Retro Player of the Year Project

[Silver Bullet]

Semi-Sentient's updated the POY page (so prompt, badass!):
http://www.dolem.com/poy/

Thoughts?

Nash and Nowitzki got raped -

[Doctor MJ]

Interestingly enough, I think Duncan will end up second to Kareem in All-time POY shares.

We'll see how it turns out. I'll be very surprised if at least Jordan doesn't beat him too.

[Silver Bullet]

Semi-Sentient's updated the POY page (so prompt, badass!):
http://www.dolem.com/poy/

Thoughts?

I'm realizing that Duncan's going to end up absolutely huge in our list. Possibly up 50% over his MVP shares. I expected that he'd improve because of his typical overperformance in the playoffs, but still, pretty huge.

Interestingly enough, I think Duncan will end up second to Kareem in All-time POY shares.

Jordan
Jordan
Jordan
Hakeem
Hakeem
Jordan
Jordan
Jordan
Duncan

My predictions for the 90's -
That would put Jordan above 5, with most of his best years yet to come -

(Of course I don't agree with those at all - but i'll save that for later).

[ElGee]

Lebron played poorly in the last 3 games. Kobe's last 5 games > his game 6, so I'm not sure where you're coming from with this.

It's fascinating to see the double standards in how Dirk's playoff failures are treated vs how Lebron's failures are. Yes, Lebron's production was good, BUT when you play in a 1 on 5 system a star player is almost always going to have good productionm, since everything runs through him. Nevermind the fact that this very 1 on 5 style nullifies his supporting cast and turns them into spot up shooters.

Kobe's last 5 games over LeBron's game 6??? If you want to elaborate please go ahead. It wasn't a poor game. I have Bryant playing 2 better games in the playoffs (of 10), and I think you could make an argument 2 more were close.

I'm not sure if you were referring to me regarding Dirk, but I've vehemently argued the same thing regarding him. Both players are victims of what I described in my last post.

[Doctor MJ]

Semi-Sentient's updated the POY page (so prompt, badass!):
http://www.dolem.com/poy/

Thoughts?

Nash and Nowitzki got raped -

I certainly agree that Nash is underrated, but I'm definitely not surprised. Honestly, I think he's more highly respected on RealGM now than when he was winning the MVPs.

Dirk I actually think is about right.

[ElGee]

I'd be interested in LeBron's stats without garbage time. I have a strong feeling that he stat-padded quite a bit when it was over. he was visibly bad when the series was on the line... and the way the series ended ? with Cavs giving up the last minute ? no way, I can let that guy be my POY.

btw. if you want to put that in the context, LeBron won only once against a 50-W team (2007 Pistons). once in his entire career. I just think he's unproven in the playoffs and got very overrated after excellent RSs the last two years. competition matters and until LeBron wins against a strong competition, I won't give him as much credit as you guys do. after all, I'm bashing Kidd in 2002 and 2003 for this, so I'm gonna be consistent about it and do the same with LeBron.

Actually he did very little in the garbage time minutes. The majority of his "stat-padding" was during the rest of the game.

I wanted to address the final minute as well. There was speculation coming out of the Cleveland media that the Cavs had quit on Mike Brown. In that moment, Brown urged his team to get up on the Celtics and foul (we assume). His team clearly used that moment to make a stand. Players standing right next to him just ignored him.

I have no idea what this had to do with LeBron. He couldn't come over and foul because his man was under the hoop, so it would have looked ridiculous for him to run away from his man under the hoop and surrender a dunk to try and foul someone 30 feet from the hoop because his teammate wouldn't. That would have gone over well with the media and bastillon.

[Silver Bullet]

The break is boring man -

[NO-KG-AI]

Duncan is going to grade out huge, but that's what happens when you win some years, and never fall past top 3.

I really like this project, because I think our page shows how high guys peaked by their wins, and how much they won by, but it shows who has been consistently good as well.

I can't see any way Jordan doesn't grade out much higher than any of these guys, he's going to be 1 for almost every year, unless you are being a stubborn hater.

I'm more curious about Hakeem to be honest.

[semi-sentient]

First of all, he didn't play poorly for 2/3 of the series. And he wasn't "awful" in game 6 (Bastillon). The 9 turnovers certainly nullified a fantastic game, but that didn't make the game awful. It was better than nearly every Kobe Bryant playoff game in 2010.

Come on, no they weren't. LeBron's turnovers were extremely costly, and let's face it, what he was doing out there in game 6 had very little impact.

You can't tell me that LeBron had a better game than, say, Kobe's game 5 against the Thunder (one of Kobe's best of the playoffs). This is about the most extreme example that I can think of where stats become useless. Kobe controlled the game on both ends (took WB out of his game and made all the right decisions on offense), yet he wasn't filling up the box score stats. The result was that the game was over at the half.

2009-10 is too fresh in our heads for us to rely on statistics alone.

[Baller 24]

I'm looking forward to the 70s, I think it's going to be both interesting and tough, TrueLAFan can give us his usually good insight on the 70s big-men, which I generally love hearing his opinion on.

[An Unbiased Fan]

I can't see any way Jordan doesn't grade out much higher than any of these guys, he's going to be 1 for almost every year, unless you are being a stubborn hater.

Based on the logic used on certain players in the 00' years, I don't see how MJ can pass Duncan in the 90's.

For example, in 1998 should MJ be over Shaq? Shaq(28.8) had a higher PER than MJ(25.2). Shaq has a 31.0 PER in the playoffs, as compared to MJ 28.1.

[ElGee]

First of all, he didn't play poorly for 2/3 of the series. And he wasn't "awful" in game 6 (Bastillon). The 9 turnovers certainly nullified a fantastic game, but that didn't make the game awful. It was better than nearly every Kobe Bryant playoff game in 2010.

Come on, no it wasn't. LeBron's turnovers were extremely costly, and let's face it, what he was doing out there in game 6 had very little impact.

You can't tell that LeBron had a better game than, say, Kobe's game 5 against the Thunder (one of Kobe's best of the playoffs). This is about the most extreme example that I can think of where stats become useless because Kobe controlled the game on both ends (took WB out of his game and made all the right decisions on offense), yet he wasn't filling up the box score stats.

2009-10 is too fresh in our heads for us to rely on statistics alone.

Wait, timeout. There is a double standard here.

Game 5 Kobe completely disrupted Westbrook. Great 4-9 game. But the upgrade from Fisher to a locked in Kobe Bryant is immense, so it's not like Kobe was suddenly 800% better because he guarded Westbrook.

Now, James did this to Pierce for most of the series and not only is it overlooked -- as well as his other defensive efforts -- but there are people under the impression that he played bad defense.

Unless you actually give Bryant all of that credit for Westbrook's bad game, I'm not sure how one can say he was better than Bynum or Gasol in that game, and those two had games much closer to LeBron's game 6. (Bynum and Gasol were defensive monsters and ridiculously efficient offensively.) In defensive guarding situations, Kobe's man was still 2-3 against him, and he commited 2 shooting fouls and most of Westbrook's turnovers were unforced or caused by other Lakers. Kobe himself had 4 turnovers as well in a game with relatively low offensive production.

This was a classic Scottie Pippen game from Kobe, but I'm not sure it's better than what LeBron provided in game 6, and I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be received so well if the name on the back of the jersey were "Artest, "Bowen" or "Marion" instead of Bryant.

[semi-sentient]

Wait, timeout. There is a double standard here.

Game 5 Kobe completely disrupted Westbrook. Great 4-9 game. But the upgrade from Fisher to a locked in Kobe Bryant is immense, so it's not like Kobe was suddenly 800% better because he guarded Westbrook.

Now, James did this to Pierce for most of the series and not only is it overlooked -- as well as his other defensive efforts -- but there are people under the impression that he played bad defense.

That's a fair point, but there is a difference because Westbrook was pretty easily the Thunders best player until Kobe made the switch, and quite frankly, Pierce is an easier guy to cover for LeBron. LeBron did play good defense on him, so I'll give him that, but Rondo was the guy raping the Celtics all series long and despite LeBron making a claim that he would take on that challenge, he did little to stop him from doing his thing.

Unless you actually give Bryant all of that credit for Westbrook's bad game, I'm not sure how one can say he was better than Bynum or Gasol in that game, and those two had games much closer to LeBron's game 6. (Bynum and Gasol were defensive monsters and ridiculously efficient offensively.) In defensive guarding situations, Kobe's man was still 2-3 against him, and he commited 2 shooting fouls and most of Westbrook's turnovers were unforced or caused by other Lakers. Kobe himself had 4 turnovers as well in a game with relatively low offensive production.

Bynum and Gasol deserve lots of credit for doing their job on defense, but that's largely because Westbrook didn't have an open lane to the basket every single time. Kobe funneled him to the right spots and never allowed him to get inside before our bigs were set, which is why he was going nuts in the previous 4 games. Westbrook's turnovers were definitely not unforced. Kobe was all over his butt in that game.

And again, his offensive production is misleading. He controlled the flow of the offense with his decision-making, not with his scoring. He made all the right plays and that's what allowed Bynum and Gasol to really dominate inside. They deserve a ton of credit, to be sure, but that was definitely Kobe's game.

I just don't think that you can compare their statistics in this case because it doesn't really represent what actually happened on the court.

[bastillon]

Pierce struggled against Anthony Parker too. I don't see how this is any of LeBron's feats. Pierce looked like a d-leaguer out there, couldn't even make an open J. phu-lease.

[mysticbb]

Maybe only a little bit related to this, but I checked some numbers for 7 players which received votes in our POY voting.

Code: Select all

Player     PPG  RPG  APG  TS% To-R  W  L
Player A  21.7  5.6  3.5 50.7 11.0  5  8
Player B  23.7 12.3  3.4 52.8 11.3  5  8
Player C  20.0 13.1  4.8 49.1 10.6  6  8
Player D  28.6  4.1  5.5 56.2 13.0  3  5
Player E  25.3 10.9  2.0 57.4 10.3  6 12
Player F  28.6 11.7  2.7 61.2  6.5 11  9
Player G  31.0 10.1  7.6 51.5 11.7  2  5


These are the points, rebounds and assists per game in playoff elimination games. The last 4 columns are the TS%, turnover rate, wins and losses in those games. Anyone care to guess which statsline and record belongs to which player?

[semi-sentient]

EDIT: Hey Sentient, seeing a couple discrepancies from my list. Going to list them, and then see if I can figure out the problem.

You've got Duncan at 5.086, I have him at 5.066.
You've got Billups at 0.013, I have him at 0.018.

EDIT: Okay, in '02-03 you have Duncan with 1 3rd place vote instead of 0, and you show 26 3rd place votes with only 25 of the rest. In '04-05 you're missing a 5th place vote for Chauncey Billups.

Corrections made, thanks. I try to be as careful as possible when I'm inputting the results, but stuff happens.

[mysticbb]

Great stuff, btw., semi-sentient. The site looks really well-arranged.

[semi-sentient]

99-00 is going to be interesting.

Lots of guys having solid regular seasons only to collapse (or not play) in the post-season (Duncan, Garnett, Hill, Carter). Bigs are going to dominate the rankings, without question. Webber, Malone, Mourning, KG, and Duncan all have to be looked at closely. The only wing player that is going to have any kind of shot at cracking the top 5 will be Kobe -- and that's largely on account of his defense and his post-season performances (he had several game-saving performances). Hill and Carter have been eliminated, IMO, due to their post-season play and the fact that they just don't stack up defensively.

I've put together a text file that has the stats/awards for players that have a case for 2-5, so you guys are welcome to use it. I'm still looking at other players, so this isn't the finalized list that I'm going to roll with.

http://www.dolem.com/poy/data/99-00.txt

[sp6r=underrated]

Maybe only a little bit related to this, but I checked some numbers for 7 players which received votes in our POY voting.

Code: Select all

Player     PPG  RPG  APG  TS% To-R  W  L
Player A  21.7  5.6  3.5 50.7 11.0  5  8
Player B  23.7 12.3  3.4 52.8 11.3  5  8
Player C  20.0 13.1  4.8 49.1 10.6  6  8
Player D  28.6  4.1  5.5 56.2 13.0  3  5
Player E  25.3 10.9  2.0 57.4 10.3  6 12
Player F  28.6 11.7  2.7 61.2  6.5 11  9
Player G  31.0 10.1  7.6 51.5 11.7  2  5


These are the points, rebounds and assists per game in playoff elimination games. The last 4 columns are the TS%, turnover rate, wins and losses in those games. Anyone care to guess which statsline and record belongs to which player?

I'll discard E because I know Shaq is the only guy whose team has been eliminated 12 times in the playoffs.

A: Kobe
B: KG
C: Duncan
D: Wade
F: Dirk
G: Lebron

How did I do?

[bastillon]

Tim Duncan (5th in MVP voting, 1st Team All-NBA, 1st Team All-Defense)

Code: Select all

RS: 74g, 38.9 min, 23.2 pts (.555 ts%), 12.4 reb, 3.2 ast, 0.9 stl, 2.2 blk, 3.3 tov, 24.8 per
PS: n/a

Kevin Garnett (2nd in MVP voting, 7th in DPOY voting, 1st Team All-NBA, 1st Team All-Defense)

Code: Select all

RS: 81g, 40.0 min, 22.9 pts (.545 ts%), 11.8 reb, 5.0 ast, 1.5 stl, 1.6 blk, 3.3 tov, 23.6 per
PS:  4g, 42.8 min, 18.8 pts (.441 ts%), 10.8 reb, 8.8 ast, 1.1 stl, 0.8 blk, 2.9 tov, 20.5 per

Karl Malone (4th in MVP voting, 2nd Team All-NBA)

Code: Select all

RS: 82g, 35.9 min, 25.5 pts (.582 ts%),  9.5 reb, 3.7 ast, 1.0 stl, 0.9 blk, 2.8 tov, 27.1 per
PS: 10g, 38.6 min, 27.2 pts (.584 ts%),  8.9 reb, 3.1 ast, 0.7 stl, 0.7 blk, 2.7 tov, 25.8 per

Chris Webber (9th in MVP voting, 3rd Team All-NBA)

Code: Select all

RS: 75g, 38.4 min, 24.5 pts (.530 ts%), 10.5 reb, 4.6 ast, 1.6 stl, 1.7 blk, 2.9 tov, 23.4 per
PS:  5g, 39.2 min, 24.4 pts (.488 ts%),  9.6 reb, 5.4 ast, 1.6 stl, 2.0 blk, 1.6 tov, 27.1 per

Vince Carter (10th in MVP voting, 3rd Team All-NBA)

Code: Select all

RS: 82g, 38.1 min, 25.7 pts (.543 ts%),  5.5 reb, 3.9 ast, 1.5 stl, 1.1 blk, 2.2 tov, 23.4 per
PS:  3g, 39.7 min, 19.3 pts (.456 ts%),  6.0 reb, 6.3 ast, 1.0 stl, 1.3 blk, 2.7 tov, 18.2 per

Grant Hill (8th in MVP voting, 2nd Team All-NBA)

Code: Select all

RS: 74g, 37.5 min, 25.8 pts (.565 ts%),  6.6 reb, 5.2 ast, 1.4 stl, 0.6 blk, 3.2 tov, 24.5 per
PS:  2g, 27.5 min, 11.0 pts (.539 ts%),  5.5 reb, 4.5 ast, 0.5 stl, 0.0 blk, 5.0 tov,  9.5 per

Kobe Bryant (12th in MVP voting, 5th in DPOY voting, 2nd Team All-NBA, 1st Team All-Defense)

Code: Select all

RS: 66g, 38.2 min, 22.5 pts (.546 ts%),  6.3 reb, 4.9 ast, 1.6 stl, 0.9 blk, 2.8 tov, 21.7 per
PS: 22g, 39.0 min, 21.1 pts (.517 ts%),  4.5 reb, 4.4 ast, 1.5 stl, 1.5 blk, 2.5 tov, 19.3 per

Alonzo Mourning (DPOY, 3rd in MVP voting, All-NBA 2nd Team, All-Defense 1st Team)

Code: Select all

RS: 79g, 34.8 min, 21.7 pts (.596 ts%),  9.5 reb, 1.6 ast, 0.5 stl, 3.7 blk, 2.7 tov, 25.8 per
PS: 10g, 37.6 min, 21.6 pts (.542 ts%), 10.0 reb, 1.4 ast, 0.2 stl, 3.3 blk, 2.4 tov, 23.8 per