Retro POY '63-64 (voting complete)

[mopper8]

A decent point. Examples aren't coming to mind that easily.

Well, its worth asking what happened between the 98-99 season and the 99-00 season with the Los Angeles Lakers. Top 9 rotation by minutes played:

99: Kobe, Shaq, Fisher, Harper, Rice, Fox, Horry, E. Jones, Dennis Rodman
00: Shaq, Rice, Kobe, Harper, AC Green, Fisher, Horry, Fox, Shaw

Now, the distribution of minutes amongst remaining players was different obviously, but still, you're look at Eddie Jones and Dennis Rodman out, Brian Shaq and AC Green in. Hard to see how that would be moves that would remotely move the needle defensively.

They also had 3 different coaches in 99, Harris, Bertka, and Rambis. Obviously, they had Phil in 00.
They went from a Drtg of 104.3 (23rd; lg avg 102.2) to 98.2 (1st; lg avg 104.1). That's significant, with largely the same if not inferior cast of players defensively. Kobe was coming into his own as a defender in 00, but EJ was 2nd team all-defense in 99. 6.1 points per 100 possessions better than the year prior, and an even greater gain against league average (from +2.1 to -5.9, net -8).

Even if you credit Phil for that, like Hannum, he is not himself contesting jumpers or protecting the rim and crashing the defensive glass, and "better schemes" can only take you so far. The jump has to be explained IMO by any reasonable take by simply the existing core playing better team defense, and you have to start with Shaq, no?

edit: his per-36 #s in 99 are 7.1 Drbs, 1.7 blks, 22.6 Drb%, 3.5 block%
per-36 for 00: 8.4 Drbs, 2.7 blks, 24.8 Drb%, 5.3 block%

Just something to chew on.

[Doctor MJ]

Good post mop. Surprised Shaq didn't come to mind immediately for me since I see Wilt & Shaq having so much in common in talent and in attitude.

[bastillon]

yeah, Shaq's great example, but in 2001. they were awful defensively in the RS and they stepped up in the playoffs, mainly because of Shaq, and their defense vastly improved.

I find it unbelievable that you can spot the difference between 6'11 and 6'10 from grainy black and white footage. Maybe you should have your own spot in "Tall Tales".

why don't you watch it first ? This type of personal attack is neither warranted nor necessary --mod

In conclusion, there is no way I'm giving mentally crediting Nate Thurmond for more than 3 pts/100 of that change, and probably crediting him with on order of 2 pts/100 for that team's defensive change. In other words, somewhere between 25-35% of the credit could plausibly go to Thurmond, even at those minutes played. And I think Chamberlain deserves the majority of the remaining share.

PS That means in 1963, Wilt's impact on the defensive side of the ball is...er...weak. To put it nicely.

totally reasonable.

what do you think about Gola ? perhaps he was a negative defensively and Thurmond's presence only exacerbated this effect ? your analysis assumed they were neutral which doesn't necessarily have to be the case here.

what's his def rep ? Penbeast ?

edit: Gola played only 800 mins so nvm. but my point stands, maybe min distribution amongst players produced better defensive results because better defenders were more often on the floor ? Hightower played a lot more (1200 mins). Gola didn't play at all (-800) and generally rotation seemed to be much more stable.

[drza]

Some thoughts...

1) This is a year when it might have been nice to have some kind of weighting scale, because while my top-4 is likely to be the same as last year this time there is a pretty big gap between the 3 and 4 slot whereas last year 3 and 4 were right on top of each other.

2) In the great debate, this is feeling more like a Wilt year than a Russ year. We're back at a time period when Wilt's team was clearly on the short end of the talent continuum vs the Celtics (and the Royals), and Wilt carried them to league elite status without a lot of help. This was one of the years he put the big defense with the always present offense, and in seemingly buying into a good coaching scheme seems to have maximized his impact.

3) Despite all of that, Russ could still easily go #1. He hasn't gotten much talk in this thread, but all of the things that have had him in my top slot the last couple of years would be true here as well. The Celtics are still winning with defense, of which he's by-far the largest cog. And the defense again just laps the rest of the league. And the team, as a consequence, also laps the rest of the league. If I do vote for Wilt at #1, it's a nod to him maximizing his own huge talents and bringing a major impact on a squad without much other talent, not an indication of any lack in Russell.

4) What to do with Oscar. This seems like a clear #1-worthy season in a lot of years. Even discounting whether the raw stats look prettier than they could in today's game, any time a guy leads the league in assists (by a LOT), is 2nd in the league in scoring, and leads that team to 55 wins and a reasonable playoff run and elite status as the co-2nd best team in the league...that's huge. But as others have stated, he had lots of help (with respect to Wilt) but the team he led wasn't any more formidable overall than Wilt's Warriors. And Oscar's supporting cast doesn't seem noticeably worse than Russell's, but the Celtics donkey-kicked the Royals in the playoffs. He seems to be slotting in at the 3rd slot behind two GOAT candidates at their peaks, which is no shame, but it was still a remarkable season.

5) Pettit, West and Baylor. I've been convinced by this thread and the relative shooting percentages to have West as my Laker in these rankings, though I do wonder if my vote would have been different if I would have been around to see the team. Shooting efficiency is an important stat, but sometimes I do think it has been over-valued a bit. Nevertheless, in the absence of more info my 4 and 5 slots will be taken by West and Petit in some order. The question is, which order.

Here's my dilemma. Petit led his team to a better regular season record and finished slightly higher in the MVP vote than West. It's hard to completely gauge team support, but as Penbeast said Petit had depth but no Baylor. And in the postseason, Petit led his Hawks past West's Lakers again. This would be a clear-cut rankings victory for Petit except for one thing...I don't know how the Hawks/Lakers series played out. I don't even have stats to work with, and that's key.

Because I've seen everyone in this thread dock Petit for having a lesser postseason than West, but we really don't know. Because in the second round Petit faced Wilt's Warriors featuring their 2nd best defense and strong interior presence. For all I currently know, Petit could have personally beat the brakes off of West's Lakers in the first round only to get rolled by Wilt in the 2nd. If that's the case, I'd still say Petit's postseason was better than Wests.

But again, I don't know. If any of you has further info on how that Hawks/Lakers series shook out it would help me make my choice. Because the opposite of what I said could have happened...maybe Petit stunk against the Lakers but his teammates carried him through. I just don't know.

In the meantime, I'm still leaning towards Petit at #4 because I know that he had the slightly more impressive regular season with more team success, and whatever his stats look like they were able to get past West's Lakers in the first round. But until I know more I'm uneasy with my decision.

Tentative rankings:

1) Wilt
2) Russell
3) Oscar

4) Petit
5) West

[Dr Positivity]

1. Russell
2. Wilt
3. Oscar
4. West
5. Pettit

Russell's first. Boston contends almost solely cause of their d. I agree this is one of their shoddier casts around Russ - a transition year with Cousy leaving but the team still managing, Hondo is still young. I almost typed 'Sam Jones is pre-prime', then I realized he's 30 this year! He has one of the strangest careers ever stats wise.

Wilt vs Oscar was tough. What it came down to for me is a high defensive impact is harder to find in the 60s than offense. This is why Wilt did almost as well as Oscar despite far less talent on his team. You can't blame Oscar for only leading his team to an ORTG +1.2 more than anyone else (mind you with by far the most supporting offensive talent), certainly his offensive impact was as good as can be. But his inability to guarantee defense is what hampers him all decade. There's so much more of a defensive shortage in the 60s than offense, than even though perhaps Oscar is as dominant offensively as Russ defensively, Russ has a much MUCH greater defensive margin compared to the rest of the league. Likewise if Wilt this year can get you the 2nd best defense by a lot, that puts you in a very good position. You give Wilt 64 Royals like talent this year and it ends up like those Sixers teams, IMO. You give Oscar Wilt's talent and you get those late 60s Royals if they didn't have Lucas (yikes!). So I put Wilt 2nd

West outperformed Pettit in the playoffs and I prefer his defense. He gets 4th.

[tkb]

1. Wilt Chamberlain
2. Bill Russell
3. Oscar Robertson
4. Jerry West
5. Bob Pettit

[mopper8]

Good post mop. Surprised Shaq didn't come to mind immediately for me since I see Wilt & Shaq having so much in common in talent and in attitude.

Heh, he didn't come to mind immediately for me either. I started by wondering what TD might look like with an injury year as compared to a healthy prime year, or see if there was a consistent improvement arc with KG, but while I was on bball-reference cruising the late 90's/00's wondering about examples, I had one of those "OF COURSE" moments with Shaq.

Just looked it up, and Shaq did not get a single DPOY vote in 98-99, but finished in 2nd in 99-00. FIgures. I was even thinking last night that if I had the time to look at what people wrote in the two RPOY threads, but it seems like everyone is on the same page with it so no point in extra work!

Just to be clear: I'm not even sure I'd put Wilt at #1, so if this comes off as my advocating for that, apologies. It just seemed like getting a clear handle on Wilt's impact this season was harder than Russell's and I had my disagreement with bastillion, so I did a lot of leg-work on that. But I still haven't though about Russell at all in comparison and it is worth discussing what Russ had to do to get that crazy Drtg more in depth.

[semi-sentient]

Well, haven't seen any reason to change my mind on the top spot, so I'm sticking with Wilt. Russell beats out Oscar at #2 for leading a dominant defense and winning a title. Both guys had plenty of help, but Russell probably had the bigger impact all things considered. West edges out Pettit who slipped a bit in the post-season.

1. Wilt Chamberlain
2. Bill Russell
3. Oscar Robertson
4. Jerry West
5. Bob Pettit

[Doctor MJ]

Guys, let's all of us be on our best behavior. This isn't just message board conversation, this is a many month long project with the same people, and a project that really could be done by the best historians in the game and which is bringing knowledgeable people from outside the site in. I know it's tough in the heat of disagreement, but try to remind yourself how "ideal conversation" would be and that when you act childish it reflects poorly on you.

Doc

[Doctor MJ]

My vote:

1. Wilt
2. Russell
3. Oscar
4. West
5. Pettit

Wilt vs Russell this year was brutal. On the one hand, this is arguably the year more than any other that hammers in how good Russell is. The team loses Cousy, Russell becomes the leading assist man, and the team's SRS goes up and they repeat as champions. Taken in account with Russell & the Celtics' consistency, this year is part of why I prefer to Russell over Wilt.

However, Wilt's impact this year was just fantastic. I don't mean to diminish Oscar, but his team leading the league in ORtg so many years just isn't as impressive as the great defensive performances of the decade. For example, the gap between Cincy and the median team in this year's league on offense is 4.0. The gap between Boston and the median on defense is 13.6, and the gap between SF and the median is 8.0. I could only put Oscar ahead of Wilt (or Russell) if I felt like his supporting cast was terrible, and I don't.

It's Wilt with the supporting cast that looks terrible to me. 8 points above average on defense, and th next year their offense totally falls apart. Now, I understand that it's not as simple as "Wilt left, team fell apart, subtract the difference, that's the impact". Realistically though, when a drop off is that massive, you're missing huge value somewhere, and it's really hard not to mark Wilt down for most of that.

Going along with all of this is the fact that this is the one year pre-'66 where Wilt's team is actually in the same league as the Celtics. Only about a 2.5 SRS gap between the two. I understand Wilt's team took the Celtics to 7 in '61-62, but there was around a 6 point SRS gap that year the tightness of the 7 game series was very clearly not based on Wilt stepping his game up (quite the opposite). This year we've truly got a situation where the team gap is small enough that it really looks to me like Russell has the edge because of a superior supporting cast. Strange I know because of the loss of Cousy, but when I look at the whole picture that's what I see.

And of course, this year coincided with Hannum arriving as coach and very much changing how Wilt played, just as he would later do in Philly. I can't tell you how impressive that is to me regarding Hannum as a coach - but that doesn't take anything away from Wilt.

West & Pettit grab the last two spots. I prefer West over Pettit at this point. I understand Pettit had the MVP edge and his team won the playoff series, but talk of Pettit having a weaker supporting cast doesn't fly. Look at the guys on that team, and look at how the team doesn't collapse as Pettit winds down.

[Doctor MJ]

Hey all,

I'm going to be out of town for a few days, so Optimism Prime has agreed to call time on the voting tomorrow and tally up the votes.

Cheers,
Doc

[ThaRegul8r]

Nevermind. Too late to be of any use. Since the deadline is tomorrow, there's really no point.

[Optimism Prime]

Hey all,

I'm going to be out of town for a few days, so Optimism Prime has agreed to call time on the voting tomorrow and tally up the votes.

Cheers,
Doc

VOTING PANEL... ROLL OUT.

[TrueLAfan]

Final vote.

1. Wilt. Persuaded by posts in this thread.
2. Russell
3. Oscar
4. West
5. Pettit

[ElGee]

Nevermind. Too late to be of any use. Since the deadline is tomorrow, there's really no point.

I could use it I also think the threads carry great value with research posts like yours.

[mopper8]

I have found multiple times recently that when I'm curious about a player or reading a back-and-forth on this board about how players matchup and what not, that I go the RPOY thread and click on a few years during these guys' primes and read the threads for some insight into how they played and whatnot.

So, please, TheRegul8r, post! Even if it doesn't end up influencing votes, it's valuable for future use.

[drza]

I have found multiple times recently that when I'm curious about a player or reading a back-and-forth on this board about how players matchup and what not, that I go the RPOY thread and click on a few years during these guys' primes and read the threads for some insight into how they played and whatnot.

So, please, TheRegul8r, post! Even if it doesn't end up influencing votes, it's valuable for future use.

I agree entirely. And at the end of the day, I think that's actually where this project will have the most utility. The voting is cool, and it'll be nice to see how the final votes talley out, but more than anything I think this place will be an invaluable source of information. I know it's already been huge for me in that vein. So by all means, Regul8tor, in the words of Al Pacino in Heat..."GIVE ME ALL YOU GOT! GIVE ME ALL YOU GOT!!!!"

[ElGee]

Since it's one of my favorite movies and we're trying to inject some extra life into this thread, don't forget some other Vincent Hannah classics like:

"Yo, VIncent, I could get killed for tell you this ****."
"You can get killed walkin' your DOGGY!"
...
"Man, why'd I get involved with that girl?"
"Because she's got a GREEEEAAAAT ASS! And you got your head all the way UP IT!"

and the best...

"I'm angry. I'm very angry, Ralph. You know, you can ball my wife if she wants you to. You can lounge around here on her sofa, in her ex-husband's dead-tech, post-modernistic bull**** house if you want to. But you do not get to watch my **** television set!"

[Sedale Threatt]

What's amazing is, I hated Heat the first time I saw it. I don't know why, because now it's one of my top 20. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. I like Mann films in general, although I have to say Public Enemies was fairly boring.

[ronnymac2]

Probably can't say much, but I should be able to vote in this one. Haven't read the thread yet, but Wilt, West, Russell, Pettit, and Oscar look untouchable right now at the top. The only challenger would be Baylor, but he didn't distinguish himself like the others. He'll still get an HM.