trex_8063 wrote:Relocating this discussion here since he's still on the table....
Owly wrote:I'll just come in in defense of Brand. I'll say this though, I never thought Marion would get in and it be with me not voting voting for him. But he's just last amongst a pack of guys I've had at the top of my list for more than 10 rounds (Nance, Brand, Marion). In any case ...
trex_8063 wrote:Now I'm going to pretend he had strong supporting casts in ANY of those years. However, I think it's a little unacceptable that a 2nd-year Brand can't get a team (any team) to 16 wins
I think you have to be ignoring the cast if you're putting 15 wins on Brand (the blame for, that is).
I’m not “blaming” Brand for 15 wins. I’m asking “why couldn’t he lift them to better?” And there is a difference. I think a player of Brand’s caliber (or at least, what his numbers would lead one to
think his caliber to be) should be able to lift ANY roster of legitimate NBA-level players to better than that.
Owly wrote:If you use EWA (and set replacement level at 11 PER, which roughly where it is on average though it varies by position), here's the credit for that team
Elton Brand 13.59024876
Brad Miller 3.852537313
Fred Hoiberg 4.807014925
Ron Mercer 4.792537313
Metta World Peace 3.056616915
Khalid El-Amin 0.55880597
Marcus Fizer 0
A.J. Guyton -0.219402985
Michael Ruffin -0.39358209
Corey Benjamin -0.93800995
Jamal Crawford -1.305970149
Bryce Drew -2.012686567
Jake Voskuhl -0.369950249
Dragan Tarlac -1.606567164
Steve Goodrich -0.456567164
Dalibor Bagaric -0.992189055
with a total of 22.36283582
Now obviously EWA comes out with too many wins (for all teams). But it has Brand contributing over half his teams net wins. And this isn't over a replacement level player (who might contribute some wins).
I indicated that while Brand’s boxscore metrics do look really impressive, I have concerns that his stats may have been “emtpy” to some degree during his early years, as they did not appear to correlate with any appreciable team success. Countering with another stat which is based on boxscore metrics doesn’t do a lot to assuage those concerns.
Further, if the implication is that Brand was responsible for ~13 of those wins (i.e. they’d have only won 2 games out of 82 without him), then I’m afraid I’m just not aboard with that idea.
Looking back thru the nearly 70 years of BAA/NBA history (plus 9 years of ABA history), the worst team record ever recorded was the ‘12 Bobcats at 7-59 (.106). Next worst was the now defunct Providence Steamrollers in ‘48, with a record of 6-42 (.125). The next worse is a tie between the ‘93 Mavericks and the ‘98 Nuggets, at 11-71 (.134) each. Next worst is the ‘87 Clippers at 12-70 (.146). And the next worst is a tie between the ‘94 Mavericks and the ‘05 Hawks at 13-69 (.159) each.
So out of all this time, and out of the thousands of teams assembled in that span, there has NEVER been a team wasn’t on pace to at the very least win “about” 9 games out of 82, and only ONE team (out of >1000) that wasn’t on pace to win >10.
And looking at what the sans-Brand roster of the ‘01 Bulls, I personally don’t think it looks significantly worse than the ‘93 Mavs, ‘05 Hawks, or ‘98 Nuggets.
In short, I suspect this is a team that is capable of winning 9-12 games even without Brand. So I find it disappointing that his presence only succeeds in bringing them up to a still abysmal 15.
Further, I look at the before/after pictures of these early Brand teams, noting major transactions (admittedly a ton of transition/rebuilding happening in Chicago, so no real chance to build chemistry).....
Chicago‘99: 13-37 (.260)
‘00: Obtain rookies Elton Brand, Ron Artest and Michael Ruffin. Also get Fred Hoiberg, Matt Maloney, and aging Hersey Hawkins, and get Chris Carr at mid-season. Lost Brent Barry, aging Mark Bryant, and aging Ron Harper. Coach is the same.
17-65 (.207).
’01: Obtain Ron Mercer, Bryce Drew, and a massive batch of rookies: Jamal Crawford, Marcus Fizer (who I was really disappointed in; I kinda had big hopes for him), Khalid El-Amin, AJ Guyton, and Dragan Tarlac. Lost Toni Kukoc, Dickey Simpkins, and old versions of Hersey Hawkins and Will Perdue. Same coach.
15-67 (.183).
’02:
Brand is gone. Also gone are Bryce Drew, Khalid El-Amin and Dragan Tarlac. Obtain rookies Eddy Curry, Trenton Hassell, and Tyson Chandler. They lose Ron Artest, Ron Mercer, and Brad Miller at mid-season, in exchange for Jalen Rose and Travis Best. Have aging Greg Anthony and Kevin Ollie for half the season only. Some coaching changes.
21-61 (.256).
Clippers’01: (before Brand) 31-51 (.378)
’02: 39-43 (.476)
’03: Obtain Andre Miller. Lose Earl Boykins, some coaching shake-up. Michael Olowakandi misses significant games. 27-55 (.329).
…...it basically isn’t too flattering to Brand: during his early years, despite the big numbers, his teams don’t seem to improve/worsen significantly when he arrives/leaves.
Can also take a peak at with/without records, which is only somewhat more flattering:
‘00: 17-64 (.210) with, 0-1 w/o
‘01: 15-59 (.203) with, 0-8 w/o
‘02: 38-42 (.475) with, 1-1 (.500) w/o
‘03: 22-40 (.355) with, 5-15 (.250) w/o
‘04: 22-47 (.319) with, 6-7 (.462) w/o
‘05: 37-44 (.457) with, 0-1 w/o
‘06: 44-35 (.557) with, 3-0 (1.000) w/o
‘07: 40-40 (.500) with, 0-2 w/o
‘08: 1-7 (.125) with, 22-52 (.297) w/o
That's not to say that I think Brand is a totally unreasonable candidate at this point. But this
is a concern. This apparent inability (for the most part) to generate team success----and I'm not suggesting he should have had those Bulls teams competing for a playoff spot or similar----it's a problem to me. Realistically, it's the biggest factor holding him back; because if you otherwise look
only at his individual numbers you'd likely conclude he's a top 60-65 player all-time.
The first element of my response is to say there's difficulty in discussing players in terms of wins, and team records, in part because of the game-by-game discrete nature of binary wins and losses (where contribution is more of a big picture thing), in part because of language (see immediately below), in part because doing it properly requires looking at how many wins you think every player on the roster contributed (and whether coaching is harming the win-loss total) and most just don't have the time to do that.
Whilst I don't think you were, per-se blaming Brand for the Bulls being a 15 win team, I had to use that term to distinguish between that and crediting him with his being worth a large part of that balance, given you were criticizing him for being on a 15 win team.
Anyhow difficulties aside, I'll try to clarify further and offer any responses required ...
I think a player of Brand’s caliber (or at least, what his numbers would lead one to think his caliber to be) should be able to lift ANY roster of legitimate NBA-level players to better than that.
See the body of my previous post. What makes you think that Chicago roster was a roster of legitimate NBA-level players trying to eke out every win possible. There's players (using a metric that has players at a 0 win baseline - not a replacement level 10-15 win team player level -, and, I believe, consistently over-predicts wins) costing two wins.
If you go down that roster and see a bunch of guys who are NBA level players fine. If however you see a "tanking" culture i.e. taking fliers on young players to see if they can play in the NBA, giving young players players more minutes than might be considered "earned" in the hope it helps them develop, a cheap roster, a lack of continuity and D and a coach that couldn't seem to cut it in the NBA maybe that changes things.
Further, if the implication is that Brand was responsible for ~13 of those wins (i.e. they’d have only won 2 games out of 82 without him), then I’m afraid I’m just not aboard with that idea.
It isn't. As noted EWA (from my limited experience) over-estimates, but proportionally that he'sworth over half their wins seems somewhat plausible, though there is somewhat of a problem here again with the wins barometer as I will touch on from your development of this point.
Looking back thru the nearly 70 years of BAA/NBA history (plus 9 years of ABA history), the worst team record ever recorded was the ‘12 Bobcats at 7-59 (.106). Next worst was the now defunct Providence Steamrollers in ‘48, with a record of 6-42 (.125). The next worse is a tie between the ‘93 Mavericks and the ‘98 Nuggets, at 11-71 (.134) each. Next worst is the ‘87 Clippers at 12-70 (.146). And the next worst is a tie between the ‘94 Mavericks and the ‘05 Hawks at 13-69 (.159) each.
So out of all this time, and out of the thousands of teams assembled in that span, there has NEVER been a team wasn’t on pace to at the very least win “about” 9 games out of 82, and only ONE team (out of >1000) that wasn’t on pace to win >10.
And looking at what the sans-Brand roster of the ‘01 Bulls, I personally don’t think it looks significantly worse than the ‘93 Mavs, ‘05 Hawks, or ‘98 Nuggets.
In short, I suspect this is a team that is capable of winning 9-12 games even without Brand. So I find it disappointing that his presence only succeeds in bringing them up to a still abysmal 15.
At the extremes terrible (or incredible) teams win (or lose) some games by dumb luck in a small sample size (single games). As a result of this it takes more badness (or goodness) at the extreme ends of the scale to move by one win. Big picture this is problem with wins as a metric, with "wins" not representing a constant value. Specifically in this instance it means Brand has to do more to improve a team by a specific number of wins that would typically be the case.
As for "without Brand" 9-12 wins, with what are you replacing Brand's minutes? A league average starter? A replacement level player? A zero win player? Bulls PFs (Fizer, Ruffin, Goodrich)?
Further, I look at the before/after pictures of these early Brand teams, noting major transactions (admittedly a ton of transition/rebuilding happening in Chicago, so no real chance to build chemistry).....
Chicago
‘99: 13-37 (.260)
‘00: Obtain rookies Elton Brand, Ron Artest and Michael Ruffin. Also get Fred Hoiberg, Matt Maloney, and aging Hersey Hawkins, and get Chris Carr at mid-season. Lost Brent Barry, aging Mark Bryant, and aging Ron Harper. Coach is the same.
17-65 (.207).
’01: Obtain Ron Mercer, Bryce Drew, and a massive batch of rookies: Jamal Crawford, Marcus Fizer (who I was really disappointed in; I kinda had big hopes for him), Khalid El-Amin, AJ Guyton, and Dragan Tarlac. Lost Toni Kukoc, Dickey Simpkins, and old versions of Hersey Hawkins and Will Perdue. Same coach.
15-67 (.183).
’02: Brand is gone. Also gone are Bryce Drew, Khalid El-Amin and Dragan Tarlac. Obtain rookies Eddy Curry, Trenton Hassell, and Tyson Chandler. They lose Ron Artest, Ron Mercer, and Brad Miller at mid-season, in exchange for Jalen Rose and Travis Best. Have aging Greg Anthony and Kevin Ollie for half the season only. Some coaching changes.
21-61 (.256).
Clippers
’01: (before Brand) 31-51 (.378)
’02: 39-43 (.476)
’03: Obtain Andre Miller. Lose Earl Boykins, some coaching shake-up. Michael Olowakandi misses significant games. 27-55 (.329).
…...it basically isn’t too flattering to Brand: during his early years, despite the big numbers, his teams don’t seem to improve/worsen significantly when he arrives/leaves.
Okay the headline that I'd take issue here with is the inclusion of '03 in a nominally "impact on arrival/departure" analysis. I just don't understand why it's there (other than to attempt to make Brand look bad). If '03 is an issue raise it, but raise it, don't put it where it doesn't make sense.
Other notes
'99: Perhaps a slightly "off" baseline (possibly in part due to the smaller sample) the Bulls post an SRS that should have earned them just a 9-41 record.
Then as you note there's massive continuity issues, plus a poor coach with a mandate to continue with a triangle offense (despite youth and team turnover). It's a bad situation and a difficult one to measure individual impact.
Clippers, on arrival leap up 8 wins.
Now if you want to discuss '03 fine. But it's not an upon arrival season. And I don't think it hurts Brand's stock. In part because your counting shows they're .105 worse without him, that account for a couple of games straight away. Throw in Brand's injuries making him play notably worse than the rest of his prime and you get a handful more (and an indication of a healthy Brand's impact). Throw in Maggette and Richardson's injuries on top of Olowakandi's and basically everyone's except ... Andre Miller who threw up perhaps the worst and most puzzling down year in a prime players career ever (mishandled by Gentry, Miller saw far less of the ball in isos and in the post, with Gentry running a lot of the offense through Olowakandi as a first option and then Odom, and spent more time hanging out on the perimeter launching 3s, though it looks as though he was less energetic in other areas, so it wasn’t just coaching), in fairness though Miller probably wasn’t costing wins on the prior year since he’d arrived for Darius Miles, a lesser player. Throw in that 5 of the top 6 guys in minutes that year (Brand, Odom, Maggette, Miller and Olowakandi) were all free agents in 2003 (Odom and Maggette restricted) so that probably screwed with cohesion quite a bit).
I indicated that while Brand’s boxscore metrics do look really impressive, I have concerns that his stats may have been “emtpy” to some degree during his early years, as they did not appear to correlate with any appreciable team success. Countering with another stat which is based on boxscore metrics doesn’t do a lot to assuage those concerns.
I’ve indicated some of the issues with using wins (not that they shouldn’t be used but with caution, and with a comprehensive look at context, rather than something that feels like “x wins is a bit disappointing”), on the flip side of this I’ll argue against “empty” stats. At least non-specific ones. If you’ve looked at JJ Hickson’s rebounding, and the team does better on the boards without him, and it doesn’t seem to be because of lineups with and without, then we can say “He’s cannibalizing easy team rebounds, those stats are empty”. If a player gambles excessively for steals, to the detriment of his team’s defense, we can say “He’s hurting his team, those are empty stats.” If there is evidence a player dominates the ball, holding it without pressuring or distorting the defense, or plays lazy defense (or forgets plays, fails to box out etc) we can say he is worse than his boxscore (if the ball dominant guy gets assists from passing at the end of the shot clock – we might specifically point to empty assists). But it’s hard for me to buy into “empty stats” without any evidence of how or why they might be so. OTOH it might be that Brand got easy rebounds playing for a bad (rebounding) team, at least in Chicago, but then he kept it up in LA, and got a large proportion of his boards on offense (whilst Olowakandi got more of the easier, team expected, defensive boards). The point wasn’t primarily that his numbers are great (though they are) it’s that (to be persuasive) you need to back up this “bad teams, ergo empty numbers” hypothesis with contextual support, and I don’t think it’s there.
Can also take a peak at with/without records, which is only somewhat more flattering:
‘00: 17-64 (.210) with, 0-1 w/o
‘01: 15-59 (.203) with, 0-8 w/o
‘02: 38-42 (.475) with, 1-1 (.500) w/o
‘03: 22-40 (.355) with, 5-15 (.250) w/o
‘04: 22-47 (.319) with, 6-7 (.462) w/o
‘05: 37-44 (.457) with, 0-1 w/o
‘06: 44-35 (.557) with, 3-0 (1.000) w/o
‘07: 40-40 (.500) with, 0-2 w/o
‘08: 1-7 (.125) with, 22-52 (.297) w/o
’00 – Single game missed was a 14 point loss to a poor Cleveland team.
’01 – 8 games missed. -629 over 74 games with for -8.5 with, -117 over 8 games without for -15. There’s a difference of 6.5 (and helps vindicate how awful those Bulls teams were).
I don’t have time to go through each one right now but it doesn’t look to me like there’s the evidence there for this “empty stats” claim. Even in an injury hit down year the binary w-l says he’s worth (slightly more than) .100 or a touch over 8 wins a season (though, whilst this is the largest sample, there’s huge noise going on that year).
