RealGM

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 best player seasons of '07-08. Some pointers:

-I will tally up the votes 3 days from now. I encourage people to wait to actually cast their votes until there's been some discussion - Ideally waiting until the 3rd day. However, I know everyone's schedule is busy - I'm not going NOT count votes just because they come in relatively early.

-The voting panel is not officially closed. However, if you'd like to be a part of it, contact me - more dedicated, knowledgeable voters will always be wanted.

-This includes both regular and post-season. You should be weighing both in to some degree, and should not be ranking one star over another just because of how far each got in the playoffs.

-Vote sincerely. Do not move a player down in your voting to give another player an advantage. I would encourage every voter to give some explanations while they do their voting - but particularly if you have a top 5 that deviates strongly with the norm and you haven't expressed your thoughts on it earlier in the thread. If I'm not satisfied, I may ask you for more of an explanation - and it may come to actually booting people out of the project.

I'm especially curious for the thoughts of people on:

KG

Paul

sp6 or Dr MJ - would you guys mind updating either of your posts with all the relevant links ? Saves a huge amount of time.

Some things to start us off:

Season Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _2009.html
Playoff Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _2009.html
Award Voting http://www.basketball-reference.com/awa ... _2009.html

Regular Season Raw +/- http://82games.com/teams07.htm
Post-Season Raw +/- http://www.82games.com/0708/playoffs/playoffs.htm
Wages of Wins http://dberri.wordpress.com/nba-team-reviews-2007-08/
Regular Season Adjusted +/- http://basketballvalue.com/topplayers.p ... =2007-2008

Questions for '07-08:

-How do you distribute individual credit for the Boston Celtics success?
-How do you factor in missed playing time when evaluating the MVP? Garnett missed a lot of time, LeBron missed some significant time early on.

Silver Bullet wrote:sp6 or Dr MJ - would you guys mind updating either of your posts with all the relevant links ? Saves a huge amount of time.

Ha - was doing it from the moment I made the first post.

I have another question. Dwight Howard is 103rd in 08-09 in terms of adj plus-minus. He's 2nd in 07-08. That seems fairly compelling evidence for me to throw this stat out. And I'd been planning to base a lot of my decision making off this stat.

I mean, sure there is some noise in a 1 year sample, but if the noise is 10ppg, then a 2 years APM doesn't help wither.

So, can someone explain, what the deal is here ?

Silver Bullet wrote:I have another question. Dwight Howard is 103rd in 08-09 in terms of adj plus-minus. He's 2nd in 07-08. That seems fairly compelling evidence for me to throw this stat out. And I'd been planning to base a lot of my decision making off this stat.

I mean, sure there is some noise in a 1 year sample, but if the noise is 10ppg, then a 2 years APM doesn't help wither.

So, can someone explain, what the deal is here ?

It is indeed an ugly thing. So some explanation:

If you look at 82games, Howard's +/- is less impressive in '08-09 than it is in '07-08. Meaning, the team net +/- is comparable, but Howard's score relative to his teammates is worse. In '07-08 he leads the team, in '08-09 he doesn't, and he's behind Rashard Lewis who plays almost exactly as much time as he does.

Where adjusted +/- really starts looking not so good is when you have two players who play a ton of time together, and it's understandable why. If a superstar and a scrub always played together, +/- wouldn't be able to tell them apart. If each got hurt on seperate days, you'd expect the team to do much better without the scrub than without the superstar. How should the scrub be rated then? Well by raw +/-, he'll look almost as good as the superstar. Is that reasonable? Nope. Adjusted +/- looks to extrapolate the difference between them based on what's been seen in the time they don't play together - extrapolate that out, and it's easy to get a big difference between the two. Is that reasonable? Yes. Is that right? Eh, it means that there's a tiny sample size, which means the precision is terrible.

Here's how I look at +/-: I look at how players are doing in team net +/-, I compare them with teammates in team net +/-, and then I look at adjusted +/-. The third step is important, if teammate A looks better than teammate B in team net +/-, but the opposite is true in adjusted, adjusted carries more weight.

+/- tells us Lewis > Howard in '08-09. There's no getting around that, and I say this as a big +/- supporter who does not believe Lewis > Howard in '08-09. If that's a deal breaker right there, okay.

In terms of Howard's huge jumping in APM score, well that's why you want to look at the team net stuff on 82games. If a superstar's team is really doing significantly worse when he's not on the court (which was the case for Howard), I'm not going to say he's vastly overrated because he doesn't have a great adjusted +/- score in one year.

Just for posterity's sake, I'm going to say that throughout this thing I'm going mostly by on-court production, with games in December mattering as much as games in March, and games in the playoffs meaning only about 50% more than games in the regular season. Which is to say: if you play 20 playoff games and 82 regular season games, your regular season still accounts for roughly 2/3rds of where I'm placing you. Why? Because a 20 game sample size pales in comparison to 82 or, together, 102 games.

Also, I don't much care about how well your team did. It's basketball, not ping pong- one player can't dictate whether an entire team wins or loses. That said, the Gongxi top 5 for 2007-2008 are:

1- LeBron James
2- Chris Paul
3- Kobe Bryant
4- Kevin Garnett
5- Dirk Nowitzki

I thought it was pretty clear that LeBron and CP3 were the best players that year, having outrageous seasons from a production standpoint (well, they'd both eclipse that the very next season, but still), and carrying their teams. Kobe had a great season and was clearly the best 2 that year. Garnett was the hardest to rank: obviously he was the best player on the best team, and obviously he was responsible for a historic turnaround, and he would probably be #1 if the question was "Who's the great player you most want on a team with other great players?", but that ain't the question. Dirk had another stellar, quiet, underrated year. Kind of par for the course for him.

I just want to put in another link for adjusted +/- stats: http://www.hoopnumbers.com/allAnalysisV ... &year=2008

A brief introduction how it works: http://www.hoopnumbers.com/allAnalysisV ... ssion=True


I like those results, because of the methods and the better consistency from year to year.

Gongxi wrote:I thought it was pretty clear that LeBron and CP3 were the best players that year, having outrageous seasons from a production standpoint (well, they'd both eclipse that the very next season, but still), and carrying their teams.

Curious your thoughts on LeBron's missed time. Missing 7 games out of 82 may not seem like a lot, but for perspective, it's hard for me to see over an 75 game hypothetical season with comparable supporting casts LeBron's team would be 5+ games better than Kobe's team. Does that bother you at all?

mysticbb wrote:I just want to put in another link for adjusted +/- stats: http://www.hoopnumbers.com/allAnalysisV ... &year=2008

A brief introduction how it works: http://www.hoopnumbers.com/allAnalysisV ... ssion=True


I like those results, because of the methods and the better consistency from year to year.

Thanks for sharing mystic. I have to say that the numbers on that site seemed less credible to me. (More scrubs near the top, and this year LeBron and Varejao at 1 & 2). However, if they are more consistent that's definitely a feather in their cap.

Any sort of "value" formula in which Vladimir Radmanovic finishes ahead of LeBron James...let's just say I have to view the results with an extreme level of skepticism.

No matter what formula you throw out there, there are always at least five or 10 guys whose presence causes me to seriously doubt their validity.

Maybe that's the point -- to snap us out of our preferred way of thinking. But again, having seen Radmanovic play that entire season, there is just no way he wasn't among the league's bottom 20%.

Doctor MJ wrote:How do you distribute individual credit for the Boston Celtics success?

This is the big one, to me. Allen is the one who throws the monkey wrench into the whole works. If it was just KG showing up, and the Celtics had still done what they did, then he's a lock for No. 1 in my opinion. But while Ray wasn't nearly as good, he was still pretty damn important. Then there's Pierce, of course.

Wow, I'm toying around with this, and I might have Kobe as low as fourth.

I'll do you one better, Doc: I think with the exact same casts that +/-5 wins is perfectly within a standard deviation. That's how big a fan of randomness I am. That season the Cavs played 24 games that were decided by 4 points or less. The difference in those games was really at least half dumb luck. I'm sure big shots were both made and missed by players from the teams involved near the end of those games, but there were also lazy plays, random bounces, and iffy calls that led up to those moments.

In the larger scheme of it, LeBron playing in 90 of 97 games compared to Kobe played in 107 of 107, doesn't change in my mind that LeBron was simply the better player. In light of Kobe's play this postseason, one could say that not playing those seven games actually contributed to him being better. If LeBron powered through it and played more games but worse, I might have had CP3 or even Kobe ahead of him. But he didn't and played at a very high level in all (okay, vast majority of- I'm sure he had a few stinkers) the games he played in- nearly 90% of them.

And, while I mostly ignore team success or failure, it bears mentioning that both their rides ended at the exact same stop: Boston.

Sedale Threatt wrote:Any sort of "value" formula in which Vladimir Radmanovic finishes ahead of LeBron James...let's just say I have to view the results with an extreme level of skepticism.

Maybe that's the point -- to snap us out of our preferred way of thinking. But again, having seen Radmanovic play that entire season, there is just no way that's possible.

Be careful what you are saying, because Vladimir Radmanovic had the highest OnCourt ORtg in the whole league that season. And that is the real value, that what really happend in the game. ;)

And looking at the error, James could also just hit the lower end and Radmanovic the upper end, which would seperate those two by around 5 pts with James being better. You have to always keep that in mind.

The point here is you have to put those numbers ALWAYS into perspective. Those numbers are minutes adjusted (per 48). Seeing that Radmanovic played in 1483 minutes that makes an overall +78.35 for him, James played 3027 minutes, which results in +159.8. Thus James was clearly more valuable for his team due to his played minutes.

That is all a matter of interpretation, those kind of numbers are not reflecting a "best player list", they never do.

^ And that's probably my mistake, because that's invariably how I end up looking at them. I still need to get a handle on exactly what these formulas are telling us.

Regarding Radmanovic -- a classic example of how stats, even advanced ones, can misconstrue. Unless there's hidden value in a one-dimensional, inconsistent 3-point shooter that I'm missing.

Here's my post regarding Paul's 08-09 Season. His 07-08 Stats are identical.

Chris Paul –
Here is the problem I have with Chris Paul. He dominates the ball way way too much. Assist% is a ratio I look at to see how ball dominant a point guard is – of course, you will only see players who are very good passers of the ball, I’ll acknowledge that. But how high is Paul’s Assist% - well for this season, his Assist % was 54.5. Only 1 other guy in history has had a season with a higher Assist % - John Stockton. Nash’s team was totally built on his passing, so you should expect him to lead this category, but he tops out at 50.1 %. How about Magic Johnson ? Tops out at 49. But, the other thing is, Stockton and Nash were not really taking a boatload of shots while they were busy distributing the ball to team mates. Their usage%’s top out at barely 20 – Paul’s usage is nearly approaching 30 (27.5). That – makes him the most ball dominant point guard in the history of the game. So no wonder, he’s gonna put numbers that are at an all time level.

Sedale Threatt wrote:Regarding Radmanovic -- a classic example of how stats, even advanced ones, can misconstrue. Unless there's hidden value in a one-dimensional, inconsistent 3-point shooter that I'm missing.

It's called spacing. If a consistent 3pt shooter isn't a great liability on defense and can play in the flow of the offense, he will always be a great contributer for the team and will make the offensive game not only easier for his teammates, but due to his 3pt shot also more efficient.

Look at the Lakers right now, they could really use another consistent 40% 3pt shooter, that would make the life in the paint easier.

That is, btw, also the reason, why a player like Nowitzki can help his team even without scoring much. He keeps the defense honest, nobody will want to leave him open even on a bad shooting night. Additional to that he his a great defensive rebounder and doesn't make many mistakes on defense. Thus his contribution is beyond his scoring, something most people aren't realise.

I see this one as a four-man race between LeBron, Paul, KG and Kobe. Before I make a full case for Garnett I’d like to bring up two areas that are sometimes used against him and point out that the facts on these two fronts tend to paint KG in a much more flattering light than the generally accepted surface viewing. The general narrative from ’08 was that Kobe and LeBron were the incumbent two best players, that Paul surprised everyone with a historic season for a point guard and joined that pair at the top, and that Garnett was important (to some indeterminate degree) in resurrecting the Celtics but his impact was more intangible (and thus nebulous) and couldn’t compare with the statistical dominance by some of the others. His stats (“only” 19 and 9”) and the Celtics playing well without him are both held against him. Here are some reasons that I beg to differ.

1) Garnett’s impact was very tangible, and he measured out right there with LeBron and Paul at the very top in Regular season stats
• LeBron and Paul went 1-2 in PER and win shares, but KG was 4th in PER and 2nd to Paul in win shares/minute (follow Doctor MJ’s Regular season summary link to see this)
• Similarly, Garnett finished just behind LeBron but ahead of Paul in 82games.com’s Roland rating (net PER and on-court/off-court +/-). http://www.82games.com/teams07.htm
• KG finished just behind Paul but ahead of LeBron in Wins Produced per 48 minutes http://www.wagesofwins.com/MVPAllNBA2008.html
• KG led the NBA just ahead of LeBron and well ahead of Paul In Ilardi’s Adjusted Plus-minus ratings http://82games.com/ilardi2.htm
• (Garnett finished ahead of Kobe in all of the stats mentioned)

To be fair, Garnett played the fewest minutes of any of the four, which is why he ranks excellent in the per-minute stats but not as good in the totals stats. And the game is obviously about more than stats, but once you get beyond the stats and into intangibles KG’s case gets even stronger. The point I’m emphasizing here is that tangible stats was the one area in which Garnett was supposedly behind the other three main candidates, but no matter which “advanced” stat you champion KG actually measured out right there with LeBron and Paul and ahead of Kobe. This was illustrated by a study that looked across seven popular “advanced” stats systems comparing how players were evaluated by all of the different systems, and the result was that Garnett ranked #1 in the NBA in 2008 across the different measures, followed by LeBron. http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2008 ... r-ratings/

2) Outside of stats, the other main area of question for Garnett was that the team went 9 – 2 during games he didn’t play in the regular season. This was ultimately what took him out of the lead in the MVP vote, as people questioned whether he was really that important if the team kept playing well without him (I’ve seen Dr. MJ express that same doubt). But if you look at who they beat without KG, this is what you see:

7 – 0 against teams with an average record of 25 – 57, none of which had more than 36 wins.
2 – 2 against teams with 45 or more wins (avg record 51 – 31), both wins at home, both losses on road.

The 9 - 2 record is the ultimate example of what stat-geeks call sample-size error. Without KG the Celtics were still clearly better than the bottom of the lottery teams, but were just competitively average against reasonable playoff teams…they just played a lot of terrible teams in that stretch. To me, this in no way reflects negatively on Garnett’s on-court impact. If anything, it reiterates it: the team without KG was an adequate mid-level playoff team in the East. The team with him was NBA championship caliber. I’d say that’s a pretty big impact.

So, I guess early on I'm thinking:

1. Garnett -- great all-around season, DPOY, led Celtics to first title in 22 years.
2. James -- would be No. 1, but sub-par series against Boston hurts.
3. Paul -- one of the great individual seasons for a PG ever.
4. Bryant -- another Hall of Fame season, helped the Lakers back to the Finals post-Shaq.

Probably leading towards Dirk for fifth.