Retro POY '96-97 (Voting Complete)

[Baller 24]

Lakers were 38-13 with Shaq, 18-13 without him. Awesome in the playoffs too. But does doing that despite missing 31 games in 1997 give him the nod in the top 5 over say someone like Scottie Pippen?

[ElGee]

1. Jordan
2. Malone

Pretty clear top 2 for me. Most impressive numbers, all 115 1st place MVP votes went to one of the two, won the most games in the reg. season and went to the Finals against each other where the Mailman didn't deliver and MJ very much did. Just one point about the 97 Bulls regular season - I consider it arguably more impressive than the 96 year. It's one thing to win 72 games with the energy of Jordan's return and Rodman's addition, but to come out in a 'year after', which anything after the 96 season had to be, and to put up the T-2nd best regular season ever with all these players who had nothing left to prove really, is a monster feat. I consider the Bulls and Jordan's most impressive titles to be the last 2 for that reason. There's been teams like the Bad Boys that wore out after 2 title runs. For Chicago to go for one more back to back after winning 4 and getting up there in age, it takes a rare blood

3. Hakeem - Would've been lower if going by regular season performance, but he played really well in the playoffs giving him this spot
4. Shaq - I know he missed games but I can't accept Grant Hill was a better player at 24 than Shaq. Lakers also won more games and went farther in the playoffs so it's not like Hill had a much more successful year.
5. Hill - Great numbers, high MVP love (albeit he was riding a lot of hype at the time), and won 54 games with old Joe Dumars, Lindsey Hunter, old Otis Thorpe and Aaron McKie.

HM: Payton, Pippen, Ewing, Hardaway/Mourning

He doesn't have to be a better player to have a better year. No?

[Dr Positivity]

But Shaq still did enough in his 60% season for the Lakers to win 56 games. Hill played the whole year and won 54, albeit with a worse team. I do favor Hill's RS for playing more and having slightly lesser teammates to get his W total, but not as much as I value what Shaq brings to the table in the playoffs compared to Hill by being the better player. Especially this year when Hill had a mediocore shooting playoffs (.49 TS%, something like 38% shooting/.47 TS% on the road including a 9 for 24 stinkbomb in Game 5) while Shaq dropped 33/9 .58 TS% on Portland. I value Shaq's superiority for the playoffs when it mattered, more than the extra regular season wins Hill got his team by playing more

[kaima]

I don't know if I'll be able to participate in the discussion so:

1.MJ
2.Dream
3.Malone
4.Pippen
5.Shaq

I feel strong about this list anyway, so I'll probably leave it like this anyway. Shaq gets punished for poor impact and low total minutes. Pippen was playing great on an epic team. Malone was obviously 27/10/4.5 and Stockton wasn't exactly making his life a lot easier at this point. Dream was phenomenal in the playoffs, but that team was atrocious defensively with old Drexler, old injured Barkley and Matt freaking Maloney.

WCFs:
Hakeem
27/9/4a/2stl/3bl 64% TS - this is crazy.
Malone
23.5/11/3/1/1 49% TS

Dream just outclassed Karl in the WCFs and that just sways me. I know Dream is gonna get robbed, people will probably put him out of the TOP5 in many cases, but when it mattered, when the season was on the line, Hakeem was every bit as good as in the championship years (okay, probably a bit worse). that should challenge MJ and I'm sure he would challenge him in the finals. Malone's illegal screen FTW though... so Jordan had a better season and that's why he gets my POY.

This is a bit OTT.

Hakeem, sacrificed his stats that year, IMO, for the Barkley project. He was better than his regular season stats. At the same time, Barkley made the team better, as shown by win%, to a great degree, and took a lot of pressure off of Hakeem during the season.

And this doesn't even begin to deal with the main factor of the Barkley trade: Seattle. Hakeem had his worst peak, plausibly prime, playoff series against the Sonics in 96. A four game sweep, wherein Hakeem had a game where he scored 6(!!!) points and averaged 18.

Without Barkley, it's highly questionable, at best, whether Houston gets past Seattle to even see Utah.

Houston, also, exploited Utah from the C position, whereas Barkley and Hakeem traded off as far as post play in the Seattle series. Difference being that Malone took away Barkley to a great extent.

On Malone's side, he had to once again do more with less. Utah was a better team than Houston, but that's a statement as to how good Malone (and, yes, Stockton) was. If he didn't perform at a high level, night in and night out, Utah would lose. That's a hell of a lot of pressure, and as a main scoring cog I don't think any superstar, leading a contending team, had more put on him than Malone in the mid/late 90s. And he almost always delivered, for 100+ games (96-98).

It also needs to be pointed out that Malone's numbers took a dive, on scoring and efficiency, at the same time he sustained a key injury: a massive blister on his shooting hand in game 1 of the WCF, that he played with for the rest of the playoffs.

Further, as far as performing well at the biggest moments, where was Hakeem in game 6? He was matched in scoring output by Greg Ostertag.

In game 6 Hakeem put up 16 and 11. Malone had 24 and 11.

[ElGee]

But Shaq still did enough in his 60% season for the Lakers to win 56 games. Hill played the whole year and won 54, albeit with a worse team. I do favor Hill's RS for playing more and having slightly lesser teammates to get his W total, but not as much as I value what Shaq brings to the table in the playoffs compared to Hill by being the better player. Especially this year when Hill had a mediocore shooting playoffs (.49 TS%, something like 38% shooting/.47 TS% on the road including a 9 for 24 stinkbomb in Game 5) while Shaq dropped 33/9 .58 TS% on Portland. I value Shaq's superiority for the playoffs when it mattered, more than the extra regular season wins Hill got his team by playing more

But you're conflating team success with individual success. The Lakers were 18-13 without O'Neal, which is indicative of a fairly good supporting cast (they were). If he's on a more average team, suddenly LA's win total is below Detroit's. Not to mention Detroit's SRS is way ahead of the Lakers anyway, which is a better way of gauging team success since it adjusts for schedule.

I suppose if you value the playoffs significantly more than the regular season, I guess you can make this argument. But does that mean 86 Jordan will be in your top 5?

[kaima]

I wonder how many people have anti-Hakeem bias here. I know about at least 5, so he's gonna be raped in this project.

it'll be interesting how much credit people will give him for stepping up big time in the playoffs. he was consistently a different player in the PS. in 97 you had 0.154 RS WS48 and 0.229 PO WS48. PER: 22.7 -> 27.6.

I've been focusing on the PS throughout entire project and I'm gonna be consistent about it.

I don't have an anti-Hakeem bias - he was a Raptor for a while afterall, so if anything I should be biased for him but Robinson was in my opinion unarguably better.

Ugh.

No. The Robinson meme just will not hold when one looks at his inability to lead a team in the playoffs.

As I've said before, it's not automatically that one team loses and another wins, but how this happens.

And when Robinson was supposed to be the alpha male on a contending team and, more tellingly, when he had his three best seasons, he got his ass kicked by better post players in Olajuwon and Karl Malone.

94, 95, and 96 all look disturbingly familiar. In 94 his PPG output dropped from 29 to barely 20, while Malone averaged 29 per. In 95 Hakeem averaged 35 while Robinson put up 23.8; this, likewise, was Hakeem's highest PPG average for a series in those playoffs. In 96, Robinson averaged 19 while Malone averaged 25.6 against him.

It must be noted that, in all three series, Olajuwon and Malone were the men tasked with guarding him.

In 98, Robinson got Duncan, and still couldn't hold Malone in the Semis.

It's a team sport, and many times guys get blamed for simply playing with lacking teammates. The problem with Robinson is that his individual performance was so bad in those series relative to the man he was playing against in the post, that the W/Ls directly relate to him.

He was too limited, both on scoring ability and mentality. Robinson's HOF speech summed him up.

He never wanted to be THE MAN. That was the difference between him and the guys he faced in those playoff series.

If there's something I loved about the 90s NBA it was the great post play. First Robinson greatly disappointed me, then I realized that his lack was simply who he was against the big boys.

[semi-sentient]

The candidates...

1996-97 Regular Season

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Player    GP   MIN    PTS     TS%    REB   AST   STL   BLK   TOV   WS    PER
=============================================================================
Jordan    82   37.9   29.6   .567    5.9   4.3   1.7   0.5   2.0   18.3  27.8
Malone    82   36.6   27.4   .600    9.9   4.5   1.4   0.6   2.8   16.7  28.9
Hakeem    78   36.6   23.2   .558    9.2   3.0   1.5   2.2   3.6    9.1  22.7
Payton    82   39.2   21.8   .545    4.6   7.1   2.4   0.2   2.6   12.9  21.8
Pippen    82   37.7   20.2   .554    6.5   5.7   1.9   0.5   2.6   13.1  21.3
Hill      80   39.3   21.4   .556    9.0   7.3   1.8   0.6   3.2   14.6  25.5
Hardaway  81   38.7   20.3   .532    3.4   8.6   1.9   0.1   2.8   12.9  20.8

1996-97 Post Season

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Player    GP   MIN    PTS     TS%    REB   AST   STL   BLK   TOV   WS    PER
=============================================================================
Jordan    21   42.3   31.1   .524    7.9   4.8   1.6   0.9   2.6   3.9   27.1
Malone    20   40.8   26.0   .501   11.4   2.9   1.4   0.8   2.7   2.2   22.2
Hakeem    16   39.3   23.1   .628   10.9   3.4   2.1   2.6   2.9   3.0   27.6
Payton    12   45.5   23.8   .506    5.4   8.7   2.2   0.3   2.9   1.5   19.8
Pippen    19   39.6   19.2   .526    6.8   3.8   1.5   0.9   2.9   2.3   18.1
Hill      5    40.6   23.6   .491    6.8   5.4   0.8   1.0   3.8   0.2   21.4
Hardaway  17   41.2   18.7   .488    4.1   7.0   1.6   0.1   3.1   1.7   15.9

1996-97 Awards Breakdown

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Player        MVP Rank    DPOY Rank    All-NBA Team    All-Defensive Team
=========================================================================
Jordan        2           5            1st             1st
Malone        1           -            1st             1st
Hakeem        7           -            1st             2nd
Payton        6           2            2nd             1st
Pippen       11           4            2nd             1st
Hill          3           -            1st             ---
Hardaway      4           -            1st             ---

Early rankings...

1. Michael Jordan - No explanation needed.
2. Hakeem Olajuwan - Like others said, he sacrificed in the regular season but really turned it up in the playoffs. IMO, he was pretty easily the 2nd best player in the post-season and just more impactful than Malone, particularly on the defensive end.
3. Karl Malone - Another great regular season, but somewhat of a disappointing post-season where he got progressively worse. Still good enough to help his team reach the Finals, but this time I'm going to knock him down a notch for not playing at a higher level, particularly when compared to his regular season.
4. Scottie Pippen - Excellent all around year. Solid contribution on offense, but really liked him defensively which is why I put him above Payton.
5. Gary Payton - Like Pippen, a solid all around year, but I don't think he has quite the same impact defensively as Pippen.

[Baller 24]

Here are my early rankings (I'll edit if I change):

1) Michael Jordan - obvious choice

2) Karl Malone - another obvious choice I think, it would have come down to Malone or Jordan for the 1st, depending on who won it all.

3) Grant Hill - excellent all-around season, absolutely phenomenal year, Grant Hill at his emerging best, 3rd in MVP voting, tremendous impact to a not-so-great built team, especially since they won 54 games.

4) Hakeem Olajuwon - solid all-around season, probably his first to many in the top 5 book, he was around the age of 34 and still producing some pretty awesome stats, rebounding the ball, scoring, still playing awesome defense, as many have noted his playoff numbers went up, but in the RS, Malone was clearly the better player, and like I said, the Rockets didn't do too well without Charles Barkley.

5) Scottie Pippen - it was going to be Shaq here for me, but him missing 31 games hurt his case IMO, Scottie had a solid all-around year, I don't know if looking to the future that he'd be again in my top 5, personally speaking, but kudos to the championship ring.

[semi-sentient]

I think Pippen will deserve some strong consideration in 93-94 for leading the Bulls, minus Jordan, to a solid season and having decent playoff run.

[Baller 24]

I think Pippen will deserve some strong consideration in 93-94 for leading the Bulls, minus Jordan, to a solid season and having decent playoff run.

He will, no doubt, but aside from Olajuwon, I think Robinson, Ewing, Shaq, and Malone all have solid cases as all. I'm really looking forward to that season.

[CellarDoor]

Jordan's an easy #1 for me. Then I've got Mailman, Sprite Drinker, and Dream, followed by Pippen. 1 and 5 are decided, but I'm going to listen to arguments on those middle 3 a while longer.

[mysticbb]

I wrote something about me trying to get an approximation of the +/- stats via Oliver's individual ORtg and DRtg in the other thread. Right now I take the ORtg and make an adjustment via USG, take the DRtg and apply that as 1/5 of the team DRtg. The difference of those two adjusted ORtg and DRtg has a linear correlation coefficient of 0.85 to the OnCourt+/- (dataset consists of the last 3 regular seasons data from basketballvalue.com). Well, I like the result so far, but I tried to get a good metric for the Net+/- which seems to be a better indicator of the impact a player has. I tried several adjustments, but the best I came up with had a correlation coefficient of just below 0.3. Thus I will skip the Net+/- thing and just go with the OnCourt values. At least that gives me a somewhat different look from the statistical point of view, not only Win Shares and PER.
There is a rather high correlation between Win Shares and that metric for players with a lot of minutes, which isn't surprising, because both are using Dean Oliver's ORtg and DRtg as basis.

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Rk Player               RS   PL   CO
 01 Michael Jordan      11.5  8.0 10.0
 02 Scottie Pippen       9.8  5.2  7.9
 03 John Stockton        9.4  5.5  7.7
 04 Gary Payton          7.7  3.9  6.4
 05 Karl Malone          9.1  2.0  5.9
 06 Shawn Kemp           6.0  4.3  5.5
 07 Grant Hill           6.7 -3.9  4.9
 08 Dikembe Mutombo      6.1  1.1  4.6
 09 Tim Hardaway         6.5  1.0  4.3
10 Hakeem Olajuwon      3.3  4.8  3.9
11 Mookie Blaylock      6.6 -3.5  3.5
12 Charles Barkley      4.0  2.7  3.4
13 Shaquille O'Neal     3.0  2.9  3.0
14 Patrick Ewing        3.1  1.7  2.7
15 Alonzo Mourning      4.2 -0.8  1.9
16 Anfernee Hardaway    1.4 -1.4  0.7
17 Kevin Johnson        3.3-15.3 -0.2

RS is the value for the regular season, PL for the playoffs and CO is the combined value for both (playoffs games are weighted 3 times as much as regular season). The list is obviously preselected, I used some criterias to shorten the list.
It might be surprising that Stockton is ahead of Malone (it was the other way around in 1998, btw.).
As many pointed out Olajuwon played better in the playoffs, but even if we assume his playoff value would be the value for the complete season, he would be behind players like Gary Payton, Grant Hill, Karl Malone or even Shawn Kemp. From the statistical POV Olajuwon shouldn't be in the Top5.

Taking all 3 boxscore metrics into account (PER, WS and my "new" rating) I get following ranking (just the sum of those 3).

1. Michael Jordan
2. Karl Malone
3. John Stockton
4. Grant Hill
5. Scottie Pippen
6. Hakeem Olajuwon
7. Gary Payton
8. Shaquille O'Neal

The rest is rather far behind. The only thing I will do here is swapping Olajuwon and Pippen, all others are pretty save. I might want to listen to more arguments to put Olajuwon over Hill. Obviously Hill's playoffs performances weren't any good and Olajuwon stepped it up.

Vote:

1. Michael Jordan
2. Karl Malone
3. John Stockton
4. Grant Hill
5. Hakeem Olajuwon

[Baller 24]

If the Rockets that season don't have Charles Barkley, they aren't getting past Settle, it took them 7 games to get past them, but it wouldn't have happened without Barkley. They had problems in the previous seasons against the Sonics, they actually never ever have beaten them in the playoffs until the '97 season, and one of the main reasons Barkley was brought onto the team was to clearly match-up better and add more firepower against the Sonics. It's like the Cavs getting Shaq to match-up better and possibly hold-off the Magic, but Barkley is obviously more significant than that for the Rockets, just throwing out a similar example.

[bastillon]

Here are my early rankings (I'll edit if I change):


4) Hakeem Olajuwon - solid all-around season, probably his first to many in the top 5 book, he was around the age of 34 and still producing some pretty awesome stats, rebounding the ball, scoring, still playing awesome defense, as many have noted his playoff numbers went up, but in the RS, Malone was clearly the better player, and like I said, the Rockets didn't do too well without Charles Barkley.

Hakeem's cast without Barkley was what, injured 34-year-old in Drexler and bunch of crap ? that team had no business being well without Barkley, because they didn't really have any depth so injuries had tremendous impact whenever they came.

32-8 (65.6) Barkley Drexler Dream
11-7 (50.1) Drexler Dream
6-3 (54.6) Barkley Dream
5-6 (37.3) Dream
3-1 (61.5) Barkley Drexler (vs 30W Tor, 56W LAL, 30W GSW, 40W Pho; avg opp 39W)

so that team was extremely succesful given their health issues. that team without Big Three was god-awful. Kevin Willis was a solid vet off the bench and Ellie was alright, but Maloney was like Calderon without passing (and arguably worse defense which IS telling) and then you had ugly-as-hell roster. this is no surprise that they lost a lot of games during the RS when they were banged up all the time. nobody wins with injuries, look at this year's Celtics as primary example.

now Hakeem was obviously great if he still kept that team competitive without Drexler and Barkley on the team, and played at (at least) 50W pace if either Barkley or Drexler played too. that's very impressive considering how poor this team was outside of this three. no reason to hold team results against Dream here. he had great success when talent was there.

Jordan's an easy #1 for me. Then I've got Mailman, Sprite Drinker, and Dream, followed by Pippen. 1 and 5 are decided, but I'm going to listen to arguments on those middle 3 a while longer.

my case for Olajuwon would consist of two main arguments: first, he was arguably the best player in the postseason (yeah, better than Jordan); second, he had great success relative to the talent on his team.

I've already explained the second part earlier, so I'm gonna focus on the first one now.

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    Player    GP   MIN    PTS     TS%    REB   AST   STL   BLK   TOV   WS    PER
    =============================================================================
    Jordan    21   42.3   31.1   .524    7.9   4.8   1.6   0.9   2.6   3.9   27.1
    Malone    20   40.8   26.0   .501   11.4   2.9   1.4   0.8   2.7   2.2   22.2
    Hakeem    16   39.3   23.1   .628   10.9   3.4   2.1   2.6   2.9   3.0   27.6
    Payton    12   45.5   23.8   .506    5.4   8.7   2.2   0.3   2.9   1.5   19.8
    Pippen    19   39.6   19.2   .526    6.8   3.8   1.5   0.9   2.9   2.3   18.1
    Hill      5    40.6   23.6   .491    6.8   5.4   0.8   1.0   3.8   0.2   21.4
    Hardaway  17   41.2   18.7   .488    4.1   7.0   1.6   0.1   3.1   1.7   15.9

these are playoff numbers from top candidates provided by semi sentient. Jordan and Olajuwon stand out on this list with nobody really coming close. efficiency is what strikes me the most. Hakeem is at 62.8% whereas the second best Pippen has merely 52.6 and 3rd best MJ only 52.4. most of these guys were very inefficient as scorers and Olajuwon really seperated himself here.

more importantly, Hakeem played his best in later rounds. I've already provided Hakeem vs Malone numbers earlier, when Dream crushed his rival individually (not even close again):
WCFs:
Hakeem
27/9/4a/2stl/3bl 64% TS - this is crazy.
Malone
23.5/11/3/1/1 49% TS

now compare Hakeem's numbers against finals Jordan to see how they played against the same opponent: 32/7/6/1/1 53%. boxscore stats favor Hakeem against the Jazz (advantage is almost solely created by big discrepancy in TS%).

playoff Olajuwon was a different animal and that's why we shouldn't judge him based on the regular season. I could see your point if it was about small samples, luck and stuff, but when you're dealing with a player who consistently plays better come playoff time, that's another thing. playoff Dream was just as good as Jordan, and that's what should've lifted him above any other player but MJ (considering his superior RS). Hakeem seperated himself from other middle-3 candidates and should be much closer to Jordan rather than Pippen or Hill.

please someone explain to me how Hill was better than Pippen that year, because I really don't see anything supporting that.

[CellarDoor]

Regarding Dream and the series against Utah: despite his great numbers, they lost. They had Barkley, Dream and Clyde that year and lost to a team with Stockton Malone and no real third option that was a threat. (hell, or 2nd. Stockton and Horny were both under 15ppg). They had solid defense, but nothing spectacular, but they still got past Dream and co.

[Optimism Prime]

Regarding Dream and the series against Utah: despite his great numbers, they lost. They had Barkley, Dream and Clyde that year and lost to a team with Stockton Malone and no real third option that was a threat. (hell, or 2nd. Stockton and Horny were both under 15ppg). They had solid defense, but nothing spectacular, but they still got past Dream and co.

Even as a Rockets fan, that's what's giving me pause about Hakeem. He fit into the system in the regular season, then became the system in the playoffs... and they didn't win.

Which depresses me to end, because I cannot for the life of me imagine a series better than Dream-Barkley-Clyde going up against Jordan-Pippen-Rodman. I weep for the potential of that series.

[Sedale Threatt]

Not really Olajuwon's fault, though, was it? Barkley was solid, and Drexler was basically a no-show until Game 6. All three were pretty well past their prime, and he was the only one who raised his game.

[Doctor MJ]

One thing I feel compelled to point out is that people shouldn't underestimate Barkley. Being a 19/13/5 guy with great efficiency is awesome - and the only reason he only scored 19 was because he was sacrificing his scoring more than Hakeem was. I'd also like to mention that in the 1998 playoffs, Barkley led the league in PER putting up a higher score than Hakeem did this year.

Hakeem's of course the Rocket MVP this year, but when people mention that the team went 41-12 with Barkley, and 16-13 with him, know that he's not just a well fitting role player - despite his age and his rep for peaking young, when Barkley was healthy even in his mid-30s, he was an incredible player.

[lorak]

Regarding Dream and the series against Utah: despite his great numbers, they lost. They had Barkley, Dream and Clyde that year and lost to a team with Stockton Malone and no real third option that was a threat. (hell, or 2nd. Stockton and Horny were both under 15ppg). They had solid defense, but nothing spectacular, but they still got past Dream and co.

Yeah. And I want to add that Jazz were as old as Rockets so I hope some people wont use age as a excuse.
BTW, in G6 Olajuwon had 0 FTA! While Jazz committed more fouls and Rockets had more FTA as a team. So the question is – where was Hakeem’s aggressiveness?

[ElGee]

I think Pippen will deserve some strong consideration in 93-94 for leading the Bulls, minus Jordan, to a solid season and having decent playoff run.

Keep in mind 95-97 Pippen benefitted from that shorter 3-point line more than the average player. He hit a number of big shots in those 2 years and his patented pullup 3 was even more effective. This is no doubt a small issue, but people's biggest reservations about him are usually offensive game/outside shooting and his range was more suited to the 22-foot line...