The Multi-Year WOWY Database

[ShaqAttac]

Did the lakers truly get -.55 worse in 97 with the addition of shaq?

didn they lose magic

[lessthanjake]

Have been making use of those in the project but as an example:

-> Give Jordan all the credit for 1988-1984(or alternatively 1986) Bulls delta, upper-bound(more likely to overrate), best teams are

-> Give Kareem 1977 - 1975, ignores trades, lower bound(more likely to underrates)

Kareem scores higher and the best teams post significantly lower srs that year so i give Kareem a pretty clear advantage in terms of lift

Interesting stuff! The thing to be cautious of here is that even without trades, all the other players are growing, with some getting better and some worsening. Our uncertainties will go up because of this.

This is right, but I think there’s more of a fundamental issue there than just “trades, all the other players are growing, with some getting better and some worsening.” The teams being compared in these sorts of exercises really aren’t the same at all.

For instance, here’s the players on the 1983-1984 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Dave Greenwood
2. Dave Corzine
3. Orlando Woolridge
4. Quentin Dailey
5. Ennis Whatley
6. Mitchell Wiggins
7. Rod Higgins
8. Jawann Oldham
9. Ronnie Lester
10. Sidney Green
11. Reggie Theus
12. Steve Johnson
13. Wallace Bryant
Coach: Kevin Loughery

Meanwhile, here’s the players on the 1987-1988 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Michael Jordan
2. Charles Oakley
3. Dave Corzine
4. Brad Sellers
5. John Paxson
6. Horace Grant
7. Scottie Pippen
8. Rory Sparrow
9. Sam Vincent
10. Sedale Threatt
11. Artis Gilmore
12. Mike Brown
13. Elston Turner
14. Granville Waiters
15. Tony White
Coach: Doug Collins

There is literally only *one* player that was on both teams, and the coaches are different too! Comparing how those two teams did as a way to figure out one player’s impact is just a meaningless exercise which would obviously be completely consumed by other factors. You might as well compare how a star player’s team did to how a completely random other team in the league did in some other season, because the similarities wouldn’t really be any less.

[ShaqAttac]

Have been making use of those in the project but as an example:

-> Give Jordan all the credit for 1988-1984(or alternatively 1986) Bulls delta, upper-bound(more likely to overrate), best teams are

-> Give Kareem 1977 - 1975, ignores trades, lower bound(more likely to underrates)

Kareem scores higher and the best teams post significantly lower srs that year so i give Kareem a pretty clear advantage in terms of lift

Interesting stuff! The thing to be cautious of here is that even without trades, all the other players are growing, with some getting better and some worsening. Our uncertainties will go up because of this.

This is right, but I think there’s more of a fundamental issue there than just “trades, all the other players are growing, with some getting better and some worsening.” The teams being compared in these sorts of exercises really aren’t the same at all.

For instance, here’s the players on the 1983-1984 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Dave Greenwood
2. Dave Corzine
3. Orlando Woolridge
4. Quentin Dailey
5. Ennis Whatley
6. Mitchell Wiggins
7. Rod Higgins
8. Jawann Oldham
9. Ronnie Lester
10. Sidney Green
11. Reggie Theus
12. Steve Johnson
13. Wallace Bryant
Coach: Kevin Loughery

Meanwhile, here’s the players on the 1987-1988 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Michael Jordan
2. Charles Oakley
3. Dave Corzine
4. Brad Sellers
5. John Paxson
6. Horace Grant
7. Scottie Pippen
8. Rory Sparrow
9. Sam Vincent
10. Sedale Threatt
11. Artis Gilmore
12. Mike Brown
13. Elston Turner
14. Granville Waiters
15. Tony White
Coach: Doug Collins

There is literally only *one* player that was on both teams, and the coaches are different too! Comparing how those two teams did as a way to figure out one player’s impact is just a meaningless exercise which would obviously be completely consumed by other factors. You might as well compare how a star player’s team did to how a completely random other team in the league did in some other season, because the similarities wouldn’t really be any less.

u literally did "compareee random teams" when u said russ played with lots of help in 69...

r things only be meaningless when it hurts what ur pushin

[lessthanjake]

Interesting stuff! The thing to be cautious of here is that even without trades, all the other players are growing, with some getting better and some worsening. Our uncertainties will go up because of this.

This is right, but I think there’s more of a fundamental issue there than just “trades, all the other players are growing, with some getting better and some worsening.” The teams being compared in these sorts of exercises really aren’t the same at all.

For instance, here’s the players on the 1983-1984 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Dave Greenwood
2. Dave Corzine
3. Orlando Woolridge
4. Quentin Dailey
5. Ennis Whatley
6. Mitchell Wiggins
7. Rod Higgins
8. Jawann Oldham
9. Ronnie Lester
10. Sidney Green
11. Reggie Theus
12. Steve Johnson
13. Wallace Bryant
Coach: Kevin Loughery

Meanwhile, here’s the players on the 1987-1988 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Michael Jordan
2. Charles Oakley
3. Dave Corzine
4. Brad Sellers
5. John Paxson
6. Horace Grant
7. Scottie Pippen
8. Rory Sparrow
9. Sam Vincent
10. Sedale Threatt
11. Artis Gilmore
12. Mike Brown
13. Elston Turner
14. Granville Waiters
15. Tony White
Coach: Doug Collins

There is literally only *one* player that was on both teams, and the coaches are different too! Comparing how those two teams did as a way to figure out one player’s impact is just a meaningless exercise which would obviously be completely consumed by other factors. You might as well compare how a star player’s team did to how a completely random other team in the league did in some other season, because the similarities wouldn’t really be any less.

u literally did "compareee random teams" when u said russ played with lots of help in 69...

r things only be meaningless when it hurts what ur pushin

I don’t know what this means. I’ve never tried to calculate an exact WOWY relating to Bill Russell. Please articulate in a meaningful way.

[ShaqAttac]

This is right, but I think there’s more of a fundamental issue there than just “trades, all the other players are growing, with some getting better and some worsening.” The teams being compared in these sorts of exercises really aren’t the same at all.

For instance, here’s the players on the 1983-1984 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Dave Greenwood
2. Dave Corzine
3. Orlando Woolridge
4. Quentin Dailey
5. Ennis Whatley
6. Mitchell Wiggins
7. Rod Higgins
8. Jawann Oldham
9. Ronnie Lester
10. Sidney Green
11. Reggie Theus
12. Steve Johnson
13. Wallace Bryant
Coach: Kevin Loughery

Meanwhile, here’s the players on the 1987-1988 Bulls (ordered by most minutes):

1. Michael Jordan
2. Charles Oakley
3. Dave Corzine
4. Brad Sellers
5. John Paxson
6. Horace Grant
7. Scottie Pippen
8. Rory Sparrow
9. Sam Vincent
10. Sedale Threatt
11. Artis Gilmore
12. Mike Brown
13. Elston Turner
14. Granville Waiters
15. Tony White
Coach: Doug Collins

There is literally only *one* player that was on both teams, and the coaches are different too! Comparing how those two teams did as a way to figure out one player’s impact is just a meaningless exercise which would obviously be completely consumed by other factors. You might as well compare how a star player’s team did to how a completely random other team in the league did in some other season, because the similarities wouldn’t really be any less.

u literally did "compareee random teams" when u said russ played with lots of help in 69...

r things only be meaningless when it hurts what ur pushin

I don’t know what this means. I’ve never tried to calculate an exact WOWY relating to Bill Russell. Please articulate in a meaningful way.

you tried to say russells 69 team was stacked and had more help than mjs even tho they also completely different teams. how that not meaningless but the other thing is? she got evidence. u dont

also no one tried to calc an exact anything for mj so idk what ur complainin about.

[lessthanjake]

u literally did "compareee random teams" when u said russ played with lots of help in 69...

r things only be meaningless when it hurts what ur pushin

I don’t know what this means. I’ve never tried to calculate an exact WOWY relating to Bill Russell. Please articulate in a meaningful way.

you tried to say russells 69 team was stacked and had more help than mjs even tho they also completely different teams. how that not meaningless but the other thing is? she got evidence. u dont

also no one tried to calc an exact anything for mj so idk what ur complainin about.

Yes, people have tried to calculate an exact impact/WOWY estimate for Jordan using this method. That’s exactly what I’m saying is a meaningless exercise!

[ShaqAttac]

I don’t know what this means. I’ve never tried to calculate an exact WOWY relating to Bill Russell. Please articulate in a meaningful way.

you tried to say russells 69 team was stacked and had more help than mjs even tho they also completely different teams. how that not meaningless but the other thing is? she got evidence. u dont

also no one tried to calc an exact anything for mj so idk what ur complainin about.

Yes, people have tried to calculate an exact impact/WOWY estimate for Jordan using this method. That’s exactly what I’m saying is a meaningless exercise!

no they didnt. they tried to "calc" a number mj probs wasnt worth more than. its a guess based on evidence. >>> a guess based on sam-jones the 6th man superstar

[lessthanjake]

you tried to say russells 69 team was stacked and had more help than mjs even tho they also completely different teams. how that not meaningless but the other thing is? she got evidence. u dont

also no one tried to calc an exact anything for mj so idk what ur complainin about.

Yes, people have tried to calculate an exact impact/WOWY estimate for Jordan using this method. That’s exactly what I’m saying is a meaningless exercise!

no they didnt. they tried to "calc" a number mj probs wasnt worth more than. its a guess based on evidence. >>> a guess based on sam-jones the 6th man superstar

Purporting to calculate an exact upper limit *is* making a precise numerical estimate. And such a thing makes absolutely no sense in this context. I don’t even see you arguing that it does. You’re just making a whataboutism argument, drawing a comparison with a different discussion that did not involve me making any purported calculations whatsoever. Indeed, to the extent anyone was ever calculating anything in the discussion you’re referring to, it was other people purporting to give Russell credit for all the extra wins the 1969 team had over the 1970 team, and I was simply arguing that other confounding factors existed that made such a calculation quite flawed. So even your whataboutism argument relates to me being entirely consistent (though of course comparing the 1984 Bulls to the 1988 Bulls is an ever bigger and more meaningless leap than comparing the 1969 Celtics to the 1970 Celtics, so I have an even stronger objection here).

[Bklynborn682]

Did the lakers truly get -.55 worse in 97 with the addition of shaq?

didn they lose magic

They were 56-26 in 97 and 53-29 in 96.
And in 97 the lakers were 38-13 with shaq and 18-13 without shaq. So they they were on a 61 win pace with shaq and a 48 win pace without him. so I’m not sure how they were a negative with him.

[ShaqAttac]

Did the lakers truly get -.55 worse in 97 with the addition of shaq?

didn they lose magic

They were 56-26 in 97 and 53-29 in 96.
And in 97 the lakers were 38-13 with shaq and 18-13 without shaq. So they they were on a 61 win pace with shaq and a 48 win pace without him. so I’m not sure how they were a negative with him.

yea these adjustments seem kinda sus

[homecourtloss]

didn they lose magic

They were 56-26 in 97 and 53-29 in 96.
And in 97 the lakers were 38-13 with shaq and 18-13 without shaq. So they they were on a 61 win pace with shaq and a 48 win pace without him. so I’m not sure how they were a negative with him.

yea these adjustments seem kinda sus

While I appreciate the OP’s effort, this is what I was getting out when I was discussing about the “adjusted” and “alternate” values with arbitrary players picked for “adjustments.” If you are going to do it, then you have to be consistent all the way around or present a list that doesn’t have any of the adjusted and alternate values. There are arbitrary decisions made and then there’s final numbers presented, which is misleading.

The Lakers were roughly +5 SRS (+/- .5) with Shaq in a large sample without doing the calculations, so saying Lakers were -.55 after adding Shaq isn’t an accurate depiction.

You mentioned about Kareem:

Karem Abdul-Jabbar
-1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -5.07 without. Total change: +9.32 [Rookie year]
*Adjusted Value: 1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -2.62 without. Total change: +6.87 [Teammate Adjustment: Adjusted Value corrects for games with Flynn Robinson/Zaid Abdul-Aziz in 1969. Does not correct for addition of Bob Deandridge or expansion in 69–70]
-1975–76 Bucks: 0.25 with, -1.55 without. Total change: +1.8 [Traded, leaving Bucks]
-1975–76 Lakers: 0.18 with, -3.94 without. Total change: +4.12 [Traded, joining Lakers]
-1989–90 Lakers: 6.38 with, 6.74 without. Total change: -0.36 [Retirement]
Career Average: +3.12
10-year prime: +4.26 (1970–1979)
Non-prime average: -0.36 (1 sample in retirement. 3.22 in 2 samples including rookie year)

Note that there is a comment about “not correcting for expansion,” but no such comment on Jordan’s profile:

Michael Jordan
-1984–85 Bulls: -0.5 with, -4.69 without. Total change: +4.19 [Rookie year]
-1986–87 Bulls: 0.38 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +4.24 [Injury year]
*Alternate Value: 1985–86 Bulls: Total change: +2.8 [Alternate Years: Alternate Value uses 1985 instead of 1987]
-1993–94 Bulls: 6.19 with, 2.87 without. Total change: +3.32 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1992–95 Bulls: Total Change: +5.26 [Context Adjustment: Alternate Value using 1992–93 for the ‘with’ sample, since many have argued Bulls were coasting in 93]
-1995–96 Bulls: 10.96 with, 4.29 without. Total change: +6.67 [re-joining Bulls]
-1998–99 Bulls: 7.24 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +15.82 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1998–99 Bulls: 8.55 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +11.28 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate Value uses MoV with Pippen for ‘with’ sample, then subtract’s 98 Pippen’s 3.1 WOWY and 97 Rodman’s 2.75 WOWY].
-2001–02 Wizards: -1.57 with, -6.75 without. Total change: +5.18 [joining Wizards]
*Alternate Value: 2001–02 Wizards: Total change: +5.51 [Health Adjustment: Alternate Value only uses games Jordan played for ‘with’ sample]/
-2003–04 Wizards -1.47 with, -6.12 without. Total change: +4.65 [Retirement]
Career Average: +5.69 (using latter 2 alternate values)
10-year prime: +7.09 (1989–1998, +7.74 1989–1998 using alternate value for 1993 too)
Non-prime average: +4.65

Here you have a bunch of health adjustments, context adjustments alternate values, including a subjective “coasting” argument (have to be consistent and apply “coasting” everywhere and not when convenient for whatever purposes), etc., so you’d think there would be something there for the 1995 Bulls with Jordan just for the record, even if it doesn’t meet the arbitrary (and convenient) 30 game sample.

Then you have the LeBron sample:

LeBron James
-2003–04 Cavs: -3.07 with, -9.59 without. Total change: +6.52 [Rookie year]
-2010–11 Cavs: 6.17 with, -8.88 without. Total change: +15.05 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
*Adjusted Value: 2010–11 Cavs: Total Change: +10.94 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate value subtracting 2011 Boston Shaq’s raw WOWY, using games with Varajao/Williams playing for ‘without’ sample]
-2010–11 Heat: 6.76 with, 1.99 without. Total change: +4.77 [Traded, joining Heat]
-2014–15 Heat: 4.15 with, -2.92 without. Total change: +7.07 [Traded, leaving Heat]
-2014–15 Cavs: 4.08 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +7.94 [Traded, joining Cavs]
-2018–19 Cavs: 0.59 with, -9.39 without. Total change: +9.98 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
-2018–19 Lakers: -1.33 with, -1.44 without. Total change: +0.11 [Traded, joining Lakers]
*Alternate Value: 2018–19 Lakers: Total change: +1.09 [Health Adjustment: Alternate value only uses when LeBron played for ‘with’ sample]
-2019–20 Lakers: 3.17 with, -3.78 without. Total change: +6.95 [Injury year]
-2021–22 Lakers: 1.25 with, -3.33 without. Total change: +4.58 [Injury year]
-2022–23 Lakers: -0.5 with, -2.8 without. Total change: +2.3 [Injury year]
Career Average: +6.21 (using alternate values)
10-year prime: +8.14 (2009–18)
Non-prime average: +4.29

What’s going here in blue? Adjusted for washed Shaq? Also, Andy V. played in 2011; Mo Williams played in 2011. They even played together and they did absolutely nothing. If you’re going to adjust for players like Andy V. and especially Mo Williams here, then you have to go through this entire list finding equivalents otherwise it seems biased, i.e., why are you picking out these two for LeBron’s sample? 1999 Bulls had ZERO minutes from Pippen, 0 minutes from Rodman, zero from Kerr and perhaps the greatest coach ever was gone. You need some adjustments there especially since 1999 Pippen was still an impact force. How is this equivalent to actually getting 2000+ minutes from Andy V. and Mo?

We have a 21 game sample with mostly same players that Taylor used and in that sample: 19 win pace

Andy V: -9.0 ON, +.5 ON/OFF, 8-23 in games played, 19 win pace, didn't do anything
Mo Williams: -13.9 ON, -4.4 ON/OFF, 9-28, 20 win pace (Cavs were better with Mo off court)
Mo Williams + Andy V.: 27 games played, -9.5, 6-21, 18 win pace; they were worse together than the “before adjustment” value fur the Cavs.

[OhayoKD]

So i think the sample treshold is causing alot of the unexpected results here:

To make this a little more specific: we can mathematically calculate our uncertainty based on the sample size, which is what Thinking Basketball did in the WOWY database. A sample size of 3 off-games has an 95% uncertainty bound off +/- 12.1 WOWY (i.e. we have 95% probability of being with 12.1 of the 'true WOWY', given a 3 game off sample). A sample size of 17 off games has a 95% uncertainty bound of +/- 5.2 WOWY. Compare that to a 30 game minimum sample where the uncertainty is +/- 2.9 WOWY. Note that these are calculated for single-season WOWY samples... over multi-year samples, the uncertainties may go up because we don't know a priori whether the other players will improve or get worse from year to year.

Sure. Better to think in terms of ranges than bounds than exact totals. Will say Moonbeam's metrics may alleviate some of these concerns if we can agree that "more often than not, players who see box-production increase are improving and vice versa".

Key point here is the scaling is internal so theoretically box-bias works for or against both versions of the players. Interesting that Bird and Jordan, who do pretty well here, seem to tdo rather poorly with that sort of adjustment. On the flipside Hakeem, who does worse here, does alot better with that sort of adjustment(while curiously looking worse in his rookie year potentially due to sampson playing more).

Now I’m *absolutely* not saying we should throw this WOWY data out. It’s good data, those games really did happen, etc. All I’m saying is that WOWY data is noisy, so I wouldn’t put too much faith into a single sample, particularly ones that have a small sample size, and particularly ones where there are other roster changes happening besides the player you’re interested in that may influence the team results.

Sure. Though this is where replication and corroboration come into play. When a guy is at the top or close no matter what(cough Lebron cough) and replicates a bunch we can have high confidence(or at least higher confidence than we would for most anyone else). Concept of "low-end" and "high-end" is also useful here for comparisons. Miami is a low-end, first cleveland is high-end. Second Cleveland is probably somewhere in the middle. Whatever you ascertain as Lebron's peak, good analysis will involve all three rather than curving down based on one of the three. And then we can compare relative to standard trajectory with other stuff(2006, 2023) kind of the way DARKO would.

You can also do this with "off". Russell only has 2.2-games for his career-average so you're not doing much when you toss those games in(he looks pretty good there too though). We know his team is stacked at the start and we know its a completely different one at the end. We have the big 8-point(7 points without health adjustment) drop in 70 and a few games from 69. It all points in Russell's favor(teammates leaving and not affecting the team much is also note-worthy), but we still have questions(bad center replacement, coach replaced, hondo/offense improves). Well then we can look at 71 where the Celtics replace Russell the player with a good center, the 2nd best player from 69 is better and...decent but not great in a league where we see the highest srs marks. At this point the confidence that those(around 69 specifically) Celtics were not stacked(setting pre-moses sixers or jordan-less bulls as a standard) should be about as high as confidence in anything else pre-data ball.

We can do a similar thing with the Bulls by looking at 94 and 95(and their over-the-season improvement in 1990 to a degree).

Ben does do a more intelligent average for his primes, so that should be good. I haven’t checked recently, but I believe he uses the off-sample size as the weighting (since off is usually smallest?) then also accounts for uncertainty. He also accounts for home court vs away games, and for diminishing returns for having good WOWY on better teams.

Yes, and rather curiously Hakeem looks quite better there while Magic and Jordan look worse. I am not sure how he got there but both Moonbeam and Ben seem to arrive at a similar place. And while there's no testing for this yet, I'm going to guess that Moonbeam's stuff better achieves that "stability" than WOWYR would. Just remember that "per-season" sample and "overall" sample are two different things. Reducing the first will also increase noise and maybe shrink relevance. There is no limit to what you can use at "on" though naturally you will get the reverse effect regarding relevance/confidence.

Ben presumably thinks Hakeem's better signals are more reflective, which would explain why he is so much higher on Olajuwon than you are despite branding him as a "floor-raiser".

There's also the matter of dray partially compensating for this by mixing different years for on/off. I'm guessing Jordan is the biggest benefactor here(87 and 96 are probably improved casts from the previous year and the team's on is higher).

You also have the matter of adjustments like 1999 where the team is stripped of everything really but without a way to quanitfy coaching or whatever intangible effects losing your three best players at once might have, you're left with what's probably not an indicative off-sample.

Adjustments themselves are also filtered. with 30-games we can't use the Bucks oscar-less games in 1972 which would likely benefit Kareem's other scores significantly.

For the multi-year data, this doesn’t seem too crazy to me in theory. If we’re going to compare a team’s change from before a player’s rookie year to during the rookie year (over a 2 year sample), it doesn’t seem crazy to consider a team’s change from during a player’s near-season-long-injury/mid-career-retirement to the next season after a player’s return from said near-season-long-injury/mid-career-retirement (over a 2 year sample).

[/quote]
The hyphens don't really do much here. Jordan was still a superstar by impact and production in 95 and then they added a guy whose wowy places him in similar territory to 72 oscar and 17 durant(while turning the bulls into a historic extra-possession generator). I see no reason to assume the jump there is bigger than what we might see with 08/09 Lebron, 70/71 Kareem, or 18/19 Giannis. Internal improvement is either valid for this database or it isn't.

Hakeem's ppg skyrockets between 92 and 93. Should I take the Rockets 93 "on", say "ah too small of a sample" and then take their 92 "off"? That adjustment would get Hakeem at +14. On that note, I do not believe I have made any adjustments regarding Hakeem. Noticing that the Rockets were unaffected missing co-stars is simply an observation. I do not believe I tried to adjust his score. I am more confident in his better signals(and weigh accordingly) because of that, but that is not the equivalent to an adjustment.

One note I’d add is that if you’re going to argue 98 overrates Jordan due to the loss of a coach and the decline in intangibles from losing multiple players, there’s definitely other samples that would get dinged too. 2010 LeBron, for instance, since coach of the year Mike Brown left, as did the GM, and presumably the combination of Lebron James/Shaquille O'Neal/Zydrunas Ilgauskas/Delonte West caused an intangibles decline for the Cavs too.

Well, keep in mind coach-of-the-year Mike Brown did not fare very well post-cleveland until he worked as an assistant coach under Kerr. He was also quickly fired on his Cleveland return so his influence is questionable. The Cavs were worse with Shaq in the lineup before his departure so an open question how much value he's offering. Other additions are fair but they were weren't starters at that point.

Will add that we can use a small 18 game sample from 08-10 which has the Cavs at 19-wins without the King corroborating that 21-game sample discussed earlier. Your +7 guess marks the Cavs without vastly higher than either.

Speaking of samples that are unexpectedly high… why in the world is 1980 Bird so high?? It looks like the Celtics lost Jo Jo White, who has a shockingly negative WOWY a few years earlier in 1978, at the same time they gained rookie Bird. Did they some how improve by losing players from the lineup? Was the Celtics coaching change in 1980 helping?

Not sure, but here looking for replication hurts Bird. His team only ever posts lower srs with the exception of 1986. And 87/88 without/with is nowhere near as good.

Re: Oscar-less bucks and Kareem, that’s one thing that WOWYR incorporates that WOWY doesn’t, which is one reason I tend to like WOWYR more in general. It allows us to incorporate other players’ data to get a better sense for the people we’re interested in!

Unfortunately WOWYR is going off incorrect WOWY data for Kareem, though I guess we'll get into WOWYR's disadvantages here...

The indirect stuff definitely helps give a larger off value, and 'full strength' adjustments definitely help reduce noise (though not entirely). So agreed there

On/off is still a larger sample regardless. To be more explicit, on/off depends on possession samples and WOWY depends on game samples, and there are *far* more 'on' possessions and 'off' possessions than there are 'with a player' games and 'without a player' games. Stars pretty easily play over a thousand possessions in a season, and they're of course don't play a thousand games in one or two seasons (that would be a crazy season! )

Um...no? Counting with a bigger or smaller unit doesn't actually change the size of the sample. I can break 82 games into 82 times X possessions and that would still be a larger result.

Remember they're counting different things though!

A WOWY sample size of 1 has a 95% uncertainty of +/- 16.4 WOWY (per Thinking Basketball WOWY database). In other words, if you have a 1 game sample, you're 95% likely to be within 16.4 of the 'true' WOWY.

Okay, but a less noisy smaller sample is still a smaller sample and this analysis of "noise" misses a key factor: time

Even if a 2.2 per game wowyr or wowy assessment was dead-on the money, that leaves you the issue of it tracking completely different rosters with players at completely different stages of their career. You might notice that when I do "upper/lower bounds" I am simply assuming a general direction for a team. I am not trying to tell you how much losing Oakley hurt the 89 Bulls or how much Doug Collins and whatever Pippen or Grant offered helped 88 Chicago.

The best data to assess 1984 comes from...1984. You should weigh your samples accordingly.

One note, it sounds like from reports that those weren't playing fully healthy/fit in at least some of the games they did play. Not sure how to correct for this mathematically, but in theory that would under-sell the 11 Cavs 'healthy' sample, which might slightly overrate 2010 LeBron's WOWY. Regardless of what you choose, it's still clearly a Top 3 sample ever at worst. But this is the kind of stuff that makes a WOWY database hard... you can go deeper on so many samples, so it becomes a bit hard to have the most accurate / corrected values for everyone while being consistent.

I would not know. I'm just using what Ben said. Worth considering if true.

Re: "player improves" WOWY, huh that's interesting. I'd keep it as a separate list. There's no real off sample... it's just a "with less-prime player" sample vs "with more-prime player" sample. Which still might have information! But might be a separate list from traditional 'WOWY'.

I mean that is basically what you are doing with 95/96 and 86/87.

I'd say LBJ has a clear case, but I wouldn't say it's 100% given bron is tops. Curry has best 10 year prime, then Bird (on only 2 samples), then LeBron, then Jordan and Russell. Oscar (2 samples), Bird (2 samples), Jordan, and Wilt (2 samples, basically equal to LeBron) have better non-10-year-prime years. In terms of peak samples, Bird has the best, then 98 Jordan (even after adjusting for Pippen/Rodman), then there's two LeBron samples. There's also 2 Curry samples above 8+ WOWY.

If you look at career value over total games played, I'd say it's probably LeBron. But it's not from getting separation in his 10 year prime or his non-prime or his peak samples... it's more from combining being *near* the top in all of those with having significantly more games than all the other players.

Well there is also the career average where Lebron scores ahead of everyone but Bird despite having the longest career. Granted Russell's +4.9 is probably better with era-considerations but it speaks to those two having the most bullet-proof impact portfolios.

I have Kareem similar to Lebron but him falling this low with a few unfavorable filters/adjustments speaks to the uncertainity there. But Lebron's score could very easily go significantly higher with a lower filter or more favorable adjustments while Bird and Jordan are pretty close to being dialed up as high as possible.

I'd be careful just going with career averages, given how unequal the sampling is (e.g. some players like Duncan really just have rookie/retirement samples without much prime, others have tons of prime samples). But yes, LBJ looks great in raw WOWY.
.

I mean, even with WOWYR Lebron is pretty firmly top 10 and that excludes his best data entirely. He also cleans up shop with APM and its derivatives despite those metrics curving down outliers(which the real-stuff would say Lebron frequently is).

He's about as close to "unassailable" as it gets(partially a result of more data being available), so there's not much reason to doubt him(at least statistically).

[lessthanjake]

You might notice that when I do "upper/lower bounds" I am simply assuming a general direction for a team.

And see, that’s a *huge* assumption when comparing teams that aren’t remotely the same at all. We have *no idea at all* what general direction the team went when the team is just completely different!

[OhayoKD]

You might notice that when I do "upper/lower bounds" I am simply assuming a general direction for a team.

And see, that’s a *huge* assumption when comparing teams that aren’t remotely the same at all. We have *no idea at all* what general direction the team went when the team is just completely different!

it is a much simpler assumption than what happens when you claim player a's team was loaded because it had a guy in the top 100 or player b's team was as good because of the top names on a roster.

It has not been presented as a certainty. You seem to be freaked out by the numbers but I'd say they're an improvement over "raw vibes"

[OhayoKD]

They were 56-26 in 97 and 53-29 in 96.
And in 97 the lakers were 38-13 with shaq and 18-13 without shaq. So they they were on a 61 win pace with shaq and a 48 win pace without him. so I’m not sure how they were a negative with him.

yea these adjustments seem kinda sus

While I appreciate the OP’s effort, this is what I was getting out when I was discussing about the “adjusted” and “alternate” values with arbitrary players picked for “adjustments.” If you are going to do it, then you have to be consistent all the way around or present a list that doesn’t have any of the adjusted and alternate values. There are arbitrary decisions made and then there’s final numbers presented, which is misleading.

The Lakers were roughly +5 SRS (+/- .5) with Shaq in a large sample without doing the calculations, so saying Lakers were -.55 after adding Shaq isn’t an accurate depiction.

You mentioned about Kareem:

Karem Abdul-Jabbar
-1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -5.07 without. Total change: +9.32 [Rookie year]
*Adjusted Value: 1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -2.62 without. Total change: +6.87 [Teammate Adjustment: Adjusted Value corrects for games with Flynn Robinson/Zaid Abdul-Aziz in 1969. Does not correct for addition of Bob Deandridge or expansion in 69–70]
-1975–76 Bucks: 0.25 with, -1.55 without. Total change: +1.8 [Traded, leaving Bucks]
-1975–76 Lakers: 0.18 with, -3.94 without. Total change: +4.12 [Traded, joining Lakers]
-1989–90 Lakers: 6.38 with, 6.74 without. Total change: -0.36 [Retirement]
Career Average: +3.12
10-year prime: +4.26 (1970–1979)
Non-prime average: -0.36 (1 sample in retirement. 3.22 in 2 samples including rookie year)

Note that there is a comment about “not correcting for expansion,” but no such comment on Jordan’s profile:

Michael Jordan
-1984–85 Bulls: -0.5 with, -4.69 without. Total change: +4.19 [Rookie year]
-1986–87 Bulls: 0.38 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +4.24 [Injury year]
*Alternate Value: 1985–86 Bulls: Total change: +2.8 [Alternate Years: Alternate Value uses 1985 instead of 1987]
-1993–94 Bulls: 6.19 with, 2.87 without. Total change: +3.32 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1992–95 Bulls: Total Change: +5.26 [Context Adjustment: Alternate Value using 1992–93 for the ‘with’ sample, since many have argued Bulls were coasting in 93]
-1995–96 Bulls: 10.96 with, 4.29 without. Total change: +6.67 [re-joining Bulls]
-1998–99 Bulls: 7.24 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +15.82 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1998–99 Bulls: 8.55 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +11.28 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate Value uses MoV with Pippen for ‘with’ sample, then subtract’s 98 Pippen’s 3.1 WOWY and 97 Rodman’s 2.75 WOWY].
-2001–02 Wizards: -1.57 with, -6.75 without. Total change: +5.18 [joining Wizards]
*Alternate Value: 2001–02 Wizards: Total change: +5.51 [Health Adjustment: Alternate Value only uses games Jordan played for ‘with’ sample]/
-2003–04 Wizards -1.47 with, -6.12 without. Total change: +4.65 [Retirement]
Career Average: +5.69 (using latter 2 alternate values)
10-year prime: +7.09 (1989–1998, +7.74 1989–1998 using alternate value for 1993 too)
Non-prime average: +4.65

Here you have a bunch of health adjustments, context adjustments alternate values, including a subjective “coasting” argument (have to be consistent and apply “coasting” everywhere and not when convenient for whatever purposes), etc., so you’d think there would be something there for the 1995 Bulls with Jordan just for the record, even if it doesn’t meet the arbitrary (and convenient) 30 game sample.

Then you have the LeBron sample:

LeBron James
-2003–04 Cavs: -3.07 with, -9.59 without. Total change: +6.52 [Rookie year]
-2010–11 Cavs: 6.17 with, -8.88 without. Total change: +15.05 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
*Adjusted Value: 2010–11 Cavs: Total Change: +10.94 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate value subtracting 2011 Boston Shaq’s raw WOWY, using games with Varajao/Williams playing for ‘without’ sample]
-2010–11 Heat: 6.76 with, 1.99 without. Total change: +4.77 [Traded, joining Heat]
-2014–15 Heat: 4.15 with, -2.92 without. Total change: +7.07 [Traded, leaving Heat]
-2014–15 Cavs: 4.08 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +7.94 [Traded, joining Cavs]
-2018–19 Cavs: 0.59 with, -9.39 without. Total change: +9.98 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
-2018–19 Lakers: -1.33 with, -1.44 without. Total change: +0.11 [Traded, joining Lakers]
*Alternate Value: 2018–19 Lakers: Total change: +1.09 [Health Adjustment: Alternate value only uses when LeBron played for ‘with’ sample]
-2019–20 Lakers: 3.17 with, -3.78 without. Total change: +6.95 [Injury year]
-2021–22 Lakers: 1.25 with, -3.33 without. Total change: +4.58 [Injury year]
-2022–23 Lakers: -0.5 with, -2.8 without. Total change: +2.3 [Injury year]
Career Average: +6.21 (using alternate values)
10-year prime: +8.14 (2009–18)
Non-prime average: +4.29

What’s going here in blue? Adjusted for washed Shaq? Also, Andy V. played in 2011; Mo Williams played in 2011. They even played together and they did absolutely nothing. If you’re going to adjust for players like Andy V. and especially Mo Williams here, then you have to go through this entire list finding equivalents otherwise it seems biased, i.e., why are you picking out these two for LeBron’s sample? 1999 Bulls had ZERO minutes from Pippen, 0 minutes from Rodman, zero from Kerr and perhaps the greatest coach ever was gone. You need some adjustments there especially since 1999 Pippen was still an impact force. How is this equivalent to actually getting 2000+ minutes from Andy V. and Mo?

We have a 21 game sample with mostly same players that Taylor used and in that sample: 19 win pace

Andy V: -9.0 ON, +.5 ON/OFF, 8-23 in games played, 19 win pace, didn't do anything
Mo Williams: -13.9 ON, -4.4 ON/OFF, 9-28, 20 win pace (Cavs were better with Mo off court)
Mo Williams + Andy V.: 27 games played, -9.5, 6-21, 18 win pace; they were worse together than the “before adjustment” value fur the Cavs.

Ooh good spot!

"adjusting for expansion" for one guy but not another is pretty bad practice. Would help explain Kareem's uncharacteristically poor performance here.

[lessthanjake]

You might notice that when I do "upper/lower bounds" I am simply assuming a general direction for a team.

And see, that’s a *huge* assumption when comparing teams that aren’t remotely the same at all. We have *no idea at all* what general direction the team went when the team is just completely different!

it is a much simpler assumption than what happens when you claim player a's team was loaded because it had a guy in the top 100 or player b's team was as good because of the top names on a roster.

It has not been presented as a certainty. You seem to be freaked out by the numbers but I'd say they're an improvement over "raw vibes"

It’s the output of numbers that make what you’re doing objectionable! It is just vibes camouflaged as some kind of actual empirical analysis, but the empirical analysis is just blatant nonsense and that’s my objection. If you want to say that you’re not impressed by Michael Jordan’s “lift” in 1987-1988 because you think the supporting cast was good enough that perhaps he should’ve won more, then that’s fine. But subtracting the wins achieved by a completely different roster and labeling the output as an upper bound of how many wins Jordan added is just utter nonsense.

[DraymondGold]

They were 56-26 in 97 and 53-29 in 96.
And in 97 the lakers were 38-13 with shaq and 18-13 without shaq. So they they were on a 61 win pace with shaq and a 48 win pace without him. so I’m not sure how they were a negative with him.

yea these adjustments seem kinda sus

While I appreciate the OP’s effort, this is what I was getting out when I was discussing about the “adjusted” and “alternate” values with arbitrary players picked for “adjustments.” If you are going to do it, then you have to be consistent all the way around or present a list that doesn’t have any of the adjusted and alternate values. There are arbitrary decisions made and then there’s final numbers presented, which is misleading.

The Lakers were roughly +5 SRS (+/- .5) with Shaq in a large sample without doing the calculations, so saying Lakers were -.55 after adding Shaq isn’t an accurate depiction.

So to start off, this is a genuine mistake with Shaq. I didn't catch that he was injured in 97 and missed a big chunk of games. I mentioned that this was by hand and thus could be subject to mistakes (and to kindly inform me if so), so thanks to Bklynborn682 for catching this! I double checked every other person's except Shaq's, who I missed out of laziness... I guess that's what I get. Fixed now though!

You mentioned about Kareem:

Karem Abdul-Jabbar
-1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -5.07 without. Total change: +9.32 [Rookie year]
*Adjusted Value: 1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -2.62 without. Total change: +6.87 [Teammate Adjustment: Adjusted Value corrects for games with Flynn Robinson/Zaid Abdul-Aziz in 1969. Does not correct for addition of Bob Deandridge or expansion in 69–70]
-1975–76 Bucks: 0.25 with, -1.55 without. Total change: +1.8 [Traded, leaving Bucks]
-1975–76 Lakers: 0.18 with, -3.94 without. Total change: +4.12 [Traded, joining Lakers]
-1989–90 Lakers: 6.38 with, 6.74 without. Total change: -0.36 [Retirement]
Career Average: +3.12
10-year prime: +4.26 (1970–1979)
Non-prime average: -0.36 (1 sample in retirement. 3.22 in 2 samples including rookie year)

Note that there is a comment about “not correcting for expansion,” but no such comment on Jordan’s profile:

Michael Jordan
-1984–85 Bulls: -0.5 with, -4.69 without. Total change: +4.19 [Rookie year]
-1986–87 Bulls: 0.38 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +4.24 [Injury year]
*Alternate Value: 1985–86 Bulls: Total change: +2.8 [Alternate Years: Alternate Value uses 1985 instead of 1987]
-1993–94 Bulls: 6.19 with, 2.87 without. Total change: +3.32 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1992–95 Bulls: Total Change: +5.26 [Context Adjustment: Alternate Value using 1992–93 for the ‘with’ sample, since many have argued Bulls were coasting in 93]
-1995–96 Bulls: 10.96 with, 4.29 without. Total change: +6.67 [re-joining Bulls]
-1998–99 Bulls: 7.24 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +15.82 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1998–99 Bulls: 8.55 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +11.28 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate Value uses MoV with Pippen for ‘with’ sample, then subtract’s 98 Pippen’s 3.1 WOWY and 97 Rodman’s 2.75 WOWY].
-2001–02 Wizards: -1.57 with, -6.75 without. Total change: +5.18 [joining Wizards]
*Alternate Value: 2001–02 Wizards: Total change: +5.51 [Health Adjustment: Alternate Value only uses games Jordan played for ‘with’ sample]/
-2003–04 Wizards -1.47 with, -6.12 without. Total change: +4.65 [Retirement]
Career Average: +5.69 (using latter 2 alternate values)
10-year prime: +7.09 (1989–1998, +7.74 1989–1998 using alternate value for 1993 too)
Non-prime average: +4.65

Here you have a bunch of health adjustments, context adjustments alternate values, including a subjective “coasting” argument (have to be consistent and apply “coasting” everywhere and not when convenient for whatever purposes), etc., so you’d think there would be something there for the 1995 Bulls with Jordan just for the record, even if it doesn’t meet the arbitrary (and convenient) 30 game sample.

Now this seems like multiple straw man arguments at once...

1) Expansion
The expansion in 70 was far bigger and produced far larger spread in SRS than the one in the late 90s. And 70 Kareem was doubly benefiting from the expansion -- the Bucks' very first first year in existence was their 'without-Kareem' sample (with plenty of contextual reasons for why their SRS was poor and likely to improve), then when they did improve they had plenty of poor teams to beat up on (and boost their SRS). You can look at the spread of SRS in sansterre's Top 100 list and see the difference between the early 70s and the late 90s.

2) Coasting
I made it pretty obvious in my post on the last page that I was marking the coasting adjustment for Jordan fans who would ask, and that I did *not* include the coasting adjustment when doing primes or career averages. And further actively did *not* encourage people taking the prime rankings too seriously.

3) Arbitrary game sample.
If you'd like to do the work for a lower game threshold, be my guest.

All 3 of these straw mans seem strange... because there's perfectly reasonable alternative ways you could have gone about things...In the future, perhaps some more productive posting for you might be
-Kindly asking to add that I add a comment about the late 90s Expansion if you think it's important. Plenty of people have argued the 70s expansion was more important factor for those teams, so it's not unreasonable to mention that first
-Kindly point out other years that are worth adding for coasting. 92 vs 93 Jordan was discussed pretty extensively in the Top 100 project, and I'm not aware of any other coasting arguments at all that project. So again it's not crazy to mark that some people believe coasting is a factor
-Offer to help if you think it's important to lower the game sample, rather than implicitly accusing someone of bias of making a "arbitrary and convenient" threshold minimum (as if I made this threshold specifically because I really wanted to buff up Jordan ), while offering to do no work to address the problem you see.

I made it pretty clear that I'm willing to improve the database with helpful comments... so phrasing all these as if they're "gotcha's" seems to have missed the point entirely...

Then you have the LeBron sample:

LeBron James
-2003–04 Cavs: -3.07 with, -9.59 without. Total change: +6.52 [Rookie year]
-2010–11 Cavs: 6.17 with, -8.88 without. Total change: +15.05 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
*Adjusted Value: 2010–11 Cavs: Total Change: +10.94 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate value subtracting 2011 Boston Shaq’s raw WOWY, using games with Varajao/Williams playing for ‘without’ sample]
-2010–11 Heat: 6.76 with, 1.99 without. Total change: +4.77 [Traded, joining Heat]
-2014–15 Heat: 4.15 with, -2.92 without. Total change: +7.07 [Traded, leaving Heat]
-2014–15 Cavs: 4.08 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +7.94 [Traded, joining Cavs]
-2018–19 Cavs: 0.59 with, -9.39 without. Total change: +9.98 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
-2018–19 Lakers: -1.33 with, -1.44 without. Total change: +0.11 [Traded, joining Lakers]
*Alternate Value: 2018–19 Lakers: Total change: +1.09 [Health Adjustment: Alternate value only uses when LeBron played for ‘with’ sample]
-2019–20 Lakers: 3.17 with, -3.78 without. Total change: +6.95 [Injury year]
-2021–22 Lakers: 1.25 with, -3.33 without. Total change: +4.58 [Injury year]
-2022–23 Lakers: -0.5 with, -2.8 without. Total change: +2.3 [Injury year]
Career Average: +6.21 (using alternate values)
10-year prime: +8.14 (2009–18)
Non-prime average: +4.29

What’s going here in blue? Adjusted for washed Shaq? Also, Andy V. played in 2011; Mo Williams played in 2011. They even played together and they did absolutely nothing. If you’re going to adjust for players like Andy V. and especially Mo Williams here, then you have to go through this entire list finding equivalents otherwise it seems biased, i.e., why are you picking out these two for LeBron’s sample? 1999 Bulls had ZERO minutes from Pippen, 0 minutes from Rodman, zero from Kerr and perhaps the greatest coach ever was gone. You need some adjustments there especially since 1999 Pippen was still an impact force. How is this equivalent to actually getting 2000+ minutes from Andy V. and Mo?

Umm... what?

The adjustment for 98 Jordan literally *explicitly says I subtract out Pippen and Rodman's WOWY*... did you miss that? Of course Pippen and Rodman had zero minutes in 1999. That's why I subtracted out their WOWY from Jordan's. You have multiple players that leave. So you look at the net drop, break up how much each other player contributed, then the remainder goes to the player you're looking at. Seems pretty simple really.

As for why I'm adjusting for "Andy V. and especially Mo Williams", when there players who are top in minute, say Top 3, who also happen to miss a lot of games, you want to adjust for them. Those two players are in the top of the Cavs rotation, and they missed plenty of games. So I adjust for them. Note that this something I checked and for every single player. You'l find comments throughout noting that I did the same thing for Kareem, the same thing for Jordan, the same thing for Duncan, the same thing for Curry....

So acting like this is some special thing just to ding LeBron's value down (while skipping over comments and missing pretty blatant text throughout the rest of the post) just seems intentionally antagonistic. I'm willing to make improvements to the Database if you're constructive, I made it clear this is a work in progress and requires input from the community to check for things I missed, but this just seems bent on being argumentative while actively missing things that are already there that address a number of your concerns.

[homecourtloss]

yea these adjustments seem kinda sus

While I appreciate the OP’s effort, this is what I was getting out when I was discussing about the “adjusted” and “alternate” values with arbitrary players picked for “adjustments.” If you are going to do it, then you have to be consistent all the way around or present a list that doesn’t have any of the adjusted and alternate values. There are arbitrary decisions made and then there’s final numbers presented, which is misleading.

The Lakers were roughly +5 SRS (+/- .5) with Shaq in a large sample without doing the calculations, so saying Lakers were -.55 after adding Shaq isn’t an accurate depiction.

You mentioned about Kareem:

Karem Abdul-Jabbar
-1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -5.07 without. Total change: +9.32 [Rookie year]
*Adjusted Value: 1969–70 Bucks: 4.25 with, -2.62 without. Total change: +6.87 [Teammate Adjustment: Adjusted Value corrects for games with Flynn Robinson/Zaid Abdul-Aziz in 1969. Does not correct for addition of Bob Deandridge or expansion in 69–70]
-1975–76 Bucks: 0.25 with, -1.55 without. Total change: +1.8 [Traded, leaving Bucks]
-1975–76 Lakers: 0.18 with, -3.94 without. Total change: +4.12 [Traded, joining Lakers]
-1989–90 Lakers: 6.38 with, 6.74 without. Total change: -0.36 [Retirement]
Career Average: +3.12
10-year prime: +4.26 (1970–1979)
Non-prime average: -0.36 (1 sample in retirement. 3.22 in 2 samples including rookie year)

Note that there is a comment about “not correcting for expansion,” but no such comment on Jordan’s profile:

Michael Jordan
-1984–85 Bulls: -0.5 with, -4.69 without. Total change: +4.19 [Rookie year]
-1986–87 Bulls: 0.38 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +4.24 [Injury year]
*Alternate Value: 1985–86 Bulls: Total change: +2.8 [Alternate Years: Alternate Value uses 1985 instead of 1987]
-1993–94 Bulls: 6.19 with, 2.87 without. Total change: +3.32 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1992–95 Bulls: Total Change: +5.26 [Context Adjustment: Alternate Value using 1992–93 for the ‘with’ sample, since many have argued Bulls were coasting in 93]
-1995–96 Bulls: 10.96 with, 4.29 without. Total change: +6.67 [re-joining Bulls]
-1998–99 Bulls: 7.24 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +15.82 [Retirement]
*Alternate Value: 1998–99 Bulls: 8.55 with, -8.58 without. Total change: +11.28 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate Value uses MoV with Pippen for ‘with’ sample, then subtract’s 98 Pippen’s 3.1 WOWY and 97 Rodman’s 2.75 WOWY].
-2001–02 Wizards: -1.57 with, -6.75 without. Total change: +5.18 [joining Wizards]
*Alternate Value: 2001–02 Wizards: Total change: +5.51 [Health Adjustment: Alternate Value only uses games Jordan played for ‘with’ sample]/
-2003–04 Wizards -1.47 with, -6.12 without. Total change: +4.65 [Retirement]
Career Average: +5.69 (using latter 2 alternate values)
10-year prime: +7.09 (1989–1998, +7.74 1989–1998 using alternate value for 1993 too)
Non-prime average: +4.65

Here you have a bunch of health adjustments, context adjustments alternate values, including a subjective “coasting” argument (have to be consistent and apply “coasting” everywhere and not when convenient for whatever purposes), etc., so you’d think there would be something there for the 1995 Bulls with Jordan just for the record, even if it doesn’t meet the arbitrary (and convenient) 30 game sample.

Then you have the LeBron sample:

LeBron James
-2003–04 Cavs: -3.07 with, -9.59 without. Total change: +6.52 [Rookie year]
-2010–11 Cavs: 6.17 with, -8.88 without. Total change: +15.05 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
*Adjusted Value: 2010–11 Cavs: Total Change: +10.94 [Teammate Adjustment: Alternate value subtracting 2011 Boston Shaq’s raw WOWY, using games with Varajao/Williams playing for ‘without’ sample]
-2010–11 Heat: 6.76 with, 1.99 without. Total change: +4.77 [Traded, joining Heat]
-2014–15 Heat: 4.15 with, -2.92 without. Total change: +7.07 [Traded, leaving Heat]
-2014–15 Cavs: 4.08 with, -3.86 without. Total change: +7.94 [Traded, joining Cavs]
-2018–19 Cavs: 0.59 with, -9.39 without. Total change: +9.98 [Traded, leaving Cavs]
-2018–19 Lakers: -1.33 with, -1.44 without. Total change: +0.11 [Traded, joining Lakers]
*Alternate Value: 2018–19 Lakers: Total change: +1.09 [Health Adjustment: Alternate value only uses when LeBron played for ‘with’ sample]
-2019–20 Lakers: 3.17 with, -3.78 without. Total change: +6.95 [Injury year]
-2021–22 Lakers: 1.25 with, -3.33 without. Total change: +4.58 [Injury year]
-2022–23 Lakers: -0.5 with, -2.8 without. Total change: +2.3 [Injury year]
Career Average: +6.21 (using alternate values)
10-year prime: +8.14 (2009–18)
Non-prime average: +4.29

What’s going here in blue? Adjusted for washed Shaq? Also, Andy V. played in 2011; Mo Williams played in 2011. They even played together and they did absolutely nothing. If you’re going to adjust for players like Andy V. and especially Mo Williams here, then you have to go through this entire list finding equivalents otherwise it seems biased, i.e., why are you picking out these two for LeBron’s sample? 1999 Bulls had ZERO minutes from Pippen, 0 minutes from Rodman, zero from Kerr and perhaps the greatest coach ever was gone. You need some adjustments there especially since 1999 Pippen was still an impact force. How is this equivalent to actually getting 2000+ minutes from Andy V. and Mo?

We have a 21 game sample with mostly same players that Taylor used and in that sample: 19 win pace

Andy V: -9.0 ON, +.5 ON/OFF, 8-23 in games played, 19 win pace, didn't do anything
Mo Williams: -13.9 ON, -4.4 ON/OFF, 9-28, 20 win pace (Cavs were better with Mo off court)
Mo Williams + Andy V.: 27 games played, -9.5, 6-21, 18 win pace; they were worse together than the “before adjustment” value fur the Cavs.

Ooh good spot!

"adjusting for expansion" for one guy but not another is pretty bad practice. Would help explain Kareem's uncharacteristically poor performance here.

Don’t think he made an “adjustment” but to make a note of it on one player, but then not on another player… Doesn’t look good. It certainly doesn’t scream objectivity.

[OhayoKD]

While I appreciate the OP’s effort, this is what I was getting out when I was discussing about the “adjusted” and “alternate” values with arbitrary players picked for “adjustments.” If you are going to do it, then you have to be consistent all the way around or present a list that doesn’t have any of the adjusted and alternate values. There are arbitrary decisions made and then there’s final numbers presented, which is misleading.

The Lakers were roughly +5 SRS (+/- .5) with Shaq in a large sample without doing the calculations, so saying Lakers were -.55 after adding Shaq isn’t an accurate depiction.

You mentioned about Kareem:

Note that there is a comment about “not correcting for expansion,” but no such comment on Jordan’s profile:


Here you have a bunch of health adjustments, context adjustments alternate values, including a subjective “coasting” argument (have to be consistent and apply “coasting” everywhere and not when convenient for whatever purposes), etc., so you’d think there would be something there for the 1995 Bulls with Jordan just for the record, even if it doesn’t meet the arbitrary (and convenient) 30 game sample.

Then you have the LeBron sample:



What’s going here in blue? Adjusted for washed Shaq? Also, Andy V. played in 2011; Mo Williams played in 2011. They even played together and they did absolutely nothing. If you’re going to adjust for players like Andy V. and especially Mo Williams here, then you have to go through this entire list finding equivalents otherwise it seems biased, i.e., why are you picking out these two for LeBron’s sample? 1999 Bulls had ZERO minutes from Pippen, 0 minutes from Rodman, zero from Kerr and perhaps the greatest coach ever was gone. You need some adjustments there especially since 1999 Pippen was still an impact force. How is this equivalent to actually getting 2000+ minutes from Andy V. and Mo?

We have a 21 game sample with mostly same players that Taylor used and in that sample: 19 win pace

Andy V: -9.0 ON, +.5 ON/OFF, 8-23 in games played, 19 win pace, didn't do anything
Mo Williams: -13.9 ON, -4.4 ON/OFF, 9-28, 20 win pace (Cavs were better with Mo off court)
Mo Williams + Andy V.: 27 games played, -9.5, 6-21, 18 win pace; they were worse together than the “before adjustment” value fur the Cavs.

Ooh good spot!

"adjusting for expansion" for one guy but not another is pretty bad practice. Would help explain Kareem's uncharacteristically poor performance here.

Don’t think he made an “adjustment” but to make a note of it on one player, but then not on another player… Doesn’t look good. It certainly doesn’t scream objectivity.

ah, okay.

Dray is probably right expansion was more notable. But it is a factor for both.

[OhayoKD]

And see, that’s a *huge* assumption when comparing teams that aren’t remotely the same at all. We have *no idea at all* what general direction the team went when the team is just completely different!

it is a much simpler assumption than what happens when you claim player a's team was loaded because it had a guy in the top 100 or player b's team was as good because of the top names on a roster.

It has not been presented as a certainty. You seem to be freaked out by the numbers but I'd say they're an improvement over "raw vibes"

It’s the output of numbers that make what you’re doing objectionable!

So if I said "jordan did not do as well as player a with similar or more help" it would be valid?

Per usual the criticism is aesthetic

The number is specific and offers something for you to scrutinize. The assumptions are laid out pretty plainly. I would think someone vigilantly looking for "motivated reasoning" would appreciate that...