RealGM Top 100 List #4

[JordansBulls]

Thanks JB. I went back through page by page and found it; already changed the totals but Magic still comes up a vote short since john248 doesn't vote until next thread.

AT THIS POINT, WE HAVE A RUNOFF WITH 17 VOTES FOR WILT CHAMBERLAIN AND 7 FOR SHAQUILLE O'NEAL.

yes agreed. Looks like we should be moving on, Wilt still is dominating this.

I predict the opposite. By Pen's count there are 23 non Wilt voters (not including new voters) v.s 17 Wilt voters. Based on the comments of the anti-Wilt voters, I doubt Wilt is going to get more than 1-2 votes from them. So far everyone who has switched has done so in favour of Shaq.

While I am open to being talked around, I am also going to go with Shaq. I've elaborated in great detail about Wilt's era and what I think of it. Shaq has him on longevity too, and while both had bad attitudes and both underachieved, I feel pretty confident that Shaq wins those comparisons too. Shaq was just the more impactful player IMO, peak and prime, however I've softened somewhat on Wilt in this thread thus far, so could theoretically be talked out of it.

Switch to Shaq

I don't see how that is possibly fair. If it was 17 to 15 or something like that then it makes sense, but 17 to 7 is a big difference

[Baller2014]

Um, it's fair because the majority pick Shaq? That's the whole point of a run-off, not to punish the people who (in good faith) voted for a 3rd party candidate (or in this case 5-6 of them).

[ceiling raiser]

I think Shaq would be a terrific choice here too, if he beats out Wilt. After Russ/MJ, there's not all that much separating the next 6 big men (KAJ/Wilt/Hakeem/KG/Duncan/Shaq in whichever order) to me.

I understand that my reasons for supporting Wilt rely on a ton of hypotheticals (especially since my criteria heavily weight skillsets/impact numbers neither for which we have extensive source material for Wilt), while for Shaq we have more concrete information (which works against Shaq somewhat for me...even though he's a favorite of mine, having lived/watched/read through the ups and downs of his entire career, the highs and lows stand out more prominently than with a guy like Wilt). I still stand by my selection of Wilt though (I've learned a good deal about pre-peak Hakeem in this thread though, and could conceivably choose him as my pick for #5 over whoever loses the runoff between Shaq and Wilt).

Apologies for ranting, just thinking out loud here.

[E-Balla]

They definitely beat Boston. Chicago is a close one. It could go either way especially if Wade still plays bad. Any how I wasn't talking about Lebron's playoff performance as a whole but his Finals performance.

The Heat don't beat the Bulls without LeBron. Not even close. That Bulls team was really good. They won 62 games despite the fact that Noah and Boozer missed a combined 57 games. When their starting lineup was healthy, they had an SRS over 8.

Yikes. Maybe I've been underestimating them. Still has nothing to do with my point but I remember everyone (especially me) talking about how they didn't miss a beat without Noah and championing Rose.

[trex_8063]

I will re-affirm my vote for Wilt Chamberlain, for reasons that have been well covered.

[An Unbiased Fan]

So getting a lot of talk about RAPM not "really" meaning impact and to me this just gets us back to really general stuff:

People are just saying the old truism that correlation is not causation. And they are correct of course, but they then use that to say "so it's meaningless!", as opposed to actually applying scientific thinking to go forward.

Literally what science is is an attempt to distill causation from correlation and obviously it can work prey damn well. It can also be wrong which is why the process itself is so important.

When assertions are made about a player using RAPM or any other stat or event they may be wrong. However the mere fact that they maybe wrong is not an argument why they are wrong, and meanwhile literally any other disagreeing assertions have the exact same vulnerability.

I am not telling anyone they must use stats like I (or others here) do, but believe me when I was that the epistemological basis of my approach to analysis is far from naive. Absolutely doesn't mean I'm always right, but I'm no crank.

I think the issues with RAPM go far deeper though. The fundamental methodology of the result is reflective of lineup rotations, and there is no mechanism within it calculations, that separate the individual from the group.

if Player A plays all of his minutes with Player B, then they have the same exact RAPM. There is no mechanism to separate the two players at all for that on court time. So what RAPM 'attempts" to do is mix & match the various lineup/rotation samples, and then assign a value based on trends. I have no problem with this if done by a coach analyzing which lineups to use at various times......however, to interpret what can only be quantified as the quality of rotations played in, as "Impact", is to misinterpret the results.

RAPM is basically nothing more than a representation of rotations in the literal sense. A guy like Odom will do well in this regard, as will a Manu, or Kirelenko. Defensive specialist will have high defensive RAPMs due to they're more structure rotational minutes centered around defenisve rotations. When guys play heavier minutes, then their lineups are more reflective to what the overall team did in most systems. Was Antoine Walker the best defender in 2002 at 2.9, not likely. That's better than both KG/TD. In fact Divac is tied with TD, and ahead of KG too. Once someone see those results, they should run for the hills, but instead prior-informed was created. Which does nothing but add the extra element of skewing numbers based on previous results.

Hey, at the end of the day, I wouldn't mind RAPM if it was kept in the context of rotations, and criticisms about it were dismissed so quickly. A player can become an "overrated defender" overnight(Kobe/Wade) just because people want to attribute "impact" to that stat. Another player(KG) can leapfrog others off the back of this one stat. the same stat that has 02 Toine as the best defender in the NBA. The same stat that we don't have for most of the nominees.

[ceiling raiser]

So getting a lot of talk about RAPM not "really" meaning impact and to me this just gets us back to really general stuff:

People are just saying the old truism that correlation is not causation. And they are correct of course, but they then use that to say "so it's meaningless!", as opposed to actually applying scientific thinking to go forward.

Literally what science is is an attempt to distill causation from correlation and obviously it can work prey damn well. It can also be wrong which is why the process itself is so important.

When assertions are made about a player using RAPM or any other stat or event they may be wrong. However the mere fact that they maybe wrong is not an argument why they are wrong, and meanwhile literally any other disagreeing assertions have the exact same vulnerability.

I am not telling anyone they must use stats like I (or others here) do, but believe me when I was that the epistemological basis of my approach to analysis is far from naive. Absolutely doesn't mean I'm always right, but I'm no crank.

I think the issues with RAPM go far deeper though. The fundamental methodology of the result is reflective of lineup rotations, and there is no mechanism within it calculations, that separate the individual from the group.

if Player A plays all of his minutes with Player B, then they have the same exact RAPM. There is no mechanism to separate the two players at all for that on court time. So what RAPM 'attempts" to do is mix & match the various lineup/rotation samples, and then assign a value based on trends. I have no problem with this if done by a coach analyzing which lineups to use at various times......however, to interpret what can only be quantified as the quality of rotations played in, as "Impact", is to misinterpret the results.

RAPM is basically nothing more than a representation of rotations in the literal sense. A guy like Odom will do well in this regard, as will a Manu, or Kirelenko. Defensive specialist will have high defensive RAPMs due to they're more structure rotational minutes centered around defenisve rotations. When guys play heavier minutes, then their lineups are more reflective to what the overall team did in most systems. Was Antoine Walker the best defender in 2002 at 2.9, not likely. That's better than both KG/TD. In fact Divac is tied with TD, and ahead of KG too. Once someone see those results, they should run for the hills, but instead prior-informed was created. Which does nothing but add the extra element of skewing numbers based on previous results.

Hey, at the end of the day, I wouldn't mind RAPM if it was kept in the context of rotations, and criticisms about it were dismissed so quickly. A player can become an "overrated defender" overnight(Kobe/Wade) just because people want to attribute "impact" to that stat. Another player(KG) can leapfrog others off the back of this one stat. the same stat that has 02 Toine as the best defender in the NBA. The same stat that we don't have for most of the nominees.

Just a note on 02 RAPM...by J.E.'s own admissions (colts posted the link earlier), the data for the first few seasons for which he calculated RAPM (01 and 02, possibly the next couple as well, since he didn't specify which years, just that it was the first few) is incomplete. It's entirely possible Walker still comes out at or near the top, but for now I can't make much of results from those two seasons.

[PaulieWal]

They definitely beat Boston. Chicago is a close one. It could go either way especially if Wade still plays bad. Any how I wasn't talking about Lebron's playoff performance as a whole but his Finals performance.

The Heat don't beat the Bulls without LeBron. Not even close. That Bulls team was really good. They won 62 games despite the fact that Noah and Boozer missed a combined 57 games. When their starting lineup was healthy, they had an SRS over 8.

Yikes. Maybe I've been underestimating them. Still has nothing to do with my point but I remember everyone (especially me) talking about how they didn't miss a beat without Noah and championing Rose.

It kinda does. Miami doesn't make the Finals without LeBron in 2011. If you still wanna argue that Battier or Ariza help Miami win against Dallas, be my guest but Miami isn't getting there without LeBron regardless.

[90sAllDecade]

So getting a lot of talk about RAPM not "really" meaning impact and to me this just gets us back to really general stuff:

People are just saying the old truism that correlation is not causation. And they are correct of course, but they then use that to say "so it's meaningless!", as opposed to actually applying scientific thinking to go forward.

Literally what science is is an attempt to distill causation from correlation and obviously it can work prey damn well. It can also be wrong which is why the process itself is so important.

When assertions are made about a player using RAPM or any other stat or event they may be wrong. However the mere fact that they maybe wrong is not an argument why they are wrong, and meanwhile literally any other disagreeing assertions have the exact same vulnerability.

I am not telling anyone they must use stats like I (or others here) do, but believe me when I was that the epistemological basis of my approach to analysis is far from naive. Absolutely doesn't mean I'm always right, but I'm no crank.

I think the issues with RAPM go far deeper though. The fundamental methodology of the result is reflective of lineup rotations, and there is no mechanism within it calculations, that separate the individual from the group.

if Player A plays all of his minutes with Player B, then they have the same exact RAPM. There is no mechanism to separate the two players at all for that on court time. So what RAPM 'attempts" to do is mix & match the various lineup/rotation samples, and then assign a value based on trends. I have no problem with this if done by a coach analyzing which lineups to use at various times......however, to interpret what can only be quantified as the quality of rotations played in, as "Impact", is to misinterpret the results.

RAPM is basically nothing more than a representation of rotations in the literal sense. A guy like Odom will do well in this regard, as will a Manu, or Kirelenko. Defensive specialist will have high defensive RAPMs due to they're more structure rotational minutes centered around defenisve rotations. When guys play heavier minutes, then their lineups are more reflective to what the overall team did in most systems. Was Antoine Walker the best defender in 2002 at 2.9, not likely. That's better than both KG/TD. In fact Divac is tied with TD, and ahead of KG too. Once someone see those results, they should run for the hills, but instead prior-informed was created. Which does nothing but add the extra element of skewing numbers based on previous results.

Hey, at the end of the day, I wouldn't mind RAPM if it was kept in the context of rotations, and criticisms about it were dismissed so quickly. A player can become an "overrated defender" overnight(Kobe/Wade) just because people want to attribute "impact" to that stat. Another player(KG) can leapfrog others off the back of this one stat. the same stat that has 02 Toine as the best defender in the NBA. The same stat that we don't have for most of the nominees.

This is interesting.

Is there any objective source material that describes the pros and cons of RAPM and prior informed RAPM as well?

[Doctor MJ]

Thanks JB. I went back through page by page and found it; already changed the totals but Magic still comes up a vote short since john248 doesn't vote until next thread.

AT THIS POINT, WE HAVE A RUNOFF WITH 17 VOTES FOR WILT CHAMBERLAIN AND 7 FOR SHAQUILLE O'NEAL.

Runoff vote: Shaq

Sorry, votes without analysis do not count.



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[sp6r=underrated]

Except that's not even what +/- answers, as such. The only question it answers is "Did your team outscore your your opponent when you are on the court?" That. Is. It. (You can adjust for teammates and opponents to put it into context, but the fundamental basis for +/- doesn't change.) It makes no other claims.

This is completely correct.

There has not been an "abstract call for rebellion" against impact oriented analysis. I'm not even sure what that phrase means. Impact on this forum has come to mean figuring at how much a player has improved their team. Essentially everyone is interested in that. The majority of posts I've read in multiple threads have been good faith attempts to partly answer this question.

What is rejected by many, including myself, is the assertion that the on/off family of stats are where you go to measure impact and that the counting category of stats are a distraction.There has been a subterranean, and occasionally overt, assertion that once you sufficiently measure on/off you have determined how much impact a player has.

There are two main family of stats: on/off and counting. IT has not been conclusively established that on/off comes close to completely measuring impact and accordingly it is inaccurate to label on/off as impact.

[sp6r=underrated]

I've noticed some posters factor in portability in their analysis but do not try to engage in time machine analysis. I've also noticed some do not consider portability but do engage in time machine analysis. Why?

If you are in the former category, why are you against time machine analysis? Isn't time machine analysis just portability over seasons?

If you are in the later camp, isn't time machine analysis just more extreme portability analysis?

These question are intended as much as a provocation as an attempt to satisfy my curiosity.

[Doctor MJ]

So getting a lot of talk about RAPM not "really" meaning impact and to me this just gets us back to really general stuff:

People are just saying the old truism that correlation is not causation. And they are correct of course, but they then use that to say "so it's meaningless!", as opposed to actually applying scientific thinking to go forward.

Literally what science is is an attempt to distill causation from correlation and obviously it can work prey damn well. It can also be wrong which is why the process itself is so important.

When assertions are made about a player using RAPM or any other stat or event they may be wrong. However the mere fact that they maybe wrong is not an argument why they are wrong, and meanwhile literally any other disagreeing assertions have the exact same vulnerability.

I am not telling anyone they must use stats like I (or others here) do, but believe me when I was that the epistemological basis of my approach to analysis is far from naive. Absolutely doesn't mean I'm always right, but I'm no crank.

I think the issues with RAPM go far deeper though. The fundamental methodology of the result is reflective of lineup rotations, and there is no mechanism within it calculations, that separate the individual from the group.

if Player A plays all of his minutes with Player B, then they have the same exact RAPM. There is no mechanism to separate the two players at all for that on court time. So what RAPM 'attempts" to do is mix & match the various lineup/rotation samples, and then assign a value based on trends. I have no problem with this if done by a coach analyzing which lineups to use at various times......however, to interpret what can only be quantified as the quality of rotations played in, as "Impact", is to misinterpret the results.

RAPM is basically nothing more than a representation of rotations in the literal sense. A guy like Odom will do well in this regard, as will a Manu, or Kirelenko. Defensive specialist will have high defensive RAPMs due to they're more structure rotational minutes centered around defenisve rotations. When guys play heavier minutes, then their lineups are more reflective to what the overall team did in most systems. Was Antoine Walker the best defender in 2002 at 2.9, not likely. That's better than both KG/TD. In fact Divac is tied with TD, and ahead of KG too. Once someone see those results, they should run for the hills, but instead prior-informed was created. Which does nothing but add the extra element of skewing numbers based on previous results.

Hey, at the end of the day, I wouldn't mind RAPM if it was kept in the context of rotations, and criticisms about it were dismissed so quickly. A player can become an "overrated defender" overnight(Kobe/Wade) just because people want to attribute "impact" to that stat. Another player(KG) can leapfrog others off the back of this one stat. the same stat that has 02 Toine as the best defender in the NBA. The same stat that we don't have for most of the nominees.

We're at an impasse because what my quite says already addresses your concern.

If you wanted to say that the sample size if basketball is just not sufficient in your assessment to glean enough signal from the noise that would be a valid concern. however when you literally just point out that two players' impacts can get confused in theory by the mechanism all you're doing is saying correlation is not causation.


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[microfib4thewin]

There are two main family of stats: on/off and counting. IT has not been conclusively established that on/off comes close to completely measuring impact and accordingly it is inaccurate to label on/off as impact.

I think a better way of saying this is +/- should not be the only stat one use to measure a player's impact. We should not ignore boxscores and just talk about RAPM when we discuss impact. Does Shaq's and Hakeem's gaudy scoring numbers not relate to their playoff impact? Does Robinson having a much lower TS in the postseason relative to his regular season not relate to him having less impact in the playoffs? Does Russell's rebounding numbers not relate to his ability to defend the boards as well as offer his team second chance opportunities?

[Clyde Frazier]

Runoff vote - Wilt

The main thing that kept me going back and forth between the 2 was shaq's sheer dominance from 00-02 in the playoffs. Watching it first hand was a sight to see to say the least. He also had pretty decent longevity production-wise, although consistently sitting out a chunk of games (from 96-04, he missed an avg of 15 games per season). In wilt's 14 seasons, he played in 70+ in 13 of the 14 seasons (9 of which were 80+).

I'd like to give credit where credit is due for wilt's personal body of work. It's hard to qualify exactly what he did back then, but it seemed there was no feat too great for him to conquer. He is criticized for not being the ultimate team player in the way that russell was, but I also judge shaq for not sucking it up and staying with kobe in LA. I think they could've won 2 more titles together.

When wilt won his first title in 67, he did it in outstanding fashion averaging ~22 PPG (on 55% TS), 29 RPG, and 9 APG. His ~15 PPG in the 72 championship run was modest for wilt, but he still scored efficiently and followed it with 21 RPG and 3 APG. Not bad for a 35 year old at the end of their career… Outside of his 2 rings, he had many deep playoff runs throughout his career.

[ronnymac2]

I originally voted for Olajuwon in this thread, but since there is a runoff vote between Chamberlain and O'Neal, I will vote for Shaquille O'Neal.

Runoff Vote: Shaquille O'Neal

1994 Shaq didn't have Horace Grant, had poor depth and coaching, and had a rookie Penny Hardaway. This is likely the least talented team he ever had in his prime, and this was when he was at his most raw aside from his rookie year. Yet he lifted the Magic to 50 wins with 29 points, 13 rebounds, and almost 60 percent shooting from the field. He also cut his turnovers down from an atrocious 3.8 per game in his rookie year in '93 to a more acceptable 2.7 in 1994. Orlando was the 3rd best offense in the league that year. In my opinion, it is the most valuable season Shaq ever had outside of maybe 2000. It doesn't get as much talk as his peak or even 1995 and 1996, but it's truly a special season.

ElGee's research regarding players missing games and how that affects odds of winning a title has quelled some of the questions I had begun to have about Shaq regarding missed regular season games in 1996, 1997, and 1998.

[DannyNoonan1221]

What I don't understand is some of the negatives of Wilt (specifically his form/fluidness in the post) that seem to be hurting him against Shaq, yet none of these things seemed to have hurt Russell. A lot of people are putting a considerable amount of team accomplishment weight into this individual ranking. But only when it seems to work.

Shaq wins against light competition at the C position; Wilt loses to the #3 player of all time according to us on this board. Shaq>Wilt. That makes no sense to me. I would call Shaq's attitude a wash with Wilt's attitude. His teams were more successful, but individually he is a little more one dimensional compared to Wilt. Shaq gets the benefit of everyone here (I would assume) having watched him in his prime, Wilt suffers from very little footage of him. We are left with newspaper clippings and old guys talking about 40+ years ago and the constant highlighting of Wilt's negatives to make sure his gaudy stats are kept in down to earth. Our memory of shaq is still fresh enough that time has not inflated the negatives the way it has for Wilt. Even if Wilt's 15bpg was inflated (which i truly believe it is), how many actual bpg does it take to cause eye witness to claim such a thing years later?

Maybe I'm wrong and thats why it got ignored, and if so then I will just shut up, but for me a guy who even at his peak couldn't shoot better than 43% from outside 3 feet (one natural step for him) of the basket doesn't have a whole lot of true basketball skills. Maybe he could make up for that somewhere else, but he didn't- never really a great passer, on/off defense but again can be attributed to his size, terrible ft shooter… essentially any skill that his size couldn't dominate he was okay at best. If this is true for Wilt, please tell me. I have not been able to find it but again, as I said before, he could be a damn good passer when he wanted to be and had the athleticism to do other basketball things than just dunk.

[An Unbiased Fan]

We're at an impasse because what my quite says already addresses your concern.

If you wanted to say that the sample size if basketball is just not sufficient in your assessment to glean enough signal from the noise that would be a valid concern. however when you literally just point out that two players' impacts can get confused in theory by the mechanism all you're doing is saying correlation is not causation.

Doc, my issue is with the fundamental methodology of RAPM itself. The very samples used to calculate it, have no distinctions between players. It's not about the size of the sample, but instead the misinterpretation of what they entail.

How do we attribute individual impact to a stat that does nothing to account for the individual? RAPM is a value that represents the relative success of various rotations, nothing more. At no point has the "individual impact" element been explained. RAPM backers tend to say it quantifies what the box score can't....but of course, RAPm is actually a box score stat itself. All of its data comes from the same place as PER or WS. It's just manipulated in a vastly different manner. And that data represents an entire lineup, instead of an individual.

Jason Collins in 2005 had the best DRAPM at 6.3, what can we glean from this. Is it noise? No, it's simply how the rotations he was in performed, nothing more really. How does that 6.3 speak to his individual impact? There has never been an explanation for this. Because again, how does the 2009 DPOY carrying a non-defensive Orlando sqaud to the #1 DRtg...only get a 2, and fall behind Rashard Lewis. RAPM has never shown actual correlation to impact.

[drza]

Grrr. IPAD ate my post.

runoff vote: Shaquille ONeal

In the midst of the obvious parallels, my vote for Shaq is because to the extent that I can currently ascertain, I believe Shaq's dominance translated more directly to team positives on the court than Wilt's did

I'm not seeing any analysis here. Please repost when you get time.

[MisterWestside]

This is completely correct.

There has not been an "abstract call for rebellion" against impact oriented analysis. I'm not even sure what that phrase means. Impact on this forum has come to mean figuring at how much a player has improved their team. Essentially everyone is interested in that. The majority of posts I've read in multiple threads have been good faith attempts to partly answer this question.

What is rejected by many, including myself, is the assertion that the on/off family of stats are where you go to measure impact and that the counting category of stats are a distraction.There has been a subterranean, and occasionally overt, assertion that once you sufficiently measure on/off you have determined how much impact a player has.

There are two main family of stats: on/off and counting. IT has not been conclusively established that on/off comes close to completely measuring impact and accordingly it is inaccurate to label on/off as impact.

No need for you to explain all of that, though. It's why, despite already having access to terabytes of on/off data, the NBA has spent boatloads of cash on technology that seeks to count and quantify every single action that takes place on the court. And also why statisticians, analysts, fans, scouts, and coaches are (rightly) calling this investment the future of sports metrics. Anyone want to email Silver that this is a "distraction"?

But what I stated is a fact that is conveniently overlooked. You show me on/off stats of Player A's team's net efficiency. Superb.

I want to know how (as in the encompassing how, not the "play-by-by" how) that took place, on the court of play, upon which the sport is played. And, knowing that the on/off data is muddled with and affected by a slew of confounding variables, it's not enough to cite the numbers over and over again like a schoolyard lad who is studying verb conjugations in Latin. Basketball statisticians still sigh that none of the available stats capture value like baseball's WAR does, and rightfully so. These are the ones who are cognizant of the fundamental weaknesses of the on/off data that is stored. The same is true for +/-, even as powerful Tikhonov methods are applied to it.

Now, anecdotes are cool; they're also flawed as hell. But flpiii, Dipper 13, myself, and a few others here are the only ones who give a rat's behind about the on-court particulars for certain players.