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This came up to me when i thought about the difference between penalizing a player evaluation for being injury prone vs Getting injured

2017 kawhi At the time was a fairly healthy player who only got injured in a freak play. It was very bad luck he [i]did[/i] get injured

1977 walton even at the time, before and after was incredibly fragile. It is considered a ton of luck he [b]didnt[/b] get injured at no point of the playoffs

Repeat the 77 and 17 seasons in 100 simulations and i feel confident walton gets hurt in the playoffs a lot more often

Yet it was kawhi who got injured and it was walton who was fully healthy fot the post season

So when we evaluate these two seasons in a peak comparision. Who do we "penalize" for injury?

If we evaluate strictly what happened the penalized player must be kawhi

If we evaluate strictly the player kawhi was (at least at the time) the more dursble player in 2017 than walton in 1977 so it should be walton

What do yoy think?

Maybe it's over simplistic, but I think you have to go by what actually happened, unless the conversation is purely hypothetical (i.e. simulate the same season 100 times). But if you want to get to something about history as it really happened, you have to focus on what really happened

The only one who should be penalized is Zaza, lol.

Seriously speaking, I've never thought about it in this way, for me it's more about objective evaluation in this sense that getting injured in the playoffs (Kawhi) just decreases your value significantly no matter whether you were unlucky or just injury prone. So there's no comparison between Kawhi '17 and Walton '77 when the latter was actually healthy in the playoffs, unless someone is a fan of 'what if (not)' discussions.

But I see your point.

My way of thinking about injuries is this. First you need to look at the type of injury. Is the injury the result of a fluke injury or is the injury due to chronic health issues?

For fluke injury comparisons to other fluke injury comparisons, I don't really penalize a player for missing post-season time relative to missing RS time. I do penalize for the severity of the injury. As an example MJ's 1986 campaign isn't better to me than Duncan 2000 campaign even though the former could play in the PS and the later could not. Both got unlucky to get hurt. Duncan got even more unlucky to get hurt in the PS. Duncan's 00 injury is in a lot of ways less concerning to me than Duncan's foot problems in 04-06.

I do penalize severely for chronic health issues. I don't weigh Walton's 1977 campaign as heavily as I used to or as heavily as others. I just think he got lucky to make it through the season. I'm less high on Davis 2020 campaign than others. He isn't nearly as injury prone as Walton but he does get hurt a lot. And I do think he was awfully lucky to get a mid-season break to rest his body.

So in a comparison between a fluke injury that occurs in the PS or a player who chronically misses time, I'm always inclined to favor the former over the later. And if you were to say to me, who would you draft for that season I would heavily favor the fluke injury player over the chronically hurt guy.

Who the hell picked Walton lol

sp6r=underrated wrote:My way of thinking about injuries is this. First you need to look at the type of injury. Is the injury the result of a fluke injury or is the injury due to chronic health issues?

For fluke injury comparisons to other fluke injury comparisons, I don't really penalize a player for missing post-season time relative to missing RS time. I do penalize for the severity of the injury. As an example MJ's 1986 campaign isn't better to me than Duncan 2000 campaign even though the former could play in the PS and the later could not. Both got unlucky to get hurt. Duncan got even more unlucky to get hurt in the PS. Duncan's 00 injury is in a lot of ways less concerning to me than Duncan's foot problems in 04-06.

I do penalize severely for chronic health issues. I don't weigh Walton's 1977 campaign as heavily as I used to or as heavily as others. I just think he got lucky to make it through the season. I'm less high on Davis 2020 campaign than others. He isn't nearly as injury prone as Walton but he does get hurt a lot. And I do think he was awfully lucky to get a mid-season break to rest his body.

So in a comparison between a fluke injury that occurs in the PS or a player who chronically misses time, I'm always inclined to favor the former over the later. And if you were to say to me, who would you draft for that season I would heavily favor the fluke injury player over the chronically hurt guy.

Does this change depensing on the framing on the question?

If i ask you 77 waltons season vs 17 kawhi season

Vs asking 77 walton as a player vs 17 kawhi as a player

Does it change anythingh?

falcolombardi wrote:
Does this change depensing on the framing on the question?

If i ask you 77 waltons season vs 17 kawhi season

Vs asking 77 walton as a player vs 17 kawhi as a player

Does it change anythingh?

Yes, when you are asking which season is more valuable you're taking that player's season exactly as is. I'm being asked to assume Walton makes it through the playoffs every year. Kawhi doesn't. I'm being asked to assume Walton's team is able to hold its head above water in the RS when he misses time. I'm being asked to assume that Kawhi steps on Zaza's foot everytime. This to me is much more a historical question.

By contrast when you ask which player is more valuable one of the first questions* I ask myself is:

If you simulated that season 100x, what would the average outcome look like?

In the case of Walton, I'm almost certain that it ends most times with him hurt. Player value is much more player analysis than historical analysis.

Hope that make sense.

I don't think you can blame Kawhi for his injury in 2017.It was such a cheap shot by Zaza!

Both had great seasons and fairly complete ones. I think they should only get penalized in comparison to title winning seasons of other players (Walton missed many games in RS and kawhi only played one game in the wcf, but overall you really can't penalize them if the comparison is 2014 Durant, or 2009 Wade). In the end, ზაზა or not ზაზა, we can only value what Kawhi did, regardless of what/who stopped him to continue doing so.