kaima wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:mystic went over the +/- argument.
OK.
The idea that I automatically care for plus/minus stats, or should, is something I'd take issue with.
Further, I never really argued that Nowitzki was a poor player, or that he didn't matter greatly to the Mavs.
But does the fact that he was the best player on the best team -- rather, the best player on the best playoff team, through whatever limited measurement and matchup contexts -- then prove he was the best player for the entire season?
I'm not seeing how that's an automatic. Not at all.
kaima, when I read your posts in the mix of everyone else, I get the impression that everyone else in the room is talking at cocktail party levels and you are shouting.
Fine, you don't buy +/-. I bring it up to touch on a point I would have made had someone else not already said it, not to make some grand assumption of what you must believe in.
kaima wrote:The more general thing which doesn't get talked about enough is this: How do you factor in team fit when ranking the players on that team? Especially the star.
I believe this has been debated quite a bit, actually.
What strikes me is how the standards shift based on legacy -- the assumptions that result -- and that selfsame team-result.
Dirk didn't magically become a better player with this run. Yet many see it that way.
In that context, looking at team-makeup is of great value. And very reasonable.
If Dirk had compiled similar stats over fewer rounds, suddenly he'd be worth less?
Let's say he provides the same offense without Chandler's presence to push the team further, was he really less of a player? If the team loses despite his great play, why is he worth less as a player than he is when they win with that same level of play?
These are not questions to attack Dirk, but provide context and sense in place of hype. Hype he's now the beneficiary of, whereas he could just as easily have been attacked through it with a slightly different team.
Or, hell. just ignored.
Over the last three POY votes, Dirk hasn't ranked in the top five. He was out of the top ten for MVP voting in two out of three years. This year he wasn't in the top five, and garnered .093 of the votes. In fact, he hasn't been in the top five since the Warriors debacle (fair for MVP? I don't know. But for POY shares, I believe it makes sense in that he arguably played so poorly as a matchup or star prop that he harmed his team).
In the time he's been acknowledged or ranked at all by the POY vote, he's missed the top five seven times. He's made it twice.
Yet he's automatically the best player in 2010/11?
The question is not whether a career can make a jump, but what the basis is for this assumption.
It appears to be team-result, very greatly.
The number of people that suddenly think he's the best player in the league has sky-rocketed.
Has he really changed so much, so quickly?
-I don't think I've ever heard a debate between mainstream media people about how to account for fit as distinct from talent in supporting cast. People do implicitly talk about fit when judging a player, but they don't make the crucial distinction from talent.
I find this to be extremely important because talent of cast exists with or without the star, but the star makes the fit. Ease of fit is a synonym for "how easy is it to build around him", and beyond that there is no one who advocates elevating a big stat star above others specifically because the talent around him is LESS effective than they thought it would be.
At the same time, management and coach do deserve credit for building around a player, and thus when you factor it all in, fit becomes a very, very complex issue.
-Dirk didn't magically become a better player. However, his narrative had been held in place for half a decade despite the growth in his game, and him having the success he did with a supporting cast that no one would say is glaringly better than what other A-list superstars have had caused people to reconsider the effect that Dirk's unique game could have.
-What if no Chandler and the team doesn't do as well? Well then people wrongly fail to realize that all he needed was a Chandler and he'd lead a team better than all others. People lacking valuable information come to incorrect conclusions.
As for myself, I'll admit both that I underrated Dirk's improvement before and that I am not mortified at the idea that my rating of a player's season has some dependence on the fit he plays in.
kaima wrote:Anyone who thinks they have an easy answer, I'd love to hear it, but I think you haven't thought it through.
Of all the people in this process, you're aiming that charge at me?
Wow.
Just because you dislike or disagree with how I rank players for a season, doesn't mean that I haven't thoroughly thought about it, and how to fairly evaluate it.
On the other hand, I've seen examples, by season, where measurement of player value fluctuates wildly from the same source(s).
If you want to debate this further -- and provide detail as to your statement about me -- I'm all for it.
See, I hear you shouting again as you express your outrage.
Dude, I didn't say you personally hadn't thought it through. I said anyone who thought they had an easy answer hadn't thought it through. And from that you think I have some individual dislike of your opinions?
kaima wrote:His Cav team last year was literally about as good as his Heat team this year. The Heat team has better talent. What did the Cav team have? Fit.
And...?
This is an argument that proves what. exactly, as far Nowitzki or James?
My thesis is unclear?
Given what he had to work with, LeBron was more impressive last year than this year. Feeling compelled to rank them identically simply because LeBron is the same player and theoretically capable of the same thing from year to year seems silly to me, and so I don't.
Application to Dirk? Dirk did more with less talent around him this year than LeBron did this year. I find this relevant to the discussion. That he also had superior fit is also relevant to the discussion, but it's less clear how to apply it to the ranking.
kaima wrote:Literally, the Cav team was built with the ability to make use of LeBron's talents such that you could have Mo Williams in place of Dwyane Wade (with the other substitutions), and achieve about the same thing.
The interesting part of that statement, is one of individual player worth as opposed to team result.
I think LeBron was very much still LeBron. But I don't agree that the team result was all that close. Not in the playoffs, certainly, which is a very big part of this process.
Regular season records can be smoke and mirrors, as I'd assert it was with the Cavs. Or merely as example of how LeBron can dominate.
If you think this year's Heat was a vastly superior team to last years Cavs, I believe that should influence your perception of LeBron this year in a positive way.
Personally, I see similar regular season performance, and I see the Heat not beating any team better than the team the Cavs lost to last year. In fact I'll go so far as to say I think the Celtics of last year would have won the title this year.
kaima wrote:I don't think it makes any sense to say "Well, LeBron had good fit on his team in Cleveland, so he wasn't as valuable as you think?" I say the same thing with Dirk.
Which is why you were arguing for Nowitzki as a clear number 1 when his teams were bowing out far earlier, right?
Hm.
As I've said: 1) My perception has changed, and 2) I'm not opposed to having my ranking of a player's job in a given year affected by fit.
kaima wrote:Now, I get that you can have ensemble casts like the Pistons of a few years ago with such good fit that they win a title even without a clear star, but that's where both common sense and +/- helps matters. This Mav team and its great fit totally disappear without Dirk. He *makes* the fit. For that I think he should be praised.
So you're basically saying, hey, team-result is conflated with the individual star, and defines his worth.
As to whether Dirk deserves praise, I don't believe that I denied it.
What I asked was whether he was the automatic number 1, as you seem to think is the case.
If praise is synonymous with being number 1, that's another matter. And certainly an interesting interpretation of the limits of the word.
Saying that Dirk had help this year, and that the Chandler move was key, is just analysis.
The one-man wrecking crew argumentation used by his fans -- however broad or limited to this vote -- is hagiography-level nonsense, that I think does a great disservice to analysis as well as Dirk's career before winning a title.
-Worth is a synonym for value. While I won't say that one should work backwards by team result, a player's job is to make his team better, and if he can lead his team to great heights with modest talent around him, this is a good thing.
-I feel like you're just too rigid in your discussion. If you post something, and I post something in return that presents a viewpoint that clearly is different from yours, you seem to take that response only in terms of whether it proves you wrong as opposed to trying to have a good discussion out of it.
I essentially ignored your "automatically" thing because to me it seemed like hyperbole. I was not responding to your to prove the "automatic" argument, I was responding to the rest of your point that seemed more worth discussing.
