RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #6 (Hakeem Olajuwon)

[Doctor MJ]

For reference for people on Hakeem’s RAPM data in the play-by-play era, since there’s been a comparison of Hakeem’s RAPM to other players at a similar age, we actually have a much better comparison point for this, which does not require comparing RAPM values across different seasons (which may be scaled a bit differently).

Specifically, Patrick Ewing and Hakeem are the same age (and also are relatively similar players), and both played to a late age. So we can directly compare how they played in their older years in the exact same seasons. And, until we get to the very very old-age seasons that basically don’t matter since neither player is doing much at all, Patrick Ewing grades out as decidedly superior to Hakeem in RAPM.

JE RAPM: Patrick Ewing vs. Hakeem Olajuwon

1996-1997 (age 34):
Patrick Ewing: 4.82
Hakeem Olajuwon: 3.37

1997-1998 (age 35):
Patrick Ewing: 4.36
Hakeem Olajuwon: 3.11

1998-1999 (age 36):
Patrick Ewing: 4.07
Hakeem Olajuwon: 2.62

1999-2000 (age 37):
Patrick Ewing: 3.56
Hakeem Olajuwon: 1.56

2000-2001 (age 38):
Hakeem Olajuwon: 0.5
Patrick Ewing: -1.9

2001-2002 (age 39):
Hakeem Olajuwon: -0.51
Patrick Ewing: -2.87

As I said, until you get to age 38-39 where both of them are providing essentially no positive value, Patrick Ewing grades out as superior to Hakeem every single season, and it’s not close. There’s honestly just very little to be all that impressed by in terms of impact data for Hakeem.

Wow, I hadn't noticed that before! Do you have any sense on what sort of on-court differences could explain this? These were the years where Hakeem was supposedly a better passer (though certainly post peak). Did Ewing's defense age better than Hakeem's? If their defensive value was similar, were other parts of Ewing's offense easier to mesh around for his teammates?

So, some thoughts:

- Olajuwon's defensive advantage over Ewing had to do with agility. Since we know that's something that degrades over time, it's not crazy at all to think that Ewing would age better.

- Worth noting that the Knicks didn't really become an elite defensive team until '91-92 when he was 29 and Riley got there in Ewing's 7th year in the league. For my DPOY ballots, this was the first year in which Ewing makes the cut, while Olajuwon had already made it 6 times.

- After that time, Ewing would make my ballot 4 more times to Olajuwon's 3, making it once more after Olajuwon's final time making it.

- In the 1999 playoff the Knicks defense would be what drove them to the finals, and of course they did most of that without Ewing.

- The Knicks run of dominance would an entire decade through '00-01, which meant it continued after Ewing was gone.

So in general I'd say Ewing deserves credit for being the defensive anchor a great defensive core was built around, but I'd be inclined to say that in the context of the Riley Knicks, Ewing had more defensive help - teammates and coaching - than Olajuwon probably ever did.

[lessthanjake]

Wow, I hadn't noticed that before! Do you have any sense on what sort of on-court differences could explain this? These were the years where Hakeem was supposedly a better passer (though certainly post peak). Did Ewing's defense age better than Hakeem's? If their defensive value was similar, were other parts of Ewing's offense easier to mesh around for his teammates?

I’m not exactly sure and would definitely need to watch some film to get a concrete answer I’d have confidence in. That said, it’s possible we can get some clues as to this by looking at the ORAPM and DRAPM breakdown in these years, and see where Ewing was deriving his gap from. What we see is that in 1996-1997, Ewing’s gap was caused by a big advantage in DRAPM. The next year the gap was about equal parts ORAPM and DRAPM. And then in the next couple years, Hakeem got back on track with Ewing in terms of DRAPM but fell off a lot in ORAPM and therefore stayed behind Ewing. So the general implication we might take from this is that Hakeem had a bit of a down-year defensively in 1996-1997 and then fell off a lot offensively, while Ewing was falling off a bit in general but not a lot (until Ewing fell off a cliff his last two years). In terms of what caused this on-court, I can’t say I’m exactly sure. The fact that Hakeem improved in DRAPM quite a bit after 1996-1997 suggests it may not just have been a loss of athleticism. Maybe the inclusion of Barkley hurt things defensively, I’m not sure. We definitely can sort of see where the offensive decline comes in after that year— his scoring falls off a good deal, and then his assist numbers go down too.

[ShaqAttac]

For reference for people on Hakeem’s RAPM data in the play-by-play era, since there’s been a comparison of Hakeem’s RAPM to other players at a similar age, we actually have a much better comparison point for this, which does not require comparing RAPM values across different seasons (which may be scaled a bit differently).

Specifically, Patrick Ewing and Hakeem are the same age (and also are relatively similar players), and both played to a late age. So we can directly compare how they played in their older years in the exact same seasons. And, until we get to the very very old-age seasons that basically don’t matter since neither player is doing much at all, Patrick Ewing grades out as decidedly superior to Hakeem in RAPM.

JE RAPM: Patrick Ewing vs. Hakeem Olajuwon
As I said, until you get to age 38-39 where both of them are providing essentially no positive value, Patrick Ewing grades out as superior to Hakeem every single season, and it’s not close. There’s honestly just very little to be all that impressed by in terms of impact data for Hakeem.

what does ewing got to do with shaq? i dont see how this comp matters unless ur plannin to vote for patrick

hakeem looks good in most of the impact i been seeing. u just really like wowyrr for some reason

The point is that Hakeem *doesn’t* look like a top 6 guy in terms of impact. Obviously Patrick Ewing is not someone we’d consider anytime soon in these rankings, and old Ewing was clearly ahead of old Hakeem in impact according to JE’s RAPM, at the same ages in the same years. More specifically, I was refuting an implication that old Hakeem’s RAPM supported his case here. There’s simply not an impact-metric case for Hakeem at this point IMO. His impact metrics just don’t look all that great.

but his old rapm is better than shaq? only guy i can vote for lookin better by rapm is kg who didn't win anything without great help and i guess ewing?

his impact looks as good as a guy we already voted and then he goes crazier than everyone else in the playoffs. why cant he be top 6? wilt cant even win joining superteams, shaq got all the rapm and it kind of sucks, kg doesnt win nothing and magic didnt play that long. you've been hypin steph but he be getting torched by lebron in his 30s and also jokic too?

i think hakeem impact look fine and then he gets cookin in the playoffs. he also played super long and did it on a team that sucked. maybe i shouldnt have voted him over duncan, but i think he beats everyone left

[lessthanjake]

what does ewing got to do with shaq? i dont see how this comp matters unless ur plannin to vote for patrick

hakeem looks good in most of the impact i been seeing. u just really like wowyrr for some reason

The point is that Hakeem *doesn’t* look like a top 6 guy in terms of impact. Obviously Patrick Ewing is not someone we’d consider anytime soon in these rankings, and old Ewing was clearly ahead of old Hakeem in impact according to JE’s RAPM, at the same ages in the same years. More specifically, I was refuting an implication that old Hakeem’s RAPM supported his case here. There’s simply not an impact-metric case for Hakeem at this point IMO. His impact metrics just don’t look all that great.

but his old rapm is better than shaq? only guy i can vote for lookin better by rapm is kg who didn't win anything without great help and i guess ewing?

his impact looks as good as a guy we already voted and then he goes crazier than everyone else in the playoffs. why cant he be top 6? wilt cant even win joining superteams, shaq got all the rapm and it kind of sucks, kg doesnt win nothing and magic didnt play that long. you've been hypin steph but he be getting torched by lebron in his 30s and also jokic too?

i think hakeem impact look fine and then he gets cookin in the playoffs. he also played super long and did it on a team that sucked. maybe i shouldnt have voted him over duncan, but i think he beats everyone left

Hakeem’s RAPM at an old age looks better than Shaq’s RAPM at an old age, but Shaq’s precipitous fall off at an old age is one of the negatives of Shaq’s case, while Hakeem’s “old age” RAPM comes right after his peak. We don’t have any indication that prime Hakeem would’ve had as good a RAPM as prime Shaq. And while old Hakeem might’ve had higher RAPM than old Shaq, the numbers are in different years (and therefore scaled differently and not necessarily directly comparable), and Hakeem is lower than old Ewing in the exact same years so it’s not like old Hakeem’s numbers are very impressive. There’s really not any particularly impressive impact-metric numbers from Hakeem. Both his full RAPM numbers from 1996-1997 onwards and his prime-years Squared RAPM snippet numbers are only okay. Pollack gives us raw on-off for Hakeem’s peak, and it’s good but does not look as impressive as peak Shaq’s raw on-off (Hakeem has a slightly lower on-off with a substantially lesser net rating while on court, a combination that is plainly less good). And in JE’s RAPM estimate using quarter-by-quarter scores and minutes data, Hakeem comes in at 32nd in the NBA for the 1990s as a whole (well behind all the other major centers of the decade: Shaq, Robinson, Ewing, Mourning, Mutombo). There’s truly nothing in the impact data we have that is at all indicative of Hakeem being even close to a top 6 all time player. The data is limited enough that one could perhaps still reasonably just ignore the data and vote for Hakeem anyways, but one should be clear that that’s what one is doing, rather than thinking the impact data provides a case for Hakeem when it doesn’t.

[MyUniBroDavis]

what does ewing got to do with shaq? i dont see how this comp matters unless ur plannin to vote for patrick

hakeem looks good in most of the impact i been seeing. u just really like wowyrr for some reason

The point is that Hakeem *doesn’t* look like a top 6 guy in terms of impact. Obviously Patrick Ewing is not someone we’d consider anytime soon in these rankings, and old Ewing was clearly ahead of old Hakeem in impact according to JE’s RAPM, at the same ages in the same years. More specifically, I was refuting an implication that old Hakeem’s RAPM supported his case here. There’s simply not an impact-metric case for Hakeem at this point IMO. His impact metrics just don’t look all that great.

but his old rapm is better than shaq? only guy i can vote for lookin better by rapm is kg who didn't win anything without great help and i guess ewing?

his impact looks as good as a guy we already voted and then he goes crazier than everyone else in the playoffs. why cant he be top 6? wilt cant even win joining superteams, shaq got all the rapm and it kind of sucks, kg doesnt win nothing and magic didnt play that long. you've been hypin steph but he be getting torched by lebron in his 30s and also jokic too?

i think hakeem impact look fine and then he gets cookin in the playoffs. he also played super long and did it on a team that sucked. maybe i shouldnt have voted him over duncan, but i think he beats everyone left

I didn’t know you could type in full paragraphs lol

[eminence]

The point is that Hakeem *doesn’t* look like a top 6 guy in terms of impact. Obviously Patrick Ewing is not someone we’d consider anytime soon in these rankings, and old Ewing was clearly ahead of old Hakeem in impact according to JE’s RAPM, at the same ages in the same years. More specifically, I was refuting an implication that old Hakeem’s RAPM supported his case here. There’s simply not an impact-metric case for Hakeem at this point IMO. His impact metrics just don’t look all that great.

Have you looked at his playoff impact numbers? Because if it is top 10 regular season players of all time, Hakeem isn't getting in. But as one of the greatest playoff risers in NBA history, that has moved him up strongly in posters' regard.

Despite apparently being a bit low on him relative to some here, I feel like I'm also moving him up more for the PO play than anyone else (possible exception to Russell). I'm not sure he'd be in my top 20 RS only guys - thinking through it: Mikan, Russell, Wilt, Oscar, KAJ, DrJ, Bird, Magic, MJ, one of Stockton/Malone (I go Malone like most, but I recognize it's difficult to split the two), Robinson, Shaq, KG, Duncan, Dirk, Kobe, Lebron, CP3 I'd all take pretty easily.

So maybe squeaking into the top 20 for RS performers, but not easily over guys like West/Moses/Curry.

[ShaqAttac]

The point is that Hakeem *doesn’t* look like a top 6 guy in terms of impact. Obviously Patrick Ewing is not someone we’d consider anytime soon in these rankings, and old Ewing was clearly ahead of old Hakeem in impact according to JE’s RAPM, at the same ages in the same years. More specifically, I was refuting an implication that old Hakeem’s RAPM supported his case here. There’s simply not an impact-metric case for Hakeem at this point IMO. His impact metrics just don’t look all that great.

Have you looked at his playoff impact numbers? Because if it is top 10 regular season players of all time, Hakeem isn't getting in. But as one of the greatest playoff risers in NBA history, that has moved him up strongly in posters' regard.

Despite apparently being a bit low on him relative to some here, I feel like I'm also moving him up more for the PO play than anyone else (possible exception to Russell). I'm not sure he'd be in my top 20 RS only guys - thinking through it: Mikan, Russell, Wilt, Oscar, KAJ, DrJ, Bird, Magic, MJ, one of Stockton/Malone (I go Malone like most, but I recognize it's difficult to split the two), Robinson, Shaq, KG, Duncan, Dirk, Kobe, Lebron, CP3 I'd all take pretty easily.

So maybe squeaking into the top 20 for RS performers, but not easily over guys like West/Moses/Curry.

mjs impact look the same as hakeem though. stockton and malone seems super sus but i guess im open to the argument

[lessthanjake]

Might not be at his best but he did wind up playing every game after he came back and heavy minutes (36 minutes per game with lessened minutes in 4 different blowouts). If we count this as an injury, especially if the player plays in every game of the series, then there are other players who have been injured or might have been and then were affected when they came back but are not listed as injured.

Also, he had some good games before the Finals and maybe not up to where he was in the regular season, but it was still 29/6/7/2 on 62% TS in the 9 games before the Finals, which is actually better than his career post season TS. His last three games vs. OKC was basically about as well as one can play, so not sure what he could do to show that he was back.

—40/9/8 on 60% TS in game back vs. the Blazers, the “I’m back” game.
—29/5/11 on 67% TS in game 2 back
—28 points on 81% TS in game 2 vs. OKC
—33/7/8 on 65% TS in the last three games vs. OKC., +36.7 ON/OFF This is even better than he was in his great regular season. Why did he fall off in the Finals? Seems convenient to say injured when he played this well BEFORE the finals.

Not sure we can just say that someone played well in some games and therefore wasn’t feeling the effects of a very recent injury. We have no counterfactual of how well he’d have played otherwise—maybe he’d have been even better! And the thing with Steph’s injury in 2016 is that it isn’t exactly hypothetical that it might’ve had an effect, because you could easily see his limited mobility while watching the games.

The way I see it, Steph was clearly at a subpar level due to injury. And you’re absolutely right that he’s not the only person that that would apply to. Especially past players, who much more often played through injuries rather than sitting. I’ve noted this before in this thread: There’s less overt “lucky” title winners as you go further back in time, in the sense that there’s fewer title winners that faced teams with major players out injured in the playoffs. But I think that that fact probably obscures that a lot of older title winners probably were lucky in terms of injuries and that back then that just manifested itself similarly to 2016—i.e. a star player playing through injury and being nowhere near as good because of it. We just don’t really know when those things occurred, since teams didn’t always publicize such stuff (it’s not exactly smart strategically to do so).

Starting center Bogut was also injured and out for the final 2.75 games of the finals. Small detail, but Iguodala also tweaked his back in the finals and wasn't able to dunk on a certain fast break at the end of a certain game 7... (though Iguodala was basically always ailing in the playoffs, so nothing new here).

This is where it really gets murky. If you’re going to count Bogut (and Iggy) as injuries then you have to go back to your entire list and mention other players that were injured but played.

Let’s first talk about Bogut.

Bogut played in the Finals but was ineffective. In fact, he hadn’t been as effective going back 11 games in the playoffs in which the Warriors were +3.2 points per 100 better without him in those games, primarily because he was bogging down the offense (offense +6.4 per 100 better with him off the court in these games). And then the Finals: Bogut was a non-factor in those finals; would he have been better if he were completely healthy? Maybe, but that applies to every player who’s played in the playoffs, so if he’s part of your “injuries,” well, there would have to be others.

Bogut only played a total of 60 minutes (15, 15, 12, 10, 8) in the series. Kerr saw that he was ineffective as the series went on for multiple reasons (he was bogging down the offense) and didn't play him.

In fact, the Warriors outscored the Cavs with Bogut off court.

In his 60 minutes on court: GS's ORTG: 91.4, GS's DRTG: 111.2, NET: -19.8 per 100 possessions
In the 276 minutes off court: GS's ORTG: 113.2, GS's DRTG: 109.5, NET: +3.7 per 100 possessions.


The Warriors offense was light years better without him and even the defense was a little better. The Warriors were blown out while Bogut was on court. Now, look at the last three games he played as his minutes got fewer and fewer: The Warriors were blown off the court with Bogut on court and Steve Kerr perhaps would have benched him regardless of health.

In his 30 minutes on court: GS's ORTG: 86.2, GS's DRTG: 131, NET: -44.8 per 100 possessions.
In the 114 minutes off court: GS's ORTG: 112.4, GS's DRTG: 116.4, NET: -4.0 per 100 possessions.

Game 1: 15 minutes with him in, -8. 33 minutes with him off, +23
Game 2: 15 minutes with him in, +10. 33 minutes with him off, +23
Game 3: 12 minutes with him in, -21. 36 minutes with him off, -9.
Game 4: 10 minutes with him in, +0. 38 minutes with him off, +11.
Game 5: 8 minutes with him in, -6. 40 minutes with him off, -9.

In his last three games, he was providing no defensive resistance and of course is a negative on offense compared to their other lineups so Kerr didn't play him.

LAST THREE BOGUT GAMES: Protection, and was a liability on our fence:

Overall: Dfg%: 63.6%, opponents usually shoot 50.4%, +13.2%
Under 6ft: Dfg%: 80%, opponents usually shoot 61.7%, +18.3%

But the effect of missing someone is determined by how bad the replacement is. Please look at what the +/- of the Bogut replacement was in the games he missed. In game 6, Festus Ezeli got just below 15 minutes of game time, and the Warriors were outscored by 17 points. In game 7, Ezeli was given just below 11 minutes of game time, and the Warriors were outscored by 9 points. In other words, in the games Bogut missed, the Warriors were outscored by 1 point a minute that Ezeli played. That’s substantially worse than how they’d averaged doing with Bogut on the floor, even if they’d not done well overall with Bogut. So it’s certainly quite plausible that they could’ve won with Bogut, even if they continued being outscored with Bogut on the floor.

Agree about context being important but you have to be consistent. The series the Warriors lost saw them have all their players who didn’t miss any minutes other than Draymond who missed fewer minutes than Love. Iggy missed zero minutes. Bogut was ineffective; the minutes he did play, he was ineffective and he was ineffective going back at least 11 games. Curry had been injured but again played the entire series and the last three games before the Finals he produced 33/7/8 on 65% TS vs. OKC., +36.7 ON/OFF I don’t count the Warriors as “injured” or “not healthy” after the first round and a half, in which they handily defeated opponents (monster +17.1 per 100 before game 3 vs. Portland) anyway as you have done, but if they are, the Cavs are equally as injured with the minutes Love lost > Draymond’s minutes,

The fact that Steph—the unanimous league MVP—was playing hobbled matters like 10x more than any issue the Cavs had. Having their second best player miss a home game is a cherry on top, and Bogut missing time and Iguodala being a bit gimpy are just cherries on top. It seems quite obvious to me that the Cavs had a health advantage in that series. Not as big an advantage as the Warriors had had the year before, but still a clear health advantage. But, of course, that’s how basketball goes, and it’s why it’s so hard to win year after year—you won’t always have a health advantage, and therefore winning year after year essentially requires you to have such a gap over your opponents that you win even when the other team has a health advantage.

[ShaqAttac]

The point is that Hakeem *doesn’t* look like a top 6 guy in terms of impact. Obviously Patrick Ewing is not someone we’d consider anytime soon in these rankings, and old Ewing was clearly ahead of old Hakeem in impact according to JE’s RAPM, at the same ages in the same years. More specifically, I was refuting an implication that old Hakeem’s RAPM supported his case here. There’s simply not an impact-metric case for Hakeem at this point IMO. His impact metrics just don’t look all that great.

but his old rapm is better than shaq? only guy i can vote for lookin better by rapm is kg who didn't win anything without great help and i guess ewing?

his impact looks as good as a guy we already voted and then he goes crazier than everyone else in the playoffs. why cant he be top 6? wilt cant even win joining superteams, shaq got all the rapm and it kind of sucks, kg doesnt win nothing and magic didnt play that long. you've been hypin steph but he be getting torched by lebron in his 30s and also jokic too?

i think hakeem impact look fine and then he gets cookin in the playoffs. he also played super long and did it on a team that sucked. maybe i shouldnt have voted him over duncan, but i think he beats everyone left

Hakeem’s RAPM at an old age looks better than Shaq’s RAPM at an old age, but Shaq’s precipitous fall off at an old age is one of the negatives of Shaq’s case, while Hakeem’s “old age” RAPM comes very close to his peak. We don’t have any indication that prime Hakeem would’ve had as good a RAPM as prime Shaq. And while old Hakeem might’ve had higher RAPM than old Shaq, the numbers are in different years (and therefore scaled differently and not necessarily directly comparable), and Hakeem is lower than old Ewing in the exact same years so it’s not like old Hakeem’s numbers are very impressive. There’s really not any particularly impressive impact-metric numbers from Hakeem. Both his full RAPM numbers from 1996-1997 onwards and his prime-years Squared RAPM snippet numbers are only okay. Pollack gives us raw on-off for Hakeem’s peak, and it’s good but does not look as impressive as peak Shaq’s raw on-off (Hakeem has a slightly lower on-off with a substantially lesser net rating while on court, a combination that is plainly less good). And in JE’s RAPM estimate using quarter-by-quarter scores and minutes data, Hakeem comes in at 32nd in the NBA for the 1990s as a whole (well behind all the other major centers of the decade: Shaq, Robinson, Ewing, Mourning, Mutombo). There’s truly nothing in the impact data we have that is at all indicative of Hakeem being even close to a top 6 all time player. The data is limited enough that one could perhaps still reasonably just ignore the data and vote for Hakeem anyways, but one should be clear that that’s what one is doing, rather than thinking the impact data provides a case for Hakeem when it doesn’t.

you keep sayin rapm but theres alot of impact whatever been provided outside of rapm with good reasons. we also got all the rapm for shaq and he looks horrible. shaq aint even top 10 in the big career one that got posted earlier.

i think youre just looking at the numbers that dont like hakeem honestly. fp and kd and eni all been posting some really good args and they seem to understand what they using. idk if you do.

[lessthanjake]

POST EDITED TO REMOVE PERSONAL ATTACK. LAST WARNING FOR THIS POSTER..

[eminence]

Have you looked at his playoff impact numbers? Because if it is top 10 regular season players of all time, Hakeem isn't getting in. But as one of the greatest playoff risers in NBA history, that has moved him up strongly in posters' regard.

Despite apparently being a bit low on him relative to some here, I feel like I'm also moving him up more for the PO play than anyone else (possible exception to Russell). I'm not sure he'd be in my top 20 RS only guys - thinking through it: Mikan, Russell, Wilt, Oscar, KAJ, DrJ, Bird, Magic, MJ, one of Stockton/Malone (I go Malone like most, but I recognize it's difficult to split the two), Robinson, Shaq, KG, Duncan, Dirk, Kobe, Lebron, CP3 I'd all take pretty easily.

So maybe squeaking into the top 20 for RS performers, but not easily over guys like West/Moses/Curry.

mjs impact look the same as hakeem though. stockton and malone seems super sus but i guess im open to the argument

Ehh, what you looking at? I see '96-'98 MJ beating '94-'96 Hakeem from what we have decent data for. '96 MJ in particular pretty soundly winning over any Hakeem season and looking like a near GOAT tier RS from the 30 years of widely available impact data.

[ShaqAttac]

Despite apparently being a bit low on him relative to some here, I feel like I'm also moving him up more for the PO play than anyone else (possible exception to Russell). I'm not sure he'd be in my top 20 RS only guys - thinking through it: Mikan, Russell, Wilt, Oscar, KAJ, DrJ, Bird, Magic, MJ, one of Stockton/Malone (I go Malone like most, but I recognize it's difficult to split the two), Robinson, Shaq, KG, Duncan, Dirk, Kobe, Lebron, CP3 I'd all take pretty easily.

So maybe squeaking into the top 20 for RS performers, but not easily over guys like West/Moses/Curry.

mjs impact look the same as hakeem though. stockton and malone seems super sus but i guess im open to the argument

Ehh, what you looking at? I see '96-'98 MJ beating '94-'96 Hakeem from what we have decent data for. '96 MJ in particular pretty soundly winning over any Hakeem season and looking like a near GOAT tier RS from the 30 years of widely available impact data.

wowy and all the "real" stuff different posters provided. we dont really got much lineup stuff for hakeem and mj right? and apparently you shouldnt just be looking at that anyway. eni made a post about it on the first page and kds been bringing it up over and over. and then fp4 and the others pointed out how he has all these srs upsets and his team gettin way better in the playoffs.

anyway im on thin ice so i wont post much outside of voting

[homecourtloss]

The fact that Steph—the unanimous league MVP—was playing hobbled matters like 10x more than any issue the Cavs had. Having their second best player miss a home game is a cherry on top, and Bogut missing time and Iguodala being a bit gimpy are just cherries on top. It seems quite obvious to me that the Cavs had a health advantage in that series.

There’s nothing *obvious* about it. Obvious would be 2015 in which Irving played one game and Love none.

In 2016, Bogut was irrelevant in the series when he played as the Warriors were a positive with him off court and a large negative with him on court. He wasn’t helping them win and wasn’t helping them win before that series either (overall negative on court 11 games before Cavs series, Warriors +3.2 with him off, much better offensively). Iggy was “gimpy” but somehow played 7 games, 230 minutes, and 37 minutes in game 7—if he’s gimpy and adds to the Cavs’ supposed health advantage then you have to go back through history and question all the players who played every game while playing heavy minutes and whether they were really injured. Neither of these give the Cavs a “health advantage.”

Draymond missed 1 game. Love missed 1.5. Draymond is better and much more valuable than Love, though, and played one of the greatest game sevens in NBA history and a great overall playoffs. Curry, unfortunately for the Warriors, came up short.

Curry wasn’t “hobbled”; he might not have been 100% but you can say that about lots of players. A player who is hobbled will not do the following in playoff situations:

— 29/6/7/2 on 62% TS in the 9 games before the Finals, pretty much what Curry did from 2018–2023 in the playoffs, actually a little better (TS% higher, 9 game BPM around +9 to +10 compared to +6.4 from 2018-2013)

—40/9/8 on 60% TS in the FIRST game back vs. the Blazers, the “I’m back” game.

—29/5/11 on 67% TS in game 2 back

—28 points on 81% TS in game 2 vs. OKC

—33/7/8 on 65% TS in the last three games vs. OKC., +36.7 ON/OFF This is even better than he was in his great regular season. Why did he fall off in the Finals? Seems convenient to say injured when he played this well BEFORE the finals. Seems got his legs underneath him and then did poorly in the finals.

[eminence]

mjs impact look the same as hakeem though. stockton and malone seems super sus but i guess im open to the argument

Ehh, what you looking at? I see '96-'98 MJ beating '94-'96 Hakeem from what we have decent data for. '96 MJ in particular pretty soundly winning over any Hakeem season and looking like a near GOAT tier RS from the 30 years of widely available impact data.

wowy and all the "real" stuff different posters provided. we dont really got much lineup stuff for hakeem and mj right? and apparently you shouldnt just be looking at that anyway. eni made a post about it on the first page and kds been bringing it up over and over. and then fp4 and the others pointed out how he has all these srs upsets and his team gettin way better in the playoffs.

anyway im on thin ice so i wont post much outside of voting

You're good in my book, but fair if you don't want to skate where it's thin.

I personally don't value WOWY type data too much if we have full lineup data or even just plus/minus. Teams simply aren't made to function without their stars, so I'm not that interested in how they do without them. For the most part - they suck. It's kind of notable when they don't suck ('91 Rockets and '94 Bulls as examples of squads performing stronger than you'd expect), or when they especially suck (Cleveland in '11, Wolves through KG's career), but for the most part it's all kinda meh. It's certainly better than nothing, but for me I see it as pretty strictly inferior to lineup data even though it is measuring something slightly different. Cetainly an area where having an opinion different to that isn't a crime though.

[lessthanjake]

The fact that Steph—the unanimous league MVP—was playing hobbled matters like 10x more than any issue the Cavs had. Having their second best player miss a home game is a cherry on top, and Bogut missing time and Iguodala being a bit gimpy are just cherries on top. It seems quite obvious to me that the Cavs had a health advantage in that series.

There’s nothing *obvious* about it. Obvious would be 2015 in which Irving played one game and Love none.

In 2016, Bogut was irrelevant in the series when he played as the Warriors were a positive with him off court and a large negative with him on court. He wasn’t helping them win and wasn’t helping them win before that series either (overall negative on court 11 games before Cavs series, Warriors +3.2 with him off, much better offensively). Iggy was “gimpy” but somehow played 7 games, 230 minutes, and 37 minutes in game 7—if he’s gimpy and adds to the Cavs’ supposed health advantage then you have to go back through history and question all the players who played every game while playing heavy minutes and whether they were really injured. Neither of these give the Cavs a “health advantage.”

Draymond missed 1 game. Love missed 1.5. Draymond is better and much more valuable than Love, though, and played one of the greatest game sevens in NBA history and a great overall playoffs. Curry, unfortunately for the Warriors, came up short.

Again, you can say the team was not doing well with Bogut on the court, but with Bogut out in Games 6 & 7, those minutes were taken up by someone with whom the Warriors did *even worse* with, to the point where if they’d only done as badly in those minutes as they’d been averaging with Bogut then they’d have won Game 7. An injury to a player matters a good deal if the replacement is worse, even if the person being replaced hasn’t been doing well. For instance, if the worst rotation player in the NBA got injured and had to be replaced by me, then that would be immensely impactful even though that player being replaced is bad (indeed, it’d make it impossible for the team to win!). This was just a less extreme version of that.

Curry wasn’t “hobbled”; he might not have been 100% but you can say that about lots of players. A player who is hobbled will not do the following in playoff situations:

— 29/6/7/2 on 62% TS in the 9 games before the Finals, pretty much what Curry did from 2018–2023 in the playoffs, actually a little better (TS% higher, 9 game BPM around +9 to +10 compared to +6.4 from 2018-2013)

—40/9/8 on 60% TS in the FIRST game back vs. the Blazers, the “I’m back” game.

—29/5/11 on 67% TS in game 2 back

—28 points on 81% TS in game 2 vs. OKC

[b]—33/7/8 on 65% TS in the last three games vs. OKC., +36.7 ON/OFF This is even better than he was in his great regular season. Why did he fall off in the Finals? Seems convenient to say injured when he played this well BEFORE the finals. Seems got his legs underneath him and then did poorly in the finals.

The problem here is that this isn’t some untelevised series from the 1960s. We all saw that Steph couldn’t move as well. Saying he still did pretty well in other games is all well and good, but it doesn’t really prove anything since we don’t have the counterfactual—maybe he’d have done even better without the injury. Indeed, you say that in the games before the finals he did “pretty much what Curry did from 2018–2023 in the playoffs” but the 2015-2016 season was by far his best season ever, so doing “pretty much what [he] did from 2018-2023” is not actually what we’d expect. We’d generally expect significantly better in the playoffs in a player’s supernova year. Anyways, what we do know is that he got injured during the playoffs, players get sent back much quicker than normal when injured in the playoffs, and he visibly was moving less well.

[One_and_Done]

POST EDITED TO REMOVE PERSONAL ATTACK. LAST WARNING FOR THIS POSTER..

Don't get yourself suspended bro. You're producing good content.

Who are you nominating next btw?

[homecourtloss]

The fact that Steph—the unanimous league MVP—was playing hobbled matters like 10x more than any issue the Cavs had. Having their second best player miss a home game is a cherry on top, and Bogut missing time and Iguodala being a bit gimpy are just cherries on top. It seems quite obvious to me that the Cavs had a health advantage in that series.

There’s nothing *obvious* about it. Obvious would be 2015 in which Irving played one game and Love none.

In 2016, Bogut was irrelevant in the series when he played as the Warriors were a positive with him off court and a large negative with him on court. He wasn’t helping them win and wasn’t helping them win before that series either (overall negative on court 11 games before Cavs series, Warriors +3.2 with him off, much better offensively). Iggy was “gimpy” but somehow played 7 games, 230 minutes, and 37 minutes in game 7—if he’s gimpy and adds to the Cavs’ supposed health advantage then you have to go back through history and question all the players who played every game while playing heavy minutes and whether they were really injured. Neither of these give the Cavs a “health advantage.”

Draymond missed 1 game. Love missed 1.5. Draymond is better and much more valuable than Love, though, and played one of the greatest game sevens in NBA history and a great overall playoffs. Curry, unfortunately for the Warriors, came up short.

Again, you can say the team was not doing well with Bogut on the court, but with Bogut out in Games 6 & 7, those minutes were taken up by someone with whom the Warriors did *even worse* with, to the point where if they’d only done as badly in those minutes as they’d been averaging with Bogut then they’d have won Game 7. An injury to a player matters a good deal if the replacement is worse, even if the person being replaced hasn’t been doing well. For instance, if the worst rotation player in the NBA got injured and had to be replaced by me, then that would be immensely impactful even though that player being replaced is bad (indeed, it’d make it impossible for the team to win!). This was just a less extreme version of that.

Curry wasn’t “hobbled”; he might not have been 100% but you can say that about lots of players. A player who is hobbled will not do the following in playoff situations:

— 29/6/7/2 on 62% TS in the 9 games before the Finals, pretty much what Curry did from 2018–2023 in the playoffs, actually a little better (TS% higher, 9 game BPM around +9 to +10 compared to +6.4 from 2018-2013)

—40/9/8 on 60% TS in the FIRST game back vs. the Blazers, the “I’m back” game.

—29/5/11 on 67% TS in game 2 back

—28 points on 81% TS in game 2 vs. OKC

[b]—33/7/8 on 65% TS in the last three games vs. OKC., +36.7 ON/OFF This is even better than he was in his great regular season. Why did he fall off in the Finals? Seems convenient to say injured when he played this well BEFORE the finals. Seems got his legs underneath him and then did poorly in the finals.

The problem here is that this isn’t some untelevised series from the 1960s. We all saw that Steph couldn’t move as well. Saying he still did pretty well in other games is all well and good, but it doesn’t really prove anything since we don’t have the counterfactual—maybe he’d have done even better without the injury. Indeed, you say that in the games before the finals he did “pretty much what Curry did from 2018–2023 in the playoffs” but the 2015-2016 season was by far his best season ever, so doing “pretty much what [he] did from 2018-2023” is not actually what we’d expect. We’d generally expect significantly better in the playoffs in a player’s supernova year. Anyways, what we do know is that he got injured during the playoffs, players get sent back much quicker than normal when injured in the playoffs, and he visibly was moving less well.

Looks like we clearly disagree about the supposed advantage. We also disagree how injured Curry was and how much it affected him, i.e., seemingly didn’t at all in one of the best three game playoff game stretches of his career (or anyone’s) in which he also played good defense in big minutes against an all-time great team in OKC right before the Finals which you haven’t accounted for.

[Doctor MJ]

Vote 1: Magic Johnson



Magic re-vote details in spoilers:

Spoiler:

Original Nomination Post:

Speaking of Magic, he'll be my first Nominee. To tell a bit of my journey here:

When I started on RealGM, I had Magic higher than the Olajuwons/Shaqs/Duncan/KGs. Then I started focusing on two things:

1. Longevity - where Magic's HIV diagnosis forever damaged what he could achieve.

2. Impact - Shaq, Duncan & KG had such high impact, and impact on both sides of the ball, that it was hard to imagine that Magic was enough better to make up for longevity issues.

Also, related to impact, was me consider how lucky Magic was to arrive on the Lakers. Incredible team success to be sure, but to be expect to a degree with that talent around you, right?

On the longevity front, I've walked it back a bit. While I'm still fine using extended longevity as a tiebreaker, I'm generally more focused in what a player can do in 5-10 years, because for the most part that's when a franchise can expect to build a contender with you. And of course, Magic had that. In Magic's 12 years before the HIV retirement, the Lakers had an amount of success that's just plain staggering for any career.

12 years. 12 years 50+ wins. 32 playoff series wins.

For the record, if my count is correct, LeBron himself only has 12 50+ win years (though he does have 41 playoff series victories).

So yeah, Magic packed in so much success into his career, that it's hard to take seriously longevity as that big of concern to me. Tiebreaker at most really.

Of course he had help and I don't want to just elevate the guy because he had more help...but being the star and leader of the team having the most dominant decade run since Russell is not something to be brushed aside lightly. I think we need to be very careful about assuming other guys have a comparable realistic ceiling.

Going back to LeBron, I'll say that watching him through his career has also helped me gain more confidence in Magic's ability to find ways to control the game around him no matter the context or how his body changed. I think Magic had an extremely strong intuition about how to win the arm-wrestling contest of basketball, finding little affordances to gain leverage over time, and I think it's offensive geniuses who in general have this capacity in the modern (and even somewhat-near-modern game).

Actual voting post
Alright so I want to first vote the context within this project. This is the first time my prior vote for Nominee will immediately translate into my vote for Inductee, and it feels awkward, but I know it won't be the last time this happens.

Without further ado...

Bird and Magic, the Beautiful Rivalry

I can't help but think about Magic with the rivalry and comparison to Larry Bird in mind. Obviously we all know them to be an amazing rivalry that dominated a decade, and probably all of us are aware that it's with the two of them that the NBA regains its momentum, and this is a big deal for a lot of reasons but its bigness isn't that relevant to this particular project.

What's just amazing about this rivalry to me is that both players weren't just very, very good at basketball, but that both players feel so qualitatively distinct from the players that came before. Magic's the most obvious one here because while you can point to transition-offense legends and tall guards of the past, I'm sure no one looked at Magic and though "Hey, he should try to play a bit like Bob Cousy!".

I find Bird's uniqueness - at least such that I perceive it - to be the more profound. In Bird you have a player with off-the-charts level awareness and (while young) an incredibly high motor, and he begins positioned - literally and figuratively - where you'd expect for a guy with his size and touch given contemporary thought, and from there he just vibrates all around based on what his utterly-unique instincts told him to do.

Bird to me feels like something of a self-taught genius in the sense that he's so incredibly good at the things he applies his mind to do, and this is a weird thing to me because he's from Indiana, the land of high school basketball for more than half a century before then. You would hope that a player who came of age there with prodigious talent would come out of their pyramid highly optimized.

It's as if Bird's in-the-moment BBIQ was so overpowering that coaches really had no idea what they could do with it other than just let him keep doing his thing.

But while that led to a career that will places him very high on my list, there was a time where I actually had him higher than Magic, and times after that where I agonized between the two of them. At this point, I have to give Magic the nod by a good distance.

It wouldn't be so strange perhaps if I said this was because of Magic's longevity - though that in itself is debatable - but there's another thing on the forefront of my mind.

I think that fundamentally on offense, there's just a real cost to have an insane in-the-moment basketball intelligence not having the ball for any extended period of time. However valuable you are off-ball, you have less decision making power because the ball is the thing.

Magic's instinct to keep control of the ball and the offense in a way allowed him considerably more impact than Bird on offense, even though I think Bird's in-the-moment BBIQ was even higher than Magic's. It's possible Bird could have been even better than Magic at being Magic if that's what he were groomed to do. It's also possible that in an age with mature 3-point shooting Bird's gravitational value would significantly change the equation. But as things played out in our universe, to some degree it's like Bird brought a knife to a gun fight with Magic.

Now let me say: This isn't factoring in defense, where I'm considerably more impressed early on by Bird, nor is it me trying to say Magic reached the tippy top tear as quickly as Bird did, but just looking at ability for offensive impact, Magic's approach was the killer app.

Top 5 ALL 11 healthy years? Really?

This is a place where I completely understand if you think I'm too eager to give Magic such credit early on. He only makes Top 5 in the NBA MVP voting 9 times. Now, I'd note that it's still AMAZINGLY impressive that he proceeded to be in the Top 3 of the MVP race each of the 9 next seasons before his diagnosis - I don't believe any other player in NBA history can claim they have 9 in a row with the debatable caveat of Jordan depending whether you consider '93-94 & '94-95 as dealbreakers.

But yeah, I think he deserves an All-Season POY Top 5 nod in both '79-80 & '81-82 as well, and that's also what the consensus was during the RetroPOY project too. So while we can disagree, I feel pretty settled on him making my Top 5 for those seasons too.

And so yeah, that's all 11 of his healthy years, which puts him in very rare air.

You can bring up that he was in a fortuitous context, cool, and yeah it helped him win more, but lots of guys go into fortuitous contexts, and they don't bat a thousand at it like Magic did. Further, we should keep in mind that we wouldn't give Magic those nods simply for being on Kareem's team. Magic got the accolades he got because he was so good, he made Kareem into a sidekick.

Now, Kareem's already voted in and I wouldn't have it any other way. Obviously it's an older Kareem that we're talking about here...but while that's not fair apples-to-apples, it's worth pondering what it would have taken to do that to Jordan or LeBron at the same age. Even if you want to say Kareem was X% lower a summit to summit, it still speaks to how incredible Magic was.

Anyway, this gets back to the thing where I think Magic had more (or the same in Wilt's case) Top 5 level seasons than any of the other guy's remaining, and this makes it hard for me to knock him too hard for longevity.

What about Defense?

The question of whether guys like, say Hakeem/Duncan/KG, are overall better or more valuable than Magic is something I've chewed on a lot over the years. While Magic moved down my list below those guys in the past partially due to ideas of longevity, there was also that 2-way advantage in my head, as well as how great KG & Duncan's on/off looked.

I've come to the conclusion that in practice, the Lakers' ability to have a good-enough defense to win playoff series was quite robust. And while I've had questions about how well this could be achieved today in this era of spacing, not only is that technically irrelevant to the criteria I'm personally using at this time, I just witnessed arguably the closest thing to Magic play out in the 2023 playoffs with Jokic and the Nuggets, and it really seemed okay.

Magic looks great in the +/- stats we have, but the sample is very small. It's possible I'll see bad enough stuff in the future to lower my assessment of Magic, but I have to say that that unless it was something really dramatic, I don't know if I'd be swayed even if he looked a bit weaker than these other guys. As I've alluded to, Magic has such profound ability to apply control and add impact on offense, that I think it would make his teams a very hard out as a matter of course...kinda like LeBron.

A moment to mourn for what might have been

Not factoring into his placement here, but I think it's critical to just appreciate how this project would look if not for the HIV diagnosis, or a better understanding of HIV at the time. Magic at age 31 was showing no signs of slowing down. We know that incredible floor generals can thrive into a late age - demonstrated most crazily by what we might call the age-inverse of Magic in Steve Nash who only began his MVP-candidacy at age 30 - and we know that Magic 2.0, aka LeBron, has stayed amazing for an incredibly long time (not identical players, but more in common than most superstars to be sure).

It's quite plausible that Magic could have kept up his game without much fall off for another half decade, and that if he did, I wouldn't be talking about how no one's ever had more Top 5 seasons than Russell, because Magic could've been rocking 15 by then.

It's quite possible, in other words, that in another basketball universe, I'd have Magic as my GOAT.

Vote 2: Wilt Chamberlain

Quite the journey I've been on with Wilt over the year. He's quite possibly the most important basketball player in history when it comes to the definition of the sport in people's eyes...and for that reason it's rough evaluating him for this particular project because his on-court achievement does - and frankly was always going to give how small "basketball" was compared to the broader celebrity landscape back then - fall short of his significance. Hence, no matter what we do, those who focus on on-court achievement can't help but be seen as haters.

In general I've felt the need to point out the issues with Wilt's competitive career, because a) that's what people generally haven't spent time trying to understand, and b) I think those issues are key to understanding so much about the game. But I'd rather not focus on that negative here.

The most remarkable thing about Wilt's career, is that fact that he changed shape so dramatically twice over his career, and in each form demonstrated the ability to have exceptional effectiveness. I don't think we've ever seen such dramatic change from anyone else in NBA history, and it speaks to an immense set of talents that Wilt had.

Was Wilt the most physically talented player in history? Quite possibly. Even being skeptical about his Paul Bunyan-esque tall tales, we know that Wilt is on the short list for most powerful players in history. Take those other guys - Thurmond, Gilmore, Eaton, Shaq, etc - none of them come close to Wilt in more track & field types of athleticism. He was just an outlier among outliers as a physical specimen in the human species, and I wonder if we'll ever see anyone who is more-Wilt-than-Wilt combining all he could do in an all around MORE frame.

The primary guy I debated against Wilt here was Hakeem. Hakeem is probably the last guy on my GOAT list who I could see actually being the best basketball player of the bunch. I mean, you can argue he's the closest thing we've seen to Russell on defense, but with a capacity for interior footwork-play that's unmatched despite coming to the game late - and yeah, soccer, I know, but as someone focusing on basketball, that doesn't make it any less impressive to me. Maybe if he'd just gone to the right place with the right visionary of a coach, he'd have actually gone the best of Jordan.

But, as great of a career as Hakeem had, he didn't dominate his era competitively to the level Wilt did, and it wasn't really that close.

And while I think Hakeem had the attitude (eventually) to have a Duncan-like extended run which I don't think Wilt could, it's untenable to let that be the deciding factor for every player that could've done something Wilt didn't do, when they didn't do it either.

Nominate: Steph Curry



Re-peated Nomination in Spoilers:

Spoiler:

So, along with Magic, Curry is benefitting from my perspective shaped by how many Top 5 years he has achieved. For different reasons, Curry also is seeing as having weak longevity. Unlike Magic there's an aspect of this that's just utterly mundane:

In my experience with Career GOAT lists, our sense of a player's longevity tends to lag behind what it actually is while he is in prime. It's as if we don't actually look to quantify a player's longevity until it's basically over and done with.

I firmly believe this is something that has been hurting Curry in people's eyes at least in prior projects, and I'd advise folks to ruminate on whether it might be hurting him here.

As I've pointed out, in my estimation he's actually had a pretty long career as star player. Not enough that he should kill other candidates in play right now based on longevity, but enough that I don't think anyone should get an automatic longevity-win over Curry until they've really thought about it remembering it's 2023 now.

I chose an image for Curry emphasizing his shot, which is obviously his big weapon. He's the greatest shooter in basketball history, bar none, easy to see how that's helped him have a legendary career.

The most interesting thing to me about Curry's shot sequence is the fact that it's so clearly NOT about about having a form that helps him be the most accurate 3-point shooter in a vacuum. It's a form crafted to allow him to get his shot off so quickly that it's hard to block, even though Curry is a small guard by modern NBA standards. This isn't the first time a new standard has emerged that's about preventing blocked shots even if it means sacrificing accuracy - that's what the jump shot is after all, and that's what all manners of floaters are.

But the fact that I don't believe ever had a shooter be this impactful before in all the decades of basketball, and he's doing it with such a non-vacuum-optimal approach that adds to the degree of difficulty is breathtaking, as is the fact we are now more than a decade point the point where Curry became the clear-cut best shooter in history...and we haven't seen anyone from new draft classes to this point who seems like he's going to be even close. That could change in a hurry, but is hasn't yet, and to be honest, I'm surprised.

Just a bit of context here: I tend to mark the evolution of the game from a horrifically small sample size playing once or twice a year against teams at my high school. Feel free to chuckle at my expense here, but what I can't help but notice as a 6'9" man:

I used to block their shots like crazy and the games were close.
Now I basically don't block shots and the teams kill us, and it's not because I'm older and even more out-of-shape (ahem, though both things are true).
It's because they aren't even trying to attack the interior except in transition or rebounding situations where the defense (eh, me) isn't set.
And they haven't changed this out of strategy to beat me...that's just how they play now.
If you give them room to shoot a 3, they'll take it, and they all seem to have proficient form modeled after Curry.
They just plain torch us every time, boys or girls. They all shoot from range with a proficiency that us old guys just don't have.

I'll note that I don't teach at a school where students come for hopes of athletic scholarship. Rationally I know these kids aren't great within their own generations standards...yet they are considerably more effective than they were 5-10 years ago because of the way they shoot 3's. And this is why I think Curry is going to go down as one of the most influential players in NBA history.

But again, his influence is irrelevant here and it's not why I'm nominating him. I'm nominating him because that shooting - along with his roving off-ball play and the rest of his game to whatever amount its added to his success - has led him to achieve so, so much as the fulcrum of everything the great dynastic run of this era has implemented.

Okay, only other thing I really feel a need to touch upon here is my man KG:

Breaks my heart having him sink on my list if I'm honest. I desperately want others to be as in awe of what he was capable of as I am, and in another universe, he'd be higher on my list. To some degree I suppose, it's the fact that I'm irritated with what happened in my own universe that I feel such a need to champion a guy like KG.

I realized though as I was going through that last pass year-by-year and considering something like where he belonged in my DPOY ballot that I'd been tying myself in some logical knots putting him above a guy like Duncan. While I can intellectually justify why KG's team defenses weren't stronger based on things that were unfair to him about his context (teammates, scheme, etc), the reality is that in doing so I was effectively projecting what I "knew" about KG back into those earlier years when I did that rather than judging his achievement based on what actually happened - and that gets me back to the question I kept circling back to:

Do I want to do this project by imagining how things would go if...?, or, Do I want to talk about what guys actually did?

Based on the latter, KG just spent a good chunk of his career in a place where he didn't have the opportunity to define an epoch the way that Curry has. Not his fault - you might call that a minor basketball tragedy, but that's life. I can't normalize for opportunity and still talk about what actually happened, so I chose the latter.

[lessthanjake]

Spoiler:

What is the quantitative evidence backing the idea that Hakeem was a top 2 defensive player of all time?

We do actually have at least a little data on this, and I don’t think it backs a strong conclusion in that regard.

- For instance, Hakeem’s Rockets made the playoffs 14 times. In those 14 years, their postseason defensive rating was only better than the league average postseason defensive rating 8 of the years. If you take a weighted average of how much the Rockets did better or worse than the league average PS defensive rating in the years Hakeem was there, it’s only 0.59 better than average. In the regular season, the Rockets did have some good defenses, but they averaged a rDRTG of just -1.33 in his career. It was -2.28 if you cut it off at 1996-1997. Even if we take that -2.28 number, it’s definitely good, but not exactly evidence of top-2-defensive-player-ever impact. It’s akin to the Pelicans this past season or the 2022 Mavericks.

- We have snippets of defensive RAPM numbers for Hakeem and they don’t look incredible. The GitHub RAPM only starts at 1996-1997 (so it doesn’t really have almost any prime Hakeem), but it never has Hakeem anywhere near the top of the league in DRAPM in any season or any playoff. Meanwhile, we have snippets of earlier seasons from Squared, and Hakeem’s defense isn’t graded out very highly in those data sets. His DRAPM in the 1984-1985 set is positive but there’s a whole ton of players above him in it. In the 1987-1988 set, Hakeem’s DRAPM was negative. Hakeem’s DRAPM in the 1990-1991 set looks good, but there’s still about 10 players ahead of him that I can see. And then the 1995-1996 numbers are positive but half the players in the top 40 have a better DRAPM in that set than Hakeem does. These are very small sample sizes, but Hakeem not coming out super high in any of them seems unlikely if he was really having top-2-all-time defensive impact.

The consensus on Hakeem seems to be built around film analysis, but I’m always pretty skeptical of film analysis when it comes to defense, since there’s so much that goes into defense that is really hard to notice or precisely value when watching the film. So I’m pretty skeptical of calling someone the best defender in history besides Russell when there’s not really any available data that supports him having that kind of impact.

So let me chime in on this here because I have Hakeem tied with Wilt at 9 times being a DPOY ballot guy 2nd only to Russell, and I have Olajuwon being the #1 4t times to Wilt's 3 (though I have Mikan at #1 6 times).

I want to be clear here that while I admire Hakeem a great deal, I was under no assumption that he'd keep making my ballot for some of the reasons you went into about the team's defense, never the less, he kept making it.

As I've said before, I didn't take notes when I did this - unwise - so I can't just give you all the reasons for why I came to the conclusions I did, but I can list out the years, and to the extent they lineup with times where you're skeptical, that yields a point for discussion.

'84-85: 3rd (behind Eaton & Moncrief)
'85-86: 1st
'86-87: 2nd (behind Eaton)
'87-88: 2nd (behind Eaton)
'88-89: 1st
'89-90: 1st
'90-91: ---
'91-92: ---
'92-93: 1st
'93-94: 2nd (behind Mutombo)
'94-95: 3rd (behind Robinson & Ewing)

And that's it.

You mention '87-88 specifically for weak DRAPM data and he's 2nd on my ballot that year, so let me look into that one.

Looking at the top RS DRtg's that year, we get:

1. Utah
2. Detroit
3. Chicago
4. Houston

So, that's quality defense that year from the Rockets and not an obvious reason to be skeptical of Hakeem.

Eaton's Jazz are at #1, no issues there.

Pistons are at #2 and had a hell of a defense, but of course, it's hard to really justify singling out one guy for DPOY. Rodman would eventually be the guy getting the DPOY love, but at this point it's hard to even see him as a candidate for making the ballot.

Jordan of course actually won the DPOY that year. He places 3rd on my ballot, and I'd honestly find it a bit amusing having to justify Olajuwon over him in this thread given that I'm justifying having Jordan on my DPOY ballots at all in a previous project thread.

Zooming in on the Rockets, in the regular season the team had 2 big minute players: Olajuwon & Rodney McCray, and McCray would also make All-D 1st team. But the team would trade McCray to the Kings the next year, and the Kings wouldn't be great on defense, and meanwhile the Rockets improve on defense.

In the playoffs, the Rockets would lose in the first round to a higher seeded team in Dallas that would get to the Conference Finals. Of the Mavs 3 playoff opponents, the Rockets would hold them to the weakest ORtg. (Olajuwon would also look amazing on offense and I don't think anyone thought there was a debate as to who the best player in the series.)

All of this going along with what we know already about Olajuwon - great shotblocker, extremely agile for a big, had the DPOY named after him - makes me pretty confident in saying that with what I see to this point, Olajuwon should at least be a candidate for DPOY this year.

And my real question would be: Should I have someone (other than Eaton) above him?

This is an interesting thought process. It seems like this method presupposes that Hakeem had to have been a better defender than everyone that was on a team with lesser defenses than his. It’s perhaps an appropriate assumption to make in response to my post that was about team defensive rating, but is it really right to use a cut off like that with this sort of analysis? For instance, maybe Ewing was a better defender? Michael Cooper? Both those guys were close in DPOY voting that year and FWIW were higher in DRAPM in the limited Squared data set.

Also, more generally, I’m not sure being one of the league’s top few defenders a bunch of years necessarily makes someone the 2nd best defender of all time. Not sure exactly how often people made your DPOY ballot, but surely guys like Mutombo, Ben Wallace, Tim Duncan, Garnett, Robinson, Eaton, etc. would have all made that sort of ballot a lot too and perhaps have been better in some years they made it? To me, I just don’t really see much of anything separating Hakeem from those guys defensively, and indeed, I think I’d probably put some of them above him (almost certainly Duncan and Mutombo, for instance).

[lessthanjake]

Who are you nominating next btw?

Am deciding between Bird and Kobe, I think. I assume they’ll be up there for a lot of people for the next nomination, and I’m hoping to see some arguments from people on it to help me make a decision, since those two are very close in my mind at the moment.