Doctor MJ wrote:Magic Is Magic wrote:penbeast0 wrote:With all due respect, Cousy was actually a negative player over the course of those 6 rings as he consistently racked up miserable playoff performances (his playoffs pre-Russell were actually good despite their lack of results). He was rescued by Russell, Frank Ramsey (who was a playoff beast) and other. Cousy pre-Russell (52-56 and the 1st half of 57) was one of the great offensive players in the 50s and his passing was still producing assists at a rate above anyone else before Oscar. He probably deserves a top 100 spot but giving him a boost over anyone for those rings is highly questionable seeing as how he shot a TS% of around .410 over the course of those 5 rings while his team shot a full 100 points higher. He was Trae Young with Ricky Rubio's shooting.
He has a very strong resume when you uncover successful components that make up a strong career. For example, Bob Cousy has:
6x Rings
1x Finals MVP
1x MVP
4x top 5 in MVP voting (not great, but not bad)
10x All NBA 1st team (HUGE)
4x Top 3 in Points
3x Top 3 in Assists
I'm not joking when I say Reggie Miller has zero of all of these measures. So with all do respect Reggie Miller has the literal lowest score of all 60 players I ran through my formula. I was actually shocked to see how little he achieved despite some sneaking him into a top 30 or top 40 ranking. He had zero in everything except an All-NBA 3rd team. It was eye opening.
Hmm. Sounds like you're coming at all this from the perspective of a younger (or newer) basketball fan first learning about some of these guys from lists like this and only then really looking in depth at their history.
You should know that some of us older folks have gone through a very different journey.
When Miller played he was seen often as a borderline all-star, rather than a superstar, in no small part because his game didn't have the box score footprint that most other top performers do. He thus became primarily known for his playoff performance. Repeatedly in the playoffs he seemed to play at a much higher stature and his teams tended to do even better. As a guy who got to the Conference Finals 5 times as his teams best player, this is no small thing.
And you'll note none of those things I described are a part of your metric, and the one thing that potentially would be (Finals MVP) is wrong. Cousy has no Finals MVPs.
Back to Miller: Early analytics folks tended to think that Miller was overrated based on playoff glamour, but at that time they were largely looking at volume stats from the regular season to make their judgments.
Thins began to shift with efficiency-based stats. Dean Oliver has said that when he put Miller into his Offensive Rating he thought he'd made an error. Nope, Miller was simply a ridiculous efficient scorer at a time when people really weren't thinking about efficiency much at all...but that doesn't mean it wasn't valuable.
With time there's been a movement to really understanding how different players played with the help of video, it's from there that some of us have gotten extraordinarily impressed by Miller. While the box score paints Miller as a guy who "only did 1 thing", video shows a guy more actively exerting energy for purpose than basically anyone else in the game. Add that activity to his efficiency, then recognize that the way he plays allows others who require the ball in their hand to flourish, to flourish.
In the end what that means is that essentially what I'm saying is that you're building a metric based on the opinions of other people, and those people had clear cut gaps and misconceptions in what they understood compared to people now. A smarter league would have been voting for Miller as All-NBA for a decade-plus.
Now as I say all of that, Miller was not an MVP-level player then or now, and thus for anyone not much interested in longevity, it makes sense to rank him lower than guys who were just on another level in your assessment.
As penbeast says though, there were major misconceptions overestimating Cousy's value in his day that inflate his accolades.
Evaluate all this to your own judgment just please don't keep relying on accolade formulas as anything more than a first pass organizer of thoughts.
Thanks for the reply. First off definitely not a new fan or young fan. In fact, I loved this idea so much that I created a full on player ranking formula with over 40 different categories, each with weighted values. Here is the current top 11 list my formula produced:
1. LeBron James
2. Michael Jordan
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
4. Tim Duncan
5. Wilt Chamberlain
6. Bill Russell
7. Magic Johnson
8. Shaquille O'Neal
9. Kobe Bryant
10. Hakeem Olajuwon
11. Larry Bird
Eerily similar to the Real GM Voter Panel's top 11 list.
The beauty of using a formula is that you are using the exact same criteria for every single player and in doing so eliminates biased opinions and analysis. I used the exact same formula criteria to rank LeBron James, to David Robinson, to John Stockton, to Artis Gilmore. This makes my system fair.
And so, using this exact same ranking formula for all players in the NBA I have found that Cousy is underrated by most and Miller is overrated by most. I'm sure we all know that there is no one particular formula that is perfect and all formulas are a work of art in progress, meaning they can be improved and tweaked, but looking at the list produced for top 11 players I have to say I am pretty happy with that top 11 player ranking. I'd say it is very sound and accurate, in fact a bit impressive to say the least. If I am being picky I don't like Kobe over Bird but I can see why he is ranked over Bird when considering the defensive end of basketball and Kobe's great longevity vs Bird's great peak. Kobe has the rings, Bird has the MVPs. Kobe has the insane longevity, Bird has the amazing peak. Both are highly valued, close in ranking, and have very different careers.
