REDOING THE NBA HALL OF FAME (retired in 1970 or earlier)

[Doctor MJ]

I've spent some time looking into Zaslofsky.

First, before I get into him specifically:

In the BAA, average TS% (to the extent they can accurately estimate it) was growing rapidly. It rose from 32.6% in the BAA's first year to 41.0% in the NBA's first year 3 years late. That's a rise of 8.4%. In the next 3 years it would rise by 3.5%. In the next 3 1.3%. I think that's a good way to imagine the shape of the S curve. Acceleration was higher in the '40s than in the '50s. Apparently there was something of a mass embrace of the sport around the war and people were playing it on all the military bases. This popularity was was spurred the creation of the BAA.

So basically, I think we have to consider how a player's game seems to have changed in these first few years and just know that the game is rising quickly.

I think we all know that Fulks didn't ever really change his game, and his inefficiency meant the team should have benched years before they did. Zaslofsky does far better than this, but there's still change.

Zaslofsky scores 20 PPG in his 2nd & 3rd year, which was extreme volume scoring for the day. In his 2nd year, his team has the 2nd highest TS% in the league (out of 8 teams). In his 3rd year the team's TS% improves and his takes a major leap forward while keeping the same PPG...and yet the team drops to 7th in TS% (out of 12). The year after his volume does drop, his team's TS% is even better...but the team drops to 12th in TS% (out of 17). I think it's telling: We're seeing actual signs that Zaslofsky's team is getting better each year, just not as fast as the competition, despite the fact the league is expanding like crazy. It's like there's an influx of talent available that's getting consolidating and concentrating, and Zaslofsky never scores like he did before...but also never plays on offenses as ineffective as the one's he was on before.

There's a clear way to characterize this as Zaslofsky only being able to play that more showy role against more amateurish competition. We'll never know for sure.

Zaslofsky lands on the New York Knicks. I think what you can say is he stablizes his career at a new equilibrium here that then gets disrupted. He takes Carl Braun's place when Braun goes into the military, and he loses his primacy when Braun comes back. It's worth noting that the Knicks nearly win the titles in both the Braun-less years, and Zaslofsky becomes an all-star in the 2nd year where he's given primacy. But it does at least look like it made sense for Braun to take primacy over Zaslofsky when he returned.

Zaslofsky then gets traded - he says it was over a money demand, but he'd been demoted in the primacy, so I wonder if he just wanted out. He got out and after bouncing around landed on a good team that apparently paid him more money, but he was back in the same non-all-star level role. He stayed an okay player for them for two seasons before Zaslofsky was done.

Interesting tidbit, Andy Phillip was on that new team, the Pistons. Philip was also on the Chicago Stags for 3 of those runs. Phillip was 3 years older than Zaslofsky and absolutely seen as his sidekick...but in the NBA Phillip would become a 5 time all-star, and would be an all-star on the Pistons while Zaslofsky was there.

Also telling: Phillip was more of a passer, Zaslofsky was more of a scorer, and the passer aged better.

As I look at this, and note that Zaslofsky legit takes a step forward in '51-52, I end up feeling like this is less about Zaslofsky getting a lot worse as a player, and more about teams just choosing to focus on him less and less again. Other guys like Braun, McGuire, Andy Philip are getting more run, and you wonder if Zaslofsky just had the lane clear if he'd have kept it up for longer.

But I think what I see is that those others guys seem like they were better than he was. Maybe not by a lot, but by a little. They probably weren't as suited to scoring 20+ in the BAA, but none of these guys could do that in the NBA, so judging them on the role they seem to have been able to play, I'd be inclined to rank them higher.

I could understand thoughsomeone ranking Zaslofsky higher based on the weight of that BAA achievement, and the fact he played on 3 NBA Finals with the Knicks and 1 for the Pistons is not nothing.