2010-11 Player of the Year thread

Post #121 » by **Doctor MJ** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:07 pm

nonemus wrote:True, the context definitely has to be taken into consideration. I was alluding to the argument that a player "plays for the stats" or "puts up useless stats" when his team loses. (IE, think Kevin Love this year. Most fans think that he put up useless stats)

True, and good example. People have been talking about Love's "empty numbers" pretty much from the beginning, and as someone who watched him a ton in college doing all the right things with high BBIQ, it's very frustrating.

Was even more frustrating before this year when I'd hear Love's emptiness contrasted with OJ Mayo as someone who really helped teams win. While I was watching Love help UCLA to elite status, I was also watching Mayo not make USC even an inch better as he came in and literally jacked up twice as many shots as any of his teammates. Thankfully, at least now Mayo's been exposed, so we're half way there.

ElGee · Post #122 » by **ElGee** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:10 pm

alucryts wrote:and under my definition, your line of assuming the numbers dwight puts up state his actual ability and impact on offense is incorrect. if all superstars were given dwights defensive attention, i dont think dwight would stick out as much. i mean, nearly all of dwights case is rooted in the regular season where flat out there are teams that are trying to lose, players are coasting, and other tertiary motives for not playing up to potential. on top of that like i stated defenses are literally giving dwight whatever he wants at times. when i take that all into consideration, his true impact is less than what the stats say. his stats to me are earned on an unfair playing field with respect to the rest of the poy candidates/super stars and stats will not show that. stats assume dwight's first round 1v1 attention is the same as rose's first round mega blitz attention on defense. simply watching the games can tell you one person is working a helllllll of a lot harder than the other for the same exact stat categories. its cases like this that hurt statistics power in my definition; its the lowry=rose syndrome in a sense.

I have no problem with outlying opinions. This just seems to be an unnecessary exercise in broken logic. What exactly is your definition of POY that leads you to drop Howard to the pack of the leader's pack based on the playoffs?

You say that you weigh playoffs heavily -- the dude just KILLED it in his only series. Is your criteria that you have to be on a team good enough to go deep into the playoffs AND play well? I really don't follow you here.

And I don't know what you mean by "Empty Stats." When he was on the court, his team scored more points than Atlanta. His teammates shot the ball horribly, in particular on open shots that they normally make. http://www.backpicks.com/2011/05/05/ana ... -shooting/

Atlanta shot the ball well. The team lost -- that's what happens. I don't see how that changes the possessions Dwight Howard played. Perhaps you could explain it because it's not clear from your posts...

Gongxi · Post #123 » by **Gongxi** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:15 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:2. Derrick Rose (2)

Started off the playoffs slow with some nagging injuries. He’s looking quite solid now. It’s also interesting that there was so much stat community negativity toward the guy during the season, meanwhile he keeps showing more as the season goes along. Doesn’t mean they were wrong by any means, but if Rose truly does emerge as a guy challenging for the top spot in advanced statistical metrics in the near future, I can just hear the frustration among the statistically minded.

Bucher: “So you admit you were wrong now?”

Stat guy: “No, YOU were wrong, but now you’re right. It’s a complete coincidence.”,

Bucher: “Whatever you want to tell yourself, I could have told you he’d do this because I watch the games.”

Stat guy: “Gah! That statement doesn’t even mean anything!” <Head explodes>

That's exactly how I feel. While I was arguing against him being the MVP in one thread last month, I was arguing for him comparing favorably to Wade since the beginning of March in another, simply because he got so much better as the season progressed.

Doctor MJ wrote:Worth chiming in on Dirk:

Dude was my MVP for most of the year. He fell back when he got injured, rose back up to #1, and then fell back again as his team slipped (which made it impossible to ignore how much his injury hurt the Mavs' final results.

With the way he's been playing in the post-season, he has an excellent shot to rise to #1 on my list after this round. I really don't think people appreciate how much more resilient he is now that he was 5 years ago. After notoriously disappointing in the first two playoffs people seriously started looking at him as a superstar, this is now the 4th playoff in a row where he's improved significantly over his regular season form, and the 3rd straight year that his PER has improved by more than 5 points come playoff time. I don't know if that's ever been done before.

I've been harsh on people propping Dirk up simply because the Mavs are one of the final four, but as I said in my initial post here, he missed out on the top 5 only because of his games missed. But as he goes on, not only do those missed games represent a smaller and smaller percentage of his whole season, but he's playing better and better.

mysticbb · Post #124 » by **mysticbb** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:21 pm

ElGee wrote:I have no problem with outlying opinions. This just seems to be an unnecessary exercise in broken logic. What exactly is your definition of POY that leads you to drop Howard to the pack of the leader's pack based on the playoffs?

You say that you weigh playoffs heavily -- the dude just KILLED it in his only series. Is your criteria that you have to be on a team good enough to go deep into the playoffs AND play well? I really don't follow you here.

Exactly. I read the posts twice and I couldn't find any clear definition. It is hard to argue against a certain opinion, if I have no idea what it is based on.

ElGee wrote:And I don't know what you mean by "Empty Stats."

If I understood that line correctly, he meant "inflated stats", but in that specific case only his scoring efficiency. Well, if Howard would have made his free throws in the regular season as accurate as during the post season, his TS% would have been at 64.4 for the regular season. So, overall we are getting an inflated TS% by 3.3 percentage points. Is that what you meant with "inflated stats", alucryts?

Gongxi · Post #125 » by **Gongxi** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:23 pm

ElGee wrote:You say that you weigh playoffs heavily -- the dude just KILLED it in his only series. Is your criteria that you have to be on a team good enough to go deep into the playoffs AND play well? I really don't follow you here.

This seems to be the criteria, and that's what's so disturbing to me. It's supposed to be an individual award and while a lot of people incorporate the team into more than I would like, arguably it's honestly by accident- this seems to be blatant, non-apologetic, and severe about it: if your teammates aren't second round of the playoffs good (ie, top 8, top ~25% of the league) don't expect to get a top 5 player vote. I can easily see that logic extending into the top 2 (you better have gotten to the conference finals if you want in that conversation) and top position (if you didn't win the championship, you won't be remembered 10 years down the road, and thus aren't the #1 player).

Dangerous precedent.

colts18 · Post #126 » by **colts18** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:32 pm

Doctor MJ wrote:
nonemus wrote:True, the context definitely has to be taken into consideration. I was alluding to the argument that a player "plays for the stats" or "puts up useless stats" when his team loses. (IE, think Kevin Love this year. Most fans think that he put up useless stats)

True, and good example. People have been talking about Love's "empty numbers" pretty much from the beginning, and as someone who watched him a ton in college doing all the right things with high BBIQ, it's very frustrating.

Was even more frustrating before this year when I'd hear Love's emptiness contrasted with OJ Mayo as someone who really helped teams win. While I was watching Love help UCLA to elite status, I was also watching Mayo not make USC even an inch better as he came in and literally jacked up twice as many shots as any of his teammates. Thankfully, at least now Mayo's been exposed, so we're half way there.

The T-Wolves went 0-9 in the games Love didn't play. If Love could play defense, I would put him in my top 5 for this year.

mysticbb · Post #127 » by **mysticbb** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:51 pm

Gongxi wrote:I've been harsh on people propping Dirk up simply because the Mavs are one of the final four, but as I said in my initial post here, he missed out on the top 5 only because of his games missed. But as he goes on, not only do those missed games represent a smaller and smaller percentage of his whole season, but he's playing better and better.

That's something I don't really get. Because which effect did Nowitzki's missed games had in the end? The Mavericks lost the 2nd seed to the Lakers. That's all what happened. Nowitzki still had more wins in those less games than a guy like Kevin Durant who also missed games. The difference is 5 games overall. Durant ended up with 52-26 during his 78 games, the Thunder were 3-1 in his missed games. So, because the Thunder didn't lose when Durant was out, it gives Durant the push over Nowitzki who ended up with a 55-18 record while his team went 2-7 without him?

Nowitzki had basically the same boxscore stats and destroys Durant in terms of +/- based stats during the regular season. I would argue that Nowitzki played better in the time he played than Durant and the missed games didn't cost the team anything in comparison to Durant, thus Nowitzki should be placed ahead of Durant after the regular season.

A similar thing I would point out for Bryant. You have him on the 4th place, and the only way I can see that happening is, if we somehow ignore Bryant's defensive failures in that season and purely focussing on the offensive output in limited minutes. Again, I argue that Nowitzki played better than Bryant during the regular season despite having to deal with a knee injury and a shoulder injury.

http://bkref.com/tiny/Llh7C

Nowitzki even beats out Bryant in terms of overall WS. That's an amazing thing considering the 9 games more Bryant played in. Nowitzki is rather equal in terms of boxscore metrics to both players. If we look at Synergy Sports stats and +/- based metrics he is the statistically speaking better player.

Code: Select all

Name     OPPP (rank) DPPP (rank)  APM  Net+/- RAPM
Nowitzki 1.10 (12)   0.82 (70)   +12.5 +16.2  +6.4
Durant   1.05 (37)   0.85 (117)   +4.9  -0.3  +2.8
Bryant   0.97 (118)  0.89 (216)   -8.5  +4.4  +1.0

OPPP = offensive points per play, DPPP = defensive points per play, both according to Synergy Sports. APM and Net+/- according to basketballvalue.com and RAPM according to Engelmann.
Do you really want to argue that Nowitzki should get punished so much that he ends up behind those two players? The only way I can see an argument for Bryant and Durant over Nowitzki works, is if you think Bryant and Durant brought some completely unmeasurable things to the table or you are completely overvalueing the missed games here.

nonemus · Post #128 » by **nonemus** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:55 pm

mysticbb wrote:
ElGee wrote:I have no problem with outlying opinions. This just seems to be an unnecessary exercise in broken logic. What exactly is your definition of POY that leads you to drop Howard to the pack of the leader's pack based on the playoffs?

You say that you weigh playoffs heavily -- the dude just KILLED it in his only series. Is your criteria that you have to be on a team good enough to go deep into the playoffs AND play well? I really don't follow you here.

Exactly. I read the posts twice and I couldn't find any clear definition. It is hard to argue against a certain opinion, if I have no idea what it is based on.

ElGee wrote:And I don't know what you mean by "Empty Stats."

If I understood that line correctly, he meant "inflated stats", but in that specific case only his scoring efficiency. Well, if Howard would have made his free throws in the regular season as accurate as during the post season, his TS% would have been at 64.4 for the regular season. So, overall we are getting an inflated TS% by 3.3 percentage points. Is that what you meant with "inflated stats", alucryts?

His whole "inflated" argument in a nutshell (alucryts, you can correct me) is this: The Hawks suck defensively, no wonder he put up beastly numbers. "Empty" stats because he put up the stats and his team lost...

Post #129 » by **Doctor MJ** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:57 pm

colts18 wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
nonemus wrote:True, the context definitely has to be taken into consideration. I was alluding to the argument that a player "plays for the stats" or "puts up useless stats" when his team loses. (IE, think Kevin Love this year. Most fans think that he put up useless stats)

True, and good example. People have been talking about Love's "empty numbers" pretty much from the beginning, and as someone who watched him a ton in college doing all the right things with high BBIQ, it's very frustrating.

Was even more frustrating before this year when I'd hear Love's emptiness contrasted with OJ Mayo as someone who really helped teams win. While I was watching Love help UCLA to elite status, I was also watching Mayo not make USC even an inch better as he came in and literally jacked up twice as many shots as any of his teammates. Thankfully, at least now Mayo's been exposed, so we're half way there.

The T-Wolves went 0-9 in the games Love didn't play. If Love could play defense, I would put him in my top 5 for this year.

Happy to see the solidarity...but I wouldn't go quite that far.

While I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with Love's approach, I do think that the Timberwolves are a complete and utter mess that indirectly means that Love's stats are inflated to some degree. Consider:

-Minny played at the fastest pace in the league last year, which inflates stats.
-Minny's offense was horrendous last year which meant the number of offensive rebounding opportunities was even greater.
-Love's rebounding is even more impressive on defense than on offense...which is disturbing considering that pretty much all of us agree that Love isn't having a great net impact on defense.

All of this means that while Love's fundamental are strong, when Love actually plays on a well constructed team his stats may indeed not look quite as WTF as they do now because of subtle shifts in role. For example, Love may have to put more focus on actual man defense which could take away from his rebounds.

mysticbb · Post #130 » by **mysticbb** » Wed May 18, 2011 10:05 pm

nonemus wrote:His whole "inflated" argument in a nutshell (alucryts, you can correct me) is this: The Hawks suck defensively, no wonder he put up beastly numbers. "Empty" stats because he put up the stats and his team lost...

The interesting thing is that Howard basically had the same stats as during the regular season. He played more minutes and ended up with a higher TS%, which was caused to a great deal by his better free throw shooting. His TRB% was bascially the same, his PER was the same, his WS/48 was the same. The beastly thing was his minutes played.

Additional to that we should keep in mind that the Hawks played the Magic incredible well during the regular season. And even if we include the HCA for the Magic, we are ending up with bascially a tie for those teams. And the Hawks sucked so much that the much better Bulls team needed 6 games to advance.

We have to evaluate why a team is losing despite a great performance by the star player. If a player has great boxscore metrics while his +/- stats are weak, there might be something fishy about it. We can look at different angles, we have to evaluate his offensive impact and defensive impact to really come to an objective conclusion about the player's overall impact. And for me Howard had a BIGGER impact than his boxscore based numbers are implicating, just due to the fact the boxscore is in favor of the offense. Howard can back the claim of his defensive impact up with solid statistical methods. I'm not quite sure, but somehow I can't see how someone can claim that Howard's stats are inflated or could give a misleading view here.

Gongxi · Post #131 » by **Gongxi** » Wed May 18, 2011 10:19 pm

mysticbb wrote:
Gongxi wrote:I've been harsh on people propping Dirk up simply because the Mavs are one of the final four, but as I said in my initial post here, he missed out on the top 5 only because of his games missed. But as he goes on, not only do those missed games represent a smaller and smaller percentage of his whole season, but he's playing better and better.

That's something I don't really get. Because which effect did Nowitzki's missed games had in the end? The Mavericks lost the 2nd seed to the Lakers. That's all what happened. Nowitzki still had more wins in those less games than a guy like Kevin Durant who also missed games. The difference is 5 games overall. Durant ended up with 52-26 during his 78 games, the Thunder were 3-1 in his missed games. So, because the Thunder didn't lose when Durant was out, it gives Durant the push over Nowitzki who ended up with a 55-18 record while his team went 2-7 without him?

I'm not looking at their teams. I'm just saying if we look at the season retroactively, basing the top 5 on who we would pick to build a team around for the 2010-2011 season, as of the end of the first round, I'd have rather have 83 games of Durant than I would want 78 games of Nowitzki. Or 88 games of Kobe than 78 games of Nowitzki.

I'd hope this notional team I'm notionally creating could overcome those missing games from DIRK, but I'm not going to risk it, and whether the real life Mavs or Thunder did or did not doesn't really matter to me. All I'm looking at is "Was X's production in fewer games 'better' enough to justify taking Y for more games?" Through the first round, X was Nowitzki and the answer for me was no.

As the amount of games missed becomes smaller and smaller (as a percentage), the answer to that question changes*. At the end of the regular season, Dirk had missed ~11% of the season. At the end of the first round, counting playoff games double, he missed 9.5% of the season. At the end of the second round, he missed ~9% of the season. So far, he's now missed only ~8.5% of the season. Even if this series only goes three more games, he'll have mitigated his time lost down from 11% to at least 8%. It's possible that that can go down just ~6.5%. For comparison's sake, Durant has to this point only missed 3.7% of his team's game this year.

*The answer also obviously can change simply because DIRK! can actually step up his game. Which we've seen happen, which is the bigger part of this equation anyway. I was just talking specifically about the missed game thing being important and then becoming less important as playoff runs go deeper.

nonemus · Post #132 » by **nonemus** » Wed May 18, 2011 10:29 pm

Ahonui has literally single-handedly changed RGM culture with the whole "DIRK" thing. Major props to him :lol:

ronnymac2 · Post #133 » by **ronnymac2** » Wed May 18, 2011 10:47 pm

mysticbb wrote:
Gongxi wrote:I've been harsh on people propping Dirk up simply because the Mavs are one of the final four, but as I said in my initial post here, he missed out on the top 5 only because of his games missed. But as he goes on, not only do those missed games represent a smaller and smaller percentage of his whole season, but he's playing better and better.

That's something I don't really get. Because which effect did Nowitzki's missed games had in the end? The Mavericks lost the 2nd seed to the Lakers. That's all what happened. Nowitzki still had more wins in those less games than a guy like Kevin Durant who also missed games. The difference is 5 games overall. Durant ended up with 52-26 during his 78 games, the Thunder were 3-1 in his missed games. So, because the Thunder didn't lose when Durant was out, it gives Durant the push over Nowitzki who ended up with a 55-18 record while his team went 2-7 without him?

Definitely agree here. I was critical of Dirk before, but games missed isn't why. Unless he suffers a season ending injury sometime in these playoffs, injury shouldn't count against him this season. I don't give a **** about 10 regular season games. Nowitzki has shown up in the playoffs, played well individually, and played in every game. That's all I ask from my superstar.

Nowitzki's really looking good for fourth for me right now. Hell, he may even move up another spot based on the small boost I give for accolades if the Mavs win the title with Dirk as Finals MVP. Not sure about that though.

Post #134 » by **alucryts** » Wed May 18, 2011 11:36 pm

nonemus wrote:His whole "inflated" argument in a nutshell (alucryts, you can correct me) is this: The Hawks suck defensively, no wonder he put up beastly numbers. "Empty" stats because he put up the stats and his team lost...

its not they sucked, did you guys forget the way the hawks played howard? they played him 1v1 and stayed at home on the shooters. they took the mentality that no matter how crazy howard goes, theres no way hes outscoring the entire hawks team; they literally let him have whatever he wants that he could get simply being played 1v1 and he killed everyone put on him. it just happened to be that the magic have literally no one that could score or take advantage of the hawks defense outside of howard and the defense the hawks employed ended up working. howard was forced to shootshootshootshootshoot because everytime him going 1v1 was the best option on the floor every time down. he KILLED it too, but the makeup of the magic made it so him doing that was exactly what the hawks wanted. their defense was designed to let him kill them with god like stats but completely demolish the rest of his team. it worked perfectly and the magic folded outside of howard.

my point is if he had a good team around him and not a bunch of spot up shooters, teams would not be able to play him straight up 1v1 with no help other than to foul him and send him to the line. he would be facing a double team in the post and be forced to give it up; his stats would come back down to earth as the offense was spread around to multiple people.

the bulls did this as well multiple times this season. that is why i say his stats were inflated. he was operating against a designed to be vanilla defense to him only.

Post #135 » by **Doctor MJ** » Thu May 19, 2011 4:08 am

alucryts wrote:its not they sucked, did you guys forget the way the hawks played howard? they played him 1v1 and stayed at home on the shooters. they took the mentality that no matter how crazy howard goes, theres no way hes outscoring the entire hawks team; they literally let him have whatever he wants that he could get simply being played 1v1 and he killed everyone put on him.

This is indeed something important to always consider whenever you see someone put up big numbers in a series loss.

Post #136 » by **alucryts** » Thu May 19, 2011 4:21 am

i dont like reacting to single games (im holding off on dirks huge night until a few games later to see how he builds off of it for one), but if rose doesnt turn this thing around in miami in game 3 and have a good game, he is going to take on a lead weight in my rankings. he cannot have a negative trend here and if he does his standing is going to take a sledge hammer.

fallacy · Post #137 » by **fallacy** » Thu May 19, 2011 4:38 am

UPDATED:

Disregarding the regular season, just going by the playoffs

1. Dirk
2. Durant
3. Lebron
4. Rose
5. Wade

PS. Wade has been better statistically but I put Rose ahead of him just because Rose is all the bulls have, but I have no problem having Wade ahead of Rose

Including Regular season

1. Lebron
2. Howard
3. Wade
4. Dirk
5. Durant
6. Rose

ElGee · Post #138 » by **ElGee** » Thu May 19, 2011 5:39 am

Doctor MJ wrote:
alucryts wrote:its not they sucked, did you guys forget the way the hawks played howard? they played him 1v1 and stayed at home on the shooters. they took the mentality that no matter how crazy howard goes, theres no way hes outscoring the entire hawks team; they literally let him have whatever he wants that he could get simply being played 1v1 and he killed everyone put on him.

This is indeed something important to always consider whenever you see someone put up big numbers in a series loss.

I don't get this though. We're supposed to penalize a player because he has a weak team and he plays really well against lesser coverage? I don't get it.

Take 40 possessions in the post:

Scenario A: Team doubles frequently. Howard Draws 10 fouls. Creates 10 shots. Shoots 20 shots (TS attempts). Scores about 23 points.

Scenario B: No doubles. Draws 15 fouls. Creates 5 shots. Shoots 20 shots (TS attempts). Score 27 points.

We're supposed to say that because the defense chose an optimal team strategy that exposes Howard's weak teammates -- something other teams should possibly employ in the RS if they had the personnel -- that he should be penalized for Scenario B???

What else can a basketball player do on offense when team's don't double or triple him? (Realizing that he still got the team into the bonus constantly and draws slightly more attention than the average big because he's a good weapon.) Looks to me like he's upping his performance in scenario B...why are we assuming it's bad if a player torches another team with one-on-one coverage??

Post #139 » by **alucryts** » Thu May 19, 2011 6:21 am

ElGee wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
alucryts wrote:its not they sucked, did you guys forget the way the hawks played howard? they played him 1v1 and stayed at home on the shooters. they took the mentality that no matter how crazy howard goes, theres no way hes outscoring the entire hawks team; they literally let him have whatever he wants that he could get simply being played 1v1 and he killed everyone put on him.

This is indeed something important to always consider whenever you see someone put up big numbers in a series loss.

I don't get this though. We're supposed to penalize a player because he has a weak team and he plays really well against lesser coverage? I don't get it.

Take 40 possessions in the post:

Scenario A: Team doubles frequently. Howard Draws 10 fouls. Creates 10 shots. Shoots 20 shots (TS attempts). Scores about 23 points.

Scenario B: No doubles. Draws 15 fouls. Creates 5 shots. Shoots 20 shots (TS attempts). Score 27 points.

We're supposed to say that because the defense chose an optimal team strategy that exposes Howard's weak teammates -- something other teams should possibly employ in the RS if they had the personnel -- that he should be penalized for Scenario B???

What else can a basketball player do on offense when team's don't double or triple him? (Realizing that he still got the team into the bonus constantly and draws slightly more attention than the average big because he's a good weapon.) Looks to me like he's upping his performance in scenario B...why are we assuming it's bad if a player torches another team with one-on-one coverage??

its not penalizing him per say, its just giving him what i perceive as his real impact not what he did vs the hawks. dwight at 70% ts% on those numbers is not what i think dwight could normally do ever

Post #140 » by **Doctor MJ** » Thu May 19, 2011 6:38 am

alucryts wrote:its not penalizing him per say, its just giving him what i perceive as his real impact not what he did vs the hawks. dwight at 70% ts% on those numbers is not what i think dwight could normally do ever

Right, it shouldn't be approached as a penalization, but rather as a "whoa, let's not get too carried away based off one unsuccessful series".