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Doctor MJ wrote:Incidentally, I decided to do some analysis of Engelmann's 1-year RAPM outlier performers by normalizing with standard deviation, and since McGrady's RAPM got brought up here, it seems rather relevant.

Preface: mystic mentioned that there's more that ideally should be done to make these measurements better, and he's right. This is what I had time to do a few nights back, but if someone has better stuff, that'd be awesome.

Okay, listed by rank, the performances 3.5+ StDev or better:

1. '10 LeBron +4.35
2. '04 Garnett +4.26
3. '09 LeBron +3.95
4. '03 Garnett +3.89
5. '07 Duncan +3.75
6. '11 Nowitzki +3.74
7. '10 Wade +3.73
8. '12 Nowitzki +3.67

When you look at the results with values of 2.5+, a "Big 10" emerges from the RAPM era. Here's a chart, listing the player, and his number of years at +4, +3.5, +3, and +2.5 respectively. The 10 listed are the only players with at least 2 +2.5 years.

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Player   +4 +3.5 +3 +2.5
Bryant    0   0   0   2
Duncan    0   1   3   5
Garnett   1   2   4   7
Ginobili  0   0   2   6
James     1   2   3   6
Nash      0   0   0   4
Nowitzki  0   2   2   4
O'Neal    0   0   1   3
Paul      0   0   0   2
Wade      0   1   1   3

McGrady, now that I check him, only just barely hits +1.5 once in his entire career. It's kind of crazy.

Of note: The Houston years don't seem that odd to me. There's where he's hovering around in the 1-1.5 range which you might find a bit low, but obviously he was only a contender here based on his Orlando work. But those Orlando years look downright mediocre, and that's weird enough I don't know if I really have confidence in them.

An Unbiased Fan wrote:

bastillon wrote:drza voted for Ewing, and I changed my vote from Nash to Ewing so that Nash vote doesn't count.

UAF you bring up some good points but I wish you'd stop with this "26/16, 28/16". after all those numbers are the very reason why we're questioning his proponents. you only look at ppg/rpg instead of taking a look at the bigger picture. the most turnover prone center in history, horrible passer, lousy defensive ratings in Houston (KG's Wolves were at least average, Moses teams were Raps-like), doesn't create shots for himself, Philly didn't improve much after his addition etc etc after yo get past the 28/16 there's not much to rely on if you're a fan of Moses.

I just posted a long post showing how Philly had a big improvement with Moses, and how Houston had a massive dropoff.

You bring up team DRtg, yet....1990 Ewing's Knicks were just the #13 team, and that's with Oakley next to him in the frontcourt. Philly was #5 with Moses.

I bring up Mose's 16 rpg, because it took Philly from a bad rebounding team to the best. Ewing wasn't even the best rebounder on his team. Philly's rebounding was the major reasons for their success that year. It spurred their fastbreaks and aggressive style.

Mose's TOV% in 1983 was 13.8%, while Ewing's in 1990 was 12.4, which is hardly a diference. In fact, Moses was a career 14.1% in the NBA, and Ewing was a career 13.6%.

Moses was All-NBA/All-D 1st, MVP, FMVP. Ewing was All-NBA 1st, but wasn't recognized for anything else.

We have one guy who was clearly the best in 1983 to a guy who was borderline Top 5 in 1990.

therealbig3 wrote:

bastillon wrote:link to DS post ?

This is actually mysticbb, in response to someone saying Moses should rank ahead of LeBron, because he won a championship:

mysticbb wrote:No, the 76ers won the championship, a team which was already a +5.7 SRS team without Moses, a team which went to the FINALS without Moses Malone, a team which had Julius Erving on their roster making a much bigger difference to that team than Moses Malone. Do you think that the Heat without James were a 57 wins team? Do you think that the Heat without James could have went to the finals?

Continued:

mysticbb wrote:Moses Malone didn't even make a huge difference to the team performance at his peak, why should I want him in other seasons when he constantly was out in the first round and not the cornerstone of a franchise being able to win.
I count 8 seasons in which Malone was healthy enough and good enough to be the best player on a championship team, that is exactly 1 season more than James has. But Malone had a lot less impact, if we don't dismiss all the evidence we have. He made a small improvement to the Rockets when he joined. He didn't improve a below average team much (granted, he had that playoff run to the finals), he didn't make a big difference to the 76ers at his absolute peak. The 76ers without him were already a 5.7 SRS team, with him that improved to 8.15 SRS with a healthy Erving playing in 1983. When Erving missed 10 games (2 games in January and 8 games in March with a wrist injury) the 76ers went down to a 3.06 SRS team. The 76ers without a absolute peak Malone were better than the 76ers with absolute peak Malone and without past peak Erving. What should I believe when peak Malone doesn't even come close a difference LeBron James made?

I think people are putting way too much stock into the boxscore numbers and way too easily they are impressed with big offensive rebounding numbers. Since the offensive rebounding numbers are available the correlation coefficient between scoring margin and ORB% is 0.06, in the last 10 years it is even -0.1. There is no clear indication that offensive rebounding helps a team to win more games. In comparison the coefficient for DRB% is 0.3. Offensive rebounding might be the single most overrated boxscore stat, even BLK% and STL show a much higher correlation to scoring margin (0.2 and 0.17 respectively). That is based on the data of 983 single team seasons from 1973/74 to 2010/11.

If you want to know how much someone helps a team win with his rebounding look at the DRB% of that player. Moses Malone's defensive rebounding is basically on par with Nowitzki's, his BLK% and STL% too. The defensive impact of Moses Malone was not big, for sure not bigger than Nowitzki's, especially when we take into account the negative effect of turnovers for the team defense. It is very likely that Moses Malone's impact on the game was lowered due to the high TO-R (turnover rate has a -0.3 correlation coefficient to scoring margin, a much bigger impact factor than offensive rebounding).

And that all is reflected in the team results with and without Moses Malone. He didn't make such a big difference, for sure not a big difference as people seem to think.

8 seasons vs. 7 seasons while James had a bigger impact, I don't see the longevity argument for Moses Malone. Nobody would pick Kevin Willis over Dwight Howard based on longevity either.

More:

mysticbb wrote:Nobody is ignoring playoff games, but that comparison wins James easily. Don't be fooled by some playoff games you might not be impressed about, but James had much more dominant performances than Moses Malone. And Malone played in 100 playoff games, James in 92.

No, I don't agree that Moses Malone was overall a player which gives me more than LeBron James. He has more personal accomplishments with the MVP awards and Finals MVP, but those awards were also really circumstantial.

I confused the poster, but I also could have sworn that DS posted some stuff against Moses too.

It was a LeBron vs Moses debate, but I think that's pretty damning evidence against Moses overall. And Duncan imo is at least on the same level as LeBron (actually, he's better imo).

mysticbb wrote:

asindc wrote:Having seen Moses' peak years, I can tell you that his impact indeed went beyond mere numbers. He was the ultimate difference-maker during those years.

If that would be the case, we would have seen that in the results. But we have multiple instances in which Moses Malone missed games and the difference was between 2 and 3. "Ultimate difference makers" are usually making a bigger difference, especially when we are talking about mediocre teams in most of those cases. In 1977/78 missing Tomjanovic or Murphy made clearly a bigger difference to the Rockets than missing Malone. Somehow that great difference maker was closer to a Kevin Love type difference maker than to a Tim Duncan type difference maker.

asindc wrote:Without him, '81 Houston misses the playoffs if you sub in an average center.

Yeah, given the fact that the Rockets barely made the playoffs, that isn't unlikely. BUT the 1981 run of the Rockets was probably one of the most luckiest streaks for a team in NBA playoff history. The only reason for the Rockets to advance against the Lakers was a lucky streak from the free throw line while the Lakers (Magic in that case) missed more free throws in game 3 than they usually did. If both teams would have made the free throws at their normal rate, the Lakers would have won that game, the difference was 8 pts in that game alone due to lucky free throw shooting in favor of the Rockets. Similar story against the Spurs in game 5, when the Rockets made 4 more than expected and the Spurs 3 less. After that the Rockets played an even worse team in the conference finals, the Kansas City Kings were a -0.49 SRS team, the Rockets -0.2 SRS team. That is probably the worst conference finals ever happened in the history of the NBA. Two below average teams in the conference finals is more related to luck than to skill.

asindc wrote:Without him, '83 Sixers probably don't get past the Celtics.

Why should they? The 76ers didn't play the Celtics in the 83 playoffs. So much about you saying " I have watched Malone ...".

asindc wrote:I assure you, that Sixers team was not winning a championship with Caldwell Jones instead of Moses

Yeah, they just made it to the finals one year before, while being a 5.7 SRS team. The difference isn't as huge as you might think.

asindc wrote:No team was winning a championship in the 80s without a loaded team, making the '81 Houston run all that more impressive.

Narrative, nothing more. The 81 Rockets were a below average team, who happened to get lucky at the line twice in the first round series against the Lakers, a team which wasn't that strong in that year. The Spurs and the Kings in 1981 were far away from a loaded team. That 81 playoff run is only impressive, when you ignore the circumstances while imaging that the Rockets beat loaded teams with excellent play. But that didn't happen.


In such a comparison I take Tim Duncan, EASILY! There is no way that I'm not picking the far superior defensive player and the at least equally good offensive player.

bastillon wrote:

bastillon wrote:

JordansBulls wrote:Why do people say Moses was overrated?

1) his defense was poor, was a big mins guy on the worst defensive team of his era (late 70s/early 80s Rockets) so he deserves a lot of blame for that, particularly playing the center position which has the most impact on defense both in positive and negative way. if you're a bad defensive PG, it won't matter all that much, but if you're Bargnani your team is surely not gonna be able to hide you defensively.

2) his offense was dependant on playing with other star players, you couldn't run the offense through Moses like you could with many of the all time bigs, it gets worse, you couldn't even dump the ball down low and expect Moses to dominate 1 on 1 because he didn't really have much of a post-game. his scoring was all about offensive rebounding and finishing off of others. sure he had some scoring moves, that famous pump fake and drive, he fouled out your entire frontline, he was amazing FT scorer, he was surely very unconventional, but the most valuable bigs gave you a guy who is able to be a playmaker, either from the high post (Walton, KG) or from the low post (Hakeem, Shaq). Moses was neither.

3) his style of play made his offense hurt his team's defense because as he was crashing the boards, he was unable to get back on defense and that was a huge loss in an era when every team played at 100+ pace. if you look at Moses stats what stands out the most is offensive rebounding, the least valuable stat in the boxscore. then you have high volume scoring @ high efficiency but those pts come as a finisher, not from his shot creation. think Pau Gasol vs McHale. then most importantly you have his defense being well sub-par. didn't boxout very well (Rockets had bad defensive rebounding %), blocked some shots but that came from chasing blocks not from playing good defense, played well as a man defender but that's not nearly as important as help D etc. the study of Moses Malone's game teaches you which boxscore stats are important in terms of high impact, and which aren't. it teaches you what's the right way of playing basketball. Moses' style

as a result of which his boxscore stats were great but they didn't translate very well to impact. Moses was excellent at what he was doing, as boxscore stats clearly indicate, but what he was doing wasn't necessarily that valuable to his teams. it wasn't the right way.

mysticbb wrote:

kasino wrote:the better scorer/rebounder/defender isn't picked here?

Playoff numbers. All 12 years for Nowitzki and for Malone from 1979 to 1989.

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              Gm   PPG   TS%   ORB%  DRB%  AST%  TOV%  STL%  BLK%  PER  WS/48
Malone        77   23.8  54.8  14.1  23.4  6.5   11.3  1.1   2.4   22.1 0.177
Nowitzki     128   25.9  58.4  4.2   24.6  11.8  9.4   1.4   1.8   24.7 0.205


So, overall Malone had a couple of more blocked shots and the higher ORB%. The higher BLK% came from Malone rather trying to block a shot than really defend the position and the higher ORB% was a result of Malone playing strictly underneath the opponents basket. Overall Malone's playing style did not lead to a huge impact. His defense was mediocre at best, him being late back on defense was making the defense rather worse. Nowitzki has to be seen as the better defender.
Malone's positional advantage underneath the own basket did not lead to a higher percentage of rebounds. That is a big indicator that Nowitzki is indeed the better rebounder. The raw boxscore numbers are giving a misleading impression here.
Nowitzki has a huge advantage in terms of passing and ball handling, something which can't be ignored. Overall Nowitzki was the higher impact player and a look at the advanced boxscore metrics reveals him also having the better combination of production and efficiency. Thus, the logical choice has to be Nowitzki in both cases. Especially for the team building aspect we have to see that Malone missed more games.

mysticbb wrote:

Optms wrote:The one year they did miss in '78 he only played in 59 games.

The Rockets missing the playoffs in 1978 had more to do with that:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgqUZ1IAA_8[/youtube]

Until that point the Rockets play like a 0.1 SRS team. Then, with Tomjanovic out and Moses Malone in, the Rockets went down to play like a -4.4 SRS team, a 4.5 point drop. For the game without Moses Malone and without Tomjanovic the Rockets played like a -6.9 SRS team. Malone showed an impact of +2.5 on a -6.9 team, leading them to be a -4.4 team. That is something about 30 players in the league can do. But most certainly that is an impact other All-Time great players laugh about.

Optms wrote:Afterwards, lead the 76ers to an NBA title including a playoff appearance year he was there. During their championship playoff run, he averaged 25 and 15.

The 76ers without Malone went to the finals! Seriously, which Mavericks team would have been capable of going to the finals without Nowitzki?

mysticbb wrote:

kasino wrote:please show that statement to be true
offensive rebound and defensive rebounding show mixed results in a team being better offensively or defensively

Make a regression analysis on the available data since 1973/74 and you will see what I mean. Just glancing over some of the results and conclude "mixed results" is pretty much useless. For sure, you will find exception from the rule always, but in average the better teams tend to rebound better defensively, but not offensively.

kasino wrote:well just using SRS the Rockets had a -10.73 drop but with Philly with him had a 1.79 improvement. SO Moses did have a defensive impact

The Rockets shifted a lot of minutes around and actually tanked that season in order to get the better draft pick. As the worst record in the conference at least ensured the 2nd pick.
The 76ers marginal improved, a similar thing is seen in the year later when Moses Malone missed games.

kasino wrote:that is a very small sample size and the Warriors had Andris at center

Andris Biedrins from 2007 to 2011 had a 25.6 DRB%, that is higher than Moses Malone's. And yeah, Nowitzki did not play often as center, but when he did and played closer to the opponents basket, he showed that he can get offensive rebounds.

kasino wrote:he just isn't the rebounder Moses is, I don't know how this is up for debate

For sure you don't understand that, because you would need to start analyzing how they played. That is for sure tougher than just taking a raw rebounds per game numbers and make assumption based on numbers without context.

ronnymac2 wrote:But I get the feeling you think Moses is a one-trick pony who excels at the one aspect of basketball that has a very low correlation with positive team results- offensive rebounding. Is my feeling accurate?

No, not at all. Moses Malone was a very, very good basketballer. And when I say that he was like the earlier version of Kevin Love, you see that I'm talking about a +3 player here. He clearly had a positive impact on the outcome of the game, but not as big of an impact as his boxscore stats suggest. People seem to assume that he was some sort of great defender, but he wasn't. His raw rebounding numbers are making it seem as if he was such a great rebounder. He had a better feeling for the offensive board than others, but he also just rebounded his own missed layups quite often. His passing and ball handling was clearly worse in comparison to other All-Time great bigs, there shouldn't be a debate. Overall we can see that he didn't make such a big difference, nonetheless he was making a positive impact on the game.
Well, my words might give the impression you have, but that is mainly because a lot of people seem to just take the MVP awards, the lucky 1981 playoff run and his raw boxscore numbers in order to assume that Moses Malone had some freaking high peak.

therealbig3 wrote:drza, I know that you have been consistent with taking two-way bigs over wings...but why Ewing over K. Malone? I understand Ewing seemed to be a traditional defensive anchor in a way Malone wasn't...but Malone was a very good, maybe even elite, man defender. He was someone who could co-anchor a great defense, or perhaps more accurately, be a "2nd option" on defense. And we know how good he was offensively.

He had a better feeling for the offensive board than others, but he also just rebounded his own missed layups quite often.

MisterWestside wrote:People can vote for whom they want to vote for, but where did Ewing come from? The voting in these threads seem to be haphazard.

drza wrote:Answering from last thread, I'd start off by pointing out that I'm one of the few that have been consistently bringing up K. Malone for a couple of threads now. I had to bring him up a couple of times, actually, before I could really get anyone besides ElGee to even comment on him. In fact, I started bringing him up before Ewing and it really wasn't until after Fatal's post reminded me of what Ewing was pre-injury and I went back and started looking deeper into it that Ewing leapfrogged K. Malone and moved to the top of my list. Before that, it was K. Malone that was probably the biggest threat to the perimeter players in my voting queue. You're right, he is an excellent big man that seems to have noticeable impact on defense in addition to his offense.

And this is key, because while Malone is strong on defense, he isn't an anchor. Ewing and Robinson can no-doubt be the best defensive players on dominant defenses...Malone can't.

bastillon wrote:how about you read the last thread and find out ? I'm going to call out everyone who complains about voting selection without providing any arguments to the contrary. let's treat each other seriously. we're not writing these essays just to put it out there. if you don't read the arguments and then start complaining you're making a Drew Gooden type impact on this discussion. not cool.

bastillion wrote:@realbig, ciz-me, why TMac over Nash ?

bastillon wrote:Houston's big task for 1983 season was getting nr 1 pick (Ralph Sampson). as with the rest of those tanking situations (Bulls 99, Spurs 97, Cavs 11 etc), I don't really give a lot of credit to missing star player. I've seen strange things happen.

Philly's improvement wasn't massive. they went up by 1.8 SRS and while that seems pretty big given they were already very good and couple of players were already missing, it's still VERY far from guys like Nash, Paul etc who were making their teams contenders and you could see the same contenders fall apart with them on the bench.

now something I don't think any poster brought up in this Moses discussion... Philly 81 were actually 7.76 SRS team which means they posted better SRS than with Moses. so clearly, Philly had some room for improvement and it's likely they kind of coasted in 82 RS. also Darryll Dawkins missed 34 games which may have impacted their artificially low rebounding numbers.

Moses clearly made impact, not saying he didn't, but Philly seemed to miss Dr J more. I don't if you know this but they only played ~3.5 SRS without Dr J in 1983. I'd say that's a pretty big knock on Moses. that was still a team with Bobby Jones, Toney and Cheeks. 3.5 SRS doesn't sound big to me.

now putting this season in a bigger context. let's look at some surrounding seasons. before Philly Moses had multiple years where his teams underachieved in SRS relative to their talent level. you can go through those teams and it really doesn't seem like Moses is making big impact. after 83 Philly never did any damage and Moses quickly started bouncing from one team to another... while making negligible impact for a guy of his caliber. with portability factor being much-discussed in these recent threads, I just don't see how that makes him versatile enough.

accolades are pretty much irrelevant to me. media have been terrible voters throughout NBA history. I'm only concerned about facts and reasonings, not mere opinions.

The 76ers without him were already a 5.7 SRS team, with him that improved to 8.15 SRS with a healthy Erving playing in 1983. When Erving missed 10 games (2 games in January and 8 games in March with a wrist injury) the 76ers went down to a 3.06 SRS team. The 76ers without a absolute peak Malone were better than the 76ers with absolute peak Malone and without past peak Erving.

MisterWestside wrote:

bastillon wrote:how about you read the last thread and find out ? I'm going to call out everyone who complains about voting selection without providing any arguments to the contrary. let's treat each other seriously. we're not writing these essays just to put it out there. if you don't read the arguments and then start complaining you're making a Drew Gooden type impact on this discussion. not cool.

I didn't see any essays for Ewing until page 10 of the last thread, and only one person voted for him up to page 9/10.

Posters tossed around players like T-Mac, West, argued for/against Malone; but Ewing was a relative left-field pick.

People can vote for whom they want to vote for, but where did Ewing come from? The voting in these threads seem to be haphazard.

C-izMe wrote:

bastillon wrote:btw, I'd like people to answer these questions in the following threads to come:

1. was Ewing a net negative offensive player ?
2. why did Knicks perform better without him offensively ?
3. do you think his offensive impact would've been bigger with different teammates/lesser role ?
4. was Ewing a good playoff performer or disappointing ?

really interesting to me. Ewing's impact defensively probably was underrated (GOAT level, it seems). I don't think Duncan seperates himself from Ewing defensively. I'd take Ewing's better man defense and shotblocking over Duncan's superior help defense and defensive rebounding. but offensively Ewing did not seem to work well with his team. so what happened ? was he really having a 2-way impact ?

Great post. As a Knicks fan I have to say the most interesting thing I've ever read about flaws in star players is the Ewing Theory. I can't simply dismiss a fairly large sample size, and I can't see Ewing having negative impact on either side of the ball; best shooting center ever among all timers, decent passer, high iq, and on the other end he led best defensive dynasty since Russell's Celtics (I'm sure everyone can agree on this), played great man defense while intimidating the other team, and is a top 5-8 defensive player ever.
His track record speaks for itself: The Jordan championship teams played worse agains the Knicks then anyone else (by a distance), he guarded Hakeem well in the 94 Finals holding him to 26.9ppg in 7 games which I believe was his lowest in a series between both championship years and possibly 93 [EDIT: Forgot about the Sonic series] too (don't ask about Ewing's offense though), and in his prime (from 90-94) he averaged 23.8/11.1/2.5 on 52TS. Slightly underwhelming but not bad at all (especially considering his competition).

Someone posted the numbers of Jordan in the PS against Pat and everyone else. If someone can find it and post it I'll be thankful because he's definetly in the next batch of players.

fatal9 wrote:If we are considering peak Ewing only, that would be him in 1990. Offensively he was much better back then. He was moving much better, his knees were feeling probably the best they ever did in the NBA and he posted 29 ppg on 58 TS% (55 FG%). Couple of things that might throw people off are that Knicks were "only" 45-37, but consider that Oakley missed 21 games, Mark Jackson had the worst season of his career (benched in favor of 33 year old Cheeks by end of season), mid-season trades (Strickland for Cheeks), a new coach, a net negative player like old Kiki V joining the team at the end of the season (7-15 in games he played...this stretch took the air out of Ewing's MVP candidacy) and it's obvious the '90 team didn't really have the stability and continuity of the other Knick teams.

In the playoffs Ewing pulled off an upset against the Celtics by winning three straight elimination games (had 33/19, 44/13/5/7/2 on 75% shooting (!), 31/8/10/4 in those three games respectively). Against the Pistons in the next series he was in foul trouble in some games but still averaged 27/10 on 56 TS% against them. This is a version of Ewing without the offensive inefficiency that we're used to from him in the 90s. He gets more space on his baseline fadeaway and he's better at finishing baskets when he gets the ball down low. You can't look at his offensive impact later on in the 90s when the "Ewing Theory" really caught steam and use that say he was a net negative player offensively in the early 90s/late 80s (particularly 1990) because he was a different player then, especially physically. Felt like he aged 5 years between 1990 and 1992.

Despite all of this, you don't want a roster where you depend on Ewing for 30 points a night, and with a proper team I doubt he would be asked to score that much and would expend more energy on the boards/defense. But still, it's nice to know that he had another gear offensively that year where you could really ride him to wins.

The only thing is that in '90, his team defensive performance wasn't quite as dominant as we're used to. But that's more because of the personnel surrounding him, continuity issues and the biggest difference is probably that he wasn't under a defensive minded coach like Riley yet. His shot blocking is dominant here, 4 bpg, second only to Hakeem, which is impressive considering how much energy he was expending on offense. With the way he was moving back then (and it's not like he's inexperienced...he was 27 in 1990), I don't see how he doesn't have the same impact defensively if put in a system where defense is emphasized. So team defensive performance is down that year, but he's still the same great defensive anchor.

So while over the course of Ewing's career, I think there are questions about his offensive impact, I don't have those concerns when we look at just his peak.

drza wrote:This thread I'm looking primarily at West, TMac 03, Karl, and Barkley. Perhaps Paul and Nash as well. Would also like to hear more about the New York boys (Ewing and King). Maybe even Pippen on the horizon. Not sure what to do with Moses, but in the end I likely won't have to worry about it because he'll probably be voted in before I would have decided to vote for him anyway. And is there any push or case to be made for one of Petit's seasons? Some general thoughts:
[...]
*Someone in a recent thread (maybe Fatal?) made a strong post about Ewing and his huge 2-way impact before the knee injury, including an excellent playoff run. If that case is made right, I could be convinced to vote Ewing as soon as this spot, because he's legitimately a dominant defensive anchor (arguably the best that isn't currently voted in) so if the case could be made that he's an offensive centerpiece as well he could go to the top of my list.

bastillon wrote:guys I'm looking at:
-West 70
-Ewing 90
-Pippen 94/95
-Nash 05/07
-Paul 08
[...]
-Ewing, even though fatal9 argued well for his offense, it's still pretty suspect to me. he's more efficient in the 90 but it's not like you want to run the offense through him other than couple dump offs every quarter. Ewing is not a good passer and that's a huge concern for me. I know he played extremely well vs Celtics but I just don't trust him offensively. defensively he's really a monster but I would like to know how much Pat Rileys scheme influenced those Knicks defensively. I don't think it gets talked about enough.

drza wrote:1990 Patrick Ewing

Needs to be getting more discussion IMO. Here is the B-R breakdown for 90 Ewing vs 2 of his peers that are already in: 1994 Hakeem and 1995 Robinson:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y3=1995

If you follow that link you might be surprised by how similar the 3 were in boxscore stats. I was...even though I was watching those years, I'd kind of started associating Ewing with his mid-1990s self. I kinda forgot how he was pre-knee injury. Ewing was scoring and rebounding at the exact same volume and efficiency as Hakeem and Robinson, and was better even than Robinson in the postseason.

bastillon wrote:

drza wrote:1990 Patrick Ewing

Needs to be getting more discussion IMO. Here is the B-R breakdown for 90 Ewing vs 2 of his peers that are already in: 1994 Hakeem and 1995 Robinson:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y3=1995

If you follow that link you might be surprised by how similar the 3 were in boxscore stats. I was...even though I was watching those years, I'd kind of started associating Ewing with his mid-1990s self. I kinda forgot how he was pre-knee injury. Ewing was scoring and rebounding at the exact same volume and efficiency as Hakeem and Robinson, and was better even than Robinson in the postseason.

I'm typing 1 handed at moment which is limiting (and annoying), so I'll stop and quote Fatal's good Ewing post for more context:

oh I'm sorry but this Olajuwon parallel is just way off. his offense was nowhere near Hakeem because he was far worse at both scoring and passing. his stats really overstate his offensive abilities here. peak Hakeem was pretty much a perfect low post player. do you really think Knicks would have those results with Olajuwon ?

I'm not sold on Ewing's offense at all. I understand that he seemed a lot better in 90 going by his stats but the fact that it's such an outlier among his other years really concerns me. it's probably just some coincidence of several factors (team style, coaching schemes, his better play) instead of Ewing legitimately improving his game. I mean what happened between 89 and 90 that Ewing became so much more potent offensively ? why sudden regress in 91 and then another sudden, bigger dropoff in 92 ? is it really all health ? I'm not sold on this.

I do think Ewing's prime gets underrated in comparison to D-Rob though. if the argument for D-Rob is that although he is a fundamentally flawed offensive anchor, he fits perfectly as the perfection 2nd option, the same holds true for Ewing. I would never trust him to run my offense through him because of his weak passing and heavy reliance on inconsistent jumpshot but I could see him being a much better 2nd option. D-Rob got voted in way too early though. his offensive impact was just weak in the postseason and I don't think his defense makes up for that.

Dr Positivity wrote:After thinking it over, I'm changing my vote to 1990 Ewing. Although not a true #1 option offensively, I like the idea of his elite defense + still excellent offense (even with his weaknesses, how little impact could 29ppg/.60 TS% with floor spacing and offensive rebounding, be having?) giving a team a HUGE building block to work around. Also I feel culturally a team is likely to come together more behind Ewing than Tmac because of his effort level

Lightning25 wrote:You know what, change my vote to 1990 Patrick Ewing.

He was a great two-way player like West and I give Ewing the advantage over West for being a big. Ewing was dominant as heck in 1990 and he gets overlooked. I think one could easily argue that 1990 Ewing was better than 1995 Robinson.

An Unbiased Fan wrote:

Lightning25 wrote:You know what, change my vote to 1990 Patrick Ewing.

He was a great two-way player like West and I give Ewing the advantage over West for being a big. Ewing was dominant as heck in 1990 and he gets overlooked. I think one could easily argue that 1990 Ewing was better than 1995 Robinson.

I really have to disagree with this. The Knicks were only the #13 defense in 1990, and Ewing wasn't playing stellar D that year. The Knicks didn't become an elite defense until Pat Riley showed up and demanded it.

As a rebounder, he's was good, not great. In fact, I really would have to ask how he beats out Karl Malone, who had a higher PPG & RPG in 1990.

Lightning25 wrote:He was averaging about 4 bpg that season. I don't know why everyone feels like the entire offensive/defensive rating should fall on the shoulders of one player. This is basketball, a team sport, a 5 on 5 sport, everybody matters, not just one star.

Yes it is true that Knicks weren't great defensively until Riley showed up but defensive coaching has more impact on defenses than one individual player does anyways.

An Unbiased Fan wrote:For reflection, the 1990 Knicks also had Oakley, who was a great defender. Oak also was NY's leading rebounder, not Ewing.

Ewing's 4 BPG don't mean much to me either, because I don't value blocks to begin with. I think counting BPG for D, is like counting dunks per game for offense. I'm only interested in whether the defender prevented a score, not how flashy he did it.

I'm failing to see how 1990 Ewing is on par with Karl Malone, Moses, or even Dwight. Nevermind the fact that Barkley has been forgotten, West is still around, Petitt has gotten no run, nor has Mikan.

fatal9 wrote:People are questioning this guy's defense?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hylBSIMbeZg[/youtube]

Come on...this is '92-'94 Ewing but with way better knees. I mean every game I've seen of his from this season, it's the type of combo of scoring variety, defense and athleticism, Knicks fans always wished he had. He was seen as a better center than Hakeem that year, made the all-NBA first over him and had coaches around the league saying he was the best center in the league.

Parish said that Ewing "is a better player today because he has variety of shots, just doesn't throw the fadeaway jumpshot, he gives you the jump hook and his spin move on the baseline is the toughest thing for me to guard" (so this isn't exactly the fadeaway jumpers all game long offensive version of Ewing we remember most). From what I've read guys say about him, he took a big leap in his post game that season but declined as the 90s went on because his knees got worse and worse (and of course he aged, he was in his 30s during '92-'94...and consequently shot jumpers wayyyyyy more often), and as a result so did his efficiency. Even in something like FT shooting, it's way above his career average and his best year ever. He is doing a lot of heavy lifting offensively...must be turning the ball over a lot like he always did, but nope, while putting up the scoring numbers he did, he also posted the third best TOV% of his career. It's not like Ewing is inexperienced here either, he is 27-28 which is usually when players peak so career trajectory wise, it makes sense.

Knicks were still above average defensively considering the following things: a rookie head coach (Stu Jackson, fired 15 games into next season...and only coached one other team after that, the 6-33 Grizzlies), the second best defender on the team missing 21 games, a bad defensive backcourt particularly when Kiki joins the team. I would say he's making pretty good impact here (and we know he can probably make a lot more if he is on a championship caliber team where he doesn't have to score as much). This is one of the great interior defenders of all time, he didn't learn defense when he was 30 years old just like KG didn't magically learn to play defense when he joined the Celtics. His comparison was Bill Russell coming out of college, he was seen as one of the finest defensive talents ever. The questions weren't "can he defend?" but "can he add enough to his post game?" (and he did in 1990). In terms of interior defense, he's ones of the best ever, anything you threw around the basket was going to get challenged, no easy baskets even it meant you put him on a poster. He's second in the league in blocks behind Hakeem, I know averages aren't everything but this isn't Javale McGee we are talking about, but a fundamentally sound defensive player, who plays great post defense and whose block averages reflect his ability to absolutely lock down the paint. I'm going to guess a better moving version of the guy who was anchoring historic defenses a year and a half later was still pretty damn effective on defense. Seems like a reasonable conclusion.

Regarding the Ewing Theory. It refers to the mid/late 90s version of Ewing (in his mid 30s) who is 5+ years away from the year in question here and a CLEAR step down offensively. Even if it were true, it's not very relevant. It's like using Kobe's impact last couple of years to define his impact in '08.

One thing I kind of wish there was more of an argument for was D-Rob (who I think went a few spots too high) vs. Ewing. Would people really take '95 D-Rob in a playoff series over '90 Ewing? Has D-Rob ever taken over offensively for his teams in the playoffs like that? Could D-Rob give the bad boy Pistons defense 45 point game and then come back and drop 30 points in the second half of the next game? And don't forget the intangibles, Ewing was intimidating on the court, a better leader, a guy who has an impact over the entire mentality of the team. I think a great argument I read for D-Rob was that he'd be a great second banana offensively on a championship team but would still be the best overall player on the team...could the same thing not be said about '90 Ewing?

DavidStern wrote:Another great post by fatal and I agree with you 100% (even youtube video you posted was uploaded by me, because I was so impressed by Ewing's play).

And Ewing theory is completly BS... at least until he was 36 years old. In 1986 he missed 32 games and NYK without him were worse by 6.2 efficiency pts (Ewing improved offense by 1 and defense by 5,2).

1987: 19 games missed, -7 without Ewing (0.4 offense, 6,6 defense)

1996: 6 games missed, -10.6 without Ewing (he improved defense by 12.2 drtg! but offense was worse with him by 1.6)

1998: 56 games missed, -5.4 without Ewing (he improved defense by 7.3 but offense was worse with him by 1.9)

1999: 12 games missed, NYK were better without him by 2.7 eff pts (but still defense was better with Ewing by 1.5)

2000: 20 games missed, team worse by 1.1 with Ewing (but with him offense was better by 3.5 and defense worse by 4.6)

So we see that through almost whole career he was great defensive player and during his early years, before knees were destroyed by injuries, he was also slightly positive player on offense. I really see no reason to put him so much behind DRob whose profile and impact on the game are very close to Ewing's.

vote: Ewing 1990

bastillon wrote:I still don't see how Ewing's impact is better than Nash's but since the latter isn't getting any traction and people are actually voting for Moses now ( ) I'm changing my vote to Ewing 90. I was about to vote for him right after Nash anyway. what really works for Ewing though is that Knicks overperformed in the postseason along with Ewing's improvement and monster performances.

DavidStern wrote:

therealbig3 wrote:Ewing did come out of left field a little bit, and he was a great player...but people need to realize that you can be separated by 7-8 spots and still be considered "close"...you don't HAVE to vote Ewing in now just because D-Rob was voted in a little while ago.

True, but Ewing is better choice than '68 West and much better than '83 Moses. And I would vote for Pat soon anyway (after Nash and CP3), so from my POV it's still better to vote for him now.

And Ewing over;
- '68 West, because Pat was defensive anchor with positive impact on offense, while '68 West seems as 0 (in best case) on defense, his health was issue, and on offense was used in wrong way (he should play more with the ball, like in 1972 for example - that's when small players are the most valuable; it's really interesting that Lakers started to play better when West started to shot less and passing more... that's one of the arguments used against Stockton, but the same anti Stockton realGMers don't see the same trend with West...)

- '83 Moses, because his overrated value (people look only on PPG and RPG) was recently often discussed and I think he wasn't even the best player on that 76ers team

- '03 TMac, because I don't see how he could be more valuable than defensive anchor like Ewing. McGrady was clearly positive on offense, but it seems not so good as his PPG numbers suggest.


EDIT

West's PPG, Lakers SRS, West's FGA+ FTA

Code: Select all


PTS   SRS   fg+ft
31,3   2,76   34,3
31,2   1,76   33,2
31   1,7   33,1
30,8   1,8   36,2
28,7   0,31   31,4
28,7   0,89   31
27,1   2,67   30,8
26,9   3,26   28,7
26,3   4,99   27,7
25,9   3,84   28,8
25,8   11,65   28,2
22,8   8,18   24,8
-------------------
20,3   0,85   23,1 last season, only 31 games
17,6   -0,12   22,3 rookie year


fatal9 wrote:Some context around the 1990 Knicks: The Knicks started out 34-17 before making the Strickland trade. Then finished the season 11-20 for a combination of reasons. I wish I had game 3 of the Celtics series on my computer because Peter Vecsey does a decent job in a halftime segment of showing all the chemistry issues the Knicks had in the last couple of months of the season (these issues were why Knicks were given no chance to beat the Celtics). From making the Strickland trade, to Mark Jackson getting booed on the court and benched for 33 year old Cheeks, to Oakley fracturing his left hand and missing games, to Kiki V coming back and joining the team. These are a LOT of lineup changes for a team to endure mid-season, Knicks had a different starting PG, a different starting PF, a different starting SF (all of whom were defensive downgrades) in the last month of the season than they did when they were winning and putting up one of the best records in the league. I don't think it's a coincidence how the team performance changed so much just as the Knicks began encountering instability in their lineup. Unfortunately this stretch thwarted Ewing's MVP campaign as well (he was in the convo with Magic, Barkley, MJ for it). That was a 50+ win team disguised by the issues at the end of the season, so I would say Ewing was doing a great job of getting the best out of what he was given.

Some posts here seem to be have no sense of context surrounding his season, no analysis of his game (probably haven't bothered to watch any games), just going off a very very superficial analysis of "let me check PER and team defensive rating" and draw conclusions. This type of analysis is only going to produce outrageous statements such as "90 Malone was better than Ewing" or that Ewing "wasn't even on par with Dwight".

This is a peak project, I have a feeling people are letting their bias from mid/late 90s Ewing (who I have issues with offensively too) cloud their judgement on how good he was this year. I had a similar bias, but then I began watching his games from that season (about 15 or so) and what I'm seeing a dominant defender (his defensive versatility is better here than later in the 90s, my one gripe defensively would be that he was more prone to foul trouble this season than he would be later) with an offensive package like we've never seen Ewing put together at any other point of his career.

Why was he so much better offensively? As I've been mentioning, he had more variety in his offensive game, this was something everyone in the league was talking about. He went from being a predictable offensive player who was easy to game plan for, to being a lot more well rounded who mixed up and expanded his scoring repertoire. He was better at creating space on his shots, got that extra bit of separation he wasn't quite getting later as the years went on and a result he was having a lot of success as a one on one scorer in the post. He was at his physical peak in the NBA, insane stamina, a lot more athletic, moved better, had a bit more spring in his legs, which naturally allowed him to have a better conversion rate around the basket. His aggressiveness is completely different, he wasn't content to bail you out with fadeaways all game, he attacked the defense more often ever and consequently posted the best FTA numbers of his career (combined with a career best FT% which further raised his efficiency). His passing also took a big leap that year. While he wasn't Shaq or prime Hakeem, he was competent at reading doubles, this is another observation that is obvious to me from watching games and also reading/listening to what people around the league were saying.

This isn't a guy who saw an increase in his averages because he just upped his numbers and feasted on bad defenses either (like say D-Rob in '94), he was lighting up everyone. Here he is putting up 41/15 on Eaton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O45_E9hkgLk. Here is the game where he put up 45/16 against the best defensive team in the league: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoPOSrHEgHk. His offensive numbers against good defensive teams/centers were very good over the course of the entire season.

Here's an article midway through the season (when Knicks were 25-10) talking about Ewing's amazing improvement on offense and how surprised everyone was by how much he improved:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

Some things which stand out:

"But what the NBA is seeing these days, and is likely to be seeing through a good bit of the next decade, is much, much more. Some of the old images of Ewing are dated. He has buried them under an avalanche of soft, turnaround jump shots. "The book on him always was, Make him shoot over you, make him earn it," says Boston's backup center, Joe Kleine. "Well, now he's earning it." The power, the intimidation, the fearlessness are still there, but so are grace and finesse and economy of movement, terms previously associated with Houston's Akeem Olajuwon, Ewing's yardstick through most of the '80s, and San Antonio rookie David Robinson, the only other NBA center currently mentioned in the same breath with Ewing and Olajuwon."

Ewing's play has been an even more important component of New York's success. "He might be the best in the game right now," Los Angeles's Mychal Thompson told the New York Daily News after Ewing scored 29 points in a 115-104 loss on Dec. 3. "He and Magic [Johnson] are shoulder to shoulder."

"I know what people are saying now," says Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, "but when he came out of college, I don't recall anybody thinking he would score like this."

"I worked on some things this summer, just like I always do. I wanted to get better on coming into the lane with my left hand, and I've done that. I'm getting to the foul line more [his eight attempts per game are about two more than last season], and that's helped my scoring. But I haven't changed my jump shot. It just got better.

Ewing gradually improved under Pitino, but only recently has the whole package been unwrapped. It reveals an agile seven-footer whose turnaround jumper is accurate up to 20 feet; a heady player who discourages double-teaming with canny passes; an outstanding athlete who has somehow figured out the exotic fast-break passing strategies of point guards Mark Jackson and Rod Strickland, both of whom never make a simple move when 13 complicated ones will do; and a defensive intimidator whose 3.7 blocks per game at week's end were second only to Olajuwon's league-leading 4.2.

''He has taken his game to another level,'' Johnson continued, ''a level I've never seen him play at before. He's dominating offensively and defensively, but he's also making the right plays at the right time. He's leading his team, as opposed to before, when it seemed he'd just as soon let somebody else lead. That's the real mark of an MVP.''

An Unbiased Fan wrote:

fatal9 wrote:
Some posts here seem to be have no sense of context surrounding his season, no analysis of his game (probably haven't bothered to watch any games), just going off a very very superficial analysis of "let me check PER and team defensive rating" and draw conclusions. This type of analysis is only going to produce outrageous statements such as "90 Malone was better than Ewing" or that Ewing "wasn't even on par with Dwight".

Well since this is clearly aimed at my posts, let me respond.

1) As most know, I could care less about PER. I always favor an overall analysis.

2) I watched 90 Ewing play realtime, and while a great player, he wasn't even at his peak yet, not a Top 5 player that year, IMO. People are looking at his PPG, and ignoring the fact that his team was mediocre defensively with him anchoring, despite having Oak next to him for 61 games.

If you only want to look at Ewing's positives, and post articles highlighting them, cool. But don't get upset when some of us point out his shortcomings.

3) Saying that's it's outrageous to say Malone was better in 1990, is......in of itself outrageous.

Karl Malone, who for some reason has been forsaken, has a great case over 1990 Ewing, and again, that's not even Malone's peak. Karl put up 31 PPG on 63% TS, which again is rather amazing. His eFG% was 56.7%, and actually shot less shots per game than Ewing did. He grabbed more rebounds than Ewing, so you basically have to elevate Ewing's defense to All-D level in order for me to seriously give him the nod, which I can't. Karl was a much more complete, skilled, polished, dominant player than Ewing.

And I would put 2009-10 Dwight over 1990 Ewing. He did much more defensively, with less defensive talent than Ewing had. Ewing is better offensively, but the obvious tie-breaking is Dwight far superior rebounding. Never mind the impact difference. But again, I'm not sure what people are looking at when comparing, because guys who just missed out on higher ranks, aren't even getting mentions now. Criteria changes from thread to thread.

4) Historically speaking, people didn't regard Ewing as having some all-time great year in 1990, not at all. In fact he was just #5 in MVP voting that year, and didn't made a All-Defense team. Now accolades should not determine a player's year, but in the absence of compelling evidence in other areas, I find Ewing's case very lacking at this point. If this project is about the best peak years, I have to wonder how he's at #19. I don't even feel 1990 is Ewing's peak year, much less better than guys who have been mentioned for multiple threads now.

fatal9 wrote:Re: the D-Rob/Ewing stuff. I only wrote a little bit of a blurb regarding D-Rob and Ewing, mainly to point out that even if you have questions about Ewing's offensive game, he could be used in the same capacity on a championship team that people were arguing could make D-Rob the best player on a title team. I don't think it's fair to give D-Rob the benefit of the doubt when making that argument, but not Ewing. To be clear, I thought it was a good argument for D-Rob and find it may be appropriate here to ease concerns about Ewing's offense for some posters. The point is that these are both players who can be really easy to build around if you are aware of their weaknesses.

But regardless, the voting doesn't matter to me (I haven't even asked to participate in the vote, I care only for the discussion), and Ewing is not a player I normally champion here or anywhere (he's someone I respect, but wouldn't call myself a fan of). It's just a season I feel needs to be argued for because it can be easy to overlook given the biases we have from other versions of him and from what I detect is a lack of awareness of his team, his skills, and the overall level he was playing at on both ends that season.

PTB Fan wrote:Great discussion going on guys. Keep it up.

thizznation wrote:I have no problem with Ewing going this high. He was an elite two way center who tended to get underrated by many people in the past, mainly due to never winning it all. However as ElGee mentioned, it is startling to see the manner he was quickly ushered in and how rapidly votes swayed. And like ElGee said, when voting in players, the reasoning of "Well since DRob just got in, I guess it's about Ewing's time" is a lazy and inaccurate analysis. I strongly urge all voters to keep your voting criteria as consistent as possible during the entire project in order to help the overall quality of the results.

Dr Positivity wrote:I haven't had a lot of problem with the amount of Ewing discussion so far. He's been brought up a few times in the last few threads, and a lot in this one. 1990 Ewing is an absolutely sick season. One of the reasons I had been a little apprehensive about 90 Ewing at the time of the Robinson vote, is that I always assumed people considered Hakeem and Robinson to be a step above Ewing as defenders. However if it's widely considered he's in that range, in addition to 29ppg with floor spacing offensively, I see no controversy in this season being in the top 20 for ability to build a title team around

Ewing has been underrated for some time on RGM in general. Any time someone makes a thread asking whether they'd build a franchise around Ewing and guys like Barkley, Dirk, Moses, if Ewing didn't win, he'd at least get "toss-up" status, despite for a long time never getting respect on the ATL - Pippen, Frazier(!), and Baylor(!!) beating him on the top 100 was ridiculous IMO. Because of the value of building around a defensive anchor at C who gives you offense, vs offense only players like Barkley and Moses and Tmac and Nash, it's definitely defend-able to say choosing to build around Ewing because of his two way impact, is the correct, if less sexy choice