Retro POY 1957-58 (Voting Complete)

[drza]

Major questions for me this year:

*How to handle Russell's injury?
*How to separate Pettit and Schayes.
*How to deal with Hagan becoming the #1 option in the postseason for the 2nd year in a row

Here's the thing. I soured relatively early on in the voting process with the concept that a playoff injury automatically meant you couldn't be considered. Someone made a point in one thread about how they'd rather have a full year of Pierce than LeBron up until a postseason injury, and that analogy actually brought home that I felt exactly the opposite. I've settled tentatively into using postseason injuries to break ties, but I still don't have a firm handle on a set rule for injuries.

This brings me to Russell. I have no questions as to his value. We've seen it demonstrated to the best extent that we're able multiple times over the last month as we've dealt with his era. In this particular season he was the regular season MVP and (once again) led them to a sizable advantage over the 2nd place team in both record and SRS, then breezed through their first playoff series and were 1 - 1 and tied in game 3 of the Finals. After he went down his team lost 3 of the next 4 games, with the 1 win seemingly the result of Red outcoaching Hannum with a gimmick that both sides knew couldn't be repeated (and wasn't). Considering that this was the only season in a 10-year window that the Celtics didn't win a title built around Russell, and that this also "coincidentally" was the only season that Russell had to miss part of the Finals due to injury, I think it safe to say that Russell's influence on the Celtics was still huge this year.

Now, I look at Pettit. Obviously a great player. The "problem" I have with him as the #1 player is, he didn't do anything to separate himself from the other great players. I look at him vs Schayes...there's nothing in their numbers to suggest that Pettit is better (simplifying to PER and WS [WS/48] for the sake of brevity), this is what Pettit, Schayes and Hagan looked like in the regular and post season:

Schayes: Reg - 24.2 PER, 13.7 WS (.226 WS/48); PO - 27.9 PER, .299 WS/48
Pettit: Reg - 26.3 PER, 11 WS (.209 WS/48); PO - 22.6 PER, .134 WS/48
Hagan: Reg - 22.6 PER, 10 WS (.220 WS/48); PO - 27.5 PER, .312 WS/48

I see nothing there to suggest that Pettit was the best, most valuable of the 3. Pettit and Schayes played each other to about a draw in the regular season, slightly above Hagan. Hagan and Schayes both stepped it up in the postseason, a solid notch above Pettit. I know that Pettit had a couple of big performances in the Finals, but from the articles it seems they might not have even been in the Finals had Hagan not stepped up. And do I really penalize Schayes, who also finished higher in the MVP vote than Pettit, because he didn't have a Hagan to play with in the postseason to get him deep into the playoffs?

And that also brings me back to Russell. Some here hate hypotheticals...but what can I say, they help me. And here's the thing, Pettit played next to a player almost as good as he was in the regular season and led his team to a respectable 2nd best record in the league (1st in their conference) and a .8 SRS. Then, in the postseason, Pettit played next to a player that was better than he was and likely (my opinion) would not have won the title were it not for Russell's injury. See, I know Russell had a strong team that he was playing for, but here's the thing: if Russell were playing next to another player as good as he was, I see no way that his team isn't the #1 seed by a mile and sweeping through the postseason. That's completely non-scientific, but it's based on the more quantitative analysis we've done already as well as the mountains of testimonials that folks like Regul8tor have worked to dig up. And it just helps me to wrap my mind around it: I just don't believe Pettit was anywhere near as good as Russell in 1958, and a sprained ankle in the Finals isn't enough for him to bridge that gap.

In fact, Pettit has to do some work to fight off Schayes and Hagan on my ballot. This is 2 years in a row now that Hagan has stepped up and clearly taken on the #1 role for the Hawks in the postseason, so it's not a fluke. I'm sorely tempted to put him in front, but the prevailing thought process at the time was that Pettit was the better player and he did have the big game 6 so he holds Hagan off. Barely. But all it would have taken was a testimonial or two from someone that watched that season suggesting that Hagan was secretly the man for me to change my mind. Barring that, Pettit edges his teammate.

But Schayes? Schayes was statistically equal to Pettit in the regular season, finished higher in the MVP vote, and led what appears to be a weaker supporting cast to the same record and a higher SRS than the Hawks. The big black mark is that the Nats got upset in the first round, but the team they lost to was also top-4 in the league...plus, Schayes posted what appears to be the highest PER and 2nd highest WS/48 in the postseason in that series. He might not have had the team to get him to the mountaintop so he could perform in the FInals like Pettit did, but I'm not going to hold that against him with the season he seemed to have. Give my Schayes at 2.

I'll finish off my five with Yardley, making my Final Vote:

Final Vote

1. Russell
2. Schayes
3. Pettit
4. Hagan
5. Yardley

[lorak]

1. Russell
2. Pettit
3. Schayes
4. Maurice Stokes - 2nd (after Russell) most modern player in that era. Also 5th in MVP voting, prototype of Magic Johnson
5. Yardley

[Optimism Prime]

1. Bill Russell
2. Bob Pettit
3. Dolph Schayes
4. Cliff Hagan
5. George Yardley

[Doctor MJ]

So tough.

1. Pettit
2. Russell
3. Dolph
4. Hagan
5. Yardley

I'm going with Pettit here, but I very much torn.

First, I want to just hammer in here a big dilemma I see. It's one thing to say "Russell was injured, sucks to be him", but consider the fact that Russell getting injured at a different time could totally change the results of other teams. If Russell gets hurt against Philly, maybe Philly wins the series. Who wins between Philly and St. Louis? Well, Philly won the season series 7-2. Probably a pretty good chance, Philly beats St. Louis.

I know people hate hypotheticals, but coherency is one of the key things to strive for when evaluating players. If a player Team A only wins the title because they didn't have to play Team B, and didn't have to play a healthy Team C, it's pretty ridiculous to talk about Team A doing things right and Team B doing things wrong.

Second, I'm glad to see the attention Hagan's getting. I think people are being pretty silly when they talk about Hagan as a sidekick getting the benefit of the clearly superior Pettit. I would people would realize that teams don't put X amount of attention on all alphas, and Y attention on all betas. When Hagan's tearing people up significantly more than Pettit, you better believe defensive coaches are uping their attention his way.

Still I'm going with Pettit here. The fact of the matter is that he put up a legendary finals performance. What about the issue that Boston was hurt? Hey, St. Louis' offense didn't become drastically more effective after Russell went down. And then of course there's the matter that Boston barely beat St. Louis the previous year with Pettit again being stellar.

Bottom line is that with a healthy Russell, may have won the title, but it's far from a given, and I'd say Pettit was more impressive in this series, than Russell had yet proved to be in his career.

[Doctor MJ]

Last call.

[Mean_Streets]

1. Bob Pettit
2. Bill Russell
3. Dolph Schayes
4. Cliff Hagan
5. George Yardley

[Warspite]

How is it again that Pettit is only good because of his supporting cast in Hagan but Russell is a one man team when he had Cousy (the defending MVP) and Sharman and both were 1st team all NBA?

[JordansBulls]

How is it again that Pettit is only good because of his supporting cast in Hagan but Russell is a one man team when he had Cousy (the defending MVP) and Sharman and both were 1st team all NBA?

Same thing I'm wondering. I mean having 2 other guys on your team that are 1st team all nba but you are 2nd team all nba and none of his teammates make the list.

[Doctor MJ]

'57-58 Results

Code: Select all

Player             1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts   POY Shares
1. Bob Pettit        9   3   2   0   0 121   0.864
2. Bill Russell      5   8   1   0   0 111   0.793
3. Dolph Schayes     0   2   9   3   0  68   0.486
4. Cliff Hagan       0   1   2   8   1  42   0.300
5. George Yardley    0   0   0   2  10  16   0.114
6. Maurice Stokes    0   0   0   1   0   3   0.021
7. Bob Cousy         0   0   0   0   1   1   0.007
   Kenny Sears       0   0   0   0   1   1   0.007
   Neil Johnston     0   0   0   0   1   1   0.007


[mopper8]

So that pushes Russell to #1 overall, yeah? With a chance to expand that lead?

Not particularly surprising.

[semi-sentient]

I believe he has. I can't get my site to load at the moment because my web host sucks, but I'm pretty sure he had enough to get past Kareem. I'll post the updated top 15 shortly.

[Doctor MJ]

So that pushes Russell to #1 overall, yeah? With a chance to expand that lead?

Not particularly surprising.

Not given what we already knew, but it wasn't a given to me before the project.

Personally, I don't have a big stake in who is #1, but I'm very much encouraged that Russell didn't get dismissed out right by people because of his lack of stats.

[JordansBulls]

So that pushes Russell to #1 overall, yeah? With a chance to expand that lead?

Not particularly surprising.

Yes he has 10.33 I believe

[mopper8]

What's interesting is that Pettit seems to have a legit shot at a top-10 finish. That surprises me, especially given how that's happening in the very threads where people are saying that they are surprised he's not separating himself as cleanly from his contemporaries as one would expect given his rep.

[drza]

What's interesting is that Pettit seems to have a legit shot at a top-10 finish. That surprises me, especially given how that's happening in the very threads where people are saying that they are surprised he's not separating himself as cleanly from his contemporaries as one would expect given his rep.

Even though I'm one of the ones talking about how he hasn't separated himself, it doesn't really surprise me that he'll do good in this project. I think it's related to the discussion you kicked off on the main project page last week. The key to good composite scores in this project is consistency, staying in the top-5 every year. And as we discussed, once we got pre-ABA with only 8 teams we started seeing a lot of homogeneity on the ballots.

It's the same reason that the 60s dominate the top of the player shares...2 of the top 4 and 5 of the top-20...no other decade comes close to that kind of top-heaviness. The 2000s had 5 of the top 20 as well (including Shaq), but none in the top-5. The 80s are the only other decade with 2 of the top-7, and at a quick glance I can't find a 3rd 80s person until Moncrief at 37 (I'm counting Jordan's class and after as the '90s, and they only have 4 top-20 with 1 in the top-9) unless you count Mo as the 80s...and if you do that it leaves the 70s with only 2 in the top-20.

Point is, Pettit was a great player and will be on every ballot for a several year stretch with a couple of top finishes. I was obviously in the minority not having him #1 this year, he's the prohibitive favorite to be #1 next year, so by the time we get done with this project he likely will have separated himself from his peers cumulatively and cracked the top-10 overall.

[bastillon]

Pettit getting 3 times as many RPOY Shares as Hagan is beyond me...

[mopper8]

And as we discussed, once we got pre-ABA with only 8 teams we started seeing a lot of homogeneity on the ballots.

Which goes back to the question of whether or not that's a function of the process, or a function of a smaller league with an arguably more-limited talent-pool from which its drawn. Either way, you'd expect this project then to somewhat over-rate the bigger names the further back we go, and that does seem to be the case.

[Doctor MJ]

Pettit getting 3 times as many RPOY Shares as Hagan is beyond me...

I don't know how you have any expectation of share ratios between teammates. Jordan had 20 times the POY shares as Pippen, did he contribute 20 times as much value as Pippen? Of course not.

[ThaRegul8r]

I apologize. As I was going to edit more information into the post I reserved for Schayes, I was informed I was no longer connected to the internet. My internet connection went down, and it hadn't been restored by the time I went to bed, or before I went to work.

[Doctor MJ]

I apologize. As I was going to edit more information into the post I reserved for Schayes, I was informed I was no longer connected to the internet. My internet connection went down, and it hadn't been restored by the time I went to bed, or before I went to work.

No apology necessary, and I'm sorry that you put that work into it only to have the internet betray you. Know that we'd certainly love to see your analysis on Schayes even if it can't be used for voting, and that we appreciate the hard work you've done.