Penalized Regression of WOWY data

[Moonbeam]

I think this is important data for us to see - while being cautious about taking noisy data too far.

I completely get being skeptical of Magic & Bird relative to other superstars. Easy to have an interpretation of "Transcendent offensive players sure, but limited on defense, can they really be more impactful than 2-way stars? Maybe we've just got a narrative full of winning bias.", but I think there's good reason to think that these guys were every bit the extreme impact outliers they're made out to be.

Cool seeing the '60s stars there too, and yeah, Russell fits along with Magic & Bird as guys who seem like they should be being held back by half the game but the impact data may tell us otherwise.

Uh:

I don't see how anyone but Magic looks like an impact outlier here. Magic's career-splits are also outright matched by Duncan who looks better than Jordan where this graph would suggest his value peaked in various metrics like AUPM, WOWY, RAPM(Cheema, JE) despite playing way more minutes than any of his teammates(and as a result having to play with sub-standard teammates).

And then we have data ball where it is two two-way bigs and a guy who combines goat-tier offense with the ability to carry -5.5 defenses

I think what impact data bears out is that scoring and one-way offense is overrated if anything.

Really not sure how you can say "Magic looks like an impact outlier" and "data bears out one-way offense is overrated". We can have conversations about individuals certainly, but the idea that, say - among contemporaries, Olajuwon should rank ahead of Magic, is not helped by this data.

And while Bird doesn't look as strong as Magic, he looks pretty damn good too.

I think it would be cool to see more graphs along these lines for guys in more recent eras. That can obviously include the more fine-detailed stuff we get with legit +/- data, but apples-to-apples analyses always provide their own insight. I'd like to see how the Nashes and Kidds compare with the Stocktons and Prices, for example.

Here are those 4 PGs:

[Moonbeam]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

[homecourtloss]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

Could you run for Draymond, Gobert, Dikembe, Mourning, and RAPM warrior Bo Outlaw?

[Moonbeam]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

Could you run for Draymond, Gobert, Dikembe, Mourning, and RAPM warrior Bo Outlaw?

Bo doesn’t fare so well here.

[homecourtloss]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

Could you run for Draymond, Gobert, Dikembe, Mourning, and RAPM warrior Bo Outlaw?

Bo doesn’t fare so well here.

Thank you!

[AEnigma]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

Could you run for Draymond, Gobert, Dikembe, Mourning, and RAPM warrior Bo Outlaw?

Bo doesn’t fare so well here.

Bo not too surprising imo; he is ultimately a role-player, and there is no WOWY approach where he seems to come across as a secret superstar (or even a secret Bobby Jones).

What is a lot more interesting is Dikembe and how yet again we come across a substantial disconnect with WOWYR and the conclusions often drawn from it.

On that note, could I see a graph with Kobe, Pierce, Vince, McGrady, Ray Allen, and Eddie Jones?

And with the expansion backward, I would be similarly interested in a graph with Thurmond, Unseld, Lanier, Hayes, Cowens, and Reed.

As always, whenever convenient.

[lessthanjake]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

This is about as we’d expect I think, in many ways. LeBron looking great starting from 2007 with some tailing off in the last several years, and Steph looking the best in the last decade (i.e. starting with the 2014-2018 timeframe). Those are not super interesting to me with this, though, since they’re so expected. One thing I find pretty interesting, though, is that Durant does a lot better here than he tends to do in other impact metrics. I’m also at least a little surprised Westbrook doesn’t do better. I’ll note that, with Harden, we should remember that he only really got his own team in 2013, so the 2013-2017 time period is the first one that’s really all him with his own team. Still, though, he looks a bit less good than I’d have thought as well.

Bo doesn’t fare so well here.

Am admittedly a little sad Mutombo doesn’t do better in this. He doesn’t have almost any missed games in his prime, so I don’t know that there’s much that can concretely be concluded from this for him. But I guess it’s possible his offensive limitations swamp out a lot of his defensive greatness.

[Doctor MJ]

Uh:

I don't see how anyone but Magic looks like an impact outlier here. Magic's career-splits are also outright matched by Duncan who looks better than Jordan where this graph would suggest his value peaked in various metrics like AUPM, WOWY, RAPM(Cheema, JE) despite playing way more minutes than any of his teammates(and as a result having to play with sub-standard teammates).

And then we have data ball where it is two two-way bigs and a guy who combines goat-tier offense with the ability to carry -5.5 defenses

I think what impact data bears out is that scoring and one-way offense is overrated if anything.

Really not sure how you can say "Magic looks like an impact outlier" and "data bears out one-way offense is overrated". We can have conversations about individuals certainly, but the idea that, say - among contemporaries, Olajuwon should rank ahead of Magic, is not helped by this data.

And while Bird doesn't look as strong as Magic, he looks pretty damn good too.

I think it would be cool to see more graphs along these lines for guys in more recent eras. That can obviously include the more fine-detailed stuff we get with legit +/- data, but apples-to-apples analyses always provide their own insight. I'd like to see how the Nashes and Kidds compare with the Stocktons and Prices, for example.

Here are those 4 PGs:

Oh man this is fun. If we're annoying you and you want to encourage us to do something that takes the work from you let me know.

So, naive interpretation of this graph:

By peak we're looking at Nash > Stockton > Price >>> Kidd, with Price having by far the worst longevity. Make sense, though I have to acknowledge I wasn't expecting Kidd to be so far behind the rest.

It's interesting that Stockton peaks in the mid-to-late '90s.

[Doctor MJ]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

The way this largely lines up with their rep is pretty amazing. LeBron, Steph & KD look fantastic in-prime.

I have to say I'd have expected more irregularity with KD in the later years.

[Doctor MJ]

Here are the MVP winners of the 2010s, minus Giannis (I have to tweak the code to add more than 6 players). The data runs through 2022 as I still have to get box scores for 2023.

Could you run for Draymond, Gobert, Dikembe, Mourning, and RAPM warrior Bo Outlaw?

Bo doesn’t fare so well here.

I have to say I'm surprised Outlaw is doing so poorly is very interesting given his +/- success. I'd expect him to be below the others, but not below the 50th percentile.

Also surprising that there looks like a prime battle with Green, Gobert & Zo, but Mutombo lags behind them.

[homecourtloss]

Really not sure how you can say "Magic looks like an impact outlier" and "data bears out one-way offense is overrated". We can have conversations about individuals certainly, but the idea that, say - among contemporaries, Olajuwon should rank ahead of Magic, is not helped by this data.

And while Bird doesn't look as strong as Magic, he looks pretty damn good too.

I think it would be cool to see more graphs along these lines for guys in more recent eras. That can obviously include the more fine-detailed stuff we get with legit +/- data, but apples-to-apples analyses always provide their own insight. I'd like to see how the Nashes and Kidds compare with the Stocktons and Prices, for example.

Here are those 4 PGs:

Oh man this is fun. If we're annoying you and you want to encourage us to do something that takes the work from you let me know.

So, naive interpretation of this graph:

By peak we're looking at Nash > Stockton > Price >>> Kidd, with Price having by far the worst longevity. Make sense, though I have to acknowledge I wasn't expecting Kidd to be so far behind the rest.

It's interesting that Stockton peaks in the mid-to-late '90s.

From the available numbers that we had with Pollack’s data, and Stockton’s late career ON/OFF and RAPM, if he peaked before THAT it would be absolutely wild.

Kidd and Nash look closer in RAPM models, though it is interesting to see that Nash basically lived in the 90th+ percentile all the way up until the 2009–2013 period.

And Magic never left the 95–99th except for when he came back 5 years and out of shape and STILL was an impact player.

[Doctor MJ]

So, the next query on my mind are current players that aren't already listed but who could end up in the Top 100. List is going to be longer, so I'll just make groups of 4 to make them as contemporaneous as possible. Please feel ZERO pressure to do any of this. I just have enough interest that I can probably ask questions at an annoying rate.

Paul George
Kawhi Leonard
Jimmy Butler
Klay Thompson

Anthony Davis
Damian Lillard
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Nikola Jokic

Devin Booker
Joel Embiid
Jayson Tatum
Luka Doncic

[Doctor MJ]

Here are those 4 PGs:

Oh man this is fun. If we're annoying you and you want to encourage us to do something that takes the work from you let me know.

So, naive interpretation of this graph:

By peak we're looking at Nash > Stockton > Price >>> Kidd, with Price having by far the worst longevity. Make sense, though I have to acknowledge I wasn't expecting Kidd to be so far behind the rest.

It's interesting that Stockton peaks in the mid-to-late '90s.

From the available numbers that we had with Pollack’s data, and Stockton’s late career ON/OFF and RAPM, if he peaked before THAT it would be absolutely wild.

Kidd and Nash look closer in RAPM models, though it is interesting to see that Nash basically lived in the 90th+ percentile all the way up until the 2009–2013 period.

And Magic never left the 95–99th except for when he came back 5 years and out of shape and STILL was an impact player.

I agree given Stockton's later numbers it would be super, super impressive for him to do even better than that earlier, but earlier was also when he was putting up his biggest box score and biggest minutes, so we'd kind of thing that that's when he should look best here. I'm not surprised, and I'm not really unsurprised. This is the sort of thing I like to try to come at as fresh as I can when I get new data.

Re: Kidd & Nash closer by RAPM. And of course this brings us to a key question:

Is the Moonbeam dispersion due to noise, or is there something about the data that plays differently than more granular +/- fed into regression?

[LukaTheGOAT]

Really not sure how you can say "Magic looks like an impact outlier" and "data bears out one-way offense is overrated". We can have conversations about individuals certainly, but the idea that, say - among contemporaries, Olajuwon should rank ahead of Magic, is not helped by this data.

I do not know if anyone who voted Olajuwon above Magic has Hakeem as a stronger regular season player during their primes. The case was
-> Hakeem's teams see the biggest playoff elevation of anyone from the era team-wide, box-wide, "expected championshp differential", "srs upsets', ect ect
-> Hakeem by box and tape profiles similarly to Tim Duncan who arguably has a better impact portfolio than anyone from the 80's/90's
-> Hakeem was in a **** situation
-> Hakeem looks great in most concentrated samples(Me and Ben apply something around a 10gm/szn filter)
-> Hakeem by larger samples looks mj-ish and has better longetvity in the rs

Combine all that and that's where the Hakeem #5 and #6 votes were coming from. I'm pretty sure also benefitted from coming across as a more consistent version as a (some-times) impact outlier in Wilt.

I think it would be cool to see more graphs along these lines for guys in more recent eras. That can obviously include the more fine-detailed stuff we get with legit +/- data, but apples-to-apples analyses always provide their own insight. I'd like to see how the Nashes and Kidds compare with the Stocktons and Prices, for example.

I mean, "apples to apples" have played a big role in the shift towards "two-way rules". That's where the idea of Russell, Lebron, and Kareem as a tier onto themselves, and Duncan, Hakeem, and KG's elevation largely come from.[/quote]

As always, things are never so cut and dry, different WOWY metrics can lead to drastically different results. The same DARKO you praised in the other thread, sees MJ as the outlier of his team.

First iteration of DARKO WOWY:

Read on Twitter

This WOWY provides predictive ratings which update at an individual game-level, as opposed to requiring multiple years of data, so it is quite good for showing year by year impact. This doesn't have issues with overly smoothing multiple years of data, thus ignoring aging/injury.

[OhayoKD]

I do not know if anyone who voted Olajuwon above Magic has Hakeem as a stronger regular season player during their primes. The case was
-> Hakeem's teams see the biggest playoff elevation of anyone from the era team-wide, box-wide, "expected championshp differential", "srs upsets', ect ect
-> Hakeem by box and tape profiles similarly to Tim Duncan who arguably has a better impact portfolio than anyone from the 80's/90's
-> Hakeem was in a **** situation
-> Hakeem looks great in most concentrated samples(Me and Ben apply something around a 10gm/szn filter)
-> Hakeem by larger samples looks mj-ish and has better longetvity in the rs

Combine all that and that's where the Hakeem #5 and #6 votes were coming from. I'm pretty sure also benefitted from coming across as a more consistent version as a (some-times) impact outlier in Wilt.

I think it would be cool to see more graphs along these lines for guys in more recent eras. That can obviously include the more fine-detailed stuff we get with legit +/- data, but apples-to-apples analyses always provide their own insight. I'd like to see how the Nashes and Kidds compare with the Stocktons and Prices, for example.

I mean, "apples to apples" have played a big role in the shift towards "two-way rules". That's where the idea of Russell, Lebron, and Kareem as a tier onto themselves, and Duncan, Hakeem, and KG's elevation largely come from.

As always, things are never so cut and dry, different WOWY metrics can lead to drastically different results. The same DARKO you praised in the other thread, sees MJ as the outlier of his team.

First iteration of DARKO WOWY:

Read on Twitter

This WOWY provides predictive ratings which update at an individual game-level, as opposed to requiring multiple years of data, so it is quite good for showing year by year impact. This doesn't have issues with overly smoothing multiple years of data, thus ignoring aging/injury.

Like usual you read selectively:

Well, no, not necessarily. After, all accuracy writ large does not preclude bias distorting a specific comparison. That is why it's worthwhile to distinguish between box and non-box, even with more "accurate" metrics. When we do so with LEBRON and RAPTOR, we see that the box-prior boosts Steph relative to his impact. Shaq's point is fair.

Fwiw, the metric at the top of the that graph(and one that consistently tests at or near the top more than the others) is darko which to my knowledge is
A. either only using RS data or is using full-season data with no playoff filtering
B. Has a predictive component (the line)and a descriptive one(the dots).
C. It curves descriptive data up and down based on typical aging curves(keep that in mind). Crucially it only curves future data-points, it does not curve retroactively(30+ years cannot bolster earlier ones, under 30 years can bolster(or cripple) 30+ ones)

...

Woah! the most accurate metric has...steph=cp3? Duncan>Lebron? Lebron>Curry>Shaq?

This is an example of where understanding how a stat(and who it might be biased against) informs how we interpret it.
-> Lebron's trajectory is far higher than anyone's up until...2011 which, at age 26, is typically around a player's "peak". Lebron looks dissapointing in that peak so everything after is capped. As everything before is typically "pre-prime" it's curved down as it happens.

-> Duncan has a phenomenal start and doesn't falter until he's 30. His arc mantains allowing it to leapfrog Lebron and by extension everyone else.

-> Steph has a slower start than CP3 but is great at the years that should be his peak so is able to quickly ascend to match.

-> The data does not include Shaq''s suprising early years so his trajectory is not as high as it should be(though tbf, im not sure that actually puts him at a disadvantage relative to steph)

Clearly this data has a bias towards players with "clean" trajectory: Be really good early -> don't dissapoint in a season placed in your mid-20's -> dominante darko

Does this make the stat useless? No. But it does mean you should factor in what it's doing when you extrapolate. This approach is probably accurate on a large scale, but it may distort things in specific comparisons. Account for that and you can still get some use here. Lebron was outlier-valuable for players his age through 24 and then not so valuable in what would typically be a peak year by age(Lebron was aged 26 for 2011). Duncan was really valuable early on and stayed that valuable right up till 30. Steph was underwhelming at the start but was really impactful at 25 and 26. Chris Paul had high impact from the getgo.

I made a point about not taking metrics at face-value and you turn this into "ohayo praised DARKO"

Regardless Jordan still comes out significantly behind Lebron who per DPM is second to two-way-big Duncan(no idea what his WOWY looks like though).

Curiously, like with moonbeam's, Jordan's impact seems to peak during the second three-peat rather than the 80's though I guess with how the stat works it's basically saying Jordan is a big outlier for his age in his 30's which he was.

Looking at the breakdowns of 1985, 1988, and 1992:

Read on Twitter

Seems like Magic has it throughout the 80's and then Jordan comes out tops in the 90's

[Moonbeam]

Could you run for Draymond, Gobert, Dikembe, Mourning, and RAPM warrior Bo Outlaw?

Bo doesn’t fare so well here.

Bo not too surprising imo; he is ultimately a role-player, and there is no WOWY approach where he seems to come across as a secret superstar (or even a secret Bobby Jones).

What is a lot more interesting is Dikembe and how yet again we come across a substantial disconnect with WOWYR and the conclusions often drawn from it.

On that note, could I see a graph with Kobe, Pierce, Vince, McGrady, Ray Allen, and Eddie Jones?

And with the expansion backward, I would be similarly interested in a graph with Thurmond, Unseld, Lanier, Hayes, Cowens, and Reed.

As always, whenever convenient.

Here are the 90s/00s stars:



And here are the 60s/70s centers:



By the way, I think the modern guys can give us some nice "sanity checks" on this methodology. The Cheema 5-year RAPM scores I compared RWOWY-Ridge to in the document are prior-informed, whereas these are not prior-informed, so that may explain some discrepancies, but it's still good to benchmark against what is available through more precise +/- data.

[Moonbeam]

Really not sure how you can say "Magic looks like an impact outlier" and "data bears out one-way offense is overrated". We can have conversations about individuals certainly, but the idea that, say - among contemporaries, Olajuwon should rank ahead of Magic, is not helped by this data.

And while Bird doesn't look as strong as Magic, he looks pretty damn good too.

I think it would be cool to see more graphs along these lines for guys in more recent eras. That can obviously include the more fine-detailed stuff we get with legit +/- data, but apples-to-apples analyses always provide their own insight. I'd like to see how the Nashes and Kidds compare with the Stocktons and Prices, for example.

Here are those 4 PGs:

Oh man this is fun. If we're annoying you and you want to encourage us to do something that takes the work from you let me know.

So, naive interpretation of this graph:

By peak we're looking at Nash > Stockton > Price >>> Kidd, with Price having by far the worst longevity. Make sense, though I have to acknowledge I wasn't expecting Kidd to be so far behind the rest.

It's interesting that Stockton peaks in the mid-to-late '90s.

Not annoying at all --- it's fun for me to look at these comparisons with you all.

[eminence]

An Eminence favorites request:
Andrei Kirilenko
Baron Davis
Ricky Rubio
Derrick Favors
Joe Ingles

[homecourtloss]

By the way, I think the modern guys can give us some nice "sanity checks" on this methodology. The Cheema 5-year RAPM scores I compared RWOWY-Ridge to in the document are prior-informed, whereas these are not prior-informed, so that may explain some discrepancies, but it's still good to benchmark against what is available through more precise +/- data.[/b]

How does it look overall? I know you talked about it a little bit in your paper. Tagging some of the active users in this threa

[70sFan]

I think comparing the 1980s high scoring wings wojld be cool to see as well:

Adrian Dantley
Alex English
Bernard King
Mark Aguirre
Marques Johnson
Dominique Wilkins