Doctor MJ wrote:trelos6 wrote:Nomination: Neil Johnston. I have Neil here. I won’t nominate him for too many weeks, if he doesn’t get any traction. Basically, he was one of the best offensive players in the early NBA. He was a 20 pp75 +10 rTS% guy for a few seasons. Looking at his WS/48, he has 6 seasons above 0.200, and 4
Above 0.250. Now, he does get a huge knock for era, but honestly, the peak is there. Relative to era, he was a terrific scorer, and rebounder.
I gotta say it makes me do a double take here to see Johnston get buzz when Arizin's not in yet.
Have you chewed on what Johnston's playoff numbers look like next to Arizin?
I'll also ask: What are your thoughts on the way the team's offense could be so bad with Johnston doing his thing without Arizin after Arizin is called to the military?
I'll grant you Arizin's playoff resilience [in relation to Johnston's]; though does this mean the rs doesn't count/matter at all?
And wrt the last question.....
Whether it was intentional or not, that question seems to imply the sequence of cause/effect events was: Arizin left and the offense got bad; Arizin came back and the offense got good.
That's really not at all a full accounting of what occurred, though.....
In '52 (with
peak Paul Arizin, Andy Phillip [a
good PG for the time], and a promising rookie Neil Johnston playing limited minutes) they were a really good offense.
In '53, there was considerable overhaul of their frontcourt; nearly everyone except for Johnston and an ineffectual Joe Fulks had gone:
*Arizin they lost to military service.
**Ed Mikan they traded away early in the year (not that he was a prize, and only -2.9% rTS; but he had a serviceable career for the time period and was the starting C in '52).
***PF Walt Budko left for greener pastures than the NBA at the time (not that he was a prize, nor a volume scorer.....but at least he was +1.7% rTS in '52, and contributed 2.9 ast/36 min from the PF position).
Pro-rating Mikan's scant '53 minutes down to the 66-game season of '52 for comparison, that's 2939 minutes of PEAK Paul Arizin, 1443 minutes of Ed Mikan, and 1126 minutes of Walt Budko to replace in the frontcourt. How did they do it?
Well, [pro-rating '53 down to the 66-game season seen in '52], an
improved Neil Johnston added 1992 minutes from the previous season. Ineffective Joe Fulks was basically the same (a hair's difference after accounting for difference in season length).
They otherwise scrambled the roster, trying out a number of [bad] options:
*They give a try to SF Don Logfan, giving 1686 pro-rated minutes to him; he's perhaps a player [apparently] rapidly declining in relation to the league??? (-5.2% rTS in '53, and would wash out of the league a year later at 24 years old).
**They give 944 minutes to PF Mark Workman who shoots
a lot at just -8.2% rTS (he would wash out of the league a year later at age 23).
***They give 729 minutes to Ralph Polson, who is more efficient than the other two, though still -1.3% rTS while averaging just 1.0 ast/36 min for them. This would be his one and only season in the league, btw.
Even if we say the improved Neil Johnston is an even swap for PEAK Paul Arizin in offensive quality......his increased minutes fall nearly 1k short of replacing all the minutes of Arizin that were lost. The rest of [peak] Arizin's minutes, as well as those of Mikan and Budko, are replaced by three [often
very] inefficient forwards who would ALL be gone from the league a year later.
Now let's look at the backcourt......
....They also traded away early in the year the guy who was probably the 2nd-best/2nd-most important player on the team in '52: Hall of Fame PG Andy Phillip. That left a vacuum of 2421 minutes to fill in the backcourt. How did they replace those?
*Well, pro-rated for difference in season length, PG George Senesky added about 278 minutes in '53, where he has a severely declined year (-6.9% rTS; perhaps another guy who couldn't keep pace with a changing game??? decline for other reason??).
**They give 957 pro-rated minutes to rookie guard Danny Finn (who has basically the same efficiency as Senesky @ -6.8% rTS, but chucks away
literally twice the shooting volume of Senesky [he would wash out of the league two years later at the age of 26]).
***They add 30-year-old former NBA player Jerry Fleishman, giving him 832 pro-rated minutes (where he shoots a fair bit at -3.9% rTS); his final pro season, btw.
That was how prime Andy Phillip was replaced.
So we saw a full third of PEAK Arizin's minutes replaced by scrubs and replacement-level players; the lost minutes of Ed Mikan and Walt Budko likewise replaced by players who were mostly worse than them.
Then in backcourt we saw the full balance of Andy Phillip's minutes replaced by
clearly much lesser players.
That the offense fell off substantially is not exactly a
stop the presses! story.
In '54, there's some more turnover:
PF's Joe Grabowski and Walt Davis come in, as does combo forward Zeke Zawoluk [whose efficiency is a nice +2% rTS], Workman/Logfan/Polson are gone, and Joe Fulks is relegated to very limited minutes. This must be seen as a small improvement overall.
In the backcourt, Senesky has FAR reduced minutes, though Danny Finn gets more. Rookies Jack George and Ernie Beck [just 15 games for Ernie] are added, but neither is any good yet. Also added is so-so veteran Paul Walther. Not sure this is any improvement over the previous year.
The team does enjoy a bit more roster stability, however. The offense climbs back about half of the way toward where it was in '52. And overall they're only -0.81 SRS worse than they'd been in '52 with peak Paul Arizin (and prime Andy Phillip).
In '55, Paul Arizin returns (admittedly he'd have some rust, but a big improvement over any forward they had in '53 or '54); AND Jack George shows improvement in his 2nd year. Few other mostly net-neutral changes. So what happens?
They improve by 4 wins, +1.7 SRS, and a mere +0.6 on rORTG. A somewhat underwhelming improvement, imo.
It's the NEXT year, with the addition of rookie Tom Gola and Arizin shaking off the rust, then the offense [and the team] take off, propelling to a league-best +4.3 rORTG and the NBA title. The following year they were again a league-best +3.5 rORTG (both of those rORTG's are better than what they'd achieved with peak Arizin in '52, btw [+2.6]).
So whereas you seem to posit that Arizin had all kinds of impact while Johnston had next to none......
I see an offense that falls off a cliff in '53; but I also see Arizin wasn't the only thing lost (and a big chunk of the minutes lost were replaced by crap players).
I see the offense recover part-way---and the team record/MOV recover
most of the way---the following year [still no Arizin] just with some roster stability, more than anything else.
I see only a marginal improvement to the offense with the return of a rusty Paul Arizin (despite small improvement by Jack George, too). Overall improvement is also small.
Then, though it's muddied substantially by Arizin's personal improvement, it's the arrival of Tom Gola that really seems to ignite their success.
And finally, I note the best offensive and team outcomes occur when it is prime/near-peak Neil Johnston combined with prime [but NOT peak] Paul Arizin and Tom Gola.......outcomes better by a solid and clear margin than what was seen with PEAK Arizin combined with prime Andy Phillip and 15 mpg of rookie Neil Johnston.
None of this is me saying Neil Johnston should be ranked higher, or even necessarily near to Paul Arizin all-time.
But the narrative you appear to be implying is, to me, not at all true. And the idea that the two of them should be separated by 60+ places on an ATL (which I suspect is the case for you) seems [to me] far-fetched.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
