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eminence wrote:Firstly a trio I think absolutely deserve HMs, if not votes.

Maurice Stokes: If it weren't for the tragic injury he and Oscar could've re-wrote the early 60's, an early small-ball big. Half of the teammate of the year award.

Marques Haynes: Wilt's pick for the best Globetrotter ever, absolute wizard with the ball, would be a world-class ballhandler even today. One of the very few players to ever outplay Mikan head to head.

Goose Tatum: The Crown Prince, what's more to be said. Not sure if he was quite the talent Haynes was, but he certainly would've been a strong NBA player.

A link to box-scores for those famous Trotters v Lakers games from the late 40's/early 50's.

http://www.apbr.org/trotters-lakers.html

penbeast0 wrote:

eminence wrote:Firstly a trio I think absolutely deserve HMs, if not votes.

Maurice Stokes: If it weren't for the tragic injury he and Oscar could've re-wrote the early 60's, an early small-ball big. Half of the teammate of the year award.

Marques Haynes: Wilt's pick for the best Globetrotter ever, absolute wizard with the ball, would be a world-class ballhandler even today. One of the very few players to ever outplay Mikan head to head.

Goose Tatum: The Crown Prince, what's more to be said. Not sure if he was quite the talent Haynes was, but he certainly would've been a strong NBA player.

A link to box-scores for those famous Trotters v Lakers games from the late 40's/early 50's.

http://www.apbr.org/trotters-lakers.html

NBA (BAA/NBL/ABA) only, Globetrotters, playground legends, Bob Kurland types not eligible except for their NBA careers.

Stokes is an interesting case. If Walton types make it into the Hall, Stokes is that level compared to the other 50s guys. And, it's a great narrative.

trex_8063 wrote:My votes:
George Mikan
Neil Johnston
Vern Mikkelsen
Ed Macauley
^^^^Those are the easier picks [first three quite easy]. Starts getting a little harder shortly thereafter....
Harry Gallatin
George Yardley
Bob Davies
Bobby Wanzer
Arnie Risen
Joe Fulks


I'll tentatively go with those picks, though I could be swayed on some toward the bottom.
Joe Fulks I think gets historically overrated for being the big scorer on the very first BAA champion; and I could be easily convinced I'm overrating him here as a result (though that circumstance does carry some historic weight, so idk). Arnie Risen is the other guy who doesn't feel solid in the 10 players above.
The "honorable mentions" I could consider replacing one of them with are:

Max Zaslofsky
Slater Martin
Dick McGuire
Maurice Stokes
Jim Pollard
Andy Phillip

I don't think there's anyone else terribly relevant who I'm forgetting for this stage. Thoughts? Does Joe Fulks truly have the career to warrant his inclusion? He's definitely the one I feel the most shaky about.

Owly wrote:My guess, if I was really getting into this would be that I would be boosting for Bob Feerick as a 40s representative, probably above Fulks. I thought I remembered reading a weird novelty stat about him in a Martin Taragano book about him being (maybe with Hagan) the only person to be top 10 in the league in a year in so many - I think "all" - categories ... much easier in the smaller number of teams, less stats leagues) but that seems to be the memory playing tricks (it was just Hagan). Regardless, whilst he didn't have the crazy volume of Fulks he was an outlier efficiency scorer and probably the best player on a good early BAA team. He does have a longevity problem but then so does Fulks for longevity of goodness (and Fulks has some years so bad they may actually detract from him, depending on how one feels about that sort of thing).

I might also, without thinking out a full voting list, be a bit frosty on Macauley based on the number of 50s centers posting strong boxscore composites, and his lackluster defensive reputation and Boston's play at that end.

Extra tidbit on Feerick. His '47 campaign ranks 27th all time in total win shares for one season (obviously with an incomplete box-score for that era), with only Jabbar, Chamberlain, Mikan, Jordan, Robertson, James, David Robinson, ABA Gilmore, Durant and Shaq having seasons above him. His 18.59 Win Shares were accumulated over 55 games (of a 60 game team schedule). Obviously WS likes efficiency and he was super efficient for that early era. Anyhow if you want someone for that early BAA era, I back him.

Owly wrote:
I might also, without thinking out a full voting list, be a bit frosty on Macauley based on the number of 50s centers posting strong boxscore composites, and his lackluster defensive reputation and Boston's play at that end.

.......

I'd also say I lean a little cynical on Macauley as a lock. Many centers putting up big numbers at the time (Neil Johnston,
Ed Macauley, Clyde Lovellette, Larry Foust, Charlie (Chuck) Share, Bob Houbregs plus Mikan) whilst I'd like to parse it out more closely, Boston was bad defensively Ed lacked strength and it seems like he might have been a real problem on that end.

eminence wrote:I'd also be pretty hesitant to call Macauley a lock, I think his calling-card (scoring efficiency) was very dependent on Cousy.

Dr Positivity wrote:I think leaving out Macauley would be overthinking it with 10 spots and 1960+ guys not being available. His stats are WAY better than some of the players who you'd have to displace for him. Only Mikan has more WS.

Same for Joe Fulks, are people doubting him cause of his efficiency? He was the star of the league and considered the best offensive player in the league in the late 40s, and you can't say it never led to success. In 47 he had the highest TS% on his team and 9th in the league, while leading the league in scoring, and his team won the title. Maybe after that his volume/inefficiency over does it (early 50s version original Thunder Melo???), but it still has a lot of value to be scoring that much in that era.

FTR here was the NBA's 25th anniversary team (retired players only):

F Bob Pettit
F Dolph Schayes
F Paul Arizin
F Joe Fulks
C Bill Russell
C George Mikan
G Bob Cousy
G Bill Sharman
G Bob Davies
G Sam Jones
Coach Red Auerbach

So some solid respect for Fulks and Davies there based in part of their success pre merger. I believe they were forced to pick 4 forwards, 2 C and 4 guards which would explain why a player like Johnston wasn't there.

My picks:

George Mikan - Duh
Neil Johnston - dominant peak statistically
Ed Macauley - strong productivity
Vern Mikkelsen - star player on Lakers dynasty
Joe Fulks
Bob Davies

For last four spots

Jim Pollard - I have a hard time leaving off a player with 2x 1st team, 2x 2nd team resume that was a part of Lakers
Slater Martin - Lakers dynasty again and was one of the better guards.
Bobby Wazner - Solid stats (he has the most WS for guards eligible here) and played on champion
Max Zaslfosky - makes 4 early 1st teams, contributes to 3x Knicks finals

HM

Harry Gallatin - productive career with winning teams. I gave Zaslofsky the slight edge.
George Yardley - impressive scoring peak (28ppg), but seems a bit like a good stats bad team
Maurice Stokes - not quite enough longevity
Arnie Risen - too many good big men

Owly wrote:Internal reasoning doesn't seem clear here. e.g. Gallatin has "stats are WAY better than some of the players" included (and yes he's a big and the weaker numbers guys are smalls but ditto for Macauley). Not to say EM can't be in, just that some rationalizations run somewhat counter to others, making the process murky, though aggregating the different and limited information can of course be tricky to do systematically.

penbeast0 wrote:BTW, possibly the second most talented NBA big man of the era won't even get considered since Alex Groza was banned for shaving points for gamblers at UK. I had serious questions about defensive value for both Macauley and Johnston but it's harder to judge defense. It may be that guys with less statistical value have more actual value, guys like Risen, Gallatin, etc. but without more evidence (eye test, contemporary observers talking about their defensive dominance, etc.) I have to give it to the clearly statistically superior pair.

Same goes for Yardley v. Pollard as well. Pollard made his name offensively and Yardley may be more "empty stats" but they are such superior stats that being the 3rd or 4th best Laker just doesn't seem as key, especially when you can see St. Louis improve when Slater Martin goes there (other reasons as well of course, but that's part of it and a part of it that contemporaries talked about even when Martin's stats were underwhelming). That's why I went with Martin, rather than Pollard as the 3rd Laker star for my picks.

Owly wrote:b) for position ... are they?
Centers peak-wise iamong primarily 50s centers (not the pool here, but his peers) it's Mikan, then Johnston, then Foust/Macauley but Lovellete, Share and Houbregs also peak close statistically. Groza would do if we had his minutes for a year. Ray Felix, and to a lesser degree Jorgensen (WS/48) and Miller (PER) show that the center position could put up numbers (and I've left out Risen and Otten as more 40s guys, and at a lower level Connie Simmons).
As 50s PFs it's Schayes/Pettit, then Gallatin then Mikelssen (or Sears if PF, then Yardley if PF).

trex_8063 wrote:fwiw, I expect guys like Foust and Lovellette to get in with the next group (or at least, I'll not be surprised to see that I am voting for them).

Somewhat related, I'm not much for dividing things up by position and inducting along the "how good he was compared only to those of his own position" lines (where we get roughly the same number of bigs and perimeter guys). I don't want to over-inflate the value of certain players based only on how they compare to other guys at the same position (rather than how they compare to ALL other players). To me that'd be a little bit like----if we were voting on football players---voting the game's best punter in ahead of the game's 3rd-best quarterback.
Basketball has been a "big man's game", especially in the early days. Personally, I'm not going to "correct" for that and give the little guys much by way of extra credit. I'm OK with there being a disproportionate number of bigs inducted on these early ballots.

Owly wrote:c) WS leans quite heavily on team performance and whilst star power isn' the whole teeam, Macauley did get to play with Cousy and Sharman, then Pettit and Hagan (and Lovellete and Share and Martin) [also WS skews heavily pro efficiency which is to his advantage,......

trex_8063 wrote:The same is true of Bob Feerick.

Dr Positivity wrote:he still helped the Hawks beat them two years later.

Dr Positivity wrote:We don't have enough close to enough information to say Macauley is as overrated as he'd have to be to be out of the top 10 in this pool.