Retro POY '91-92 (Voting Complete)

[Gongxi]

Hopefully, I'll be able to flesh this out more later, but if not:

1- Michael Jordan
2- Karl Malone
3- Clyde Drexler
4- Patrick Ewing
5- Charles Barkley

Drob and Hakeem were right there, very tough year to call, especially with all the games missed by HO, DR, and CB.

[lorak]

I actually feel bad for Robinson. I can't put him in if I'm going to be consistent about things, but his defensive stats are just sick this year.

Yeah, and not only his defensive stats were great, but also his on court impact:
68 games with Robinson: Spurs 102.3 DRtg (that's better than Knicks defense)
14 games without Robinson: Spurs 111.4 DRtg (and 119.6 in 3 playoff games)

Spurs also were 5-9 (36%) without Robinson and 42-26 (62%) with him.

[kaima]

1. Jordan - Easy choice.
2. Drexler - Even though I think his team was better than Malone's, I think Drexler was in the clear bridesmaid position this year. A month before the finals SI published a Drexler/Jordan cover listing Drexler as his biggest rival and creating a closer comparison than Drex probably deserved. Jordan used this to amp him up to destroy Drexler in Game 1 and on, and then carried it over to the Olympics where he ate Clyde's soul
3. Karl Malone - 28/11 .60 TS%, good playoffs, made the WCF. All around one of his best years.

I see the Drexler-Malone comparison as similar to Chuck-Dream in 93. The latter wasn't being hyped as Jordan's rival, but may have had the better season overall. Is the standard who was better, or was hyped more? If it's the latter, then many of us should have voted differently on Barkley V Hakeem, for one.

Looking at Malone's playoff and regular season production, I think he wins out.

Regular Season

Malone: 28.0 PPG, 11.2 REB, 3.0 AST, 1.3 STL, 0.6 BLK, PER 25.4, WS 15.1

Drexler: 25.0, 6.6 REB, 6.7 AST, 1.8 STL, 0.9 BLK, 23.6 PER, WS 12.8

Playoffs

Malone: 29.1 PPG, 11.3 REB, 2.6 AST, 1.4 STL, 1.2 BLK, PER 25.0, 3.2 WS over 16 games

Drexler: 26.3 PPG, 7.4 REB, 7.0 AST, 1.5 STL, 0.9 BLK, PER 22.8, 3.4 WS over 21 games

Jazz/Blazers, 6 games

Malone: 28.2 PPG, 11.6 REB, 2.3 AST, 1 STL, 0.8 BLK

Drexler: 23.6 PPG, 5.3 REB, 7.6 AST, 1.5 STL, 0.3 BLK

Note that I don't think these metrics are perfect -- such as PER and WS -- but that some do value them more highly than I do, and that they fit in with the overall picture of Malone having the superior season.

I also think Malone faced tighter coverage than Drexler overall, particularly in their series, and still managed to put up big stats, with or without Stockton. Utah's spacing sucked, and Malone still got high production.

Barkley, Pippen, Daughtery, KJ, Mullin, and, Isiah, who was still putting around the same numbers as the 5 years before this.

Isiah's a real tough sell. He'd really dropped off by this point, in my estimation.

[kaima]

Looking at tape of Jazz/Blazers, Stockton got in trouble with Porter not only because of iso situations, but maybe to even greater degree because of roaming.

He tried to gamble too much on ball movement, and the other Utah players didn't cover on rotation. Result, many wide-open perimeter shots for Porter. There are also multiple sequences where Stockton roams, then tries to rotate late to Porter, which gives Porter easy baseline lanes.

There are sequences where it's as if Utah is playing multiple defensive sets at the same time, depending on personnel. Out of sync.

This, unfortunately, screams of Jerry Sloan's gameplanning, where he continually pretends as if outside shots are bad shots.

[sp6r=underrated]

....

[sp6r=underrated]

Looking at tape of Jazz/Blazers, Stockton got in trouble with Porter not only because of iso situations, but maybe to even greater degree because of roaming.

He tried to gamble too much on ball movement, and the other Utah players didn't cover on rotation. Result, many wide-open perimeter shots for Porter. There are also multiple sequences where Stockton roams, then tries to rotate late to Porter, which gives Porter easy baseline lanes.

There are sequences where it's as if Utah is playing multiple defensive sets at the same time, depending on personnel. Out of sync.

This, unfortunately, screams of Jerry Sloan's gameplanning, where he continually pretends as if outside shots are bad shots.

I'm going to try to find some blazers game from earlier in the PS to widen the sample size, as I was basically a kid during this season so I'm basically a blank slate. Based on the parts of the games I watched for Por/Utah I'm voting for Malone.

Doctor MJ made the case that Webber got MVP consideration only one season in his career and it was a mistake. Voters didn't realize how good Webber's supporting cast was. I think 92 might have been a case were voters didn't realize how good that blazers team was 2-12. I'm still going to have him top 5 but I can't justify him over Malone.

[mysticbb]

Stats for 91-92:

Code: Select all

Rk Player             PER    WS    ON   SUM
1  Michael Jordan     27.5  21.0  9.1   57.5
2  Karl Malone        25.2  18.6  5.8   49.6
3  David Robinson     27.5  13.9  5.4   46.8
4  Clyde Drexler      23.2  16.1  5.8   45.0
5  Horace Grant       18.6  16.8  9.1   44.5
6  Scottie Pippen     20.9  15.5  7.7   44.0
7  Brad Daugherty     21.8  14.4  5.3   41.4
8  Patrick Ewing      21.9  14.4  4.4   40.7
9  Terry Porter       18.8  15.4  6.4   40.6
10 John Stockton      21.5  13.7  4.7   40.0
11 Charles Barkley    24.5  12.3  1.8   38.6
12 Larry Nance        19.9  13.5  5.1   38.5
13 Kevin Johnson      20.3  11.5  4.5   36.2
14 Hot Rod Williams   18.8  11.9  4.6   35.4
15 Mark Price         21.1  10.3  3.5   34.9
16 Hakeem Olajuwon    23.7  9.8   0.7   34.2
17 Reggie Lewis       19.6  11.2  3.0   33.8
18 Reggie Miller      18.1  12.0  3.2   33.2
19 Chris Mullin       18.8  10.1  3.3   32.2
20 Danny Manning      19.6  10.1  1.6   31.4


Switching Robinson and Drexler due to the fact that Robinson didn't play in the playoffs. Also Horace Grant wasn't as important imho as Pippen, thus I will switch those two also.

Vote:

1. Michael Jordan
2. Karl Malone
3. Clyde Drexler
4. David Robinson
5. Scottie Pippen

[lorak]

1. MJ
2. Malone
3. Drexler
4. Robinson
5. Ewing

[An Unbiased Fan]

#1 MJ
#2 Drexler
#3 Malone
#4 DRob
#5 Daugherty

[TMACFORMVP]

1. Michael Jordan
2. Clyde Drexler
3. Karl Malone
4. Patrick Ewing

Edit - I think I have KJ over Daugherty, and nearly the same with Pippen. I think both Hakeem and Robinson were of course the better players, but probably too many missed games, and lack of play-ing in the playoffs puts them below those candidates. I'm sort of leaning KJ, but I'm partially a homer for him because of how much he gets underrated.

5. Kevin Johnson

[Baller 24]

I haven't read all the arguments for David Robinson yet, but what's the pass on him again? Tim Duncan was off of most lists because he couldn't finish the '00 season and play in the playoffs, why does Robinson get a free pass?

[Dr Positivity]

Looking at tape of Jazz/Blazers, Stockton got in trouble with Porter not only because of iso situations, but maybe to even greater degree because of roaming.

He tried to gamble too much on ball movement, and the other Utah players didn't cover on rotation. Result, many wide-open perimeter shots for Porter. There are also multiple sequences where Stockton roams, then tries to rotate late to Porter, which gives Porter easy baseline lanes.

There are sequences where it's as if Utah is playing multiple defensive sets at the same time, depending on personnel. Out of sync.

This, unfortunately, screams of Jerry Sloan's gameplanning, where he continually pretends as if outside shots are bad shots.

I'm going to try to find some blazers game from earlier in the PS to widen the sample size, as I was basically a kid during this season so I'm basically a blank slate. Based on the parts of the games I watched for Por/Utah I'm voting for Malone.

Doctor MJ made the case that Webber got MVP consideration only one season in his career and it was a mistake. Voters didn't realize how good Webber's supporting cast was. I think 92 might have been a case were voters didn't realize how good that blazers team was 2-12. I'm still going to have him top 5 but I can't justify him over Malone.

I'm leaning towards changing my vote to Karl, but one note, Clyde didn't do so bad in MVP voting the other years. For example in 88 he finished 5th with Jordan, Bird, Magic, Barkley (in his 28/12/3 .665 TS% form) ahead of him... he got more points than Hakeem and Karl Malone that year. In 91 he finishes 6th behind Michael, Magic, Drob, Barkley, Malone but putting up 21.5ppg instead of the 25+ he would the following year. I'd say the biggest reason Drexler all of a sudden looks like a top 2-3 player this year was lack of competition. It was a 5th-6th type season playing in a year where Hakeem, Barkley, David Robinson all had warts and when Magic, Bird, and Shaq were all out of the league. You add 2-3 of those guys and all of a sudden this sits along 88 and 91 for Drexler

The thing about impresses me about Clyde's 92 MVP vote though is he got 12 1st place votes. That's not a "Iverson in '00" dick vote, it shows some people actually thought he had the better year, or were just buying into the Jordan's rival stuff too much. The other thing I wonder about is how Drob beat Karl Malone in 68 games. Now Robinson was on his way to an epic season if he stayed healthy, but still Malone played 81 and put up 28/11 on a 55 win team. He should've been an easy 3rd that year. I think Robinson was riding a lot of hype at that time as a guy who was supposed to go Jordan/Magic/Bird level in a few years, it just never happened

I'm starting to lean towards Karl though with the comment that Drexler's support this year was more hype than truth whereas Karl was for the most part overlooked by the media

[Dr Positivity]

I haven't read all the arguments for David Robinson yet, but what's the pass on him again? Tim Duncan was off of most lists because he couldn't finish the '00 season and play in the playoffs, why does Robinson get a free pass?

I'm guessing it's because of how weak the year is, but yeah my policy is to never cast a vote for a guy not around for the playoffs.

To me the regular season's function is to set up a team's playoff position. The value I put in a player's RS production is how they helped their team in playoff set-up. So when a player misses the PS like Robinson or Hakeem or Duncan, it means the entirety of their value is getting their supporting cast to the playoffs where they will almost surely lose. The real value of a player is how close he gets you to a championship, if you removed all other variables. Thus when someone misses the playoffs he has almost no value at all. Robinson helping his team so much in the RS is rendered meaningless when he's not around in the postseason

[Jordan23Forever]

Not sure if you need to be part of a selected panel of voters to chime in here, but in '92 I'd have it like so:

MJ (no explanation needed)

Drexler (second best record in the league; 25/7/7; second in MVP voting by a handy margin)

Ewing (24/11/3 blk, and this was the last year before he really transitioned into being more perimeter oriented, posting a respectable 52.2% FG; Ewing was a warrior and pushed the Bulls to the limit that year)

DRob (would have been above Ewing if not for injury and the fact that he didn't play in the postseason; a 24 ppg scorer and a beast defensively with 2.3 stl/4.5 blk)

Malone

Hon. Mention: Hakeem/Barkley (middling records keep these two from being higher), Pippen, Mullin, Price

[kaima]

Your ranking for Malone is awful.

[Jordan23Forever]

How so? You think he was better than DRob? DRob missed 14 games or else it's safe to say they would have at least won 51 games as opposed to the 47 they actually won that year. Utah won 55; they were comparably talented teams apart from Malone/DRob, with Utah having the edge. DRob's defensive impact was LIGHT YEARS beyond Malone's, and on top of that he was a less limited offensive player (i.e., could create his own shot better than Malone, who was more dependent on Stockton).

Since we're be looking at comparable team records and team talent, I'll take the 24/12/5 blk/2 stl/55% FG/60% TS juggernaut over the 28 pt/11 reb/.6 blk/1 stl/52% FG/60% TS more limited offensive player any day.

[kaima]

Started watching Bulls/Blazers.

Jordan's comment is right on the money about the Blazers overwhelming talent being a partial indictment compared to mentality. Over the years I've watched some important games with this team, and it always struck me that they would bail themselves out through sheer depth rather than intelligence -- that, in fact, the lack of intellect was what got them in trouble.

Thought they were bad at managing games. Real bad, in some instances. Wish I had more time to see if this was a devaluation or an exaggeration of memory.

[kaima]

How so? You think he was better than DRob?

At peak form and in overall prime or career value? Way.

And he was better in 92, as well.

DRob missed 14 games or else it's safe to say they would have at least won 51 games as opposed to the 47 they actually won that year. Utah won 55; they were comparably talented teams apart from Malone/DRob, with Utah having the edge. DRob's defensive impact was LIGHT YEARS beyond Malone's, and on top of that he was a less limited offensive player (i.e., could create his own shot better than Malone, who was more dependent on Stockton).

That you think Malone was the limited offensive player tells me that you have no real clue as to how these guys played. Stat-counting will only get you so far. That you then use Stockton as an excuse to trash Malone's offensive ability further demonstrates that you haven't really watched a peak/prime Malone at work; that this comes while arguing Robinson's superior offensive talent (no no no) is even more embarrassing.

Simplified, Malone was the far more talented offensive player. This has been gone over many times in previous threads.

When they played in the playoffs, Malone ripped Robinson apart on both ends. Malone could stop Robinson defensively, but Robinson could not stop Malone.

And Malone's 92 was plain better than Robinson's.

I don't think you have the best handle on how these guys played, what their skillset value was, or how they matched up.

Suffice it to say, you're not giving Malone proper respect.

[ronnymac2]

Jordan, Malone, Drexler, Hakeem, Barkley, Ewing....again, sorry to Robinson. I'm not a fan, and I don't like stats too much, but even I had to pay attention to those defensive numbers. Truly amazing.

Barkley is getting underrated here. He did his thing; his teammates didn't. Same with Hakeem.

MJ is going number one. This is still just about his peak imo. Let's see....Malone over Drexler. Drexler BARELY over Ewing. I actually like Ewing in the playoffs. I just like Clyde a little more, mainly due to his greater team success. It really does come down to that sort of tiebreaker for me. I think prime Drexler and prime Ewing are very, very close as players, so....

Now, where do Hakeem and Barkley come into play? I'll take Hakeem over Barkley this year. Dream was playing top2 defense ever at this point, with very good offense.

To be honest, I don't see why Hakeem can't be ranked at number two. Hell, I think Sir Charles could be ranked at number four. Charles wasn't better than Malone, but he may have been better than Ewing and Drexler.

So what to do? Should I just put Hakeem at number five and be content with moving on to the next year? Or do I go with my gut and put two players in my top five who most think shouldn't (mainly due to lack of team success)?

**** it. I'm going to put them in. This whole thing has been about judging the individual. My criteria dictates to me that I need to put these two players in. I don't feel this should be one of those times where I allow for different criteria just to make my decision easier or not get my final ranking bashed (which I understand will happen).

Final Vote:

Michael Jordan
Karl Malone
Hakeem Olajuwon
Charles Barkley
Clyde Drexler

Honorable Mention: Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Kevin Johnson (after reading about him this season and looking at the numbers, he does deserve this...excellent season by KJ)

Regret he was injured: David Robinson. Historic season defensively.

I ended up putting Malone over Dream because I feel this is merely prime Hakeem, while this may be peak Malone (not sure exactly what Malone's peak is....too damn consistent). So they are close enough as players where Malone's vast advantages in other areas boosts him ahead.

[kaima]

Want to get a plug in for Kemp. Arguable coming out party against the Warriors. Just tore them apart.

Games of 28 and 16, 17 and 19 and a closeout game of 21 and 20.

Somewhat of an important series this year, as Mullin had a great regular season...but his playoffs. What?!?!

Like to see some tape on this. If this vote went longer, I'd search around.

Will check out Knicks-Bulls and Cavs-Bulls before voting. Feel like Barkley, Hakeem and Robinson still have cases for the five spot. Mullin? Uh...maybe if he had pulled up lame before the Sonics series.

Pippen as dark horse seems reasonable