RealGM

Sort of surprised to see Cowens make the top 35; he was like Chauncey Billups in the early 2000s, the team leader and a very good player but it was a huge upset when he outplayed Kareem or even held him to a draw.

I'm not in the project but seriously . . . ahead of Pettit's championship season? A bit surprised. Wouldn't surprise me that contemporary Artis Gilmore ranked ahead of Cowens 73 too, at least his 75 season.

How about ending the project at top 40.

Have a 1 week break with a thread where we discuss upcoming candidates and nominate like 10 or so, then in each thread we choose from those nominations which player we want.

penbeast0 wrote:Sort of surprised to see Cowens make the top 35; he was like Chauncey Billups in the early 2000s, the team leader and a very good player but it was a huge upset when he outplayed Kareem or even held him to a draw.

I'm not in the project but seriously . . . ahead of Pettit's championship season? A bit surprised. Wouldn't surprise me that contemporary Artis Gilmore ranked ahead of Cowens 73 too, at least his 75 season.

beast, note my post from last night. We're really struggling to get participation right now. Until that gets better, it goes without saying that the results might not look so great.

I vote for ending the project at 35 or 40

I'll add one more note:

If we seriously consider ending this early, when I already made it a point up front to chop the project in half compared to what we normally do, what is the problem?

Doctor MJ wrote:

penbeast0 wrote:Sort of surprised to see Cowens make the top 35; he was like Chauncey Billups in the early 2000s, the team leader and a very good player but it was a huge upset when he outplayed Kareem or even held him to a draw.

I'm not in the project but seriously . . . ahead of Pettit's championship season? A bit surprised. Wouldn't surprise me that contemporary Artis Gilmore ranked ahead of Cowens 73 too, at least his 75 season.

beast, note my post from last night. We're really struggling to get participation right now. Until that gets better, it goes without saying that the results might not look so great.

I saw it, I was trying to generate some of that discussion you were looking for.

Doctor MJ wrote:I'll add one more note:

If we seriously consider ending this early, when I already made it a point up front to chop the project in half compared to what we normally do, what is the problem?

Very small voting pool missing many of the key posters of the best top 100 and RPOY threads

For me, it's more of a not enough time to process everyone who should get talked about. My interest is still there for sure. As you get deeper and deeper into these lists, there end up being more and more guys who are on the same level so it becomes harder to separate them. I was pushing back my vote because I was undecided (I'm fine with Cowens getting in btw, I just would have picked a different year) but then forgot about the deadline completely. Maybe move it to 1 week per thread for a bit? It gives time to lay out arguments for everyone (the wings, the centers and the PGs who haven't even really been discussed yet). I'm guessing it can't hurt, especially with NBA season serving as a distraction now.

yup, not enough time for discussion, top40 finish

Unrelated to the current discussion, question directed to colts18:

How did you calculate standard deviation for MOV in the 11th highest peak thread? You said you were calculating it w.r.t. the mean of the other teams. Does that mean you calculate the average MOV of the other 29 teams, calculate out the variance of team 1's MOV w.r.t. the mean and then find out the standard deviation via square root?

ardee wrote:Unrelated to the current discussion, question directed to colts18:

How did you calculate standard deviation for MOV in the 11th highest peak thread? You said you were calculating it w.r.t. the mean of the other teams. Does that mean you calculate the average MOV of the other 29 teams, calculate out the variance of team 1's MOV w.r.t. the mean and then find out the standard deviation via square root?

I believe you are referring to the Walton discussion.

I replaced the Blazers MOV with the MOV with Walton in, then I calculated how many SD they were from the league mean MOV (slightly above 0.00). Based on that I got around a 2.7 SD for the Walton Blazers.

colts18 wrote:

ardee wrote:Unrelated to the current discussion, question directed to colts18:

How did you calculate standard deviation for MOV in the 11th highest peak thread? You said you were calculating it w.r.t. the mean of the other teams. Does that mean you calculate the average MOV of the other 29 teams, calculate out the variance of team 1's MOV w.r.t. the mean and then find out the standard deviation via square root?

I believe you are referring to the Walton discussion.

I replaced the Blazers MOV with the MOV with Walton in, then I calculated how many SD they were from the league mean MOV (slightly above 0.00). Based on that I got around a 2.7 SD for the Walton Blazers.

So the average MOV of the league is always 0 right? The Blazers' MOV with Walton in '78 was +10, so to figure out the average MOV of the other 21 teams it would be -10/21.

Variance would be |x-mean|, giving us something like 10.46, the square root of which is 3.23?

Obviously that's different from your answer. Sorry to be a pain but could you walk me through how you arrived at that number? I'm just curious because I was always fascinated by Walton's in/out impact, and if his team was actually better then the '96 freaking Bulls in some form of measure, I'd be interested to know how haha.

ardee wrote:So the average MOV of the league is always 0 right? The Blazers' MOV with Walton in '78 was +10, so to figure out the average MOV of the other 21 teams it would be -10/21.

Variance would be |x-mean|, giving us something like 10.46, the square root of which is 3.23?

Obviously that's different from your answer. Sorry to be a pain but could you walk me through how you arrived at that number? I'm just curious because I was always fascinated by Walton's in/out impact, and if his team was actually better then the '96 freaking Bulls in some form of measure, I'd be interested to know how haha.

Yeah the league average MOV is always 0 but for my calculations it was slightly above 0 since I just replaced the Blazers numbers with Walton's full season numbers. I wasn't going to spend the time to make the
adjustments to make the league average 0.

I replaced the Blazers 5.59 MOV with the +8.4 they had with Walton

Rk Team MOV ▾
1 Portland Trail Blazers* 8.4
2 Denver Nuggets* 5.22
3 Philadelphia 76ers* 3.94
4 Golden State Warriors* 3.22
5 Los Angeles Lakers* 2.72
6 Houston Rockets* 1.61
7 Cleveland Cavaliers* 1.12
8 Washington Bullets* 1.02
9 Chicago Bulls* 0.9
10 Kansas City Kings 0.88
11 Phoenix Suns 0.73
12 San Antonio Spurs* 0.61
13 New York Knicks -0.01
14 Detroit Pistons* -1.04
15 Seattle SuperSonics -1.55
16 Indiana Pacers -1.77
17 Boston Celtics* -1.98
18 New Orleans Jazz -2.82
19 Milwaukee Bucks -3.12
20 Atlanta Hawks -4.06
21 Buffalo Braves -4.44
22 New York Nets -6.78


league average MOV 0.13
Standard Deviation 3.44
Blazers minus League Average 8.27
Z score with Walton 2.40

Alright folks, so what I'm seeing is no immediate signs that the project is going to come back to life.

On the other hand, a 35 project just lacks any kind of credibility, so I don't see any benefit to giving up just yet. Here's what I'm planning at the moment:

We're going to go to 40.

We're going to do a thread per week.

When we near 40 I'll ask people's thoughts. If there isn't more pull to go on, we'll stop it at 40.

Re: The idea of you guys sending me a list. Changing up voting methods so drastically at this point to me makes the list meaningless. It's quite possible we'll do the next project in such a less time-intensive manner, but this one, for better or worse, will continue as is for at least 5 more threads.

C'mon guys, let's finish this up in a solid manner.

Would anyone be interested in the idea of submitting a ballot with your top 20, 30 or 40, how many ever, at the end of the project, and then just totaling the results to see how they contrast the actual list? Would be a fun exercise IMO, would show how much we learnt.

Doctor MJ wrote:On the other hand, a 35 project just lacks any kind of credibility, so I don't see any benefit to giving up just yet. Here's what I'm planning at the moment:

We're going to go to 40.

Really? What's the difference between 35 and 40?

Besides, project lost credibility when Cowens won with 2 votes ;/

ardee wrote:Would anyone be interested in the idea of submitting a ballot with your top 20, 30 or 40, how many ever, at the end of the project, and then just totaling the results to see how they contrast the actual list? Would be a fun exercise IMO, would show how much we learnt.

Sure, that would be great.

Ok, so here's a top 25 I think I can say I have a decent amount of confidence in. Following ElGee's example a few pages ago, I'm also grading the players on how certain I am of their placements, 1 being confused and 5 being absolutely sure. Also separated them into tiers.

1. 1967 Wilt Chamberlain (5)
2. 1991 Michael Jordan (4)
3. 2000 Shaquille O'Neal (5)

4. 1987 Magic Johnson (3)
5. 1986 Larry Bird (3)
6. 1995 Hakeem Olajuwon (5)

7. 2009 LeBron James (5)
8. 1977 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (3)
9. 1965 Bill Russell (2)
10. 2003 Tim Duncan (5)

11. 1977 Bill Walton (5)
12. 2004 Kevin Garnett (4)
13. 1976 Julius Erving (2)

14. 2008 Kobe Bryant (5)
15. 1964 Oscar Robertson (4)
16. 2009 Dwyane Wade (4)
17. 1966 Jerry West (4)

18. 2007 Steve Nash (5)
19. 1993 Charles Barkley (3)
20. 2011 Dirk Nowitzki (3)
21. 2008 Chris Paul (3)

22. 1983 Moses Malone (1)
23. 1990 Patrick Ewing (3)
24. 1994 David Robinson (3)
25. 1994 Scottie Pippen (5)

Anyone else have a ballot?

Steve Nash with a peak higher than Barkley, Malone, Malone, Baylor, Paul, Stockton, Thomas, etc, etc.

Well, it's fair to say that RealGM's regulars have surpassed even my expectations so far as comically overrating Steve Nash.

Entertaining project, but it's easy to see where its peak value was by that same measure. Just coasting from here.

ardee wrote:Anyone else have a ballot?

Yes -- and I was going to ask everyone this question. I believe it has value two-fold:

(1) If Doc, realbig3, fatal, Mufasa, drza, Regulat8r, raven, Penbeast, etc all submit a ballot, we can see the biases based on the current voting method. To me, this is the most interesting and valuable thing from a voting/results perspective.

(2) It forces people to make a ballot, which can be a very good thing. I'll post my top-40 below in an edit.

Rank Year SRS Impact Portability Health Player

SACRED PEAKS
1 1990 9.0 AVG 100% Jordan
2 2000 9.0 AVG 100% Shaq
3 1986 8.0 HIGH 100% Bird
4 1967 8.0 AVG 100% Chamberlain
5 2012 8.0 AVG 90% LBJ
6 1987 7.5 AVG 100% Magic
7 1993 7.5 HIGH 100% Olajuwon
8 1962 8.0 HIGH 100% Russell
9 2002 7.5 HIGH 100% Duncan
10 2004 7.5 HIGH 100% KG
11 1977 8.0 HIGH 80% Walton

GATEKEEPERS
12 1977 7.0 AVG 100% Kareem
13 1976 7.0 AVG 100% Erving

ALMOST SACRED
14 1994 6.5 HIGH 100% Robinson
15 2009 6.5 AVG 100% Wade
16 1968 6.5 HIGH 60% West
17 1990 6.0 HIGH 100% Barkley
18 1964 6.0 HIGH 100% Oscar
19 2008 6.0 AVG 100% Kobe
20 2008 6.0 AVG 100% Paul
21 1992 6.0 AVG 100% Malone
22 2007 6.0 AVG 90% Nash
23 2006 5.5 AVG 100% Dirk
24 1990 5.5 AVG 100% Ewing
25 1982 5.5 AVG 100% Moses
26 2003 6.0 AVG 90% McGrady

THE REST
27 2011 5.0 HIGH 100% Howard
28 1991 5.0 HIGH 100% Pippen
29 2012 5.0 HIGH 100% Durant
30 1996 5.0 HIGH 100% Penny
31 1975 5.5 AVG 100% Barry
32 1987 5.0 AVG 90% McHale
33 1971 5.0 AVG 100% Frazier
34 1967 5.0 AVG 80% Thurmond
35 1975 4.5 HIGH 100% Gilmore
36 2006 4.0 HIGH 100% Pierce
37 1997 5.0 LOW 100% Hill
38 2000 4.0 HIGH 100% Mourning
39 1984 4.5 LOW 90% King
40 1985 4.0 AVG 100% Thomas

**Note -- multiple years may qualify for the same player -- in that case, the first occurrence was selected