Outside wrote:pandrade83 wrote:Outside wrote:Isn't it possible to flip what I bolded above and say:
In terms of postseason impact, there's no case that Nance is equal to Worthy.
No. I'm going to synthesize a few posts here. All stats are playoff career.
PER: Worthy 18.3 vs. Nance 18.1 - marginal advantage for Worthy
WS/48: Worthy .135 vs. Nance .146 - as Owly pointed out,
Win Shares skews pro-good team, and Worthy played with Magic et al, and always in the West when that was very weak for competitive playoff teams (and from the top-seed). Nance never had the same talent around him, and played without in depth, round-by-round digging, against a presumably more typical playoff schedule. And still Nance comes out ahead in WS/48.
BPM: Worthy: +3.1 vs. Nance +3.8
Per 100 +/-: Worthy: 116-111 vs. Nance 117-108.
Dhsilv called out Nance's sample size as being a potential issue but he played 68 playoff games which is a full season, and the poster seemed fine with that.
I know that Worthy's the one who we remember making big plays and he even has a nickname "Big Game James" but he got to play in bigger moments by virtue of the fact he was lucky enough to play with Magic & to a lesser extent, Kareem. We remember Nance getting beat by Jordan 4 times in the playoffs - but just because he was on teams getting beat by Jordan doesn't mean he didn't acquit himself.
While Worthy did raise his game & Nance more or less remained the same, the tangible points to Nance - not a blowout - but still fairly clearly. The intangible - i.e. - memories - what you saw - I understand why you'd point to Worthy. He's the one with the rings & the FMVP. I get that. But he has none of that if he doesn't get to play with one of the GOATs and when you boil it down to who was the better player in the playoffs - it's still Nance.
That seems somewhat cherry-picked for Nance.
Longevity counts for something, and that applies to the postseason also. Tracy McGrady's paper-thin PS resume counts against him and makes his numbers less reliable, impactful, meaningful, whatever. At the other end, you have to discount somewhat PS longevity for (mostly) secondary players like Worthy who were on teams that regularly went to the finals. But Worthy has over twice as many PS games as Nance (143 to 68),going deep into the playoffs many times, meaning that he went through multiple rounds of (usually) increasingly good competition. Worthy had seven years of double-digit PS games, while Nance has two. Worthy made it to the finals six times. Nance made it out of the first round four times. That matters.
I'm no fan of PER and rarely include it in arguments. High-usage guys have great PER, but it seems to fail too often for supplementary players, and it does nothing for defense.
WS/48 -- what is more impressive, Nance's .212 in 1993 when they were swept in the second round and .174 in 1989 when they lost in the first round? Or Worthy's .199 in 1985 and .190 in 1987, both times beating the Celtics for the title? In Nance's two deep playoff runs (17 games each in 1984 and 1992), his WS/48 was .157 and .139. Worthy has five PS years with at least 15 games with WS/48 of .142 or higher.WS -- one of your arguments in Nance's favor is that Nance has two years of WS better than Worthy's best. Worthy has four PS years with WS better than Nance's best and another year that matches Nance's best. WS for the PS is a reflection of number of games played in that PS, but Nance's best is 2.1 in 17 games. Worthy had 2.6 in 19 games, 2.7 in 18 games, and 2.2 in 15 games.
BPM is a per/100 stat. In Nance's two deep playoff runs (17 games), his BPM was 4.5 and 3.3. Worthy's BPM for years with 15 or more PS games -- 3.7, 4.2, 5.4, 4.5, 5.4, -0.2.
I don't know whether you give any credit for titles and FMVP. To me, it's not the crux of an argument for a player, but is more like bonus points. I think it should be worth something because a) it proves that he could play winning basketball, and at its core, these rankings to me are about how well players play winning basketball, not how good they are at accumulating brute force stats (which sometimes comes at the expense of team winning); and b) it shows that the player could perform on the highest stage against the best competition and under the most intense pressure. That counts more for me that putting up a nice stat line in a first-round loss.
Anyway, it seems clear to me that Worthy's PS resume is better than Nance's, but others may disagree. Apparently almost everyone disagrees with me on Worthy.
Okay well, on the average of those two (without weighing for each's years games played) by the metric in question it's marginally Worthy by the metric you're using. Which is odd as this is notionally an attempt to discredit the metric, because Worthy is worse by it overall. And you were calling other numbers cherry picked. Okay I'll do the maths for weighting games. Worthy is at 0.194621622
WS/48 and Nance 0.198428571 Nance is marginally better on average, but I'm assuming you didn't do that calculation.
So perhaps you mean that each Nance season is worse than either Worthy season. So let's look at '93. And then ...
It's Nance. It's Nance. He's playing better than Worthy. And on average versus better opposition. Because he's playing three-peat Bulls for almost half his sample (albeit one that hadn't maxed-out for the regular season). Whereas Worthy is going through the murder's row of Phoenix (-2.34 SRS), Portland (2.80) and Denver (2.05) before Boston (6.47). And off the top of my head that sounds like one of their tougher runs over that period. Their average opponent, after weighting for games was 2.95 SRS. Nance's opponents was 3.417777778. And that's assuming you take Chicago's 6.19, regular season SRS at face value, that the repeat defending champs, coming off two seasons with an SRS north of 8.5, were genuinely substantially worse than either of the prior teams, rather than merely coasting during the regular season. So Nance is facing tougher competition, with worse teammates and he comes out better on the metric. But lets take a further look.
It's a metric that correlates a lot with your your team's points differential, so Worthy is given a baked in advantage from his team winning a higher proportion of his games (without knowing Nance has worse teammates, and better opponents). And still Nance comes out higher. And he's a better defender, which the boxscore doesn't always capture.
Oh and let's throw this in, I was being generous looking at the Lakers' '85 run. Their '87 conference opponents were the devastating forces that were Seattle (0.08), Denver (-1.14) and Golden State (-2.54), before a finals face off with Boston (6.57).
To a general point made elsewhere in your post, such stats include finals stats. I don't see any need to double count the finals by saying, "well he was the MVP, which means he must have been far better than his numbers". Obviously this doesn't pertain to the years in question above, but rather to the broader point.
If your ranking is about the most significant players and stated as such, I have no problem with promoting title winners and FMVPs. But couching it in terms of "how well players play winning basketball", makes no sense, ignoring the nine other players on the court in one instance (titles), and the vast inequality of opportunity to play for such things in the other (FMVP).
But I could look at "Winning basketball" squad versus a "Numbers" team
Team titles (with more than one team (so it isn't just playing with MJ or whoever)
Charles Johnson ('75, '78 champ)
Steve Kerr ('96, '97, '98, '99, '03)
Robert Horry ('94, '95, '00, '01, '02, '05, '07)
John Salley ('89, '90, '96, '00)
James Edwards ('89, '90, '96)
bench
Will Perdue ('91, '92, '93, '99)
Slater Martin ('50, '52, '53, '54, '58)
Pep Saul ('51, '52, '53, '54)
Gerald Henderson ('81, '84, '90)
Ron Harper ('96, '97, '98, '00, '01)
James Jones ('12, '13, '16)
we could, if desired, thicken out this squad by allowing ABA champs
Bill Melchionni (once NBA '66 76ers, '74 and '76 Nets)
Arvesta Kelly ('68 Pipers, '72 Pacers - Playoffs DNP in '72 fwiw)
Jim Eakins ('69 Oaks, '76 Nets)
Ted McClain ('75 Colonels, '76 Nets)
Team "Numbers"/no titles (I'll limit myself to non-active players, including leaving Paul off the board)
John Stockton
Reggie Miller
Elgin Baylor*
Karl Malone
Patrick Ewing
bench
Charles Barkley
George Gervin
Bob Lanier
Tracy McGrady
Steve Nash
Dominique Wilkins
* = (going with what seems to be basketball history canon here, technically he did get a ring for '72 - could sub in Barkley and bring Alex English onto the bench if necessary)
You can build a better team if you require the title to have been NBA (not ABA, freeing up Gilmore), and require them to have been the best player (Erving, Robertson, Drexler, Kidd, Payton, arguably Robinson though he's got a good claim for '99 etc).
And yes this is simplistic, but if you're arguing for players based on that they happened to be on title winners without any explanation of how you're dividing up credit whilst casually dismissing serious attempts to weigh up the contributions of players to their teams, then this is where your argument takes you.
My only reservation is we're talking tiny samples when talking about one or two playoff runs, which is why I don't weight playoffs heavily. As such where metric gaps are small and there's wiggle room on each side for either player, conclusions aren't so certain. But if people are going in for playoffs arguments, this is unavoidable.
