in real competitive competence and teamwork. All you could say was that your teammates stunk and that you had done all you could, and besides, the refs never gave you a break. Poor Wilt.

In 1967, your team finally broke through. That 76er team established records that are still standing today. But the following year, the Sixers lost and, predictable as ever, you quit. You came out to L.A. and got with a dream team. The only lack that team had was leadership at the center position. Bill and the Celts took one from you in '69, and the Knicks followed suit in '70. People are still trying to figure out where you disappeared to in that series. True to form, after the Knicks beat the Lakers in the world championship in 1973, you quit and haven't been seen on the court since.

Of course, you came out every so often to take a cheap shot at me. During the sixth game of the world championship series in 1988, you stated, "Kareem should have retired five years ago." I can now see why you said that. If I had quit at the time you suggested, it would have been right after a disappointing loss to the 76ers. And it would have been typical of one of your retreats.

But after that loss, I decided that I had more to give. I believed in myself and in the Lakers and stuck with it. We went on to win three out of four world championships between '85 and '88. The two teams you played on that won world championships, in '67 and '72, never repeated. They never showed the consistency that the Lakers of the '80s have shown. And you didn't want me to be part of that.

Given your jealousy, I can understand that. So , now that I have left, one thing will be part of my legacy: People will remember that I worked with my teammates and helped us win. You will be remembered as a whining crybaby and a quitter, stats and all.

[tsherkin]

Just here to drop in some thoughts on Wilt from Kareem.... An absolute ether that impacted the way I see Wilt.


Open letter from Kareem's 1990 memoirs.

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-03-18/magazine/tm-602_1_final-season/5

Yikes.

[eminence]

Lol, I do always appreciate that one, quality content Kareem.

[tsherkin]

Yeh yeh, there were some other minor variations in players but none of it was much of a needle mover for mine. It was prinarily Bird's impact. He made the guys on his team better.

"Minor variations?"

New coach, and he was there the whole year. More than two guys playing 70+ games (5 guys playing 80+, actually). Tiny went from 69 games at 24 mpg the season after an Achilles injury to 80 games at 36 mpg.

Surely, Bird's impact was very large, but there were many factors involved in the full breadth of Boston's improvement. Do keep in mind that Bird came in as a 21/10/4.5 guy on +0.7% rTS, so it's not likely he was a dominant scorer from day one. His passing and range made a huge difference, of course, and his heath was important. It was also his best offensive rebounding season and additive in general to Boston's recovery from their injury-plagued year in 79. But he didn't have the kind of season that, on its own, screams "yes, this explains why we were the second-best offense and 4th-best defense just because I'm here." He did very well and was an immense part of their success, but hand-waving the other stuff away doesn't seem sensible.

[DraymondGold]

ooh, 100th. guess beating the best combined opponents in nba history ain't what it used to be. didn't old San also have the 2018 Rockets, who took his 5th all time team to 7 games, in like 95th place? guess he forgot to take out the "if team = Rockets, underscore indiscriminately" line in his code (spreadsheets can't be perfect, him defending it was a problem).

Re: Beating the best combined opponents: well it’s not just who you beat, it’s how much you beat them by. Team A beats a +5 opposing team by +1, Team B beats a +3 Team by +7. Team B is clearly the better team, if that’s all the information we’re given. The Rockets beat the best average opponents, but lots of teams beat their opponents by more. That means they were less dominant in era.

If you want to measure underdog stories, that’s one thing… but if you want to measure how *good* a team was and thus how *good* Hakeem was, well then that’s what SRS does. And it turns out Hakeem’s Rockets were less good than the teams of basically all the championship teams of the other all-time players we’re talking about. Some of this undoubtedly is supporting cast, but again this makes it harder to argue for Hakeem using team stats alone.

Small incoming, apologies ahead of time.
Re: 2018 Rockets, you seem quite upset by this (or at least quite sarcastic about this). No stat is perfect, no list based on a single stat is perfect. (Again, that’s why I prefaced this post with the qualifier you for some reason objected to).

But Sansterre’s Top 100 is *clearly* the best single statistic to rate a team’s in-era dominance on the market. Find a single better list — and remember if you turn to FiveThirtyEight, you’ll be turning to a list that’s even less friendly to the Hakeem Rockets. Or try to build one yourself, and find the right balance between 1) Regular Season vs Postseason weightings across vastly different eras that treat the postseason in vastly different ways , 2) playoff improvers and regular season coasters, 3) higher standard deviations in a smaller league vs higher values in a bigger league, 4) winning a series with a losing margin of victory vs losing a series with a winning margin of victory… with additional factors to consider such as 5) health, 6) correcting for outlier blowouts, 7) performance against better opponents vs performance against weaker opponents, etc. Sansterre found a balance between 1–4, and discussed plans to add 6–7 in Version 2.0.

No, it’s not perfect, yes it has outliers that go against our intuition, but name a single statistic that doesn’t… I’ll wait. So a single outlier value is odd to levy against this list, both because that doesn’t make this list any worse than any other list (again, every stat has an imperfect ranking), but *also because Sansterre openly acknowledges the list’s limitations*. In fact if you actually read the 2018 Rockets article, Sansterre proposes improvements to the stat that might produce a more accurate ranking for the 2018 Rockets (but might come at the cost of less accurate rankings for other teams). So until we get Version 2.0 of the list which finds a better balance between all these factors, or until someone else comes in with some other better team ranker, I’m going to stick with the best available stat on the market…. While also incorporating the other stats that are available.

yes, it was a very nice spreadsheet. very well planned. seemingly the best job anyone could do. his write ups are very good and thorough. a labor of love that everyone should look at, as i have as well. as i said, no formula can survive all situations, and a team in a conference with another great team being a team that also gets injured is a problem for his formula. but san could certainly have helped himself if he wanted to vis a vis the 2018 rockets. instead he wrote this:

I’d love to write about how the after-the-fact narrative is wrong, that Houston *could* have won that series, that Harden isn’t a choker, that Paul going down for Games 6 and 7 was incredibly bad luck and that going 7 of 44 on three pointers is historically unlucky. And, frankly, every one of those points is valid. Here’s the problem - the Warriors seriously outclassed the Rockets in that series.

BS

Here’s how it went:
With Paul healthy:

Golden State wins by 13
Houston wins by 22
Golden State wins by 41 (!!!!)
Houston wins by 3
Houston wins by 4


by 41 you say!

With Paul out:

Golden State wins by 29
Golden State wins by 9

So even with Paul healthy, the Warriors were outscoring the Rockets by 5 points a game. And with Paul out, the Warriors’ edge became even more pronounced. Yes, the Rockets were up 3-2 and were incredibly unlucky after. But they were incredibly lucky to have been up 3-2.

ahh yes. in game 2, with 5 minutes to go, all of the starters come out with the rockets up...28 points. in game 3, with 5 minutes to go, all of the starters come out with the warriors up...29. what a difference. i'm surprised adam silver didn't throw in the towel and end the series right there. turns out the scrub swung game 2 by 6 points and game 3 by 12 points in the final 5 minutes. i guess San likes to figure his great teams based on those classic ryan anderson/jordan poole matchups in 29 point games. in the actual parts of the first 5 games where the stars played, the warriors outscored the rockets over 5 games by a total of? 7 points. 1.4 ppg. as coin-flippy as it gets.


When all was said and done the Warriors outscored the Rockets by 9 points a game. Leave Paul healthy, maybe it’s closer to 5. Maybe the Rockets do eek out a win in the series somehow, that sort of thing happens, but it goes down as the fluky victory of a weaker team.

The Warriors were flat-out better. By a lot. And there’s not a ton of shame in that.

except they weren't.

The Warriors with Durant were some of the best teams ever. In that series the Rockets’s outstanding offense was held to an offensive rating six points below league average. The series was way less close than it looked.

the warriors were one of the best teams ever, the rockets almost beat them, playing them completely even and winning 3 out of 5 games when chris paul was healthy. conclusion, the rockets weren't very good. you see why this is a problem?

So where does that leave us? Houston in 2018 was really good. They deserve credit historically for that. Could they have beaten the 2017 Cavs? It’s very possible - much as it pains me to bet on a non-dominant team against LeBron, 2018 Cleveland was his worst 2nd edition iteration. Is the '18 Rockets' place in history compromised by their misfortune in existing in a year with one of the best teams ever? Maybe. They certainly looked good in the first two rounds. But top teams simply don’t lose by that much.

top teams don't lose by that much. except the 2018 warriors lost game 2 just as badly. guess we might need to knock them down from #5 then? keep in mind, the rockets are a -0.3 SRS team for losing to the warriors in the WCF per San's numbers. so it turns out the rockets might not have even really been a 0.500 team.

Even to historically dominant super-teams. They were probably better than this ranking. But probably not by as much as they’d like.

well let's peruse the rest of the list and see if we can see any teams the 2018 rockets might be able to shine the shoes of, if they are lucky.

#88 - the 1976 warriors. you remember that juggernaut. lower regular season SRS than the rockets, one series win before losing as a huge favorite in the conference finals. what a team!

#85 - the 1989 phoenix suns. don't let the heat get to you with this team. lower regular season SRS and swept in the conference finals by a team that didn't win the championship.

#65 - the 2009 denver nuggets. uhh, yeah. 3.12 SRS and lost in the conference finals.

...Skip to almost 50 spots ahead of the Rockets...

#47 - the 2020 boston celtics. i mean, really? beating the raptors was a +15 SRS result? guess the 2018 rockets can't compete with such dominance.

#35 - the 1996 utah jazz. they almost beat the conference champion. a year after losing to the terrible 1995 rockets.

#32 - the 2010 orlando magic. and San defends it because they blew out the hawks.

Scroll down just a bit, mon ami, and you'll find this retrospective on the 2018 Rockets:

I'm surprised no one is up in arms about the placement of the 2018 Rockets honestly.

Lot of people peg them as one of the best non-title teams of the last couple decades, 94th would seem pretty low all things considered. Personally I would probably put them in-front of both '95 Houston and '09 Orlando, among a few other teams. But I also feel people really over-rate how they performed against Golden State, granted, they were still only a few possessions from beating them despite getting completely blown out in 2 of their losses.

Yeah, I was surprised they were so low. Part of it is their getting beaten so bad by Golden State, and the other part is that Golden State, up to that point, had definitely been playing below their ability which depressed their SRS.

But here are some scenarios of alternate gradings:

1) If we grade Golden State at a +15.73 SRS (what they showed by the end of the playoffs) and credit Houston with playing them to a standstill, then Houston would be graded of #12 overall, definitely the best non-title team.

2) If we grade Golden State at a +15.73 SRS, but leave Houston losing by 9 points a game they would be 43rd, the 10th best non-title team.

3) If we grade Golden State at a +15.73 SRS, and mark Houston as losing only by 9 points a game (as they were before Paul went down) they would be 25th, the 4th best non-title team.

Long and short of it, I think in an adjusted system, I'd move Houston way up (probably closer to estimate #2). But this is the tradeoff of an Elo-style ranking; when you have a team that slow-plays its ability the system doesn't reward you when you get vaporized by them.

Note the typo on point 3 (they lost by closer to 5 per game when Paul healthy).

As sansterre suggested Warriors are coasting / injured through the regular season and definitely ramp up vs the Rockets. But if you lower the value of the regular season to limit the inaccuracy of this specific coasting regular season, the rest of the list becomes a lot less accurate.

so yeah, it's going to be at least a little tough to think hakeem's 1994 and 1995 rockets weren't good, or at least that their strength implies hakeem wasn't that good, based on something that says they didn't compare favorably to the 2020 boston celtics.

2020 Celtics vs 1995 Rockets in every team stat I can find:
Regular Season SRS: 5.83 > 2.32
Regular Season MoV: 6.3 > 2.1
Regular Season Healthy MoV: 7.24 (games with Tatum) > 0.9 (games with Drexler)
Regular Season Record: 48 wins > 47 wins
Regular Season Healthy Record: 56 win pace (with Tatum and Walker) > 44 win pace (with Drexler / Hakeem)
Sansterre Playoff SRS: +12.39 > 7.75
Playoff Record: won 59% games < won 68% games
Sansterre Overall SRS: 9.92 > 7.47
Overall SRS standard deviation: 1.87 > 1.50
Peak ELO: 1710 > 1665
Mean ELO: ~1640 (by eye) > 1589
Final Playoff ELO: 1692 > 1665
Overall ELO: ~1681 > 1640
Playoff cNET Rating: TBD, Thinking Basketball website is down.

Team Stats where 2020 Boston wins: 12
Team stats where 1995 Rockets win: 1.

So... where exactly are all the stats that favor 1995 Rockets over 2020 Celtics?? What stats is sansterre supposed to pull from to get such a great rating for the 1995 Rockets over the 2020 Boston Celtics?

Literally the only stat I've seen so far that favors the rockets is playoff record, where the Rockets won by 9%. Every other stat favors Boston, many by more than 9%. Would you prefer we just rate every team all time exclusively by playoff record?

Are we really so sure that the 1995 Rockets are that much better than the 2020 Celtics? There's almost no evidence for that to be the case.

[rk2023]

One player whom I am surprised hasn't been mentioned yet amongst nominees (and believe holds a candle to the likes of Kobe, Bird, Curry - just to compare some perimeter players) is Oscar Robertson. Lots to like about his body of work (beyond the impact of being the pioneer of modern heliocentric excellence & the impressive ability to pinball ~30-10 seasons), to the point where I regard him as a top 5 offensive career of all time and a sure-fire top ten offensive apex.

While far from an end-all-, be-all - a decent amount of prime and longevity based statistical arguments are in Oscar's favor:
- 4th in Career TS Added with 3519.5 (behind Kareem, Gilmore, and Wilt)
- 2nd (behind Wilt) in 82 game TS Added average of 277.5, 7th highest TS Added peak of all time (392.5), 7 straight seasons >= 324 TS Added, 9 >= 291, and 10 overall top 5 seasons in this mark.
- Only player along-side James top 15 in both career assists and points (8th and 14th)
- 4th in career Offensive Win Shares with 152 (behind Kareem, James, and Wilt)

For more on win-shares (again, an approach with some holes) analysis to deduce Oscar's value - Sansterre's 1971 Bucks writeup:

Spoiler:

Oscar Robertson? Let’s talk about him.

He was taken first overall by the Cincinnati Royals in the 1960 NBA draft. At the time the Royals had gone 19-56, their roster pretty much Jack Twyman and some of those lucky waving cat figurines you see at Japanese restaurants. Oscar coming on board transformed them into . . . a 33-win team, that was him, Twyman and the waving cats. Oscar would go on to become the best point guard in the league, taking the mantle from Bob Cousy and improving upon it. He would lead the league in assists six times in the decade. He would also finish in the top three of points scored seven times in that stretch, while finishing in the top 20 of rebounds five times. His having averaged a triple-double is a testament to how capable he was in all three areas (even if the actual achievement was considerably influenced by how fast teams played). With the understanding that Win Shares aren’t a great stat, he led the league in offensive win shares four different times in the decade (and that’s in a league with Wilt Chamberlain). He put up efficiencies that were insane for the era, shooting mostly in the +8% and +9% range; only Jerry West could challenge those numbers. And he wasn’t a low-usage specialist either, he was routinely taking 25-26% of his team’s shots.

You may be assembling these numbers in your head (35% AST, 25.5% Usage estimated, +8.5% shooting) and going “Holy balls, Oscar Robertson was stupid good!” Yes, yes he was. I’d love to say that I have comps for him, but I don’t. Charles Barkley when he was 28 put together 25.1% usage at +8.1%. In terms of shooting we’ve got ‘87 Magic Johnson, Barkley, ‘82 Alex English, ‘14 Goran Dragic, ‘02 Ray Allen, ‘92 and ‘93 Mark Price . . . Basically, guys that took a lot of shots (but never broke the 30% volume mark) and shot at crazy efficiency. Except combine those with being the best passer in the league and playing 3400 minutes a season and rebounding a ton for a guard. Magic is an interesting comp for him; once Magic hit his stride in the mid-80s he was hitting Oscar-level efficiency, but only in ‘87 did he shoot at Oscareque volume. Oscar was a better scorer than Magic by a respectable amount. But Magic was in another league with his passing, while Oscar was merely a very good distributor (his era didn’t help; being the best distributor from before 1980 was like being the best mainstream martial-arts film before the Matrix; the environment just wasn’t conducive to that sort of thing).

“So, wait,” you may say, “Oscar Robertson was basically one of the better scorers ever, maybe the best scorer in his era, and he also passed and rebounded a ton. How the heck did he end up in a trade for Flynn Robinson who, while decent in his own right, would only have the right to carry Oscar’s jockstrap if he made low-key heavenly choir sounds while he did it?”

Great question. Here were how the Royals did from 1958 to 1970:

1959: 22 wins, -7.89 SRS, No Playoffs
1960: 21 wins, -5.92 SRS, No Playoffs
** Oscar is drafted **
1961: 34 wins, -3.04 SRS, No Playoffs
1962: 44 wins, +1.28 SRS, Lost Semis
1963: 43 wins, +1.24 SRS, Lost Conf Finals
1964: 56 wins, +4.43 SRS, Lost Conf Finals
1965: 49 wins, +2.04 SRS, Lost Semis
1966: 46 wins, +1.03 SRS, Lost Semis
1967: 39 wins, -0.23 SRS, Lost Semis
1968: 39 wins, -0.64 SRS, No Playoffs
1969: 41 wins, -0.83 SRS, No Playoffs
1970: 36 wins, -2.55 SRS, No Playoffs

Well, if we’re just going by team success (who would do that, right?) it doesn’t look particularly impressive. Sure, they were a 20-win bottom-feeder, and he lifted them up to respectability for several years. But I can’t help but notice not a single Finals appearance, and that’s with 8 and 9 team leagues. There’s a pretty obvious explanation: Oscar wasn’t a winner. Just didn’t have that killer instinct. Didn’t have that Serpent Certainty (err, Mamba Mentality). Didn’t have that swagger. I’m sure he was good and all, but there’s more to the game than counting stats. It’s called counting wins, and by that stat he clearly was good but not thaaaaaat good.

And yet there are weird signs to the contrary.

In Ben Taylor’s WOWYR (of which there are many formulations) Oscar Robertson shows up in the Top Ten of players . . . ever. Those numbers are never perfect, but they suggest an alarming dependence on Oscar. Here are three different instances where he missed times and their effects (courtesy of BackPicks):

1961: Missed 9 games, went from 36 win pace to 9 win pace (-27)
1968: Missed 10 games, went from 46 win pace to 17 win pace (-29)
1970: Missed 12 games, went from 42 win pace to 18 win pace (-24)

So Oscar may have been a Grade A choker/loser . . . and yet whenever he missed time his teams went from being average to being Chernobyl. Is it possible that his teammates were bad? Like, really bad? Like, really, really, really bad? It strains credulity that anyone that good could have teammates that bad . . . right? I mean, any remotely competent organization would realize that they had one of the best players of all-time and try and build around them, wouldn’t they?

I normally use a stat called Heliocentrism for this sort of thing, which is basically what share of their team’s VORP comes from that player. You have to take it with a grain of salt, because lower numbers don’t necessarily mean worse, just less dependent. Stephen Curry on the 2017 Warriors has a relatively low Helio score for a stud, but it’s less because he wasn’t that good and more because his teammates were historically great.

Now we don’t have VORP in Oscar’s day, so we’re using Win Shares to calculate it (which tends to generate smaller percentages, so Win Share Helio and VORP Helio are not comparable). Here are Oscar’s Helio scores with Cincinnati:

Yr 1: 43.7% (34 wins)
Yr 2: 37.6% (44 wins)
Yr 3: 40.8% (43 wins)
Yr 4: 40.9% (56 wins)
Yr 5: 39.1% (49 wins)
Yr 6: 40.4% (46 wins)
Yr 7: 44.4% (39 wins)
Yr 8: 33.1% (39 wins)
Yr 9: 35.5% (41 wins)
Yr 10: 32.9% (36 wins)

Well, it’s been a while since I did any Win Shares Helio, but 40% is really high from what I remember. Let’s compare Oscar’s numbers to those of another historically under-supported stud:

Yr 2: 31.4% (35 wins)
Yr 3: 33.7% (42 wins)
Yr 4: 26.1% (50 wins)
Yr 5: 35.4% (50 wins)
Yr 6: 29.9% (45 wins)

Huh. LeBron James has fairly high scores, and yet his highest Helio scores are comparable to Oscar’s worst. Of course, James had a tendency to make his teammates look better (Oscar was a distributor as well, but in that era it was less effective). What about another stud with bad support?

Yr 1: 35.4% (38 wins)
Yr 2: Out with Injury
Yr 3: 37.9% (40 wins)
Yr 4: 40.9% (50 wins)
Yr 5: 43.3% (47 wins)
Yr 6: 37.2% (55 wins)

Ahhh. That’s what we’re looking for. If you didn’t guess, those are Michael Jordan’s first six years with the Bulls. And, let’s be honest, they look *really* similar to Oscar’s peak seasons in terms of how good his team was and what share of his team’s success he was credited for. Am I saying that Oscar Robertson at his peak was as good as Jordan? It’s an argument, but not the one I’m trying to make. And I’ll be the first to admit that Win Shares is a very imperfect stat, and that in Oscar’s era they didn’t have defensive stats (not that blocks and steals are great, but they’re better than literally nothing). So take this with a grain of salt. But that Oscar’s WS Helio scores look so comparable to early Jordan scores at comparable win levels basically suggests that, as far as Win Shares is concerned, attacking Oscar for the Royals losing would have been about as fair as attacking Jordan for the Bulls losing. Except that we got to see Jordan eventually get good teammates and win. We never got to see that for Oscar . . . in Cincinnati.

As mentioned in the write-up, some semblance of pragmatic impact used well before the data-ball grades Oscar highly, primarily Thinking Basketball's WOWY studies. Unsure about the rankings, as the website is down - but:

Spoiler:

Oscar Robertson

Prime WOWYR (61-72)-8.4
Career WOWYR-8.5

Scaled WOWYR-7.8
Alt Scaled-8.4
10-year Scaled GPM (62-71)-7.7

As one further step pragmatically - relative team offenses [where over a holistic sample, the Royals crumbled in Oscar's absence] for Cincy each of Oscar's years as well as the two before his drafting:
-2.7, 0.2, (Oscar drafted ->), 3.5, 4.7, 3.5, 4.3, 4.4, 2.6, 2.3, 4.3, 4.7.

The Royals finished top three in offensive rating each year from 1961 through 1969 with a majority of #1 finishes in this time frame - primarily at Oscar's control. After being traded to Milwaukee, he fared well (for his age) in a scaled down role before injuries took final tolls on his career. That still gives Oscar 14 total years in an era which is harder for longevity to be accrued - 12 of which were played at a Weak-MVP or higher level imo. Pretty incredible stuff.

[One_and_Done]

I’d say they were pretty minor variations. Tiny was playing better, and was more recovered from his achilles, but he only made the all-star team that year because of what the Celtics were doing; which was all about the position Bird put him in. Without Bird on that team they’d have missed the playoffs and nobody would have thought Tiny was an all-star. He was one of those all-stars who makes it because of how good the team is and voters feel like “they’ve got to get enough representation on the team!”. Also, while Tiny was better it’s fair to say Cowens was worse. He too was propelled into the all-star team by Bird, yet when he left the next season the Celtics won the title anyway. Obviously the additions of Parish and a young McHale were a big part of that, but even in 1980 the Celtics were 12-4 in the games he missed. Cowens was not a needle mover either, he was given recognition because of Bird.

I don’t really give much credence to Bird’s coaches changing, because his coaches changed all the time. Basically Bird coached the team. The coaches role was to stay out of Bird’s way; which did require some competence obviously, but I don’t see coaching as significant. I don’t think Sanders was a bad coach; he coached the Celtics to 48 wins just the year before he was fired. He got fired as the scapegoat for his team lacking talent. Nor do I think his replacement, player coach Cowens, was bad. He coached the Hornets two 50 win seasons. Even if we say he wasn’t a good coach yet at age 30, and the player coach stuff was all too weird, the season was lost before he was even put in charge anyway. It seems very clear to me the issue was talent not coaching.

Without Bird that team would have missed the playoffs. Even if you think they could win 40 games, the lift required to get from 41 to 61 is so much bigger than from 21 to 41. It's not linear.

[f4p]

Scroll down just a bit, mon ami, and you'll find this retrospective on the 2018 Rockets:

yes, i remember him trying to walk it back later, but too little too late as far as i'm concerned when your initial writeup for one of the best teams ever is "james harden choked! couldn't beat vastly more talented team with best teammate injured. also, rockets not really that good if you think about it." maybe write the "oops, my formula underrated the warriors" part first.

someone had also suggested to him at one point in the project, non-rockets related, that iterating the results could help. basically until they stabilize. so you don't get the 2018 warriors as the 5th best team ever and the team that took them to 7 as a -0.3 SRS team.

so yeah, it's going to be at least a little tough to think hakeem's 1994 and 1995 rockets weren't good, or at least that their strength implies hakeem wasn't that good, based on something that says they didn't compare favorably to the 2020 boston celtics.

2020 Celtics vs 1995 Rockets in every team stat I can find:
Regular Season SRS: 5.83 > 2.32
Regular Season MoV: 6.3 > 2.1
Regular Season Healthy MoV: 7.24 (games with Tatum) > 0.9 (games with Drexler)
Regular Season Record: 48 wins > 47 wins
Regular Season Healthy Record: 56 win pace (with Tatum and Walker) > 44 win pace (with Drexler / Hakeem)
Sansterre Playoff SRS: +12.39 > 7.75
Playoff Record: won 59% games < won 68% games
Sansterre Overall SRS: 9.92 > 7.47
Overall SRS standard deviation: 1.87 > 1.50
Peak ELO: 1710 > 1665
Mean ELO: ~1640 (by eye) > 1589
Final Playoff ELO: 1692 > 1665
Overall ELO: ~1681 > 1640
Playoff cNET Rating: TBD, Thinking Basketball website is down.

Team Stats where 2020 Boston wins: 12
Team stats where 1995 Rockets win: 1.

So... where exactly are all the stats that favor 1995 Rockets over 2020 Celtics?? What stats is sansterre supposed to pull from to get such a great rating for the 1995 Rockets over the 2020 Boston Celtics?

Literally the only stat I've seen so far that favors the rockets is playoff record, where the Rockets won by 9%. Every other stat favors Boston, many by more than 9%. Would you prefer we just rate every team all time exclusively by playoff record?

Are we really so sure that the 1995 Rockets are that much better than the 2020 Celtics? There's almost no evidence for that to be the case.

if you want to tell me the 2020 celtics are better than the 1995 rockets, then i'm not sure what to say. there has to be some benefit to beating 4 straight 6 SRS teams, even if the margins aren't crazy, over just beating a good raptors team by a lot in the 2nd round. at this point, it's even less the rockets being 100th and why would the 2020 celtics be the 47th best team ever? i think this probably shows that playoff SRS could use an adjustment. it tends to get in a self-reinforcing loop. the 2016 spurs are amazing because they were a 10+ SRS team. the thunder beat them so they must be even more amazing. the warriors, already a 10+ SRS team, beat the thunder so they're even more amazing. the cavs beat the warriors so they're even more amazing. some part of this chain probably involves significant underperformance from one of the great teams as opposed to continual outperformance by the teams ranked lower at the beginning of the playoffs. the 2020 celtics get a +15 SRS for beating the post-kawhi raptors and a +8 for losing to a heat team that was +2.6 when the playoffs started, while the 1995 rockets are languishing at a +7.8 for knocking off 4 straight teams with an average 6 SRS, all on the road.

[DraymondGold]

Voting Post

Vote: Wilt Chamberlain.
Alternate: Kevin Garnettl
Nomination: Steph Curry

I've been commenting throughout much of this thread, with posts on Wilt's down years here (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107709117#p107709117) and on Wilts WOWY here (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107709162#p107709162).

Of the remaining players, I have Wilt and Curry as having the best peaks (see peak project: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100029958#p100029958), and I tend to weigh peaks highly. In other words I'd rather have a player with a slightly higher peak and slightly worse longevity than someone who was constant throughout. So this bumps Wilt and Curry up.

Wilt's prime was more inconsistent year to year than other players, but I've seen compelling arguments that at least some of this is situation-driven. And if we adjust for health just in 1965, suddenly his WOWY doesn't look so bad (better multi-year WOWY than Shaq and definitely Hakeem, though not as good as KG/Curry/Magic). In box metrics, he certainly looks the best of the remaining players.

From a team building perspective, I see him as slightly worse than some of these other players with a poor coach, but slightly better if you put a good coach and system around him. I give him a *ton* of credit for leading the GOAT level team up to that point in 1967. His fantastic ceiling raising in 67 and 72 make me confident you can build all-time teams around him.

That just leaves longevity...
An Aside on Wilt's Longevity:
The average length of a career was ~71% longer in the 2010s vs the 1960s (source: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=106874307#p106874307). I suspect a number of factors are at play: better money (like Doc mentioned), improved training, improved sports medicine, improved focus on coasting / preserving your body, improved tools, etc. Some of this change might be driven by role players, but stars also had fewer years in the nba back in the day. This kind of longevity relative to era helps Wilt bridge the gap with the other longevity players like Shaq and KG.

With Wilt, I also see that longevity as being helpful towards his overall career value. 1960 Rookie Wilt (23 years old after time with the Globetrotters) was easily one of the best rookie seasons ever. He was an MVP candidate in his first year. So it's pretty reasonable to expect that in another era, he would have more younger seasons adding to his longevity. He also had one of the best last seasons of a player ever (Thinking Basketball gave him the ~2nd best Final Season ever out of players who aged out, rather than getting injured out of the NBA). So if we time-machine him to a later era, it would not be unreasonable to expect a larger number of valuable early and late seasons. Or again, even without the time machine, if we look at his longevity *for his era*, he starts to catch up a lot more than the simple "Wilt Played 14 seasons, Shaq played 19" would suggest.

...
I plan to revisit my alternate in the next thread. Garnett has some of the best career total stats, with a fantastic top-10 level peak and arguably the best longevity of the remaining players, though it's certainly possible I may end siding with Magic/Shaq/Curry on a closer look. For now, I posted these career stats a previous post (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107696172#p107696172), but they're worth posting again to explain the Garnett vote and the Curry nomination:

Spoiler:

Approximate Career raw WOWY (prime WOWY per game x total games):
-Curry: +10.2 per game * 882 games= +8996.4 in his career (40% ahead of Hakeem)
-Oscar: +8.4 per game * 1040 games= +8736.0 in his career (36% ahead of Hakeem)
-Garnett: +5.7 per game * 1462 games = +8333.4 in his career (29% ahead of Hakeem)
-West: +7.8 per game * 932 games = +7269.6 in his career (13% ahead of Hakeem)
-Shaq: +5.5 per game * 1207 games = +6638.5 in his career (3% ahead of Hakeem)
-Hakeem: +5.2 per game * 1238 games= +6437.6. in his career
-Bird: +5.3 per game * 897 games = 4754.1 in his career
-Magic: +4.7 per game * 906 games = 4258.2 in his career
-Wilt: +1.2 per game * 1045 games = 1254 in his career *[note Wilt's prime WOWY is dominated by 1965, when he was apparently playing injured!]

Approximate Career Adjusted WOWY (average between prime WOWYR/alt-WOWYR/GPM per game * total games):
[Curry's stats unavailable]
-Garnett: +6.3 per game * 1462 games = +9210.6 in his career (35% ahead of Hakeem)
-Oscar: +8.0 per game * 1040 games= +8320.0 in his career (22% ahead of Hakeem)
-Magic: +9.0 per game * 906 games = +8154 in his career (19% ahead of Hakeem
-Shaq: +6.4 per game * 1207 games = +7724.8 in his career (13% ahead of Hakeem)
-Hakeem: +5.5 per game * 1238 games= +6809. in his career
-West: +7.3 per game * 932 games = +6803.6 in his career (equal to Hakeem)
-Wilt: +5.2 per game * 1045 games = 5434 in his career *[note Wilt's prime WOWY is dominated by 1965, when he was apparently playing injured! This likely biases WOWYR too.]
-Bird: +5.3 per game * 897 games = 4754.1 in his career *[note Bird has highest adjusted WOWYR uncertainty, likely due to WOWYR over-crediting small-sample Reggie Lewis for the Celtics success in 88-91. Bird is +7.9 WOWYR from 80-83, which is on pace for +7086.3 for his career, above Hakeem).
...

What about box stats?
Total Career VORP (Basketball Reference's Box Plus Minus over total career):
[Wilt/West/Ocar unavailable]
-Garnett: 96.86 (31% ahead of Hakeem)
-Magic: 79.97 (1% ahead of Hakeem)
-Bird: 77.24 (equal to Hakeem)
-Shaq: 75.51 (equal to Hakeem)
-Hakeem: 74.22 (equal to Hakeem)
-Curry: 65.61

Total Career Backpicks VORP N/A

Total Career Win Shares:
-Wilt: 247.26 (52% ahead of Hakeem)
-Garnett: 191.42 (18% ahead of Hakeem)
-Oscar: 189.21 (16% ahead of Hakeem)
-Shaq: 181.71 (12% ahead of Hakeem)
-Hakeem: 162.77
-West: 162.58 (equal to Hakeem)
-Magic: 155.79
-Bird: 145.83
-Curry: 128.00

...

As for the Curry nomination, see the reasoning in my previous posts on the subject. That's all for now -- not as thorough reasoning as these players deserve, but hopefully next time

[tsherkin]

I’d say they were pretty minor variations. Tiny was playing better, and was more recovered from his achilles, but he only made the all-star team that year because of what the Celtics were doing; which was all about the position Bird put him in. Without Bird on that team they’d have missed the playoffs

I am not as sure about that as you are. Washington made it in with 39 wins that year, man. I'm reasonably confident the Celtics could have eked out 11 more wins than 1979 with the changes they experienced, sans Bird.

Without Bird that team would have missed the playoffs. Even if you think they could win 40 games, the lift required to get from 41 to 61 is so much bigger than from 21 to 41. It's not linear.

I agree that Bird was the largest part of their success, but looking at the full measure of their success and writing off everything else doesn't seem sensible to me.

[OhayoKD]

Scroll down just a bit, mon ami, and you'll find this retrospective on the 2018 Rockets:

yes, i remember him trying to walk it back later, but too little too late as far as i'm concerned when your initial writeup for one of the best teams ever is "james harden choked! couldn't beat vastly more talented team with best teammate injured. also, rockets not really that good if you think about it." maybe write the "oops, my formula underrated the warriors" part first.

someone had also suggested to him at one point in the project, non-rockets related, that iterating the results could help. basically until they stabilize. so you don't get the 2018 warriors as the 5th best team ever and the team that took them to 7 as a -0.3 SRS team.

so yeah, it's going to be at least a little tough to think hakeem's 1994 and 1995 rockets weren't good, or at least that their strength implies hakeem wasn't that good, based on something that says they didn't compare favorably to the 2020 boston celtics.

2020 Celtics vs 1995 Rockets in every team stat I can find:
Regular Season SRS: 5.83 > 2.32
Regular Season MoV: 6.3 > 2.1
Regular Season Healthy MoV: 7.24 (games with Tatum) > 0.9 (games with Drexler)
Regular Season Record: 48 wins > 47 wins
Regular Season Healthy Record: 56 win pace (with Tatum and Walker) > 44 win pace (with Drexler / Hakeem)
Sansterre Playoff SRS: +12.39 > 7.75
Playoff Record: won 59% games < won 68% games
Sansterre Overall SRS: 9.92 > 7.47
Overall SRS standard deviation: 1.87 > 1.50
Peak ELO: 1710 > 1665
Mean ELO: ~1640 (by eye) > 1589
Final Playoff ELO: 1692 > 1665
Overall ELO: ~1681 > 1640
Playoff cNET Rating: TBD, Thinking Basketball website is down.

Team Stats where 2020 Boston wins: 12
Team stats where 1995 Rockets win: 1.

So... where exactly are all the stats that favor 1995 Rockets over 2020 Celtics?? What stats is sansterre supposed to pull from to get such a great rating for the 1995 Rockets over the 2020 Boston Celtics?

Literally the only stat I've seen so far that favors the rockets is playoff record, where the Rockets won by 9%. Every other stat favors Boston, many by more than 9%. Would you prefer we just rate every team all time exclusively by playoff record?

Are we really so sure that the 1995 Rockets are that much better than the 2020 Celtics? There's almost no evidence for that to be the case.

if you want to tell me the 2020 celtics are better than the 1995 rockets, then i'm not sure what to say. there has to be some benefit to beating 4 straight 6 SRS teams, even if the margins aren't crazy, over just beating a good raptors team by a lot in the 2nd round. at this point, it's even less the rockets being 100th and why would the 2020 celtics be the 47th best team ever? i think this probably shows that playoff SRS could use an adjustment. it tends to get in a self-reinforcing loop. the 2016 spurs are amazing because they were a 10+ SRS team. the thunder beat them so they must be even more amazing. the warriors, already a 10+ SRS team, beat the thunder so they're even more amazing. the cavs beat the warriors so they're even more amazing. some part of this chain probably involves significant underperformance from one of the great teams as opposed to continual outperformance by the teams ranked lower at the beginning of the playoffs. the 2020 celtics get a +15 SRS for beating the post-kawhi raptors and a +8 for losing to a heat team that was +2.6 when the playoffs started, while the 1995 rockets are languishing at a +7.8 for knocking off 4 straight teams with an average 6 SRS, all on the road.

With all this talk about injury I may as well as note that there are significant opposing injuries in every title-run. The only two exceptions I can think off going back all the way to 89 would be....

Miami Heat's run in 2012....and the Houston Rocket's run in 94. Injury is also an especially odd to fixate on if you're backing Steph when his team was a big beneficiary of opposition health in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022. Iow, every time He's won a title

[eminence]

With all this talk about injury I may as well as note that there are significant opposing injuries in every title-run. The only two exceptions I can think off going back all the way to 89 would be....

Miami Heat's run in 2012....and the Houston Rocket's run in 94. Injury is also an especially odd to fixate on if you're backing Steph when his team was a big beneficiary of opposition health in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022. Iow, every time He's won a title

2012 was the season the #1 overall seed lost the reigning MVP in the first game of the playoffs.

Can't remember off the top for '94, but I expect there was something, there always is (obviously the MJ retirement isn't not notable as well).

Anywho, I like Curry for peak/prime well enough as a comparison to anyone else being nominated (except Mikan), but don't see him having quite the longevity for me to support yet.

I expect I'll go Mikan, but am considering Oscar and maybe Dirk (haven't seen him mentioned yet, but I like his longevity and consistency).

[OhayoKD]

With all this talk about injury I may as well as note that there are significant opposing injuries in every title-run. The only two exceptions I can think off going back all the way to 89 would be....

Miami Heat's run in 2012....and the Houston Rocket's run in 94. Injury is also an especially odd to fixate on if you're backing Steph when his team was a big beneficiary of opposition health in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022. Iow, every time He's won a title

2012 was the season the #1 overall seed lost the reigning MVP in the first game of the playoffs.

Can't remember off the top for '94, but I expect there was something, there always is (obviously the MJ retirement isn't not notable as well).

Anywho, I like Curry for peak/prime well enough as a comparison to anyone else being nominated (except Mikan), but don't see him having quite the longevity for me to support yet.

I expect I'll go Mikan, but am considering Oscar and maybe Dirk (haven't seen him mentioned yet, but I like his longevity and consistency).

Was specifically looking at playoff opponents. Not sure if any team qualifies if we go that broad(maybe the 86 celtics?).

Best I can think for 94 is dereck harper returning from injury but that feels very nitpicky