(Originally posted in thread #5, here:
http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=56803730#p56803730 )
Wilt vs ShaqI'm one that likes comps as a tool to evaluate players, but I don't remember ever doing a Shaq vs Wilt comp. If I did, I have no idea where it is so I may as well start again. At this moment I don't have a set path for the comp, so forgive me if I meander my way through this. Hopefully something good comes of it.
Stylistically, Wilt and Shaq are the two giants of their time. Both had the reputations as Goliaths, but there were differences. Wilt seemed to be the more skilled of the two, able to develop more finesse moves and to focus (when he chose to) on different aspects of the game. Shaq was much more athletic and explosive than he's often given credit for, especially as a younger player, and he had excellent footwork and even ball-handling ability. But, unlike Wilt, he never tried to maximize his talents that weren't in his wheelhouse. Shaq worked the paint on offense and defense, he would use moves as needed, but his goal was to dunk if he could on every possession. If he couldn't, then he would work the jump hooks or drop steps to get as easy of a shot as possible. But there were no finger rolls or other finesse displays for Shaq. Of course, one could argue that Wilt had more upside because he could do more things than Shaq (in addition to his own awesome physical size), but the flip side that's often argued around here is that Shaq made more effective use of his power than Wilt did. Is that true? Well, let's look a bit further.
It's hard to compare boxscore volume numbers across this many eras, because the pace was DRAMATICALLY different and the way that the game was played was way different, as well. Wilt playing every minute of the game and racking up huge numbers in categories that he chose is worthy of attention, certainly. But it's not a 1-to-1 comp, because the environment, coaching and style of play around the 2000s era simply does not allow the same opportunity to get those numbers. And more...I'm one that believes that accumulating boxscore stats for the sake of them (as Trex alluded to) is not the goal anyway. The boxscores tell us a bit about how a player might be having his particular impact, but a) the boxscores only cover part of the game and b) it's clearly possible to load up on boxscore statistics without those boxscore stats helping the team. A decade or so ago, this phenomenon was called "empty stats", and dealt a lot with players on bad teams that wanted to put up big numbers to attract a contract. With the rise of analytics, +/- data and hyper-scouting, I don't hear the term "empty stats" nearly as often anymore. But, clearly, it can be done. One of the big arguments often used against WIlt, in fact, is that his boxscore stats footprint doesn't allign with his impact on his team's fortunes. Let's look at that a bit.
Impact footprint analysis, regular seasons70s Fan made the argument, I think it was last thread, that Wilt was criticized for emptier stats in the regular season, but that he modified his play in the playoffs, resulting in lower boxscores but, in his opinion, better playoff results than expected. So, in light of that, I figured we should treat regular season and playoffs as separately.
Obviously there were no +/- stats in Wilt's day, and he hardly ever sat so they wouldn't have been easy to get stats anyway. However, due to trade and injury, WIlt did have a few extended absences on his given team to allow WOWY to have some data to work with. Shaq, on the other hand, missed significant numbers of games several times i his career, so he's got a WOWY footprint as well. Per ElGee's WOWY spreadsheet:
1965 Warriors: SRS w/ WIlt: -4.4; SRS improvement = +2.2 w/ Wilt (42 "missed" games)
1965 76ers: SRS w/ Wilt: 2.4; SRS improovement = +2.8 w/ Wilt (43 "missed" games)
(Note, ElGee's spreadsheet says, under sample controls, "Greer, Costello in (61)" before giving a WOWY score that was a pedestrian 2.0. I say that not to focus on the WOWY score, which I don't have the greatest handle on, but instead to point out that he did attempt to adjust for injured teammates).
1970 Lakers: SRS w/ Wilt: +3.9; SRS improvement = -0.3 w/ Wilt (he sat most of year)
1996 Magic: SRS w/ Shaq: +9.0; SRS improvement = +6.1 w/ Shaq (23 games missed)
1997 & 1998 Lakers: SRS w/ Shaq: +6.2, SRS improvement= +3.7 w/ Shaq (48 games missed)
2002 Lakers: SRS w/ Shaq: 8.9, SRS improvement +7.5 w/ Shaq (15 games missed)
Thoughts: Because of the 1965 trade in mid-season, we get to see how Wilt's presence/absence for half a season changed two different teams. This is the year that Wilt is said to have been having heart issues. However, he did play major minutes without much discernible difference in his boxscore stats. From this, Ive seen it concluded that regardless of tthe shape of his heart, the lack of apparent impact here suggests at the very least that his monster boxscore production didn't translate to much impact in that year. And that argument seems to have merit.
Ardee says that the 65 Sixers started 11 - 3 with Wilt, then injuries to other players derailed their momentum and thus may be the culprit for the only modest change in SRS that Philly experienced. So, no conclusion here, but just note it as a datapoint.
But in 1970, the Lakers also didn't experience much change in effectiveness with or without Wilt. This is now 3 different teams, three different sets of circumstances, 3 different calibers of team (weak, average and good) with Wilt having heavy extended absences for all three, without much correlation between his presence and very positive changes to his team's scoring margins.
Meanwhile, with Shaq it's the opposite. His absence made larger differences than Wilt in each case, and some of his measured impacts were significantly larger than anything we saw from Wilt. This matches well with the often-espoused argument that, for all of Wilt's boxscore dominance, Shaq just had a much bigger impact on the game.
Impact footprint analysis, playoffsThis is, clearly, a much more difficult thing to quantify for Wilt in the playoffs, because (again) there is no +/- data, and WOWY doesn't really apply for the playoffs. I thought I might start by looking at the results of Wilt's playoff teams, vs expectation. If his approach shifted to a bigger impact in the playoffs than in the regular season, I hoped I might find something there.
I can't say that I did. 1965 was actually a good year for Wilt, in this respect, because his 76ers in the playoffs did beat up on Oscar's Royals, despite those Royals having 8 more wins and an SRS more than 2 points higher. They then went on to lose a nailbiter to Russell's Celtics in 7 games, despite the Celtics having 22 more wins and an SRS almost 8 points higher. I could definitely see using this as a support of the notion that Wilt improved the 76ers more than the 2 or so SRS points suggested by ElGee's WOWY calculation.
But outside of 1965, I couldn't find much else in the way of overachieving in the postseason for Wilt's teams. He did win two titles, which is outstanding, but there wasn't a noticable uptick in the quality of those teams from the regular season that could be traced to Wilt, that I could tell. Outside of those three instances, probably the most impressive part of Wilt's postseason resume is that he often led teams that made the dynasty Celtics work in the playoffs...but the matchups weren't taking place because Wilt's teams overachieved in their match-ups with other opponents, and the Celtics matchups (though close) almost always ended in a loss. Plus, in three seasons, Wilt's team had better regular season records than the Celtics (in 1968 and 69, significantly so) and they still lost.
All told, I could be convinced that playoff Wilt was either better or worse than regular season Wilt, based on this level of analysis. Considering that regular season WIlt seemingly had clearly less impact than regular season Shaq, he needed a solid win here to change my view. Instead...
While Wilt's playoff impact is ambiguous, Shaq's is not. Especially in his LA peak, he was utterly devastating in the playoffs.
Between 2000 and 2004, Shaq led his team in playoffs on/off +/- in 2000 (+32.4, 2nd on team +0.3), 2002 (+22.9, 2nd +8.4) and 2004 (+25.3, 2nd + 13.6). His playoffs on/off from 2000 - 2004 was over +20. These are HUGE numbers, the kind that have proven extremely rare in the years we have that data for (since 1997).
Duncan, LeBron and Garnett are the only other players in the 2000s with multi-year playoff runs of extended length that I've seen with on/off +/- scores over 20. If you extend it to the last few years of last millenium, it's likely Jordan was close from 1997 and 1998, and I think David Robinson achieved that from 1999 - 2001. But it's very rare, and only the best-of-the-best of the last 20+ years have breathed that air.
Now, you might very fairly point out that we don't have that data for Wilt, making it hard to directly compare. And you'd be right. BUT. The data that we DO have for Wilt indicates that he wasn't having anywhere near Shaq's impact in the regular season, and there's nothing about his playoffs results that suggest that he suddenly jumped up to all-time impact levels there compared to what he was doing in the regular season.
Bottom line: Wilt accomplished some amazing things. His iron man status, both with health and minutes played, is a big advantage over Shaq, who was notorious for his weight and his attitude towards rehab and missed games. Wilt could also do a lot more things than Shaq could on the court, and neither were known as great leaders. And Wilt's boxscore achievements are noteworthy. But with that said, from what I can tell, it certainly looks like Shaq was having a SIGNIFICANTLY larger positive impact on his team's ability to win games than Wilt was. And that, to me, is the defining difference in this comp. I'm interested to see what rebuttals, if any, this post receives. But at the moment, I've got Shaq over Wilt and it's not a terribly tough decision.
