LA Bird wrote:Odinn21 wrote:I don't think your rankings is crazy or outlandish. Though I must say that this your rankings look way more susceptible to "inherently superior" player mindset and (imho) you are not looking into LeBron's career variances as much as you're doing with the others.
If a player is indeed superior, I don't see anything wrong with having multiple seasons above another's peak. I had 5 Jordan seasons above Bird's peak and I would say the same for Jordan vs Russell too.
I mean Russell's 1963 was still pretty much in line with his 1962/1964/1965. You have the latter 3 seasons in your rankings, 1963 of Russell was way less of a variance compared to LeBron's 2010 after 2009 and 2014 after 2013. Yet, somehow 1963 Russell is below 2014 LeBron and not making the cut.
Russell having less variance doesn't necessarily mean he had a better season since I had his peak ranked lower in the first place.
I wouldn't say 63 Russell was in line with 62/64/65 either. There was a pretty big drop in his RS+PO WS/48 that year (see graph below) and it was the Celtics' weakest postseason in both net rating and relative defense of his entire career up until 66.
'63 was in line with '62/'64/'65. I mean WS/48? For a person like you who uses stats to great extents, I'm baffled by you using WS/48 as an actual indicator of anything. Even the unweighted and old EFF is more predictive than WS/48 for the times before tov tracking.
Was Paul Pierce less of a player in 2002/2003/2006 than 2008 due to WS/48 saying so?
Or did Oscar Robertson peak like 2003 Tracy McGrady in 1964?
The very least you could do was putting WS numbers next to each other in those teams.
In 1962; Russell had 24.9% of team's total WS in rs and 37.5% in ps.
In 1963; Russell had 23.1% of team's total WS in rs and 33.3% in ps.
In 1964; Russell had 27.6% of team's total WS in rs and 25.3% in ps.
In 1965; Russell had 26.9% of team's total WS in rs and 38.5% in ps.
If anything, 1964 is the odd man among those with that ps rate.
Doing it by EFF;
In 1962; Russell averaged 35.4 per game, that's 24.3% of team total, 27.3% if we account for play time linearly.
(season / eff per game / % of team total / mins adjustment)
1962; 35.4 / 24.3% / 27.3% in rs & 41.9 / 31.5% / 31.8% in ps
1963; 33.3 / 24.1% / 26.6% in rs & 38.7 / 29.2% / 29.6% in ps
1964; 34.2 / 26.4% / 29.2% in rs & 33.2 / 28.5% / 30.3% in ps
1965; 34.1 / 26.2% / 29.1% in rs & 39.1 / 29.9% / 30.9% in ps
In any of these numbers, do you see such a gap between 1963 and the others that would suggest anything like 0.185 and 0.230?
I don't.
Going further;
Among that 4 seasons, you have 1964 which was the only season Russell had negative rTS% in the playoffs as your #1. WS/48 is variance and a reason but rTS% is not?
1962; he scored 18.9 ppg on +1.0 rts in rs & 22.4 ppg on +6.5 rts in ps
1963; he scored 16.8 ppg on -2.8 rts in rs & 20.3 ppg on +4.2 rts in ps
1964; he scored 15.0 ppg on -2.4 rts in rs & 13.1 ppg on -4.3 rts in ps
1965; he scored 14.1 ppg on -0.7 rts in rs & 16.5 ppg on +9.1 rts in ps
Do you think that Russell was less of a defender, a rebounder and a facilitator in any of those 4 seasons in a significant way?
And you have the only season Russell failed to improve in volume and efficiency from rs to ps as his #1 season, if there's an inconsistent season among them, it's that one.
But 1963 gets short end of the stick because WS/48 couldn't handle Russell's efficiency drop and Havlicek's arrival?..
