Laimbeer wrote:@dzra
Bill Russell - I won't let the stat geeks off the hook that easily on Russ/Wilt. From your post, it sounds like you constructed a line of logic to make the statistics support Russell. He had good stats on D, and the Celts relied on their D, etc. It seems you retroactively built the statistics case in a way that would support the conclusion Russell was better.
When taken at face value, virtually any traditional or advanced stat favors Wilt. But Russell is largely considered the better, or at least greater in a winning sense, player. The numbers don't capture it.
I'm not sure if you skimmed my last post and thus didn't get my gist, or if I just didn't do a good job writing it. But whatever happened, you just did exactly what I spent a book-like post explaining was incorrect. You say that "advanced stats" or "the numbers" would say that Wilt was better than Russell, but that's not true. The more accurate statement is that the "BOX SCORE advanced stats" or "the BOX SCORE numbers" say that Wilt was better than Russell. But the entire point of my previous post was that the +/- stats aren't just another example of a box score stat like PER...instead, the +/- stats are the evolution of stats that would try to capture impact. And those so-called "impact stats" DO show Russell's value with respect to Wilt, even without any prior knowledge of who won the championships.
During the RPoY project, several posters combed through all of the available information from that time period and demonstrated quantitatively that the Celtics' defense was by-FAR the most dominant unit (offense or defense) from any team in that era, and that this defensive dominance could be traced directly to Russell's presence. Meanwhile, when Wilt changed to or from several teams, even in his prime, their overall records and scoring margins didn't change that much. In essence, these two methods are cave-man versions of the +/- info that is available on current players. So you see, THESE numbers DO capture Russell's bigger impact with respect to Wilt in a way that is completely outside of the box scores AND is completely outside of who won the rings. It's an entirely separate branch of analysis, and my point that you seemed to miss before is that the first step in understanding +/- stats is recognizing that it IS its own unique way of analyzing and not just a branch of something we've seen before.
Laimbeer wrote:Oscar Robertson - The advanced stats show his offensive impact was great. Whoever argued against that? The rap on Oscar was he didn't translate his stats and talent into a more winning tradition, and he really didn't have the personality and mindset to do so. Did he have an Allen Iverson or Michael Jordan type of mindset and influence on his team?
Kevin Garnett - Again, not sure your point proves much. The naysayers said his traditional stats were belied by his lack of team success. So advanced stats echo his excellence in traditional stats. That doesn't change the arguement of the naysayers.
Now that (hopefully) I got that point across, these are two more examples of what I'm talking about. The advanced BOX SCORE stats show Oscar's play was great, but the old rap was that he didn't translate his stats and talent into winning. But what impressed me upon further examination was that the cave-man IMPACT stats DO indicate that Oscar translated his stats and talent towards a dominant team effect. The reason his team didn't win, then, were issues more beyond his control (teammates, system, front office, etc.) than because of a failure in him. I couldn't say that definitively based only on his box scores, or his PER, or whatever. But further analysis into his impact was enough to convince me.
And with Garnett, it's really the same story. The naysayers say his traditional BOX SCORE stats were belied by lack of team success. But the now more developed impact stats (the +/- family) indicate that, like Oscar, he individually was contributing hugely to team success and the rest of his team just wasn't strong enough. Again, this is an entirely different result than you could gather just by looking at his PER or Win Shares.
Laimbeer wrote:The advanced stats aren't a holy grail of ultimate truth.
Stats are a tool. But not all of a player's value can be captured in numbers, no matter how they're crunched.
Everything that you say here is true. On the other hand, the way you use this truth makes it false. Because while no set of stats are perfect or capture everything, the current body of available stats and analysis capture a LOT more than they ever have before. And if you ignore that, you cut yourself off from a lot of the story, for really no good reason.
