OhayoKD wrote:Owly wrote:Short, otoh, version, no.
4 good teams (assume Lakers still have actual timeline Wilt). Lakers and Mil possibly not maxing RS as recent and dominant champs.
SRS swing to get even with the average of those 4 (and say, to oversimplify, have 1/5 chance, though irl they'd (hope to) be a third contender in the conference and likely have a tougher route) is 18.855. That's a lot.
Wilt and Russell aren't complementary figures. Neither has shooting range. Both are dominant rim-protectors (Wilt when motivated, dedicated to that end) and rebounders. Wilt and (young) Thurmond didn't seem optimal as a related concept trial.
There can be more nuance as to how things got this way, what's changed to get to this point, what are we holding constant (e.g. injuries), coaching etc.
Fwiw there are teams from the NBL in major league era with worse win percentages as well as the '12 Bobcats (though all on a smaller sample) and (through 2019) 4 with worse SRSes, Bobcats and '92 Mavs clearly so.
As to who does, it get's too much into time machine struff (and needs better knowledge of the baseline 76ers roster and how those players were playing at that time) but you'd want a better fit than the pair offered here.
Focusing on srs swing when the srs treshold for winning titles was vastly lower in the 60's is misguided. +3 or +4 is suffecient to be the best team in many years in that era. Teams with nuetral and negative srs did okay in the playoffs multiple times.
Russell dragged a 30 win team to a title on his last legs and wilt dragged teams with horrible records without wilt to relative parity with russell's celtics when bill had more help. Why do they need to be complimentary to do this?
Okay in principle:
Either you didn’t read the title (subject is 1973) or seem to be making assumptions that aren’t stated or justifiably assumed as implicit (e.g. “I estimate ’64 Russell’s impact on the Celtics to be X SRS and it remains constant to ’73 except now we adjust for different team contexts”). What's stated is that to get even with the top tier in '73 requires a "18.855" swing and that "that's a lot." Feel free to engage with or dispute this.
Fwiw, though I'll engage as I think there's other stuff that has issues here.
Focusing on srs swing when the srs treshold for winning titles was vastly lower in the 60's is misguided. +3 or +4 is suffecient to be the best team in many years in that era. Teams with nuetral and negative srs did okay in the playoffs multiple times.
…
I guess it depends what you mean by “did okay”. In a small sample in a small league pedestrian teams could advance and a team could be underrated due to health changes, but lets dig in.
For the 60s (60-69)
19 such teams made the playoffs
No negative SRS team won a title.
No negative SRS team made the finals, won 2 series (later not always required for former)
7 teams made the conference finals/2nd round (1 east, 6 west [weaker]). This goes down to 3 of 13 (all west) if looking at -1 or worse teams.
’65 Bullets: 6 of 9 teams make playoffs. Upset Hawks in first to 3 series. Played a slightly weaker (than Hawks) Lakers side okay but outscored and lost 4-2.
’62 Pistons. 6 of 8. Upset Royals in first to 3. Played a similar Lakers side, clearly outscored, lost 4-2.
’67 Hawks. 8 of 10. Beat on paper weaker expansion Bulls (-3.37). Someone had to win. Lost to and outscored by Warriors,
The rest are within 0.66 of 0 SRS
’68 Warriors defeat Hawks. 8 of 12. SRS underrates Warriors. ElGee’s WoWY, with two different filters, called Warriors slightly positive with Thurmond healthy and much worse with him out. Warriors advance whilst being outscored in best of 5, first to 3. Then swept by clearly better Lakers.
’66 Hawks best Bullets. 6 of 9. Bullets slightly worse SRS. Someone had to win. Hawks do play Lakers pretty well, goes 7.
Within 0.13 of 0.
First eastern team. ’65 Philly 76ers. 6 of 9. Significant turnover/acquisition within season. Some injuries. ’65 76ers with Chamberlain and Greer and Costello in given by Elgee as 2.6 SRS (if accurate, narrow favorites).
’61 Lakers. 6 of 8. Beat worse Pistons team (3-2). Play Hawks close (3-4, even points dif).
So in summary. No teams win the title. No teams win 2 series. Of the seven teams that win a series the vast majority are in the clearly weaker conference. Of the 7, 3 defeat outright worse teams. 2 teams seem not to be negative SRS teams with something like their final playoff roster and in at least one case may not even be underdogs. And two actual, outright clear upsets in best of 5 series.
I would therefore question the assertion that they “did okay”. I would suggest they did as expected in small samples. Where RS and playoff roster key members consistent (i.e. actual sub-zero teams) more so. Typically lost. Wins often versus inferior opposition. Occasional upset. I don’t think there’s a win over a championship caliber team in there.
Russell dragged a 30 win team to a title on his last legs and wilt dragged teams with horrible records without wilt to relative parity with russell's celtics when bill had more help. Why do they need to be complimentary to do this?
The ’70 Celtics won 34 with a 36 pythag wins, without Jones and with Howell vastly diminished, whilst Sanders misses time and may be diminished by a knee injury. I don’t think these are insignificant. Perhaps you have WoWY for ’69 Russell? Still a larger sample suggests with a pretty pedestrian replacement (Hank Finkel) and further losses/diminutions they were not a 30 win team so it would seem very harsh to say they would have been in ’69.
Regarding the dragging specifically to the title I’ve seen smart posters (not to say I always agree with them) posit Hondo as the Celtics ’69 FMVP (e.g. multiple voices here viewtopic.php?t=1328508). This does not fit with the implication of a single player “dragging”.
On why fit matters see above. Skillsets may not mesh. You can’t just stack say +5 in that context and +5 in that context and assume +10 elsewhere. It’s a team game. People can go too far with it or get fit wrong and I think I’ve seen smart people do it. But bad fit can nuke a player’s impact.
1) Because fit always matters. See above re Thurmond.
2) Floor raising and ceiling raising whilst related aren’t the same thing (the asserted lift from Chamberlain [inconsistent in any case] doesn’t necessarily scale though, fwiw the specifics here may be somewhat moot because the Chamberlain selected is different from the one you are talking of with bad casts.
3) Feel free to illustrate what you mean but I’m pretty confident Wilt’s teams never had any kind of parity with Celtics until the 76ers. Feel free to show any specific horrible records without where his team is better than or super close Boston’s in SRS, or won a series or outscored Boston in a series and were merely unlucky. If however you mean “they played a series fairly close” I’d say, yeah, that can happen in a small sample.
Regarding 3 or 4 SRS “sufficient to be the best team” it’s unclear what you mean.
I guess if you mean the actual best team could have secured first whilst easing off to that level, perhaps but then other teams SRS go up, so perhaps not, we can’t really say.
If, however we’re not eliminating what the actual best team did, and assuming they are relevant (it's unclear why they wouldn't be)…
Top SRS (note with a dynastic champ leading into and throughout this decade they may not actually maximize for RS consistently) from 1960
7.62
4.94
8.25
6.38
6.93
7.46
4.34
8.5
7.96
5.48
A new team playing at the level of 3 SRS (level in the existing league) would have led the league 0 of 10 times.
A new team playing at the level of 4 SRS would have led the league 0 of 10 times.
As per original post, this was an at a glance rather than an absolute statement. But your response gives no actual case for the contrary and is often unclear and I would argue misleading or inaccurate.