Retro Player of the Year 1992-93 UPDATE — Hakeem Olajuwon

[B-Mitch 30]

I already asked this in the general discussion thread Enigma, but can you wait 6-8 hours to post the voting results? I was planning to write a detailed post using contemporary analysis books, and the one I need won't arrive until tomorrow. I have most of my post already ready, I just need the book to put the finishing touches on it.

[AEnigma]

I already asked this in the general discussion thread Enigma, but can you wait 6-8 hours to post the voting results? I was planning to write a detailed post using contemporary analysis books, and the one I need won't arrive until tomorrow. I have most of my post already ready, I just need the book to put the finishing touches on it.

So for discussion purposes I am not wholly clear on the value if it ends up being a case of you making your thorough voting post right before I close, as opposed to you making an incomplete vote before tomorrow’s deadline and then editing later.

Accordingly, you should submit what you have so I can call the thread at any point without excluding your vote. I will probably extend a few extra hours, seeing as this has been by far the most active thread of the project, but I am not going to explicitly wait just for you to perfect a vote. If you have not added the book content by early evening, you can always post it after the fact. Seem fair?

[B-Mitch 30]

I already asked this in the general discussion thread Enigma, but can you wait 6-8 hours to post the voting results? I was planning to write a detailed post using contemporary analysis books, and the one I need won't arrive until tomorrow. I have most of my post already ready, I just need the book to put the finishing touches on it.

So for discussion purposes I am not wholly clear on the value if it ends up being a case of you making your thorough voting post right before I close, as opposed to you making an incomplete vote before tomorrow’s deadline and then editing later.

Accordingly, you should submit what you have so I can call the thread at any point without excluding your vote. I will probably extend a few extra hours, seeing as this has been by far the most active thread of the project, but I am not going to explicitly wait just for you to perfect a vote. If you have not added the book content by early evening, you can always post it after the fact. Seem fair?

Perfectly fair Enigma, sorry if I annoyed you a bit about this, just want to contribute as best as I can.

[Narigo]

I find it strange that posters here vote Hakeem over Jordan for the latter having one bad series against the Knicks but are ok with voting Magic over Jordan in 1989 when Magic played one bad series against the Pistons in the finals because of injury

[AEnigma]

I find it strange that posters here vote Hakeem over Jordan for the latter having one bad series against the Knicks but are ok with voting Magic over Jordan in 1989 when Magic played one bad series against the Pistons in the finals because of injury

Pretty obvious difference between a bad series and an injured series. If Magic had actually played worse against the Pistons than Jordan did, then he would not have won, no.

[One_and_Done]

I find it strange that posters here vote Hakeem over Jordan for the latter having one bad series against the Knicks but are ok with voting Magic over Jordan in 1989 when Magic played one bad series against the Pistons in the finals because of injury

Pretty obvious difference between a bad series and an injured series. If Magic had actually played worse against the Pistons than Jordan did, then he would not have won, no.

Really? What's the difference? If you have a bad season because you were hurt, you're still bad. We weren't nominating Walton for seasons he was too hurt to be effective either.

[B-Mitch 30]

Offensive Player of the Year

1. Michael Jordan

Coming into this project, I actually thought this was MJ’s peak season. It certainly featured some of his career’s greatest highlights. He had his best year shooting three-pointers in the regular season and playoffs combined, hitting them at 36.1% on above average volume. He also had the best offensive rebounding numbers of his three-peats. While accomplishing all this, Jordan also had the worst help of championship teams, with only B.J. Armstrong, Trent Tucker, and Will Perdue scoring at above average efficiency. The effects of the NBA’s expansion were also at their least potent this year, out of all of his full 90’s seasons. The Heat had reached the playoffs the prior season, Charlotte made the playoffs, and Orlando got Shaq (the Timberwolves still stunk though). MJ had another great playoff run and the highest scoring Finals ever, though Phoenix were no longer as good on defense as they were in the last few years. The only real blemish on this season was him playing somewhat bad against the Knicks, but while Scottie outperformed him overall, Jordan clearly contributed greatly to the Bulls victory, even ignoring his 54 points in game four.

2. Charles Barkley

Despite losing quite a bit on defense by trading for Barkley while already having a great offense, and Kevin Johnson struggling with injuries, the Suns improved by 9 wins with him. Barkley also had the best assist and three-point numbers of his career, and was efficient and clutch in the playoffs, hitting a game winner over David Robinson, and nearly matching MJ’s offensive production.

3. Larry Johnson

Johnson had a great season, while overcoming a meniscus injury that happened in the offseason. The Hornets were one of the best offenses in the NBA, being 8th in eFG, 10th in turnover percentage, 16th in offensive rebounding, and 10th in free throws per field goal attempt. Only the Pacers were as well rounded, but while Reggie Miller was clearly the best player there, he didn’t contribute in all phases of the offense the way Johnson did. Johnson led the NBA in minutes, was about tied with Alonzo Mourning as the Hornets best rebounder, was 2nd on the team in assists, and averaged 22.1 points per game on great efficiency. He also improved on that efficiency in the playoffs, though his volume declined, as Charlotte beat the remnants of the Big Three Celtics and managed to win a game against the Knicks.

Defensive Player of the Year

1. Hakeem Olajuwon

Hakeem led the league in blocks this year, and guided the Rockets to one of the NBA’s best defenses, despite the best defender to help him probably being Robert Horry. Hakeem continued his dominance in the postseason, though he met his match against a loaded Sonics team.

2. Patrick Ewing

The Knicks were clearly the best defensive team this season, and Ewing led them in blocks and the NBA in defensive rebounds.

3. Derrick Coleman

However, the Knicks had one deficiency, which was committing a lot of fouls, which I believe was caused by Pat Reilly adapting the tactics of the Bad Boy Pistons. The Nets on the other hand, committed an average amount of fouls, and were in the top 11 of every other defensive stat. Coleman led the team in blocks and rebounds, while averaging over a steal per game.

Player of the Year

1. Michael Jordan

As good as Hakeem was, clearly there were things he could have done differently to beat the Sonics. Does that mean he shares most of the blame for the Rockets loss? I imagine he would say so, at the time and now, but that’s not true in an objective sense. Still, at the end of the day, MJ was able to do what he needed to do against the Knicks. I don’t think MJ should be penalized because he made it to the Conference Finals and Hakeem didn’t. Obviously Hakeem was the better defender, but despite the revisionism by some posters, most contemporary analysis says Jordan was still one of the better defensive players in the league. Rick Barry and Jordan Cohn excellent yearly stat books, The Pro Basketball Bible/Scouting Report, which used the eye test for its player evaluations as well as true shooting percentage (!) has this to say about MJ's defense in 1993:

"Plays the passing lanes as well as anybody has," asserted one analyst... Oh, he'll take shortcuts, gamble too much, rest on defense, but, hey, he's playing big minutes (39.3 mpg last season) and he plays D at all the right times... Not to mention that he led all 2s in defensive rebounds per minute."

Charles Barkley when talking about his Finals loss was also very respectful of MJ's defense (see 9:49 particularly):

Watch on YouTube

MJ was obviously not the best defender ever, and likely not the best guard defender ever, but he was clearly far from a load on that front.

2. Hakeem Olajuwon

At the same time, Hakeem still performed great in the regular season and playoffs, while clearly being the NBA’s best two-way player.

3. Charles Barkley

Barkley has arguably his best season and a great postseason run, coming closer than any Western team to beat MJ.

4. Patrick Ewing

Ewing had probably the best playoff run of his career and a very good season in general offensively and defensively. I don’t think he had the same impact Barkley did in improving the Suns by 9 wins however.

5. Derrick Coleman

In addition to his defense, Coleman scored 20 points per game on decent efficiency, and improved greatly in the playoffs, taking a still excellent Cavs squad to five games out of five.

[One_and_Done]

When you brought up LJ, I almost replied 'you might as well vote for Derrick Coleman then', but it seemed too outlandish. Derrick Coleman over prime D.Rob, K.Malone and Scottie Pippen? Really? How could Coleman be better on D than D.Rob? How could he be better than Pippen? He's not even better than Zo. I doubt Coleman was even a top 10 defensive player any year of his career.

[AEnigma]

I find it strange that posters here vote Hakeem over Jordan for the latter having one bad series against the Knicks but are ok with voting Magic over Jordan in 1989 when Magic played one bad series against the Pistons in the finals because of injury

Pretty obvious difference between a bad series and an injured series. If Magic had actually played worse against the Pistons than Jordan did, then he would not have won, no.

Really? What's the difference? If you have a bad season because you were hurt, you're still bad. We weren't nominating Walton for seasons he was too hurt to be effective either.

One is bad luck; the other is bad play. And in 1989, Magic was the one playing later than Jordan. Your standard is how we had a 2010 project which felt Magic was “better” in 1990 losing to the Suns in the second round than he was in 1989 when he swept them to go to the Finals.

As for Walton, he came in second in 1978, with five of eleven first place votes, eight of eleven top two votes, and nine of ten other votes listing him higher than you did.

[OhayoKD]

I’d be careful assuming the sample “transparently misses three of [Magic’s] best years.” It seems quite clear that the multi-year data includes more data than what Squared has posted on his website for individual seasons. Most obviously, the most recent multi-year data was posted specifically mentioning that “[m]ore 1986-87 data” was being added. There is no specific page for 1986-87 RAPM on Squared’s website, so obviously that’s an example of data that’s in the multi-year data but isn’t independently posted on Squared’s website. And that’s a particularly notable example here, since 1986-87 is surely a year you’re including as one of Magic’s best years that Squared purportedly has “transparently misse[d].” I doubt there’s a lot there for Magic, since Squared said he only logged about 100 games from 1986-87, but it is likely that the sample does actually include some additional Magic data from at least 1986-87 (and possibly other years).

I’ll also note that it’d be nice if we could ask Squared about exactly what is in this multi-year data and not on the website (and potentially ask that individual-season stuff be put on the website), but that is now impossible for reasons you should be well aware of.

We all would be thankful if you didnt involve someone's terrible illness as part of a basketball discussion

I’m not even entirely sure *exactly* what you’re referring to here, to be honest. Perhaps you’re not actually aware of this, but as I recall, the reason Squared doesn’t post here is because he decided to stop posting here as a result of an acrimonious discussion with AEnigma (and eventually others, I believe, but I can’t recall exactly who)

It was a result of squared after correctly being told that saying Jordan was an average shooter was false, falsely reported that enigma said he wanted him to die.

After which, you and a bunch of like-minded people decided to attack enigma...

[One_and_Done]

Pretty obvious difference between a bad series and an injured series. If Magic had actually played worse against the Pistons than Jordan did, then he would not have won, no.

Really? What's the difference? If you have a bad season because you were hurt, you're still bad. We weren't nominating Walton for seasons he was too hurt to be effective either.

One is bad luck; the other is bad play. And in 1989, Magic was the one playing later than Jordan. Your standard is how we had a 2010 project which felt Magic was “better” in 1990 losing to the Suns in the second round than he was in 1989 when he swept them to go to the Finals.

As for Walton, he came in second in 1978, with five of eleven first place votes, eight of eleven top two votes, and nine of ten other votes listing him higher than you did.

Len Bias dying of cocaine was bad luck too, but he doesn't get credit for games he never played. The reason you missed the games, or were ineffective in them, strikes me as irrelevant.

It's impossible to distinguish luck from bad play anyway. Maybe when someone played bad they were just unlucky. We should rate guys off what they actually did. Period.

[OhayoKD]

I find it strange that posters here vote Hakeem over Jordan for the latter having one bad series against the Knicks but are ok with voting Magic over Jordan in 1989 when Magic played one bad series against the Pistons in the finals because of injury

It's just not equivalent.

1989 -> voter consensus was that Magic was better than Jordan through the rs and 3 rounds
1993 -> voter consensus is that Hakeem was better than Jordan through the rs and 2 rounds

To those voters, you are basically saying they should reward a player they thought played worse on the assumption Jordan would not have gotten hurt as well.

Hakeem isn't being voted over Jordan for the Knicks series, he's being voted for being better and the Knicks series. If people thought hakeem vs jordan was a tie outside of the knicks series, jordan would probably be their POY

[OhayoKD]

Really? What's the difference? If you have a bad season because you were hurt, you're still bad. We weren't nominating Walton for seasons he was too hurt to be effective either.

One is bad luck; the other is bad play. And in 1989, Magic was the one playing later than Jordan. Your standard is how we had a 2010 project which felt Magic was “better” in 1990 losing to the Suns in the second round than he was in 1989 when he swept them to go to the Finals.

As for Walton, he came in second in 1978, with five of eleven first place votes, eight of eleven top two votes, and nine of ten other votes listing him higher than you did.

Len Bias dying of cocaine was bad luck too, but he doesn't get credit for games he never played. The reason you missed the games, or were ineffective in them, strikes me as irrelevant.

It's impossible to distinguish luck from bad play anyway. Maybe when someone played bad they were just unlucky. We should rate guys off what they actually did. Period.

rating guys off what they did =/ rating jordan higher off what he didn't do lol

[One_and_Done]

One is bad luck; the other is bad play. And in 1989, Magic was the one playing later than Jordan. Your standard is how we had a 2010 project which felt Magic was “better” in 1990 losing to the Suns in the second round than he was in 1989 when he swept them to go to the Finals.

As for Walton, he came in second in 1978, with five of eleven first place votes, eight of eleven top two votes, and nine of ten other votes listing him higher than you did.

Len Bias dying of cocaine was bad luck too, but he doesn't get credit for games he never played. The reason you missed the games, or were ineffective in them, strikes me as irrelevant.

It's impossible to distinguish luck from bad play anyway. Maybe when someone played bad they were just unlucky. We should rate guys off what they actually did. Period.

rating guys off what they did =/ rating jordan higher off what he didn't do lol

No? I'm rating Jordan off his holistic performance in the playoffs, which was great. I'm doing the same for Hakeem, and for 1989 Magic.

[OhayoKD]

Len Bias dying of cocaine was bad luck too, but he doesn't get credit for games he never played. The reason you missed the games, or were ineffective in them, strikes me as irrelevant.

It's impossible to distinguish luck from bad play anyway. Maybe when someone played bad they were just unlucky. We should rate guys off what they actually did. Period.

rating guys off what they did =/ rating jordan higher off what he didn't do lol

No? I'm rating Jordan off his holistic performance in the playoffs, which was great. I'm doing the same for Hakeem, and for 1989 Magic.

No you're asking us to reward MJ for not getting injured in a series he didn't play in

[One_and_Done]

rating guys off what they did =/ rating jordan higher off what he didn't do lol

No? I'm rating Jordan off his holistic performance in the playoffs, which was great. I'm doing the same for Hakeem, and for 1989 Magic.

No you're asking us to reward MJ for not getting injured in a series he didn't play in

No, I'm saying we can't reward guys for playing badly (or not playing at all) by saying 'well, they were hurt'. Hurt or not, the player still didn't play well.

[70sFan]

This is a very reasonable and tempered post.

Thank you, I always appreciate your contribution as well

The only thing I'll say is that I think it's unfair to say that Jordan just wasn't good against the Knicks. He put up 32.2/6.2/7.0 on +1.8 rTS and had a very low 2.3 turnovers per game. I feel like if he missed fewer shot in each game but committed one more turnover instead, people would be a lot higher on the series because everyone factors in scoring efficiency but not turnovers into offensive efficiency. Even if we go game-by-game, he had an insanely good Game 4 and a very good Game 5 so it wasn't all bad.

He indeed had insanely good G4, G5 isn't bad but that's just 2 out of 6 games. Without games 4 and 5, he averaged 27.5/5.3/6.5 on 45.5 TS% with 1.8 tov. Of course excluding the best games from the average is not fair, but I would call all these 4 games massive underperformances for him.

It's also very important to remember that Jordan had one of the worst games of his career in game 3, which was critical for the series. Had the Bulls not step up, the series would be over and even his heroic G4 performance wouldn't have changed anything.

Good point about low turnovers by the way - it's true that people often forget about it. I don't think it changes my evaluation of the series, but it does make it a little "less bad" than it looks in the first place.

I see this series by Jordan in a similar light to Kareem's series in the 1972 WCF. Not very good but not terrible efficiency at all (still +rTS) and still a very good performance.

I don't think the analogy is perfect because:

1. Kareem had a monstrous defensive series, Jordan wasn't close him in that regard.
2. Kareem's averages weren't inflated by one game.
3. Kareem didn't have much help in the series, while Jordan's supporting cast played fantastic.

[AEnigma]

Really? What's the difference? If you have a bad season because you were hurt, you're still bad. We weren't nominating Walton for seasons he was too hurt to be effective either.

One is bad luck; the other is bad play. And in 1989, Magic was the one playing later than Jordan. Your standard is how we had a 2010 project which felt Magic was “better” in 1990 losing to the Suns in the second round than he was in 1989 when he swept them to go to the Finals.

As for Walton, he came in second in 1978, with five of eleven first place votes, eight of eleven top two votes, and nine of ten other votes listing him higher than you did.

Len Bias dying of cocaine was bad luck too, but he doesn't get credit for games he never played. The reason you missed the games, or were ineffective in them, strikes me as irrelevant.

It's impossible to distinguish luck from bad play anyway. Maybe when someone played bad they were just unlucky. We should rate guys off what they actually did. Period.

Rating off what they actually did is exactly what happened. No one credited Magic or Walton for games never played.

As always, I encourage you to read what others write before whining about how their votes do not match yours.

[Narigo]

I find it strange that posters here vote Hakeem over Jordan for the latter having one bad series against the Knicks but are ok with voting Magic over Jordan in 1989 when Magic played one bad series against the Pistons in the finals because of injury

It's just not equivalent.

1989 -> voter consensus was that Magic was better than Jordan through the rs and 3 rounds
1993 -> voter consensus is that Hakeem was better than Jordan through the rs and 2 rounds

To those voters, you are basically saying they should reward a player they thought played worse on the assumption Jordan would not have gotten hurt as well.

Hakeem isn't being voted over Jordan for the Knicks series, he's being voted for being better and the Knicks series. If people thought hakeem vs jordan was a tie outside of the knicks series, jordan would probably be their POY

But Magic wasnt better than Jordan in the first three rounds of the playoffs either. Magic didn't play that great against Seattle where he averaged 15ppg on 40%FG

[AEnigma]

Interesting choice to focus on field goal percentage rather than true shooting (and for a player who drives offence primarily through his passing…), in what was a pretty comfortable 4-0 sweep (with only Game 4 being at legitimate risk of a loss).